LIFE AND DEALTH OF THE AMERICAN SCHOOL SYSTEM

Some years ago Diane Ravitch wrote LEFT BACK which is a minor masterpiece; years from now historians will recommend one book to understand the background of American public education and it will be LEFT BACK. With her new book, THE DEATH AND LIFE of the AMERICAN SCHOOL SYSTEM, Diane Ravitch has once again proven that she is the Grand Dame of the history of American education and once again has produced what must be classed as a permanent book a book scholars will turn to years from now as a standard sourcebook for American public education's virtues and vices.




Diane has always been a supporter of standards; as a public school teacher so am I. But Diane makes a powerful case that our scientism of day -which mistakenly believes schools can be judged or measured by such narrow instruments as scantron/edusoft bubble tests-is NOT an accurate measure of educational effectiveness.



Ravitch is also not afraid to state the obvious: the temptation for schools, teachers and administrators to game the system or cheat is sometimes overwhelming. Even honest administrators would be foolish not to drop students who never show up for class. The reason why is because NCLB hits schools for low participation points and students who don't show up count as a ZERO for school averages.



AYP's tell us something but they are not a valid barometer of true academic achievement. One would think that if a high school had 300 AP scholars a year that would count for something but it does not. But the reality that those 300 AP scholars are not merely proficient but far, far above state standards (ten times as much twenty times as much?). On the AYP's AP students are counted as just competent students. That would be like rating the US military but not counting the Special Forces or Marines. It is idiotic. Much of NCLB is idiotic and Ravitch proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt.



As a classroom teacher I know that teacher evaluations based on performance of standardized tests are notoriously biased. When I had all AP classes I was a genius and the "Jaime Escalante" of Bakersfield. The truth is even Jaime Escalante was not Jaime Escalante when he was challenged by a different school body with different problems and different cultural backgrounds than Mr. Escalante was accustomed to. And similarly, now that I have no AP students my test scores are no longer so stellar. The reality is the friends of the principal or departments chairs make sure to assign themselves the best classes so that THEIR teaching may not be called into question.



I am not afraid of having the lowest performing students however. I consider them a challenge and I consider it my duty to try to give these students the best quality education I can. But I am not a miracle worker. If my juniors are unable to read a single sentence of English how are they -in one year or two years- pass their proficiencies and complete the curriculum for college prep students in social studies? My job (as I see it) is to give these students an introduction to history, study skills and the reading of English. My theory is that the students must learn how to learn to read English first. If they can't do that then they cannot hope to engage the English medium curriculum. No one would expect first year American students of Spanish or French to score as well as high school students in France, Spain or Costa Rica so why should we expect immigrant students -often from the poorest and most disadvantaged classes- to read, write and score "ABOVE BASIC" , "PROFICIENT" or “ADVANCED on their standardized tests?



This writer remembers when Diane Ravitch was flirting with “voucherism” as a solution to low performing schools; but Ravitch examines the facts dispassionately and says "in sum, twenty years of vouchers in Milwaukee and a decade of the program's expansion to include religious school, there was no evidence of dramatic improvement for the neediest students or the public schools they left behind." Ravitch is exactly right that non-educators -often with no classroom experience- are simply not qualified to reform schools let alone run them.



Ravitch is blunt she says NCLB is wrong headed and "a timetable for the demolition of public education in the United States." Ravitch proves that Charter schools are no panacea. Ravitch proves that small schools (as touted by Bill Gates) are no solution. One thing she doesn't mention is that reforms like smaller schools and block schedules undermine and virtually destroy Advanced Placement programs because there are not the resources, students or teachers to sustain these programs. So in trying to improve a school we often dynamite the highest achieving classes. That makes no sense.



I am not irrevocably opposed to Charter schools or Catholic schools. In fact I spent much of my professional career teaching in Catholic schools or private education; at present I am still involved in tutoring “home schoolers” in subject areas their parents are unable to give them (such as Spanish and Latin). But like Ravitch I know that Charters ("school choice") by themselves are no answer to our societal and educational problem. And Ravitch documents the incompetence, theft and corruption associated with Charter schools such as The California Charter Academy which declared bankruptcy in 2004 stranding over 6000 students in more than 60 "storefront" schools. The founder of the organization -not an educator but a former insurance salesman- may have taken the State of California for over $100,000,000. That is no way to run a navy.



And by the way, does anyone think a nation can be defended by a citizen militia with private gunboats to protect the coast? Of course, not! No modern nation could defend itself on that basis. As Ron Unz noted many years ago not a single modern nation has dared to abandon universal public education. The USA would be very unwise if it were to abandon universal free public education.



Ravitch pulls no punches but is not a pessimistic doomsayer. She writes "If we want to improve education, we must first have a vision of what good education is. We should have goals that are worth striving for." Ravitch is right that our students need basic skills in literacy and numeracy but then says, wisely, "but that is not enough." Ravitch writes:



We want to prepare them for a useful life.

We want them to be able to think for themselves when they are out in the world on their own.

We want them to have a good character and to make sound decisions about their life, their work, and their health.

We want them to face life's joys and travails with courage and humor.

We hope that they will be kind and compassionate in their dealings with others.

We want them to have a sense of justice and fairness.

We want them to understand our nation and our world and the challenges we face.

We want them to be active, responsible citizens, and to reach decisions rationally. We want them to learn science and mathematics so they understand the problems of modern live and participate in finding solutions. We want them to enjoy the rich artistic and culture heritage of our society and other societies.



I may be mistaken but here I sense the influence of two other great teachers of the 20th century: NYU worthy Sidney Hook and another great Columbian like Dr. Ravitch, and one of the finest teachers and authors of the 20th century, Gilbert Highet. Hook, Sidney. (SEE "The Closing of the American Mind: An Intellectual Best-Seller Revisited." The. American Scholar 58 (1989): pp. 123-35.)

.

And I may be mistaken again but I sense at least indirectly the influence of Catholic educators on Ms. Ravitch because when she speaks like this she sounds like Sister Rosemary of Holy Names Academy (Seattle) one of the hardest work and most inspiring teachers I ever had the privilege to work with. But this just goes to show you how catholic (small c) the intellectual influences have been on Diane Ravitch. Diane is always thinking, always revising, always researching and always exploring. She may have visited more schools and interviewed and corresponded with more teachers from more states and more countries than anybody alive. Ravitch is not parochial at all and she is right when she notes that countries like Finland and Japan have excellent public systems without rewards or sanctions of any kind. Ravitch notes "their students excel at tested subjects because they are well educated in many other subjects that teach them to use language well and to wrestle with important ideas.”



Ravitch is also right that our very expensive text books are, for the most part, veritable quaking bogs of boredom and ennui or as she put it in THE LANGUAGE POLICE sanitized PC tomes that create "the Empire of Boredom." Ravitch notes such PC textbooks "maintain a studied air of neutrality, thus ensuring the triumph of dullness.



In fact, I feel it is my primary job as a classroom teacher to enliven the curriculum with humorous anecdotes and great stories. It never ceases to amaze me how students pick up things in classroom discussion such as Butch O'Hare's notorious father (an associate of Al Capone) , why German machine guns had three times the rate of fire of the best Allied machine guns, why Hitler's V-2 rocket program may have ensured Hitler's defeat, why Puerto Rico produces zero illegal aliens (due to the Jones Act of 1917), how the Polish Air Force smuggled out a Nazi Enigma machine to England and help win the Battle of the Atlantic, how Lesley Howard may have helped kept Spain neutral and so became a target of assassination by the Nazis- the story of Earl Warren's immigrant wife and parents (none of whom were native English-speakers), how Martin Luther King survived TWO assassination attempts prior to 1968, the fact 80 or 90 year old women could be wet nurses to babies- this was once very common place in the Highlands and Islands- , stories of Cubans working in the Gran Zafra (sugar cane harvest), how primitive medicine was even as late as 1915 -no blood transfusions or antibiotics- Tiger tanks shooting duds because the shells had been sabotaged by slave laborers, Jacqueline Kennedy's famous pink dress at Dallas, Mrs. Kennedy giving speeches in fluent French and Spanish, John F. Kennedy using Latin and German in his Berlin speech, how Roosevelt helped establish the March of Dimes, and the story of the Candy Bombers during the Berlin Airlift. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction and it is these very human stories and curious anecdotes that help make history come alive.



And I might add that public schools are not the only places where safe mediocrity reigns; most books on required reading lists in Teacher Ed programs were unknown 50 years ago and I dare say will be unknown 50 years from now. What a colossal waste of paper, time and resources! As a case in point a good argument could be made that one could learn more about the Cold War, politics and totalitarianism by reading and studying in depth three pieces of literature than every text book every written: the candidates would be Animal Farm by Orwell, For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway, Dr. Zhivago by Pasternak or perhaps the First Circle by Solzhenitsyn. I know from experience that young peoples eyes light up when they read great literature filled with humor and insights.



Ravitch is absolutely right that curriculum, good curriculum is absolutely the sine qua non. She writes " It is a road map. Without a road map, you are sure to drive in circles and get nowhere...a sound curriculum ensures that young people will not remain ignorant of the most essential facts and ideas of the humanities and sciences."



Ravitch also has been made aware by her school visits and her many contacts with classroom teachers "in the trenches" how student behavior and civility has, essentially, collapsed. Teachers today hear more curse words and see more violence that any Marine recruit ever heard or witnessed in Camp Pendleton or Parris Island 30 years ago. Teachers are taxed to the breaking point by the constant challenge to their authority and disruptions to the learning process. It is a wonder more teachers don't break and attack their students. The fact is many teachers soldier on heroically resorting to mental health counseling and if things become unbearable they die or resign. I don't know of any teacher who gets combat pay or disability but they should. Just the other day a teacher had to take a loaded gun away from an intruder and it did not even make a line in the local paper. Ravitch is right on the mark when she says "schools must enforce standards of civility and teach student to respect themselves and others, or they cannot provide a safe, orderly environment which is necessary for learning."



Ravitch’s book is not a series of unsupported assertions by any means. Every chapter is very convincingly documented. My favorite chapter, as a school teacher, is chapter 9 "What would Mrs. Ratliff do?" Nobody knows Mrs. Ratliff but Ravitch makes it clear that Mrs. Ratliff was an unsung front line heroine of American civilization and education. American owes more to the Mrs. Ratliffs than most of its presidents past and present (if we are honest most were mediocre plodders or worse complete incompetents with a few glorious exceptions).



Who was Mrs.Ruby Ratliff ? She was none other than the mentor and homeroom teacher of Diane Ravitch herself. I found Ravitch's homage to her former teacher moving. Most teachers labor on in genteel poverty and rarely get any recognition but the teacher's reward is the gratitude of his or her many students. That is what makes it all worthwhile because one does not teach just for fun or for oneself but for the community and in a larger sense for one's civilization. Gilbert Highet once said that a teacher must know and love his subject and Ravitch emphasizes that Mrs. Ratliff loved her subject: the English language and its literature. Mrs. Ratliff had high standards and no doubt spent many hours after school and at home correcting essays, exams and reports. And Ravitch notes that Mrs. Ratliff did it all without once ever recurring to standardized multiple choice tests. That Ravitch does not say so I have a hunch she agrees with this classroom teacher that excessive use of standardized tests is like excessive consumption of junk food; in excess it is sheer poison.



One of the chief faults of American teachers and American education may be excessive overreliance on machine graded superficial bubble multiple guess tests which I may add are exceedingly easy to cheat on or fake. I am quite sure Mrs. Ratliff was never fooled by plagiarism or cheating and by her hands on familiarity with her students work easily spotted the `"rats" and "cheats".



If one seeks a `magic bullet' to cure our educational ills or as Ravitch humorously alludes to a "magic feather" a la Dumbo you will not find it here. Ravitch says "in education, there are no short cuts, no utopias, no silver bullets. For certain, there are no magic feathers that enable elephants to fly.



Truly, as Euclid reportedly said to King Ptolemy, “there is no Royal Road to Geometry." He or she who wants to learn mathematics, solve equations, writing clear prose and gain wisdom must toil and sweat for days, months and years on end. Ravitch is also right that the survival and success of our free society may depend on our public school system. If the public school system is allowed to wither away we may become more like Latin America (which has excellent private schools for the rich and non-existent or woefully inadequate public education for the many who are poor).



This way lies more than madness or bad policy.



This way lies social strife and class warfare to an extent that the independence, prosperity and unity of our Republic may be at risk.



Ravitch writes "it is unlikely that the United States would have emerged as a world leader had it left the development of education to the whim and will of the free market." In my opinion, she never wrote a truer line.



Education is neither about profit and loss nor merely about narrow utilitarian goals. America by its very nature has tended to be utilitarian and materialist for better or for worst. Success in America has always been measured by the accumulation of power, money, status, prestige, property and fame. In addition, Americans have always valued the new over the tried and true disregarding most traditions, -this is their philistine side - which when it comes to culture is often a mistake. The Greeks had a word for this “apeirokalia” (a lack of experience in things beautiful) and yet another which we could translate as `unculture' or "apaideusia" (ignorance of the greatest goods in life)..



Yet I would argue that the most enduring aspect of the American Dream is not these manifestations of pomp, prosperity and power-these things like the Almighty Dollar -presently quite anemic- our naval and air supremacy will pass away- but not the single most valuable we thing we have which is our free and splendid ancient heritage.



What are we to do? We must look firmly towards the future but must never forget the past -that is to say our splendid and free ancient heritage. Above all we must not throw in the towel. We must teach every man, woman and child to wish for liberty, to cherish liberty, to understand liberty and most importantly to be capable of it.



I always tell my students there are there are TWO educations:

The first education is the practical one we all need that teaches us what we need to make a living -most of us have to make a living.



The second education we need is the other education, the "true education" that which teaches us how to live our lives more fully by teaching us to think AND to appreciate `the Good Life". I can't imagine my life without the second education and I encourage my students to cultivate their private lives for their own benefit, happiness and enjoyment and for the unity and mental health of their families.



And we must have the humility and foresight to recognize a people without wisdom -without a strong culture- without a strong memory and strong values without strong schools- will come to ruin.



As we pass the torch to a new generation we are most fortunate to have the lantern of Ravitch's wisdom and learning to help us see a better way. With The Death and Life of the Great American School System Diane Ravitch has raised a monument more enduring than brass -to paraphrase Horace: Non omnis morieris.








Some years ago Diane Ravitch wrote LEFT BACK which is a minor masterpiece; years from now historians will recommend one book to understand the background of American public education and it will be LEFT BACK. With her new book, THE DEATH AND LIFE of the AMERICAN SCHOOL SYSTEM, Diane Ravitch has once again proven that she is the Grand Dame of the history of American education and once again has produced what must be classed as a permanent book a book scholars will turn to years from now as a standard sourcebook for American public education's virtues and vices.




Diane has always been a supporter of standards; as a public school teacher so am I. But Diane makes a powerful case that our scientism of day -which mistakenly believes schools can be judged or measured by such narrow instruments as scantron/edusoft bubble tests-is NOT an accurate measure of educational effectiveness.



Ravitch is also not afraid to state the obvious: the temptation for schools, teachers and administrators to game the system or cheat is sometimes overwhelming. Even honest administrators would be foolish not to drop students who never show up for class. The reason why is because NCLB hits schools for low participation points and students who don't show up count as a ZERO for school averages.



AYP's tell us something but they are not a valid barometer of true academic achievement. One would think that if a high school had 300 AP scholars a year that would count for something but it does not. But the reality that those 300 AP scholars are not merely proficient but far, far above state standards (ten times as much twenty times as much?). On the AYP's AP students are counted as just competent students. That would be like rating the US military but not counting the Special Forces or Marines. It is idiotic. Much of NCLB is idiotic and Ravitch proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt.



As a classroom teacher I know that teacher evaluations based on performance of standardized tests are notoriously biased. When I had all AP classes I was a genius and the "Jaime Escalante" of Bakersfield. The truth is even Jaime Escalante was not Jaime Escalante when he was challenged by a different school body with different problems and different cultural backgrounds than Mr. Escalante was accustomed to. And similarly, now that I have no AP students my test scores are no longer so stellar. The reality is the friends of the principal or departments chairs make sure to assign themselves the best classes so that THEIR teaching may not be called into question.



I am not afraid of having the lowest performing students however. I consider them a challenge and I consider it my duty to try to give these students the best quality education I can. But I am not a miracle worker. If my juniors are unable to read a single sentence of English how are they -in one year or two years- pass their proficiencies and complete the curriculum for college prep students in social studies? My job (as I see it) is to give these students an introduction to history, study skills and the reading of English. My theory is that the students must learn how to learn to read English first. If they can't do that then they cannot hope to engage the English medium curriculum. No one would expect first year American students of Spanish or French to score as well as high school students in France, Spain or Costa Rica so why should we expect immigrant students -often from the poorest and most disadvantaged classes- to read, write and score "ABOVE BASIC" , "PROFICIENT" or “ADVANCED on their standardized tests?



This writer remembers when Diane Ravitch was flirting with “voucherism” as a solution to low performing schools; but Ravitch examines the facts dispassionately and says "in sum, twenty years of vouchers in Milwaukee and a decade of the program's expansion to include religious school, there was no evidence of dramatic improvement for the neediest students or the public schools they left behind." Ravitch is exactly right that non-educators -often with no classroom experience- are simply not qualified to reform schools let alone run them.



Ravitch is blunt she says NCLB is wrong headed and "a timetable for the demolition of public education in the United States." Ravitch proves that Charter schools are no panacea. Ravitch proves that small schools (as touted by Bill Gates) are no solution. One thing she doesn't mention is that reforms like smaller schools and block schedules undermine and virtually destroy Advanced Placement programs because there are not the resources, students or teachers to sustain these programs. So in trying to improve a school we often dynamite the highest achieving classes. That makes no sense.



I am not irrevocably opposed to Charter schools or Catholic schools. In fact I spent much of my professional career teaching in Catholic schools or private education; at present I am still involved in tutoring “home schoolers” in subject areas their parents are unable to give them (such as Spanish and Latin). But like Ravitch I know that Charters ("school choice") by themselves are no answer to our societal and educational problem. And Ravitch documents the incompetence, theft and corruption associated with Charter schools such as The California Charter Academy which declared bankruptcy in 2004 stranding over 6000 students in more than 60 "storefront" schools. The founder of the organization -not an educator but a former insurance salesman- may have taken the State of California for over $100,000,000. That is no way to run a navy.



And by the way, does anyone think a nation can be defended by a citizen militia with private gunboats to protect the coast? Of course, not! No modern nation could defend itself on that basis. As Ron Unz noted many years ago not a single modern nation has dared to abandon universal public education. The USA would be very unwise if it were to abandon universal free public education.



Ravitch pulls no punches but is not a pessimistic doomsayer. She writes "If we want to improve education, we must first have a vision of what good education is. We should have goals that are worth striving for." Ravitch is right that our students need basic skills in literacy and numeracy but then says, wisely, "but that is not enough." Ravitch writes:



We want to prepare them for a useful life.

We want them to be able to think for themselves when they are out in the world on their own.

We want them to have a good character and to make sound decisions about their life, their work, and their health.

We want them to face life's joys and travails with courage and humor.

We hope that they will be kind and compassionate in their dealings with others.

We want them to have a sense of justice and fairness.

We want them to understand our nation and our world and the challenges we face.

We want them to be active, responsible citizens, and to reach decisions rationally. We want them to learn science and mathematics so they understand the problems of modern live and participate in finding solutions. We want them to enjoy the rich artistic and culture heritage of our society and other societies.



I may be mistaken but here I sense the influence of two other great teachers of the 20th century: NYU worthy Sidney Hook and another great Columbian like Dr. Ravitch, and one of the finest teachers and authors of the 20th century, Gilbert Highet. Hook, Sidney. (SEE "The Closing of the American Mind: An Intellectual Best-Seller Revisited." The. American Scholar 58 (1989): pp. 123-35.)

.

And I may be mistaken again but I sense at least indirectly the influence of Catholic educators on Ms. Ravitch because when she speaks like this she sounds like Sister Rosemary of Holy Names Academy (Seattle) one of the hardest work and most inspiring teachers I ever had the privilege to work with. But this just goes to show you how catholic (small c) the intellectual influences have been on Diane Ravitch. Diane is always thinking, always revising, always researching and always exploring. She may have visited more schools and interviewed and corresponded with more teachers from more states and more countries than anybody alive. Ravitch is not parochial at all and she is right when she notes that countries like Finland and Japan have excellent public systems without rewards or sanctions of any kind. Ravitch notes "their students excel at tested subjects because they are well educated in many other subjects that teach them to use language well and to wrestle with important ideas.”



Ravitch is also right that our very expensive text books are, for the most part, veritable quaking bogs of boredom and ennui or as she put it in THE LANGUAGE POLICE sanitized PC tomes that create "the Empire of Boredom." Ravitch notes such PC textbooks "maintain a studied air of neutrality, thus ensuring the triumph of dullness.



In fact, I feel it is my primary job as a classroom teacher to enliven the curriculum with humorous anecdotes and great stories. It never ceases to amaze me how students pick up things in classroom discussion such as Butch O'Hare's notorious father (an associate of Al Capone) , why German machine guns had three times the rate of fire of the best Allied machine guns, why Hitler's V-2 rocket program may have ensured Hitler's defeat, why Puerto Rico produces zero illegal aliens (due to the Jones Act of 1917), how the Polish Air Force smuggled out a Nazi Enigma machine to England and help win the Battle of the Atlantic, how Lesley Howard may have helped kept Spain neutral and so became a target of assassination by the Nazis- the story of Earl Warren's immigrant wife and parents (none of whom were native English-speakers), how Martin Luther King survived TWO assassination attempts prior to 1968, the fact 80 or 90 year old women could be wet nurses to babies- this was once very common place in the Highlands and Islands- , stories of Cubans working in the Gran Zafra (sugar cane harvest), how primitive medicine was even as late as 1915 -no blood transfusions or antibiotics- Tiger tanks shooting duds because the shells had been sabotaged by slave laborers, Jacqueline Kennedy's famous pink dress at Dallas, Mrs. Kennedy giving speeches in fluent French and Spanish, John F. Kennedy using Latin and German in his Berlin speech, how Roosevelt helped establish the March of Dimes, and the story of the Candy Bombers during the Berlin Airlift. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction and it is these very human stories and curious anecdotes that help make history come alive.



And I might add that public schools are not the only places where safe mediocrity reigns; most books on required reading lists in Teacher Ed programs were unknown 50 years ago and I dare say will be unknown 50 years from now. What a colossal waste of paper, time and resources! As a case in point a good argument could be made that one could learn more about the Cold War, politics and totalitarianism by reading and studying in depth three pieces of literature than every text book every written: the candidates would be Animal Farm by Orwell, For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway, Dr. Zhivago by Pasternak or perhaps the First Circle by Solzhenitsyn. I know from experience that young peoples eyes light up when they read great literature filled with humor and insights.



Ravitch is absolutely right that curriculum, good curriculum is absolutely the sine qua non. She writes " It is a road map. Without a road map, you are sure to drive in circles and get nowhere...a sound curriculum ensures that young people will not remain ignorant of the most essential facts and ideas of the humanities and sciences."



Ravitch also has been made aware by her school visits and her many contacts with classroom teachers "in the trenches" how student behavior and civility has, essentially, collapsed. Teachers today hear more curse words and see more violence that any Marine recruit ever heard or witnessed in Camp Pendleton or Parris Island 30 years ago. Teachers are taxed to the breaking point by the constant challenge to their authority and disruptions to the learning process. It is a wonder more teachers don't break and attack their students. The fact is many teachers soldier on heroically resorting to mental health counseling and if things become unbearable they die or resign. I don't know of any teacher who gets combat pay or disability but they should. Just the other day a teacher had to take a loaded gun away from an intruder and it did not even make a line in the local paper. Ravitch is right on the mark when she says "schools must enforce standards of civility and teach student to respect themselves and others, or they cannot provide a safe, orderly environment which is necessary for learning."



Ravitch’s book is not a series of unsupported assertions by any means. Every chapter is very convincingly documented. My favorite chapter, as a school teacher, is chapter 9 "What would Mrs. Ratliff do?" Nobody knows Mrs. Ratliff but Ravitch makes it clear that Mrs. Ratliff was an unsung front line heroine of American civilization and education. American owes more to the Mrs. Ratliffs than most of its presidents past and present (if we are honest most were mediocre plodders or worse complete incompetents with a few glorious exceptions).



Who was Mrs.Ruby Ratliff ? She was none other than the mentor and homeroom teacher of Diane Ravitch herself. I found Ravitch's homage to her former teacher moving. Most teachers labor on in genteel poverty and rarely get any recognition but the teacher's reward is the gratitude of his or her many students. That is what makes it all worthwhile because one does not teach just for fun or for oneself but for the community and in a larger sense for one's civilization. Gilbert Highet once said that a teacher must know and love his subject and Ravitch emphasizes that Mrs. Ratliff loved her subject: the English language and its literature. Mrs. Ratliff had high standards and no doubt spent many hours after school and at home correcting essays, exams and reports. And Ravitch notes that Mrs. Ratliff did it all without once ever recurring to standardized multiple choice tests. That Ravitch does not say so I have a hunch she agrees with this classroom teacher that excessive use of standardized tests is like excessive consumption of junk food; in excess it is sheer poison.



One of the chief faults of American teachers and American education may be excessive overreliance on machine graded superficial bubble multiple guess tests which I may add are exceedingly easy to cheat on or fake. I am quite sure Mrs. Ratliff was never fooled by plagiarism or cheating and by her hands on familiarity with her students work easily spotted the `"rats" and "cheats".



If one seeks a `magic bullet' to cure our educational ills or as Ravitch humorously alludes to a "magic feather" a la Dumbo you will not find it here. Ravitch says "in education, there are no short cuts, no utopias, no silver bullets. For certain, there are no magic feathers that enable elephants to fly.



Truly, as Euclid reportedly said to King Ptolemy, “there is no Royal Road to Geometry." He or she who wants to learn mathematics, solve equations, writing clear prose and gain wisdom must toil and sweat for days, months and years on end. Ravitch is also right that the survival and success of our free society may depend on our public school system. If the public school system is allowed to wither away we may become more like Latin America (which has excellent private schools for the rich and non-existent or woefully inadequate public education for the many who are poor).



This way lies more than madness or bad policy.



This way lies social strife and class warfare to an extent that the independence, prosperity and unity of our Republic may be at risk.



Ravitch writes "it is unlikely that the United States would have emerged as a world leader had it left the development of education to the whim and will of the free market." In my opinion, she never wrote a truer line.



Education is neither about profit and loss nor merely about narrow utilitarian goals. America by its very nature has tended to be utilitarian and materialist for better or for worst. Success in America has always been measured by the accumulation of power, money, status, prestige, property and fame. In addition, Americans have always valued the new over the tried and true disregarding most traditions, -this is their philistine side - which when it comes to culture is often a mistake. The Greeks had a word for this “apeirokalia” (a lack of experience in things beautiful) and yet another which we could translate as `unculture' or "apaideusia" (ignorance of the greatest goods in life)..



Yet I would argue that the most enduring aspect of the American Dream is not these manifestations of pomp, prosperity and power-these things like the Almighty Dollar -presently quite anemic- our naval and air supremacy will pass away- but not the single most valuable we thing we have which is our free and splendid ancient heritage.



What are we to do? We must look firmly towards the future but must never forget the past -that is to say our splendid and free ancient heritage. Above all we must not throw in the towel. We must teach every man, woman and child to wish for liberty, to cherish liberty, to understand liberty and most importantly to be capable of it.



I always tell my students there are there are TWO educations:

The first education is the practical one we all need that teaches us what we need to make a living -most of us have to make a living.



The second education we need is the other education, the "true education" that which teaches us how to live our lives more fully by teaching us to think AND to appreciate `the Good Life". I can't imagine my life without the second education and I encourage my students to cultivate their private lives for their own benefit, happiness and enjoyment and for the unity and mental health of their families.



And we must have the humility and foresight to recognize a people without wisdom -without a strong culture- without a strong memory and strong values without strong schools- will come to ruin.



As we pass the torch to a new generation we are most fortunate to have the lantern of Ravitch's wisdom and learning to help us see a better way. With The Death and Life of the Great American School System Diane Ravitch has raised a monument more enduring than brass -to paraphrase Horace: Non omnis morieris.







Some years ago Diane Ravitch wrote LEFT BACK which is a minor masterpiece; years from now historians will recommend one book to understand the background of American public education and it will be LEFT BACK. With her new book, THE DEATH AND LIFE of the AMERICAN SCHOOL SYSTEM, Diane Ravitch has once again proven that she is the Grand Dame of the history of American education and once again has produced what must be classed as a permanent book a book scholars will turn to years from now as a standard sourcebook for American public education's virtues and vices.




Diane has always been a supporter of standards; as a public school teacher so am I. But Diane makes a powerful case that our scientism of day -which mistakenly believes schools can be judged or measured by such narrow instruments as scantron/edusoft bubble tests-is NOT an accurate measure of educational effectiveness.



Ravitch is also not afraid to state the obvious: the temptation for schools, teachers and administrators to game the system or cheat is sometimes overwhelming. Even honest administrators would be foolish not to drop students who never show up for class. The reason why is because NCLB hits schools for low participation points and students who don't show up count as a ZERO for school averages.



AYP's tell us something but they are not a valid barometer of true academic achievement. One would think that if a high school had 300 AP scholars a year that would count for something but it does not. But the reality that those 300 AP scholars are not merely proficient but far, far above state standards (ten times as much twenty times as much?). On the AYP's AP students are counted as just competent students. That would be like rating the US military but not counting the Special Forces or Marines. It is idiotic. Much of NCLB is idiotic and Ravitch proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt.



As a classroom teacher I know that teacher evaluations based on performance of standardized tests are notoriously biased. When I had all AP classes I was a genius and the "Jaime Escalante" of Bakersfield. The truth is even Jaime Escalante was not Jaime Escalante when he was challenged by a different school body with different problems and different cultural backgrounds than Mr. Escalante was accustomed to. And similarly, now that I have no AP students my test scores are no longer so stellar. The reality is the friends of the principal or departments chairs make sure to assign themselves the best classes so that THEIR teaching may not be called into question.



I am not afraid of having the lowest performing students however. I consider them a challenge and I consider it my duty to try to give these students the best quality education I can. But I am not a miracle worker. If my juniors are unable to read a single sentence of English how are they -in one year or two years- pass their proficiencies and complete the curriculum for college prep students in social studies? My job (as I see it) is to give these students an introduction to history, study skills and the reading of English. My theory is that the students must learn how to learn to read English first. If they can't do that then they cannot hope to engage the English medium curriculum. No one would expect first year American students of Spanish or French to score as well as high school students in France, Spain or Costa Rica so why should we expect immigrant students -often from the poorest and most disadvantaged classes- to read, write and score "ABOVE BASIC" , "PROFICIENT" or “ADVANCED on their standardized tests?



This writer remembers when Diane Ravitch was flirting with “voucherism” as a solution to low performing schools; but Ravitch examines the facts dispassionately and says "in sum, twenty years of vouchers in Milwaukee and a decade of the program's expansion to include religious school, there was no evidence of dramatic improvement for the neediest students or the public schools they left behind." Ravitch is exactly right that non-educators -often with no classroom experience- are simply not qualified to reform schools let alone run them.



Ravitch is blunt she says NCLB is wrong headed and "a timetable for the demolition of public education in the United States." Ravitch proves that Charter schools are no panacea. Ravitch proves that small schools (as touted by Bill Gates) are no solution. One thing she doesn't mention is that reforms like smaller schools and block schedules undermine and virtually destroy Advanced Placement programs because there are not the resources, students or teachers to sustain these programs. So in trying to improve a school we often dynamite the highest achieving classes. That makes no sense.



I am not irrevocably opposed to Charter schools or Catholic schools. In fact I spent much of my professional career teaching in Catholic schools or private education; at present I am still involved in tutoring “home schoolers” in subject areas their parents are unable to give them (such as Spanish and Latin). But like Ravitch I know that Charters ("school choice") by themselves are no answer to our societal and educational problem. And Ravitch documents the incompetence, theft and corruption associated with Charter schools such as The California Charter Academy which declared bankruptcy in 2004 stranding over 6000 students in more than 60 "storefront" schools. The founder of the organization -not an educator but a former insurance salesman- may have taken the State of California for over $100,000,000. That is no way to run a navy.



And by the way, does anyone think a nation can be defended by a citizen militia with private gunboats to protect the coast? Of course, not! No modern nation could defend itself on that basis. As Ron Unz noted many years ago not a single modern nation has dared to abandon universal public education. The USA would be very unwise if it were to abandon universal free public education.



Ravitch pulls no punches but is not a pessimistic doomsayer. She writes "If we want to improve education, we must first have a vision of what good education is. We should have goals that are worth striving for." Ravitch is right that our students need basic skills in literacy and numeracy but then says, wisely, "but that is not enough." Ravitch writes:



We want to prepare them for a useful life.

We want them to be able to think for themselves when they are out in the world on their own.

We want them to have a good character and to make sound decisions about their life, their work, and their health.

We want them to face life's joys and travails with courage and humor.

We hope that they will be kind and compassionate in their dealings with others.

We want them to have a sense of justice and fairness.

We want them to understand our nation and our world and the challenges we face.

We want them to be active, responsible citizens, and to reach decisions rationally. We want them to learn science and mathematics so they understand the problems of modern live and participate in finding solutions. We want them to enjoy the rich artistic and culture heritage of our society and other societies.



I may be mistaken but here I sense the influence of two other great teachers of the 20th century: NYU worthy Sidney Hook and another great Columbian like Dr. Ravitch, and one of the finest teachers and authors of the 20th century, Gilbert Highet. Hook, Sidney. (SEE "The Closing of the American Mind: An Intellectual Best-Seller Revisited." The. American Scholar 58 (1989): pp. 123-35.)

.

And I may be mistaken again but I sense at least indirectly the influence of Catholic educators on Ms. Ravitch because when she speaks like this she sounds like Sister Rosemary of Holy Names Academy (Seattle) one of the hardest work and most inspiring teachers I ever had the privilege to work with. But this just goes to show you how catholic (small c) the intellectual influences have been on Diane Ravitch. Diane is always thinking, always revising, always researching and always exploring. She may have visited more schools and interviewed and corresponded with more teachers from more states and more countries than anybody alive. Ravitch is not parochial at all and she is right when she notes that countries like Finland and Japan have excellent public systems without rewards or sanctions of any kind. Ravitch notes "their students excel at tested subjects because they are well educated in many other subjects that teach them to use language well and to wrestle with important ideas.”



Ravitch is also right that our very expensive text books are, for the most part, veritable quaking bogs of boredom and ennui or as she put it in THE LANGUAGE POLICE sanitized PC tomes that create "the Empire of Boredom." Ravitch notes such PC textbooks "maintain a studied air of neutrality, thus ensuring the triumph of dullness.



In fact, I feel it is my primary job as a classroom teacher to enliven the curriculum with humorous anecdotes and great stories. It never ceases to amaze me how students pick up things in classroom discussion such as Butch O'Hare's notorious father (an associate of Al Capone) , why German machine guns had three times the rate of fire of the best Allied machine guns, why Hitler's V-2 rocket program may have ensured Hitler's defeat, why Puerto Rico produces zero illegal aliens (due to the Jones Act of 1917), how the Polish Air Force smuggled out a Nazi Enigma machine to England and help win the Battle of the Atlantic, how Lesley Howard may have helped kept Spain neutral and so became a target of assassination by the Nazis- the story of Earl Warren's immigrant wife and parents (none of whom were native English-speakers), how Martin Luther King survived TWO assassination attempts prior to 1968, the fact 80 or 90 year old women could be wet nurses to babies- this was once very common place in the Highlands and Islands- , stories of Cubans working in the Gran Zafra (sugar cane harvest), how primitive medicine was even as late as 1915 -no blood transfusions or antibiotics- Tiger tanks shooting duds because the shells had been sabotaged by slave laborers, Jacqueline Kennedy's famous pink dress at Dallas, Mrs. Kennedy giving speeches in fluent French and Spanish, John F. Kennedy using Latin and German in his Berlin speech, how Roosevelt helped establish the March of Dimes, and the story of the Candy Bombers during the Berlin Airlift. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction and it is these very human stories and curious anecdotes that help make history come alive.



And I might add that public schools are not the only places where safe mediocrity reigns; most books on required reading lists in Teacher Ed programs were unknown 50 years ago and I dare say will be unknown 50 years from now. What a colossal waste of paper, time and resources! As a case in point a good argument could be made that one could learn more about the Cold War, politics and totalitarianism by reading and studying in depth three pieces of literature than every text book every written: the candidates would be Animal Farm by Orwell, For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway, Dr. Zhivago by Pasternak or perhaps the First Circle by Solzhenitsyn. I know from experience that young peoples eyes light up when they read great literature filled with humor and insights.



Ravitch is absolutely right that curriculum, good curriculum is absolutely the sine qua non. She writes " It is a road map. Without a road map, you are sure to drive in circles and get nowhere...a sound curriculum ensures that young people will not remain ignorant of the most essential facts and ideas of the humanities and sciences."



Ravitch also has been made aware by her school visits and her many contacts with classroom teachers "in the trenches" how student behavior and civility has, essentially, collapsed. Teachers today hear more curse words and see more violence that any Marine recruit ever heard or witnessed in Camp Pendleton or Parris Island 30 years ago. Teachers are taxed to the breaking point by the constant challenge to their authority and disruptions to the learning process. It is a wonder more teachers don't break and attack their students. The fact is many teachers soldier on heroically resorting to mental health counseling and if things become unbearable they die or resign. I don't know of any teacher who gets combat pay or disability but they should. Just the other day a teacher had to take a loaded gun away from an intruder and it did not even make a line in the local paper. Ravitch is right on the mark when she says "schools must enforce standards of civility and teach student to respect themselves and others, or they cannot provide a safe, orderly environment which is necessary for learning."



Ravitch’s book is not a series of unsupported assertions by any means. Every chapter is very convincingly documented. My favorite chapter, as a school teacher, is chapter 9 "What would Mrs. Ratliff do?" Nobody knows Mrs. Ratliff but Ravitch makes it clear that Mrs. Ratliff was an unsung front line heroine of American civilization and education. American owes more to the Mrs. Ratliffs than most of its presidents past and present (if we are honest most were mediocre plodders or worse complete incompetents with a few glorious exceptions).



Who was Mrs.Ruby Ratliff ? She was none other than the mentor and homeroom teacher of Diane Ravitch herself. I found Ravitch's homage to her former teacher moving. Most teachers labor on in genteel poverty and rarely get any recognition but the teacher's reward is the gratitude of his or her many students. That is what makes it all worthwhile because one does not teach just for fun or for oneself but for the community and in a larger sense for one's civilization. Gilbert Highet once said that a teacher must know and love his subject and Ravitch emphasizes that Mrs. Ratliff loved her subject: the English language and its literature. Mrs. Ratliff had high standards and no doubt spent many hours after school and at home correcting essays, exams and reports. And Ravitch notes that Mrs. Ratliff did it all without once ever recurring to standardized multiple choice tests. That Ravitch does not say so I have a hunch she agrees with this classroom teacher that excessive use of standardized tests is like excessive consumption of junk food; in excess it is sheer poison.



One of the chief faults of American teachers and American education may be excessive overreliance on machine graded superficial bubble multiple guess tests which I may add are exceedingly easy to cheat on or fake. I am quite sure Mrs. Ratliff was never fooled by plagiarism or cheating and by her hands on familiarity with her students work easily spotted the `"rats" and "cheats".



If one seeks a `magic bullet' to cure our educational ills or as Ravitch humorously alludes to a "magic feather" a la Dumbo you will not find it here. Ravitch says "in education, there are no short cuts, no utopias, no silver bullets. For certain, there are no magic feathers that enable elephants to fly.



Truly, as Euclid reportedly said to King Ptolemy, “there is no Royal Road to Geometry." He or she who wants to learn mathematics, solve equations, writing clear prose and gain wisdom must toil and sweat for days, months and years on end. Ravitch is also right that the survival and success of our free society may depend on our public school system. If the public school system is allowed to wither away we may become more like Latin America (which has excellent private schools for the rich and non-existent or woefully inadequate public education for the many who are poor).



This way lies more than madness or bad policy.



This way lies social strife and class warfare to an extent that the independence, prosperity and unity of our Republic may be at risk.



Ravitch writes "it is unlikely that the United States would have emerged as a world leader had it left the development of education to the whim and will of the free market." In my opinion, she never wrote a truer line.



Education is neither about profit and loss nor merely about narrow utilitarian goals. America by its very nature has tended to be utilitarian and materialist for better or for worst. Success in America has always been measured by the accumulation of power, money, status, prestige, property and fame. In addition, Americans have always valued the new over the tried and true disregarding most traditions, -this is their philistine side - which when it comes to culture is often a mistake. The Greeks had a word for this “apeirokalia” (a lack of experience in things beautiful) and yet another which we could translate as `unculture' or "apaideusia" (ignorance of the greatest goods in life)..



Yet I would argue that the most enduring aspect of the American Dream is not these manifestations of pomp, prosperity and power-these things like the Almighty Dollar -presently quite anemic- our naval and air supremacy will pass away- but not the single most valuable we thing we have which is our free and splendid ancient heritage.



What are we to do? We must look firmly towards the future but must never forget the past -that is to say our splendid and free ancient heritage. Above all we must not throw in the towel. We must teach every man, woman and child to wish for liberty, to cherish liberty, to understand liberty and most importantly to be capable of it.



I always tell my students there are there are TWO educations:

The first education is the practical one we all need that teaches us what we need to make a living -most of us have to make a living.



The second education we need is the other education, the "true education" that which teaches us how to live our lives more fully by teaching us to think AND to appreciate `the Good Life". I can't imagine my life without the second education and I encourage my students to cultivate their private lives for their own benefit, happiness and enjoyment and for the unity and mental health of their families.



And we must have the humility and foresight to recognize a people without wisdom -without a strong culture- without a strong memory and strong values without strong schools- will come to ruin.



As we pass the torch to a new generation we are most fortunate to have the lantern of Ravitch's wisdom and learning to help us see a better way. With The Death and Life of the Great American School System Diane Ravitch has raised a monument more enduring than brass -to paraphrase Horace: Non omnis morieris.





Some years ago Diane Ravitch wrote LEFT BACK which is a minor masterpiece; years from now historians will recommend one book to understand the background of American public education and it will be LEFT BACK. With her new book, THE DEATH AND LIFE of the AMERICAN SCHOOL SYSTEM, Diane Ravitch has once again proven that she is the Grand Dame of the history of American education and once again has produced what must be classed as a permanent book a book scholars will turn to years from now as a standard sourcebook for American public education's virtues and vices.




Diane has always been a supporter of standards; as a public school teacher so am I. But Diane makes a powerful case that our scientism of day -which mistakenly believes schools can be judged or measured by such narrow instruments as scantron/edusoft bubble tests-is NOT an accurate measure of educational effectiveness.



Ravitch is also not afraid to state the obvious: the temptation for schools, teachers and administrators to game the system or cheat is sometimes overwhelming. Even honest administrators would be foolish not to drop students who never show up for class. The reason why is because NCLB hits schools for low participation points and students who don't show up count as a ZERO for school averages.



AYP's tell us something but they are not a valid barometer of true academic achievement. One would think that if a high school had 300 AP scholars a year that would count for something but it does not. But the reality that those 300 AP scholars are not merely proficient but far, far above state standards (ten times as much twenty times as much?). On the AYP's AP students are counted as just competent students. That would be like rating the US military but not counting the Special Forces or Marines. It is idiotic. Much of NCLB is idiotic and Ravitch proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt.



As a classroom teacher I know that teacher evaluations based on performance of standardized tests are notoriously biased. When I had all AP classes I was a genius and the "Jaime Escalante" of Bakersfield. The truth is even Jaime Escalante was not Jaime Escalante when he was challenged by a different school body with different problems and different cultural backgrounds than Mr. Escalante was accustomed to. And similarly, now that I have no AP students my test scores are no longer so stellar. The reality is the friends of the principal or departments chairs make sure to assign themselves the best classes so that THEIR teaching may not be called into question.



I am not afraid of having the lowest performing students however. I consider them a challenge and I consider it my duty to try to give these students the best quality education I can. But I am not a miracle worker. If my juniors are unable to read a single sentence of English how are they -in one year or two years- pass their proficiencies and complete the curriculum for college prep students in social studies? My job (as I see it) is to give these students an introduction to history, study skills and the reading of English. My theory is that the students must learn how to learn to read English first. If they can't do that then they cannot hope to engage the English medium curriculum. No one would expect first year American students of Spanish or French to score as well as high school students in France, Spain or Costa Rica so why should we expect immigrant students -often from the poorest and most disadvantaged classes- to read, write and score "ABOVE BASIC" , "PROFICIENT" or “ADVANCED on their standardized tests?



This writer remembers when Diane Ravitch was flirting with “voucherism” as a solution to low performing schools; but Ravitch examines the facts dispassionately and says "in sum, twenty years of vouchers in Milwaukee and a decade of the program's expansion to include religious school, there was no evidence of dramatic improvement for the neediest students or the public schools they left behind." Ravitch is exactly right that non-educators -often with no classroom experience- are simply not qualified to reform schools let alone run them.



Ravitch is blunt she says NCLB is wrong headed and "a timetable for the demolition of public education in the United States." Ravitch proves that Charter schools are no panacea. Ravitch proves that small schools (as touted by Bill Gates) are no solution. One thing she doesn't mention is that reforms like smaller schools and block schedules undermine and virtually destroy Advanced Placement programs because there are not the resources, students or teachers to sustain these programs. So in trying to improve a school we often dynamite the highest achieving classes. That makes no sense.



I am not irrevocably opposed to Charter schools or Catholic schools. In fact I spent much of my professional career teaching in Catholic schools or private education; at present I am still involved in tutoring “home schoolers” in subject areas their parents are unable to give them (such as Spanish and Latin). But like Ravitch I know that Charters ("school choice") by themselves are no answer to our societal and educational problem. And Ravitch documents the incompetence, theft and corruption associated with Charter schools such as The California Charter Academy which declared bankruptcy in 2004 stranding over 6000 students in more than 60 "storefront" schools. The founder of the organization -not an educator but a former insurance salesman- may have taken the State of California for over $100,000,000. That is no way to run a navy.



And by the way, does anyone think a nation can be defended by a citizen militia with private gunboats to protect the coast? Of course, not! No modern nation could defend itself on that basis. As Ron Unz noted many years ago not a single modern nation has dared to abandon universal public education. The USA would be very unwise if it were to abandon universal free public education.



Ravitch pulls no punches but is not a pessimistic doomsayer. She writes "If we want to improve education, we must first have a vision of what good education is. We should have goals that are worth striving for." Ravitch is right that our students need basic skills in literacy and numeracy but then says, wisely, "but that is not enough." Ravitch writes:



We want to prepare them for a useful life.

We want them to be able to think for themselves when they are out in the world on their own.

We want them to have a good character and to make sound decisions about their life, their work, and their health.

We want them to face life's joys and travails with courage and humor.

We hope that they will be kind and compassionate in their dealings with others.

We want them to have a sense of justice and fairness.

We want them to understand our nation and our world and the challenges we face.

We want them to be active, responsible citizens, and to reach decisions rationally. We want them to learn science and mathematics so they understand the problems of modern live and participate in finding solutions. We want them to enjoy the rich artistic and culture heritage of our society and other societies.



I may be mistaken but here I sense the influence of two other great teachers of the 20th century: NYU worthy Sidney Hook and another great Columbian like Dr. Ravitch, and one of the finest teachers and authors of the 20th century, Gilbert Highet. Hook, Sidney. (SEE "The Closing of the American Mind: An Intellectual Best-Seller Revisited." The. American Scholar 58 (1989): pp. 123-35.)

.

And I may be mistaken again but I sense at least indirectly the influence of Catholic educators on Ms. Ravitch because when she speaks like this she sounds like Sister Rosemary of Holy Names Academy (Seattle) one of the hardest work and most inspiring teachers I ever had the privilege to work with. But this just goes to show you how catholic (small c) the intellectual influences have been on Diane Ravitch. Diane is always thinking, always revising, always researching and always exploring. She may have visited more schools and interviewed and corresponded with more teachers from more states and more countries than anybody alive. Ravitch is not parochial at all and she is right when she notes that countries like Finland and Japan have excellent public systems without rewards or sanctions of any kind. Ravitch notes "their students excel at tested subjects because they are well educated in many other subjects that teach them to use language well and to wrestle with important ideas.”



Ravitch is also right that our very expensive text books are, for the most part, veritable quaking bogs of boredom and ennui or as she put it in THE LANGUAGE POLICE sanitized PC tomes that create "the Empire of Boredom." Ravitch notes such PC textbooks "maintain a studied air of neutrality, thus ensuring the triumph of dullness.



In fact, I feel it is my primary job as a classroom teacher to enliven the curriculum with humorous anecdotes and great stories. It never ceases to amaze me how students pick up things in classroom discussion such as Butch O'Hare's notorious father (an associate of Al Capone) , why German machine guns had three times the rate of fire of the best Allied machine guns, why Hitler's V-2 rocket program may have ensured Hitler's defeat, why Puerto Rico produces zero illegal aliens (due to the Jones Act of 1917), how the Polish Air Force smuggled out a Nazi Enigma machine to England and help win the Battle of the Atlantic, how Lesley Howard may have helped kept Spain neutral and so became a target of assassination by the Nazis- the story of Earl Warren's immigrant wife and parents (none of whom were native English-speakers), how Martin Luther King survived TWO assassination attempts prior to 1968, the fact 80 or 90 year old women could be wet nurses to babies- this was once very common place in the Highlands and Islands- , stories of Cubans working in the Gran Zafra (sugar cane harvest), how primitive medicine was even as late as 1915 -no blood transfusions or antibiotics- Tiger tanks shooting duds because the shells had been sabotaged by slave laborers, Jacqueline Kennedy's famous pink dress at Dallas, Mrs. Kennedy giving speeches in fluent French and Spanish, John F. Kennedy using Latin and German in his Berlin speech, how Roosevelt helped establish the March of Dimes, and the story of the Candy Bombers during the Berlin Airlift. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction and it is these very human stories and curious anecdotes that help make history come alive.



And I might add that public schools are not the only places where safe mediocrity reigns; most books on required reading lists in Teacher Ed programs were unknown 50 years ago and I dare say will be unknown 50 years from now. What a colossal waste of paper, time and resources! As a case in point a good argument could be made that one could learn more about the Cold War, politics and totalitarianism by reading and studying in depth three pieces of literature than every text book every written: the candidates would be Animal Farm by Orwell, For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway, Dr. Zhivago by Pasternak or perhaps the First Circle by Solzhenitsyn. I know from experience that young peoples eyes light up when they read great literature filled with humor and insights.



Ravitch is absolutely right that curriculum, good curriculum is absolutely the sine qua non. She writes " It is a road map. Without a road map, you are sure to drive in circles and get nowhere...a sound curriculum ensures that young people will not remain ignorant of the most essential facts and ideas of the humanities and sciences."



Ravitch also has been made aware by her school visits and her many contacts with classroom teachers "in the trenches" how student behavior and civility has, essentially, collapsed. Teachers today hear more curse words and see more violence that any Marine recruit ever heard or witnessed in Camp Pendleton or Parris Island 30 years ago. Teachers are taxed to the breaking point by the constant challenge to their authority and disruptions to the learning process. It is a wonder more teachers don't break and attack their students. The fact is many teachers soldier on heroically resorting to mental health counseling and if things become unbearable they die or resign. I don't know of any teacher who gets combat pay or disability but they should. Just the other day a teacher had to take a loaded gun away from an intruder and it did not even make a line in the local paper. Ravitch is right on the mark when she says "schools must enforce standards of civility and teach student to respect themselves and others, or they cannot provide a safe, orderly environment which is necessary for learning."



Ravitch’s book is not a series of unsupported assertions by any means. Every chapter is very convincingly documented. My favorite chapter, as a school teacher, is chapter 9 "What would Mrs. Ratliff do?" Nobody knows Mrs. Ratliff but Ravitch makes it clear that Mrs. Ratliff was an unsung front line heroine of American civilization and education. American owes more to the Mrs. Ratliffs than most of its presidents past and present (if we are honest most were mediocre plodders or worse complete incompetents with a few glorious exceptions).



Who was Mrs.Ruby Ratliff ? She was none other than the mentor and homeroom teacher of Diane Ravitch herself. I found Ravitch's homage to her former teacher moving. Most teachers labor on in genteel poverty and rarely get any recognition but the teacher's reward is the gratitude of his or her many students. That is what makes it all worthwhile because one does not teach just for fun or for oneself but for the community and in a larger sense for one's civilization. Gilbert Highet once said that a teacher must know and love his subject and Ravitch emphasizes that Mrs. Ratliff loved her subject: the English language and its literature. Mrs. Ratliff had high standards and no doubt spent many hours after school and at home correcting essays, exams and reports. And Ravitch notes that Mrs. Ratliff did it all without once ever recurring to standardized multiple choice tests. That Ravitch does not say so I have a hunch she agrees with this classroom teacher that excessive use of standardized tests is like excessive consumption of junk food; in excess it is sheer poison.



One of the chief faults of American teachers and American education may be excessive overreliance on machine graded superficial bubble multiple guess tests which I may add are exceedingly easy to cheat on or fake. I am quite sure Mrs. Ratliff was never fooled by plagiarism or cheating and by her hands on familiarity with her students work easily spotted the `"rats" and "cheats".



If one seeks a `magic bullet' to cure our educational ills or as Ravitch humorously alludes to a "magic feather" a la Dumbo you will not find it here. Ravitch says "in education, there are no short cuts, no utopias, no silver bullets. For certain, there are no magic feathers that enable elephants to fly.



Truly, as Euclid reportedly said to King Ptolemy, “there is no Royal Road to Geometry." He or she who wants to learn mathematics, solve equations, writing clear prose and gain wisdom must toil and sweat for days, months and years on end. Ravitch is also right that the survival and success of our free society may depend on our public school system. If the public school system is allowed to wither away we may become more like Latin America (which has excellent private schools for the rich and non-existent or woefully inadequate public education for the many who are poor).



This way lies more than madness or bad policy.



This way lies social strife and class warfare to an extent that the independence, prosperity and unity of our Republic may be at risk.



Ravitch writes "it is unlikely that the United States would have emerged as a world leader had it left the development of education to the whim and will of the free market." In my opinion, she never wrote a truer line.



Education is neither about profit and loss nor merely about narrow utilitarian goals. America by its very nature has tended to be utilitarian and materialist for better or for worst. Success in America has always been measured by the accumulation of power, money, status, prestige, property and fame. In addition, Americans have always valued the new over the tried and true disregarding most traditions, -this is their philistine side - which when it comes to culture is often a mistake. The Greeks had a word for this “apeirokalia” (a lack of experience in things beautiful) and yet another which we could translate as `unculture' or "apaideusia" (ignorance of the greatest goods in life)..



Yet I would argue that the most enduring aspect of the American Dream is not these manifestations of pomp, prosperity and power-these things like the Almighty Dollar -presently quite anemic- our naval and air supremacy will pass away- but not the single most valuable we thing we have which is our free and splendid ancient heritage.



What are we to do? We must look firmly towards the future but must never forget the past -that is to say our splendid and free ancient heritage. Above all we must not throw in the towel. We must teach every man, woman and child to wish for liberty, to cherish liberty, to understand liberty and most importantly to be capable of it.



I always tell my students there are there are TWO educations:

The first education is the practical one we all need that teaches us what we need to make a living -most of us have to make a living.



The second education we need is the other education, the "true education" that which teaches us how to live our lives more fully by teaching us to think AND to appreciate `the Good Life". I can't imagine my life without the second education and I encourage my students to cultivate their private lives for their own benefit, happiness and enjoyment and for the unity and mental health of their families.



And we must have the humility and foresight to recognize a people without wisdom -without a strong culture- without a strong memory and strong values without strong schools- will come to ruin.



As we pass the torch to a new generation we are most fortunate to have the lantern of Ravitch's wisdom and learning to help us see a better way. With The Death and Life of the Great American School System Diane Ravitch has raised a monument more enduring than brass -to paraphrase Horace: Non omnis morieris.

On Robert Sherwood, America and Sarah Palin

I am very fond of Robert Sherwood’s work and have read and studied a good portion of his work including his fine biography of Roosevelt and Hopkinns and about half a dozen of his plays. I also know –you might not know it- that he was a combat veteran of the Black Watch (of Canada) in the First World War. Humphrey Bogart is a great favorite. My father saw him and Lesley Howard on Broadway in the mid-30’s in Robert Sherwood’s PETRIFIED FOREST (I have in an anthology of American drama). The film version is very well done and my son enjoyed watching it with my father so it has become part of the family tradition.
Of course Sherwood’s script for THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES which won an Oscar I believe is a masterpiece. It is worth reading the NYT review. I recommend it to my students but do not show it to them because most are not mature enough to appreciate it. I used to show clips to my AP US history classes and give them the movie review to read.

http://movies.nytimes.com/mem/movies/review.html?_r=2&res=EE05E7DF1739E561BC4A51DFB767838D659EDE


Bosley Crowther (1946):

“It is seldom that there comes a motion picture which can be wholly and enthusiastically endorsed not only as superlative entertainment but as food for quiet and humanizing thought. Yet such a one opened at the Astor last evening. It is The Best Years of Our Lives. Having to do with a subject of large moment—the veteran home from war—and cut, as it were, from the heartwood of contemporary American life, this film from the Samuel Goldwyn studio does a great deal more, even, than the above. It gives off a warm glow of affection for everyday, down-to-earth folks.”


I like GONE WITH THE WIND and it has an interesting POV from the home front and at times it has wonderful performances and even intelligent dialogue but I think THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES is a more grown up film and captures some of the best and worst of America.

The best is its generosity and the humanity of its people and genuine democratic spirit; the worst is its anomie, carnal materialism and hedonism (as exemplified in the “Pat Derry” character the shallow estranged adulterous wife of Dana Andrews). We have a lot of Pat Derrys in our schools and universities. But as I live in the western most fringe of the American Heartland I know America is redeemed by its legions (still) of Sarah Palinesque women.


It is hard to understand the hatred and contempt felt for Mrs. Palin but then again Messalina had great hatred and contempt for other women whose virtue and character showed her own corrupt selfish blackened soul in a bad light. Much of the disdain for Mrs. Palin is class prejudice ( I know a lot about class prejudice ) mixed with envy and a ideological vitriol. There is a thing as Sarah Palin derangement syndrome. Personally, I would love to match Mrs. Palin versus Mr. Obama in, let’s say Jeopardy. I would even love to match their literary efforts (leaving off Mr. Obama’s ghost written hagiographies.) I have no doubt Mrs. Palin would come off as the wiser of the two. Mr. Obama (or as I like to call him sometimes “Sportin’ Life”) is a zero without his speechwriters and teleprompter . That is my opinion. I saw him speak in person last summer and admit he has great charm but I believe there is no substance there and Mr. Obama is an immature, ignorant, arrogant political witch doctor. America will do well to vote him out of office in 2012; I think Independents are coming to that realization too.

Personally I think post modernist Sangerite-Shakerite hedonists like this are a tragic waste of womanhood. But of course they are great temptations for American males (and others ) and are (for a while) objects of lustful desire. The wise ones realize they don’t have many good years and so make adjustments. But traditional family life and motherhood –and my sources are the mothers themselves- is a much happier and saner life choice.

By Sangerite-Shakerite I mean people who use dud in the mud sex for entertainment purposes only in the fashion of the Last Days of Pompeii. But of course I am a traditionalist. I believe, however, there is something to the “Roe effect”. It is why there will always be Orthodox Jews, Muslims, Mormons etc. If a movement and if a nation and if a belief system are to have a strong future they must go forth and multiply. We survived the 20th century and hope our race and line will survive the 21st century.

Well these are some Saturday morning musings as I listen to E Power Biggs on the organ playing Bach on the Flentroop organ in the Busch-Resinger Museum (Harvard University).

Turn Ye to Me by John McCormack

Scottish Gaelic and Auld Country Scottish Attitudes

Well, Bruce

Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig) is pronounced “Gallic”; my grandfather who was born in the Scottish Highlands in 1886 often referred to his native language as Highland Scots (as opposed to Lallans or Lowland Scots). He said it was a dialect of Irish Gaelic (pronounced Gael-ic) and many people called Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig) “ERSE “(Irish) when he was young but he never did.



He never considered “Erse” to be denigrating. Most Highlanders consider themselves to be Gaels and to have racial ties to Irish Gaels as well as the Cymric (Welsh/British people).



My grandfather often said “the Scots and the Irish are the same people except half of them don’t know it and the other half don’t want to know!.” He was referring to the attitude of so many who wanted to out English to the English and hide their Irish/Celtic roots. That was a very common attitude in the late Victorian or Edwardian period in Britain. My people by the way always considered themselves Islanders or Highlanders and referred to Ireland and Scotland as “the Isles”. Their homeland was their native place (Cioch Mhor) or the Gaidhealteachd (Highlands) and sometimes they spoke of “Alba” (the land of the mountains white) as Scotland. They also called it Scotia and Caledonia but those were poetic usages I think.



They rarely if ever, quite innocently, referred to themselves as “British” because to them British people were their WELSH cousins and they themselves were not Welsh. They never, it hardly needs to be said, spoke of themselves as English or Europeans. They were Highlanders, Islanders or Gaels. People who lived on the Continent or An Roinn Eorpa were the other though of course it seemed to me my grandfather was aware of his kinship to the Gauls of old. He often called his kilt the “Garb of Auld Gaul.”



The English (or Sassunachs) and the Europeans were the other. My Auld Pop referred to English women, for example, as “South o’ the Dyke Lassies” and routinely called English “Saxon.” As a joke he used to say anyone who married French women or Italians or Spanish were marrying lassies ‘very much to South o’ the Dyke’ but aye closer to Rome. As a boy most of the priests in my grandfather’s region were educated at the Scots College in Rome or the Scots College of Valladolid (Spain); some were Irish Franciscans. He had a very strong sense of belonging to Christendom and believing in the unity of Christendom in way many Calvinists did not. Of course, many people in my family intermarried with Irish people in Glasgow and I know there were a lot of Tallies (Scottish born Italians) in my grandfather’s parish in Govan. Glasgow has long been a very cosmopolitan town not unlike Brooklyn or London.



The Scots language was always called Beurla Albannach (Anglo-Scottish or Scots). “Gnath-bheurla na H-Eireann” was (Anglo-Irish). His language he always called ‘the Gallic” or “Highland Scots.”





Manx Gaelic (spelled in a phonetic English pattern) has been extinct, except in an artificially restored way, since the early 20th or late 19th century. It appears to be very close to the Scottish Gaelic of the Western Isles and Argyll.





Today I think it clear that Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic are two languages as separate as say Portuguese and Spanish but they are also very closely related. I have heard many Irish scholars say that Scottish Gaelic is (or was) a dialect of Irish Gaelic



The habit of calling Irish Gaelic “Irish” seems to be a modern one from the dates of the Free State. It is a simple fact that “Irish” and “Ireland” are not Irish words! Gaeilge is the Irish Gaelic word for Irish Gaelic.



As a final note my grandfather always called many city girls “paltry women”. “They wadna survive a Highland winter until Easter.”

He was of the opinion that healthy, strong and beautiful women were well-rounded and solidly built. To him the ideal woman was a woman with womanly, matronly look. I suppose our ideals of beauty have been shaped by the childless or nearly so Hollywood ideal. If we honored motherhood more we would not put the figures of childless teenagers as the ideal.



He had nothing but scorn for boyish bony gamin-like women. To him they were hardly women at all. Personally, I tend to agree with him.



Mise le meas (that’s me with respect)


Richard Keith Munro


****
READER COMMENT

Hebrew sadly is a special case- there were so many immigrants from
Europe and natives that Hebrew was the only way they cld talk to each
other(Yiddish did not include the middle eastern Jews). Irish was
being taught much earlier but it didn't take the same way because
people could speak English.

It's amazing how fast Hebrew became a mother tongue - but hard to
emulate.


On Nov 12, 2009, at 8:21 PM, "Richard K. Munro"
wrote:

> Dear Todd: I am delighted to know that Manx has be resurrected ; if
> it can
> be done with Hebrew it can be done with Manx. It is all a matter of
> making it the lingua franca of a family or community.
>
> I wish you all the luck in the world. I was vaguely aware that there
> were
> some movements to preserve the language or restore it. I know
> recordings
> were made of the last fluent native speakers.
>
> Manx music and Manx songs are very special as is Ellan Vanin
> herself. I
> have known a few Manxmen in my life including men who fought along
> side my
> grandfather's Regiment in the Struma Valley (they served in the 27th
> Division together). I visted the Menin Gate with one of the last
> veterans
> of the 27th Division and he was a Manxman.
>
> I have read some Manx songs and it seems very similar to Irish
> Gaelic or
> Scottish Gaelic but especially the "English phonetics" of the Book
> of the
> Dean of Lismore.
>
> Richard Munro
>
> _____
READER COMMENT >
>

Subject: Re: [CelticCafe] Gaelic Languages and South O' the Dyke
> Lassies
>
> Great post, Richard. I wanted to add an interesting note. At our
> festival we typically have several Irish Gaelic speakers, but in
> 2007 we
> had over a dozen. That year we also had a Manx band, who had a Manx
> speaker. The Irish, who all came from either Cork or Conamara, were
> very
> excited and spent lots of time conversing with the Manx speaker. They
> indicated that they could understand each other well, and figured that
> the actual languages were around 80% the same. Manx has a slew of
> Norse,
> Latin, and English borrow words in it, but in any given sentence the
> Irish knew what the Manx speaker was saying. They may miss a word or
> two, but the context was readily known. We also had two Welsh speakers
> that year, and all of the Celtic speakers jumped in a round table
> discussion about the languages that the public absolutely loved. Of
> course, the Welsh speakers and the Gaelic speakers couldn't
> communicate,
> but they were very aware that they shared a huge number of common
> words.
> In any case, the last fully fluent Manx speaker only died in the 70's.
> There were still several mostly fluent speakers alive then, and they
> have managed to pull the language from the edge of extinction to the
> point today where there are more than a hundred fluent speakers, with
> several native speakers (meaning children who learn it as a first
> language). A couple of thousand can speak it with some proficiency.
> They
> are a very interesting group and quite a lot of fun.
>
> Tod Ardoin
>
> >
MUNRO:

Of course, when I was referring to Hebrew I was referring to a best case scenario.



And Hebrew being a language of a great classic the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures and all the rabbinic commentaries has a special allure that Latin once had (and still does to a diminished degree). My father studied Latin at school and so could read Virgil in Latin but he had only a passing, corrupt , oral knowledge of Gaelic which was his father and grandfather’s native language.



But they were both –essentially- illiterate in Gaelic as they were not taught the language.



So it is curious that my father and grandfather both being Gaels could read and write in French, Latin and English but almost not at all in Gaelic.



When they went to school in Scotland (1890-1927) used Gaelic was discouraged if not prohibited. Those who grew p in the great cities because English dominant and Gaelic survived only as part of the oral and musical culture. I became interested in Gaelic and Scots poetry chiefly because of my interest in clan histories, slogans, songs piping and traditional music.



I cannot remember a time when I did not know Caisteal Folais Na Theine (Foulis Castle Ablaze ) and Biodh eagal Dhe oirre! (Reverence you to God or Dread God; the ancient clan Munro motto). My grandfather taught me to count in Gaelic (and Punjabi too) by lining up my toy solders. He also taught me elementary commands in both languages. In his stories he would often punctuate his stories with Punjabi (“marv e” he is dead changa dost (good comrade)….changa gori spahis (the good white soldier) ‘covering fire day-do” (give him covering fire) nan lao (bring bread; food); panee lao (bring water) chai lao (bring tea). I remember these off the top of my head but if I think about it I could remember more and naturally he knew so much more than I because they ate, drink and slept with Indian Regiments of the 27th Division and they had almost daily contact for five years. In another age I would have been an NCO in a Highland regiment or in the Indian Army.



In his day Scottish Highlanders were expected to be the interpreters and go betweens with the Dins (soldiers of the Indian Army) so he had some basic oral competence in Punjabi (which is an Indo-European Language closely related to Latin and Gaelic). They often went on scouting patrols with the Dins and never spoke a word of English. They and the Punjabis communicated in a Punjabi-Gaelic-English patois.



Educationally all the adults in my family were all English dominant, however though I think our bilingual background and respect for Latin and French as universal languages gave us a cosmopolitan interest in languages. My father never discouraged me from studying Gaelic as a hobby but there is no question he favored my studying Spanish, Portuguese and German formerly as he considered these to be culture languages with great utility. For that reason I never studied a single day in Scotland; my father considered Scotland to be part of our past. He was not against Gaelic in the sense of being hostile but he was convinced that “English was the language of the banks and the long-range guns.” In other words as the Romans won the war in Gaul so the English and English-speaking Lowlanders won their wars so Latin, French and Gaelic were (the old pre-Flodden languages of the court) were dethroned. ‘He believed that Lingua Francas were languages based upon high culture or empire; minority languages were doomed to be swept away or assimilated like Gaulish or Old British (a native language of the Scottish lowlands).



Many people date the decline of Gaelic to the Highland Clearances or Culloden but my father thought the decisive movement was Flodden (1513) when the last Gaelic-speaking King of Scotland (James IV) was killed. At that time most of the Scottish Roman Catholic aristocracy could speak French, Gaelic and read and write in Latin or French. A whole generation of Scots were wiped out in that battle and it may have changed the cultural history of Scotland as well.



Mary Queen of Scots, for example, could not speak English (she was a native speaker of French and could read and write Latin) but as far as I know she knew little or no Gaelic. When she spoke with her friends among the Highland Chiefs she probably spoke in French or Latin. This probably explains part of her alienation from her own people; it was more than just religion.



Gaelic is hurt by the fact that



1) it is not a true national language (unlike Welsh) ; it one is the ancient ancestral languages of the native Gael, Pict and Briton.

2) It’s hinterland of Gaelic speakers has diminished almost to the vanishing point; once less than 50% of a population speaks a language there is no language majority to immerse oneself in.

3) 80% of Gaelic speaking people intermarry with non Gaelic speakers and most do not live in Gaelic speaking communities. Some of their children will be Gaelic speakers but many if not most will not be.

4) Planned Parenthood has come to the Scottish Islands and Highlands; at one time a high birth rate helped offset the high immigration rate but this is not true any longer. I read that there are scarcely 2000 Gaelic speaking children living in households in which both parents are native Gaelic speakers. No language has a long future if it does not have demographic vitality. The desire for independence came too late for French Quebec and I think there is little chance that Scotland will ever vote to become an independent country especially as non Scottish ethnics emigrate to Scotland. They, like immigrants to French Canada, will have no interest in Scottish Gaelic culture or Scottish Independence.

5) The Gaels are very religiously divided embracing different sects of Christianity. I could be wrong but essentially I have observed there is a Roman Catholic minority in some places and Evangelical Christians in another. This division means that Gaels do no have a strong unified religious tradition to sustain them and unite them.

6) The decline in the Scottish Regiments and Territorial units is another factor. I have heard it said that the Army discouraged the use of Gaelic but on the other hand when my grandfather served in the Argylls it was the most Scottish institution he was ever associated with bar none. There is no question the Scottish Regiments kept piping and promoted a pride in Scottish national feeling In the First World War there were hundreds of volunteers from Nova Scotia in my grandfather’s Regiment (the 1st Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders) who were native Gaelic speakers. English may have been the language of command but at the squad level they men spoke and sang as they pleased. There was an active piping culture and many companies –all recruited from the Highlands and Islands were predominately Gaelic-speaking. In fact the only education in Gaelic my grandfather ever received was while in the Army. What Gaelic he could read was from the Psalms and the New Testament which was the only Gaelic book he ever saw (or owned). But he really couldn’t read; he used it as a memory aid it seems to me. He really just memorized some psalms and some portions of the Bible. He could not write them out properly so he was for all intents and purposes illiterate. (though of course he could read and write English reasonably well for a person with only an elementary education; he went to sea at age 8.



At one time the Churches were a very important community and educational force for Gaelic if not the most important. I don’t think any one will disagree that Church attendance and participation has declined in Scotland though it Gaels in general have high attendance rates than the general population. One place Gaelic thrived was in the hymns and prayers of the people.



Also I believe the decline in church attendance tends to diminish the use of Gaelic and well as the decline (in young people) in the interest in traditional music.



The allure of English-speaking pop culture is very great. Youth only interested in movies , video games and computers tend to be English dominant.



On the plus side, Scottish Gaels are more literate than at anytime in modern history and Scottish Gaelic is popular

and fashionable in a way it hasn’t been in centuries.



Gaelic is available on the Internet and via mass media, This allows heritage speakers to support the language and retain or regain the use of the language.



But the decline of the Scottish birthrate to ZPG or even Negative Population Growth guarantees there will be a diminishing number of native speaking children.



So by the 22nd century Gaelic may go the way of Manx and exist only in folkloric tradition. I reverently hope this is not the case but I am being realistic. That worse case scenario is probably more likely than a Hebrew like resuscitation.



By the 22nd Century if present population trends continue not only Gaelic will be endangered but other European languages as well.



French and Italian, for example may become minority languages in their own hinterlands.



As incredible as that seems, it is a real possibility if one looks at birth rates, assimilation rates and immigration rates to Europe.



Demography is destiny. The hands that rock the cradles rule the word and it is their mother tongue that shall endure because tomorrow belongs to the big battalions.





A seal fein fuair an t-eineach HONOUR has had its own day,

Ag so an dile dheireadhach This is the final flood

A dhuid fa chre do chadal that shut your sleep under clay

Rug a re go Roghadal. That brought his life span to Rodel.





Mise le meas (that’s “me” with respect)

Richard K. Munro




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: CelticCafe@yahoogroups.com [mailto:CelticCafe@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Gwen
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2009 8:22 PM
To: CelticCafe@yahoogroups.com
Cc:
Subject: Re: [CelticCafe] Gaelic Languages and South O' the Dyke Lassies





Hebrew sadly is a special case- there were so many immigrants from
Europe and natives that Hebrew was the only way they cld talk to each
other(Yiddish did not include the middle eastern Jews). Irish was
being taught much earlier but it didn't take the same way because
people could speak English.

It's amazing how fast Hebrew became a mother tongue - but hard to
emulate.

Sent from my iPhone

On Nov 12, 2009, at 8:21 PM, "Richard K. Munro"
wrote:

> Dear Todd: I am delighted to know that Manx has be resurrected ; if
> it can
> be done with Hebrew it can be done with Manx. It is all a matter of
> making it the lingua franca of a family or community.
>
> I wish you all the luck in the world. I was vaguely aware that there
> were
> some movements to preserve the language or restore it. I know
> recordings
> were made of the last fluent native speakers.
>
> Manx music and Manx songs are very special as is Ellan Vanin
> herself. I
> have known a few Manxmen in my life including men who fought along
> side my
> grandfather's Regiment in the Struma Valley (they served in the 27th
> Division together). I visted the Menin Gate with one of the last
> veterans
> of the 27th Division and he was a Manxman.
>
> I have read some Manx songs and it seems very similar to Irish
> Gaelic or
> Scottish Gaelic but especially the "English phonetics" of the Book
> of the
> Dean of Lismore.
>
> Richard Munro
>
> _____
>
> From: CelticCafe@yahoogroups.com [mailto:CelticCafe@yahoogroups.com]
> On
> Behalf Of Tod Ardoin
> Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2009 8:14 AM
> To: CelticCafe@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [CelticCafe] Gaelic Languages and South O' the Dyke
> Lassies
>
> Great post, Richard. I wanted to add an interesting note. At our
> festival we typically have several Irish Gaelic speakers, but in
> 2007 we
> had over a dozen. That year we also had a Manx band, who had a Manx
> speaker. The Irish, who all came from either Cork or Conamara, were
> very
> excited and spent lots of time conversing with the Manx speaker. They
> indicated that they could understand each other well, and figured that
> the actual languages were around 80% the same. Manx has a slew of
> Norse,
> Latin, and English borrow words in it, but in any given sentence the
> Irish knew what the Manx speaker was saying. They may miss a word or
> two, but the context was readily known. We also had two Welsh speakers
> that year, and all of the Celtic speakers jumped in a round table
> discussion about the languages that the public absolutely loved. Of
> course, the Welsh speakers and the Gaelic speakers couldn't
> communicate,
> but they were very aware that they shared a huge number of common
> words.
> In any case, the last fully fluent Manx speaker only died in the 70's.
> There were still several mostly fluent speakers alive then, and they
> have managed to pull the language from the edge of extinction to the
> point today where there are more than a hundred fluent speakers, with
> several native speakers (meaning children who learn it as a first
> language). A couple of thousand can speak it with some proficiency.
> They
> are a very interesting group and quite a lot of fun.
>
> Tod Ardoin
>
> >Of course, when I was referring to Hebrew I was referring to a best case scenario.



And Hebrew being a language of a great classic the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures and all the rabbinic commentaries has a special allure that Latin once had (and still does to a diminished degree). My father studied Latin at school and so could read Virgil in Latin but he had only a passing, corrupt , oral knowledge of Gaelic which was his father and grandfather’s native language.



But they were both –essentially- illiterate in Gaelic as they were not taught the language.



So it is curious that my father and grandfather both being Gaels could read and write in French, Latin and English but almost not at all in Gaelic.



When they went to school in Scotland (1890-1927) used Gaelic was discouraged if not prohibited. Those who grew p in the great cities because English dominant and Gaelic survived only as part of the oral and musical culture. I became interested in Gaelic and Scots poetry chiefly because of my interest in clan histories, slogans, songs piping and traditional music.



I cannot remember a time when I did not know Caisteal Folais Na Theine (Foulis Castle Ablaze ) and Biodh eagal Dhe oirre! (Reverence you to God or Dread God; the ancient clan Munro motto). My grandfather taught me to count in Gaelic (and Punjabi too) by lining up my toy solders. He also taught me elementary commands in both languages. In his stories he would often punctuate his stories with Punjabi (“marv e” he is dead changa dost (good comrade)….changa gori spahis (the good white soldier) ‘covering fire day-do” (give him covering fire) nan lao (bring bread; food); panee lao (bring water) chai lao (bring tea). I remember these off the top of my head but if I think about it I could remember more and naturally he knew so much more than I because they ate, drink and slept with Indian Regiments of the 27th Division and they had almost daily contact for five years. In another age I would have been an NCO in a Highland regiment or in the Indian Army.



In his day Scottish Highlanders were expected to be the interpreters and go betweens with the Dins (soldiers of the Indian Army) so he had some basic oral competence in Punjabi (which is an Indo-European Language closely related to Latin and Gaelic). They often went on scouting patrols with the Dins and never spoke a word of English. They and the Punjabis communicated in a Punjabi-Gaelic-English patois.



Educationally all the adults in my family were all English dominant, however though I think our bilingual background and respect for Latin and French as universal languages gave us a cosmopolitan interest in languages. My father never discouraged me from studying Gaelic as a hobby but there is no question he favored my studying Spanish, Portuguese and German formerly as he considered these to be culture languages with great utility. For that reason I never studied a single day in Scotland; my father considered Scotland to be part of our past. He was not against Gaelic in the sense of being hostile but he was convinced that “English was the language of the banks and the long-range guns.” In other words as the Romans won the war in Gaul so the English and English-speaking Lowlanders won their wars so Latin, French and Gaelic were (the old pre-Flodden languages of the court) were dethroned. ‘He believed that Lingua Francas were languages based upon high culture or empire; minority languages were doomed to be swept away or assimilated like Gaulish or Old British (a native language of the Scottish lowlands).



Many people date the decline of Gaelic to the Highland Clearances or Culloden but my father thought the decisive movement was Flodden (1513) when the last Gaelic-speaking King of Scotland (James IV) was killed. At that time most of the Scottish Roman Catholic aristocracy could speak French, Gaelic and read and write in Latin or French. A whole generation of Scots were wiped out in that battle and it may have changed the cultural history of Scotland as well.



Mary Queen of Scots, for example, could not speak English (she was a native speaker of French and could read and write Latin) but as far as I know she knew little or no Gaelic. When she spoke with her friends among the Highland Chiefs she probably spoke in French or Latin. This probably explains part of her alienation from her own people; it was more than just religion.



Gaelic is hurt by the fact that



1) it is not a true national language (unlike Welsh) ; it one is the ancient ancestral languages of the native Gael, Pict and Briton.

2) It’s hinterland of Gaelic speakers has diminished almost to the vanishing point; once less than 50% of a population speaks a language there is no language majority to immerse oneself in.

3) 80% of Gaelic speaking people intermarry with non Gaelic speakers and most do not live in Gaelic speaking communities. Some of their children will be Gaelic speakers but many if not most will not be.

4) Planned Parenthood has come to the Scottish Islands and Highlands; at one time a high birth rate helped offset the high immigration rate but this is not true any longer. I read that there are scarcely 2000 Gaelic speaking children living in households in which both parents are native Gaelic speakers. No language has a long future if it does not have demographic vitality. The desire for independence came too late for French Quebec and I think there is little chance that Scotland will ever vote to become an independent country especially as non Scottish ethnics emigrate to Scotland. They, like immigrants to French Canada, will have no interest in Scottish Gaelic culture or Scottish Independence.

5) The Gaels are very religiously divided embracing different sects of Christianity. I could be wrong but essentially I have observed there is a Roman Catholic minority in some places and Evangelical Christians in another. This division means that Gaels do no have a strong unified religious tradition to sustain them and unite them.

6) The decline in the Scottish Regiments and Territorial units is another factor. I have heard it said that the Army discouraged the use of Gaelic but on the other hand when my grandfather served in the Argylls it was the most Scottish institution he was ever associated with bar none. There is no question the Scottish Regiments kept piping and promoted a pride in Scottish national feeling In the First World War there were hundreds of volunteers from Nova Scotia in my grandfather’s Regiment (the 1st Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders) who were native Gaelic speakers. English may have been the language of command but at the squad level they men spoke and sang as they pleased. There was an active piping culture and many companies –all recruited from the Highlands and Islands were predominately Gaelic-speaking. In fact the only education in Gaelic my grandfather ever received was while in the Army. What Gaelic he could read was from the Psalms and the New Testament which was the only Gaelic book he ever saw (or owned). But he really couldn’t read; he used it as a memory aid it seems to me. He really just memorized some psalms and some portions of the Bible. He could not write them out properly so he was for all intents and purposes illiterate. (though of course he could read and write English reasonably well for a person with only an elementary education; he went to sea at age 8.



At one time the Churches were a very important community and educational force for Gaelic if not the most important. I don’t think any one will disagree that Church attendance and participation has declined in Scotland though it Gaels in general have high attendance rates than the general population. One place Gaelic thrived was in the hymns and prayers of the people.



Also I believe the decline in church attendance tends to diminish the use of Gaelic and well as the decline (in young people) in the interest in traditional music.



The allure of English-speaking pop culture is very great. Youth only interested in movies , video games and computers tend to be English dominant.



On the plus side, Scottish Gaels are more literate than at anytime in modern history and Scottish Gaelic is popular

and fashionable in a way it hasn’t been in centuries.



Gaelic is available on the Internet and via mass media, This allows heritage speakers to support the language and retain or regain the use of the language.



But the decline of the Scottish birthrate to ZPG or even Negative Population Growth guarantees there will be a diminishing number of native speaking children.



So by the 22nd century Gaelic may go the way of Manx and exist only in folkloric tradition. I reverently hope this is not the case but I am being realistic. That worse case scenario is probably more likely than a Hebrew like resuscitation.



By the 22nd Century if present population trends continue not only Gaelic will be endangered but other European languages as well.



French and Italian, for example may become minority languages in their own hinterlands.



As incredible as that seems, it is a real possibility if one looks at birth rates, assimilation rates and immigration rates to Europe.



Demography is destiny. The hands that rock the cradles rule the word and it is their mother tongue that shall endure because tomorrow belongs to the big battalions.





A seal fein fuair an t-eineach HONOUR has had its own day,

Ag so an dile dheireadhach This is the final flood

A dhuid fa chre do chadal that shut your sleep under clay

Rug a re go Roghadal. That brought his life span to Rodel.





Mise le meas (that’s “me” with respect)

Richard K. Munro