the rix mix

In this very same election, on the very same ballot, we passed here in Jersey, by a huge margin, a constitutional amendment raising the minimum wage & linking it to hikes in the cost of living. You don't get much more "liberal" than that. Democrats retained control of the state senate & assembly. Christie had no "coattails," We also forced Christie, through public pressure, to drop his legal fight against marriage equality.  Two weeks ago we elected a new Democratic senator, who won by 11 points while spending hardly any of the huge campaign chest he's saving for next year. That election ended the political career of the state's only prominent "tea party" type politician. We liberals are doing just fine here, thank you. We want Christie to run for president. The state is much quieter when he's not around.

Locally, a young woman I supported for Board of Ed came in 4th for three available positions. Her insurgent slate, well-financed by the County Democratic Committee, endorsed by the mayor,  grabbed two of those seats. She lost because she was positioned 8th on the ballot, & all the  slick flyers, robocalls & door-to-doors couldn't overcome that.  An incumbent had the #1 spot, he came in second. The #2 position candidate came in first, & the #6 position came in third. There were several candidates listed not actively running - I don't know why they bothered to run. The BoE election is  "nonpartisan" but pits the County Democratic machine - nothing to brag about as a "democratic" organization except they tend to be very liberal - against a BoE machine autocratically run by a single boss with right wing tendencies.  The young woman took the defeat quite hard. But before BoE elections were moved to the general election in November, the BoE fortress was almost impregnable.  But with  the superior campaign resources of the Regular Democrats to counter the slick official mailings of the BoE  paid for out of the school budget, three BoE members have been picked off in two years. This at least will bring some transparency to the Board.  If the BoE were genuine progressive reformers & didn't constantly manipulate stats to make the schools look better than they are or run the system like parochial schools, I would support them.

Labels: education, Elizabeth NJ, New Jersey politics

Later: Alabama 42, Notre Dame 14. Ouch! Whadda nightmare!

It's more that I grew up in an Army football family with a connection to the glory teams of WWII, an uncle at West Point then.  There was still some national prestige attached to Army in the late Fifties, with Heisman Trophy winner Pete Dawkins.  For years, the Army - Notre Dame game at Yankee Stadium was a national event. Army usually got its butt kicked. The series is Irish 38, Army 8, one tie - that 1946 scoreless contest one of the "Games of the Century." But it was an honorable rivalry, filled with tradition dating back to the famous 1913 "forward pass" game with Knute Rockne making the catches. It's generally forgotten that Army won in 1914.  Army fans will gladly point out that Navy has played Notre Dame nearly twice as many times, winning only 12 games.

The game Notre Dame won for "The Gipper"  was against Army. (See Ronald Reagan, whose career might have taken a different path had he not played George Gipp in "The Knute Rockne Story.")

Both teams still have their traditions & pageantry. No matter how awful Army is, a game at historic Michie Stadium  at West Point is an unforgettable experience. There  is a bond between the two teams.  Whatever one thinks of Notre Dame's conceit & arrogance (fueled by a relentless P.R. machine), The Joe Paterno / Penn State scandal showed that hubris takes many forms, even quietly evil ones masquerading as sainthood.

I'm not forgetting that there is at Notre Dame an unresolved sexual assault tragedy involving a current player & a St. Mary's student who later committed suicide. Notre Dame thinks it has been resolved, the dead student's family does not, nor do some Notre Dame alum sitting out this Championship Game because of it. It's received pitifully little attention over the past month. There may also be a second incident. Should Notre Dame win the Championship (I think "Bama will prevail), there could be a ticking time bomb inside it the Irish publicity machine cannot defuse.

Labels: education, in the news, sports

Couldn't resist linking to this classy, attractive couple attending the Elizabeth NJ High School prom. Photo was in the middle of a gallery of 50.

BTW, I do not like the trend toward jacketless tuxes. When you wear only a vest, you look like you should be carrying around trays of appetizers. 

Once, miraculously, a tux rental store actually did the alterations they said would do. Before attending the wedding I asked my date if I resembled the little man on top of the wedding cake. She said I did. I said, "Then I'm perfect."

Labels: culture, education, Elizabeth NJ, Mahalo, photograph

Mrs. Dill:  Robert, it's your turn to read the psalm today.

B but I ss tutter Mrs. Dill.

Bobby?

You you nn know what hhhhappened last time.

You'll do better this time. You may read Psalm 117, it is very brief. I've bookmarked the page. 

(Bobby whispers in ear of friend sitting in front of him) Jeffie, what I'm gonna d do this is the lllast tttime I'll hhhave to rrread it.

(Bobby goes to front of room, picks up Bible & opens it.)

Sa sa psalm one sevenTEEEEN

P praise the lllLORD, all you nay nay nay nay nay nay nay nay nay nay nay nay nay nay nay nations;

extol him, all y you pee pee pee pee pee pee pee pee pee pee pee

(class starts snickering.)

Mrs. Dill: Robert, are you serious?

I ssstutter Mrs. DDDill.

Alright, continue.

I sss start again.

Ppraise the lllLORD, all you nay nay nay nay nay nay nay nay nay nay nay nay nay nay nay nations

extol him, all y you pee pee pee pee pee pee pee pee pee pee pee
PEOPLES! 

(several students applaud)

For gggggRATE is his la la la la (sung as music notes) la la la la la la la la la la love
t t t t toward us,

(Door at back of room opens, tall, frowning,  elderly gray haired woman enters, the feared Principal Miss Titus)

an the fa fa fa fa

Miss Titus: Sorry to interrupt Mrs. Dill, a word with you please?

fa fa fa

Hold on Robert.

(Miss Titus & Mrs. Dill confer at the side of the room in whispers, Miss Titus shows Mrs. Dill a sheet of paper.)

Mrs. Dill: You mean that atheist woman won?

Miss Titus: Yes, I'm afraid so.

Mrs Dill says loudly: Oh thank you Jesus, Mary  & Joseph & all the blessed saints in Heaven.

Robert, Bobby, you may take your seat now.

B b but I havea  another llline ttto go,

That's alright sit down. Class, we'll go right to Arithmetic this morning. Take out your workbooks.

Bobby smirks at Jeffie.  Jeffie, smirking,  raises hand.

Yes Jeffrey?

We got the psalm, how come we don't say  the Lord's Prayer no more?

Labels: blogging against theocracy, education, poem, religion

Sources: FBI joins criminal investigation into abuse allegations against Elizabeth school board

ELIZABETH — A criminal investigation into allegations of abuses within the Elizabeth Board of Education has been joined by federal prosecutors, according to two school district employees, who say they were questioned by the FBI.

The two, who filed a lawsuit two weeks ago to halt an internal investigation into leaks of confidential school board records, would not disclose specifically what was discussed, but said they were both asked about a wide range of matters involving the board. The state-supported school district has been the focus of allegations of spending abuses, secret settlements and the pressuring of teachers to make campaign contributions in exchange for jobs.

The investigations come in the wake of a series of stories in The Star-Ledger detailing the school lunch program abuses, as well as allegations that jobs and promotions in Elizabeth were tied to the amount of money employees contribute to school board candidates and others running for political office.

How does Elizabeth Board of Ed deal with this? By hiring a security firm at taxpayer expense to discover &  expose the two whistle-blowers who exposed the [alleged] criminal waste of taxpayer money. Meanwhile, the BoE keeps cranking out slick self-congratulatory brochures, mailed to every city address, manipulating statistics so confusingly that they actually claimed Elizabeth's test scores are somehow  comparable to Millburn, a town of 20,000 with a median household income of $130,848. Even reading the fine print I couldn't figure out how they arrived at that incredible assertion  or  exactly which test scores they were using.

I appreciate the Star-Ledger's investigation & reports, but with a school system as large as Elizabeth's, no doubt with dozens of disgruntled employees, the newspaper is coming up short of Pulitzer Prize.

Labels: education, Elizabeth NJ

Springfield superintendent bans Halloween costumes from town's elementary schools

SPRINGFIELD — There will be no princesses, pirates or vampires roaming the halls at Springfield’s two elementary schools this Halloween.

Citing concerns that dressing up detracts from learning, Michael Davino, superintendent of the Union County school district has barred children from wearing costumes to school next Monday.

"In an effort to minimize the interruption of instruction, and recognizing that students have ample time to celebrate the holiday in costume after school, costumes will no longer be permitted in school on Halloween," reads a letter sent to parents this week from the principals at the James Caldwell and Thelma L. Sandmeier elementary schools.

Frustrated parents — and even some children — spoke against the policy at a recent school board meeting.

Parent Debra Bachman said the edict is stifling and prevents kids from "just being kids."

"My 10-year old daughter was going to be Big Bird from Sesame Street and all her friends were going to be other Sesame Street characters," Bachman said. "I should say she is still going to be — just not at school."

In some places they want to get rid of Halloween because it's pagan, evil & anti-Christian. Here we deem it educationally useless, & send it the way of the relaxed story time teachers used to have after lunch to settle the children down so they wouldn't throw up their pizza.

Children are expected to choose a career track in first grade now.  Pretty soon our all-purpose public schools will be dismantled &  all children  segregated into subject immersion charter schools, so we might as well get rid of this useless, silly stuff. What are you smiling at kid? Get real, grownups don't smile. Sorry little girl, your skills tests say you'll never be a ballerina, princess, or Wonder Woman.

Labels: education, holidays

Union Township school officials investigate teacher who allegedly made anti-gay remarks on Facebook

School officials in Union Township are investigating allegations that a teacher at Union High School posted comments on her Facebook site criticizing a school display recognizing Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender History Month and calling homosexuality "perverted."

On Saturday, a local attorney who said he had initially been contacted by a parent, wrote to the district calling for the teacher’s dismissal.

The lawyer, John Paragano, a former township councilman, provided the district with what he said was a copy of the Facebook thread that included the offending remarks.

A copy was also provided to The Star-Ledger, in which the teacher, Viki Knox, allegedly referred to homosexuality as, "a perverted spirit that has existed from the beginning of creation," and a "sin" that "breeds like cancer."

"Hateful public comments from a teacher cannot be tolerated," wrote Paragano, also a former Union Township Municipal Court judge. "She has a right to say it. But she does not have a right to keep her job after saying it."

Important to remember these remarks were not made in the classroom or as part of school duties.  On his FB page, Jersey gay activist Richard Goldstein vows "not to rest" until she is dismissed. This puts him at odds with the ACLU, which defends her remarks in the context she made them, on a personal Facebook page.

The only possibly legit argument for dismissing her is that her attitudes would prevent her from enforcing an anti-bullying law passed after the suicide of gay Rutgers student Tyler Clementi. But I don't see the logic in it, unless a connection made from remarks directly to an incident of bias bullying.  It's awful that this woman is a public school teacher.

Labels: education, in the news, New Jersey

Elizabeth Board of Ed. president arrested on state charges of lying to obtain free federally subsidized lunches for her kids

ELIZABETH — The president of the Elizabeth Board of Education was arrested at her home early this morning on state charges of lying to obtain free federally subsidized lunches for her two children.

Also charged was the ex-wife of a school principal whose daughter was also received reduced-cost meals, along with the husband of another supervisor whose daughter had received free lunch under the program that helps feed the children of needy families.

Charged were Marie L. Munn, 46 who heads the Elizabeth school district; Angela Lucio, 35, the ex-wife of school principal Carlos Lucio; and Peter W. Abitanto, 42, the husband of Marlene Abitanto, the district’s supervisor of custodians, according to a spokesman for the Attorney General’s office. He said all three were charged with third degree theft by deception and third degree tampering with public records or information.

So pathetic. If what Munn claims is true - she wasn't aware her kids received subsidized lunches - there's some reckoning on the way for the Munn children, who either tossed  the lunches mom packed them or pocketed the money she gave them for lunch & not telling her. That's unlikely. This is just one of those perks politically-connected people thoughtlessly accept when they complacently believe they're invisible or protected from scrutiny. It's also the kind of chump change benefit real power disdains in order to play bigger games with important money. Munn is a gavel-whacker, as provincial as an Atlantic City convention in February or a $100-per-seat charity  dinner-dance at a  local restaurant, formal dress optional but there's a red carpet on the sidewalk.  The Star-Ledger knows where the real power is in Elizabeth's Board of Ed, & those men won't hesitate long before throwing Munn under the school bus. Any competent criminal defense lawyer can defend against & maybe even beat these charges, but it won't be cheap; it'll cost Munn far more than the $2,682 of grilled cheese, seasoned peas, & Jell-0 she's alleged to have stolen.

I'm sure the speculation around Elizabeth & Union County is that Munn, Abitanto, & Lucio aren't the intended quarry, but rather three  birds the attorney general's office wants to start  singing.

Labels: education, Elizabeth NJ, in the news, New Jersey politics

Backpacks, supplies will be distributed to 6,000 Elizabeth students

ELIZABETH — Thousands of children who might otherwise return to school next month without proper supplies will not enter the classroom empty-handed.

On Tuesday,for the third year, B4K, an organization that advocates for education reform in New Jersey, the United Way and the Elizabeth Development Co., a nonprofit economic development corporation, will distribute backpacks filled with school supplies to 6,000 Elizabeth students in need.

Something about this seemingly positive, innocuous article that reads like a cut & paste press release set my political jive antennae vibrating. A mere five minutes of Google search revealed that B4K (B4NJKids) is a rather mysterious education "reform" group, anti-union, pro-Chris Christie, with a Director who sits on the boards of two Catholic schools. The group has produced a pro-Christie video & buys internet ads that show up on other pages after the web page tracking cookie buried in one's browser remembers one has visited the B4NJKids site. The organization is is not listed as a partner on the County United Way website.

Elizabeth has many poor & under-privileged kids; I'm hardly suggesting they not receive free school supplies. But we should always be aware of who seeks  influence in public schools & education policy  (I'm aware the NEA is already there, but so is  an elected Board of Ed), & avoid as much as we can  in these lean times the corporatizing (or branding) of public schools.  Those gifts may be Trojan horses. Once they're in it'll be the dickens to get them out. & keep an eye for B4NKids, that organization's real  goal may be to  bust up public school systems & create special interest charter schools that have taxpayers paying for what were  private schools with  limited  scope, that is, parochial, using union-busting as a wedge issue. More on that later. 

Labels: bully pulpit, education, Elizabeth NJ

Girl's death calls into question how DYFS investigates abuse

IRVINGTON — Four times between March 2006 and April 2008, anonymous tipsters called the state child abuse hotline to report that a woman in their Irvington neighborhood was screaming at her three children and beating them with a belt.

Each time, the Division of Youth and Family Services investigated, found no injuries or harm and deemed the abuse and neglect allegations against Venette Ovilde "unfounded," closing the family’s file for the last time on May 1, 2008.

Now Ovilde’s oldest child, 8-year-old Christiana Glenn, is dead from an untreated broken leg and malnutrition. Ovilde, 29, is sitting in jail. And child welfare veterans and advocates are questioning whether investigators missed any clues that could have foretold the family was headed for tragedy.

The mother had come under the influence of a crackpot Haitian "preacher."

  Like all government child/family agencies, DYFS has a mixed reputation. No one is sure how it operates. Caseworkers are overloaded.  It has been known to bring a heavy hand down on households that could, with better community resources, have been held together, while overlooking situations that turned tragic.

What puzzled me in this case was Ovilde's claim that she was home-schooling her children. It turns out New Jersey is one of 10 states that do not in any way track home-schooled children. There are no standards, none of the requirements public & private schools must meet.  In New Jersey, parents don't have to initiate any contact at all with the state or local school board. So, as far as Irvington, Essex County & the state were concerned, these three children just disappeared from the education system. They were invisible. They were not enrolled in any school.

Home schooling is not easy. To do it well, home schooling parents have to put as much effort, organization & discipline into it as any school teacher. There are abundant web resources, instructional materials, cooperative groups, & online courses. If Ovilde had been required to show some - even minimal - evidence that she was, in fact, home schooling her three children, I doubt very much  she could have complied.  She would then have been ordered to enroll the children in an approved public or private school until she could come up with a month's lesson plans, or teaching materials, or something. The horrible physical abuse given these three children -  starvation & beatings - would not have passed unnoticed in a school, nor would have long, unexplained absences.  A local Board of Education should know all the school age children residing in its district, & how these children are being educated as required by law.  I leave it to legislators to decide how much information local government needs to have. At the very least it needs to know children exist.

Labels: education, in the news

I've been listening to  an old radio show, "Our Miss Brooks, " starring Eve Arden.  Miss Brooks was a feisty, acerbic, smart, single, independent high school English teacher, a remarkable radio character for the time, certainly a cool role model for young women.  The era is the late 1940's. Connie Brooks is underpaid, not unionized, subject to the whims of a tyrannical boss, her principal, who orders her to do extra work (or "favors") - some of it menial, demeaning, or absurd, she's often in fear for her job for reasons unrelated to her teaching skills. The principal lives very comfortably.   Miss Brooks'  car is usually in the repair shop; a student drives her to school in his jalopy  most days. Some months she can't pay her rent on time - she resides with an elderly woman;  occasionally she can't afford a cheap lunch in the school cafeteria. She has an unrequited crush on Mr. Boynton, a biology teacher, but he's also  broke most of the time,  despite being much more frugal than Miss Brooks, who is a soft touch.  Boynton maintains his classroom menagerie of frogs & hamsters at his own expense.  At the center of the show is, I think, an economic reality of the era for school teachers. By the time I entered high school it had changed, although job security - tenure -  rather than salary was the greater attraction. A funny show.

Labels: culture, education

Skipped the school election. 4 candidates for 3 BoE slots, so there was no opposition slate & no debates to make the news. The mayor & his people were against the budget, of course, since he doesn't control the Board, & the people who do are in effect the political opposition to the powerful city/county regular Democratic organization. The Mayor sent out flyers to vote no. I'm indifferent to the budget. For several months BoE has piled up slick brochures in the mailbox telling us how good the schools are. Some of them sure look nice. But the test results & rankings easily found online say something else. It may be possible to steer a child through the system here, to the best schools & teachers. The only Elizabeth teacher I know teaches music, he was just reelected to the Rahway Board of Ed, which passed their budget. A few towns have lively elections for the Board of Ed, but it's such a thankless job in most communities that they're lucky residents care enough to run & serve. Roselle Park had only two candidates for three slots. Since BoE elections are "nonpartisan" it's considered unseemly to behave too much like a politician when you campaign.

(The Elizabeth budget was defeated. )

Labels: education, Elizabeth NJ

I can relate to that. I used to plow through a wide variety of books over the summer other than The List. I wasn't very discriminating. From a NYT article, The Future of Reading:

JONESBORO, Ga. — For years Lorrie McNeill loved teaching “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the Harper Lee classic that many Americans regard as a literary rite of passage.

But last fall, for the first time in 15 years, Ms. McNeill, 42, did not assign “Mockingbird” — or any novel. Instead she turned over all the decisions about which books to read to the students in her seventh- and eighth-grade English classes at Jonesboro Middle School in this south Atlanta suburb.

Among their choices: James Patterson‘s adrenaline-fueled “Maximum Ride” books, plenty of young-adult chick-lit novels and even the “Captain Underpants” series of comic-book-style novels.
***
The approach Ms. McNeill uses, in which students choose their own books, discuss them individually with their teacher and one another, and keep detailed journals about their reading, is part of a movement to revolutionize the way literature is taught in America’s schools. While there is no clear consensus among English teachers, variations on the approach, known as reading workshop, are catching on.
***
“What child is going to pick up ‘Moby-Dick’?” said Diane Ravitch, a professor of education at New York University who was assistant education secretary under President George H. W. Bush. “Kids will pick things that are trendy and popular. But that’s what you should do in your free time.”

Indeed, some school districts are moving in the opposite direction. Boston is developing a core curriculum that will designate specific books for sixth grade and is considering assigned texts for each grade through the 12th.

Moby Dick? Maybe kids can find some old Classic Illustrated comics. I did more than one book report from those.

Summer reading lists did greatly improve over the years, compared to the ones I received from teachers. Not that Harold Robbins novels were ever on any of them, nor would teacher now think much of "The Carpetbaggers." But my mom had them, so I read them. In the Sixties, in my high school, even "Franny & Zooey" & "On the Road" were more or less "alternative" reading.

The local library has some alluring reading for teens, including a genre of very realistic Black urban culture novels.

I'll always remember my freshman English class taking what seemed like a month to collectively grind through "Great Expectations." Why? Because the head of the high school English dept was 100 years old.

Labels: education, what I'm reading

Asbury Park considers renaming elementary school

If the board votes Wednesday night to change the name of Bangs Avenue School to Barack H. Obama School, Asbury Park would become one of the first communities in New Jersey and the nation to take action so soon into the president's administration.

"I'm so glad this is coming to a head finally," said Greg Hopson, the board's vice president. "This goes hand-in-hand with our new motto: 'embracing change.' Change is happening. Change is inevitable."

For a city that for decades has been mired in stagnation and decay, change is a big deal. Eager to shed its reputation as a crime-ridden waste of prime oceanfront real estate in Monmouth County, Asbury Park is starting to attract large numbers of tourists again as a massive redevelopment project on the east side slowly takes hold.

But like most of the west side neighborhood where it's located, the Bangs Avenue School has not experienced the resurgence seen along the oceanfront. The school's population is primarily black and Hispanic. Many of the 440 children in grades pre-K-5 are poor and come from broken homes
***
Built in 1912, Bangs Avenue School was segregated early on but was integrated in the mid-1940s, long before other schools in New Jersey. But [Myra] Campbell said that in her view, Nathan Bangs lost some historical significance after she learned he was part of a committee of Methodist ministers working to oppose the abolition of slavery.

There's a boardwalk town solution: Give the arcade the fresh coat of paint but inside it's the same old prizes.

Also seems premature.

Asbury Park was always a city divided by railroad tracks, an east side & a west side.

Plainfield has a Barack Obama alternative high School for "at risk" students, meaning it basically achieves the positive goal of removing some of the most sociopathic teenage gangbangers from the general high school population until they can be expelled or sent to jail. Does Asbury Park have one of those schools yet?

Elizabeth has a Ronald Reagan Academy, established three years ago, supposedly a higher academic standards public grammar school, with a longer school day & required uniforms. Why Ronald Reagan represents higher academic standards or what he did to help urban schools are mysteries to me, but if his selective academy achieves test results anywhere near what Jersey's suburban schools routinely average, it serves its purpose. If I was raising children here they'd be attending a Catholic School in another town, no disrespect intended toward our public school teachers.

I'd advise Asbury Park to hold off & concentrate on improving what's inside the schools. Anyway, it isn't like President Obama went from 'hood to White House. He attended an elite private high school in Hawaii guaranteed to make any Jersey public school kid envious. There are plenty of African-Americans deserving of having their names on schools, although who they are & why they inspire might need to be explained to kids. Too many of those kids are impressed only by wealthy musicians & athletes, & by the local criminals perversely filling the bleak empty spaces in the lives of fatherless youths.

Labels: Asbury Park, Barack Hussein Obama, education, Elizabeth NJ

Kevin Roose, The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University; Grand Central Publishing; 2009.

"What would happen if a student at one of America’s most secular colleges spent a semester at Reverend Jerry Falwell’s “Bible Boot Camp” for young evangelicals?

"The Unlikely Disciple answers that question, following Brown University sophomore Kevin Roose during his semester as a new transfer student at Liberty University, the world’s largest evangelical Christian college."

Publisher's blurb

Three things attracted me to the book. First, I was curious about the culture of the school, mainly because it is so large & the vision of one man. Second, Roose's experience is something I can fantasize doing, & have done in other, smaller ways. Third, my nephew - who I like but hardly know - attended Liberty & graduated with a useful degree in business & sports management. Although a PK (pastor's kid), he was raised a moderately conservative United Methodist, attended public schools, & wasn't under parental pressure to turn Evangelical, much less associate himself with strict fundamentalism. I don't think the fundamentalism is what attracted him to Liberty. What specifically did draw him there was a mystery to me. Maybe the book could enlighten me.

A well-adjusted Brown University sophomore, Roose seemed poorly-equipped for this project, his reasons for doing it not very convincing. He never had a church, attended Sunday school, or belonged to a Christian youth group. His parents are affluent, liberal, secularized Quakers. He didn't know enough to even fake an Evangelical attitude in a crowd of arm-waving Born Agains, something any mainline Methodist kid could do. Surely, he'll be found out within 24 hours in a Liberty men's dorm.

But Kevin Roose is open, affable, adaptable, makes friends easily, qualities appreciated on any college campus & especially at conservative Christian schools, where abrasiveness, fashionable rebellion, & alienated behavior stick out like a scarecrow in a cornfield. So he reads, takes a crash course in Evangelicalspeak & manners with an Evangelical friend, rehearses interpersonal encounters &, most importantly, decides to be as honest as possible without completely blowing his cover as a recent arrival at the school with a desire for an earnest Life in Christ. Few people he meets at Liberty show curiosity about Roose's vague personal history & his unwillingness to reveal which Rhode Island school he had previously attended.

The male students (with prying resident advisors) on Roose's dorm floor are recognizable types, as college students & as Evangelicals, including the mildly rebellious guy from Jersey. One roommate is nasty & paranoid, nobody likes him. Most are friendly enough. They're all horny. They sound & act impossibly naive in this day & age. But they listen to mainstream rock. They know popular culture. A few sneakily gather to watch "R" rated movies ($50). They all want to be better Christians.

Their favorite insults are "queer," "gay," & "fag." Someday, in the real world, one of them might misspeak to a big, tough gay of the sort they don't even know exists, & receive a huge scare if not a broken nose. Because, as Roose notes, for all their obsession with the subject, they have terrible gaydars. When Roose invites a gay friend from Brown for a weekend, nobody gets it. There's much they don't get. Liberty must be a convenient place for a confused, guilt-ridden, conflicted young gay or lesbian Evangelical to hide for a few years, since it's easy enough to pretend sexual enthusiasm for the opposite sex when no one expects actual intimacy & the rules expressly forbid it. Only a brave few guys seek help from the spiritual advisor assigned to deal with same-sex attraction. The same advisor counsels habitual masturbators. Roose doesn't enlighten us on what women with those "problems" do. Except for a few women he gets to know personally, we don't learn much about the female Liberty experience. We do get the impression they have great presence on campus but not much power other than their psychic & pheromonal effect on celibate young men. It's a patriarchal culture. Some of Liberty' s male students imagine screwing & impregnating their wives at will. Some consider joinng the Quiverful movement, which advocates gigantic families of happy caucasian Christians. One wonders if they will discuss this with their fiances or just surprise them later. But it's all hypothetical at this stage.

Meeting Roose's new friends, it's important to remember that they didn't choose to attend Wheaton College (the most selective Evangelical school), Asbury College, Bethel University, Messiah College, George Fox University, Northwestern College, or Eastern Mennonite University about an hour up the Interstate. All those schools also have exclusively Christian faculty & strong codes of conduct, if not exactly "The Liberty Way." But they're "liberal" compared to Liberty. Some of them teach intelligent design, & Eastern Mennonite even offers a major in Peace Studies.

Roose tries to "date." Of course, hardly any college students "date" anymore, so it's rather quaint, with all the virgins afraid to even risk a kiss ($10 offense), expecting to find a soulmate/spouse based on a stroll around campus & a deep conversation at a Lynchburg restaurant. Students at Liberty want to meet & marry someone from the school, & Falwell encourages it. Get married, then be fruitful & multiply.

Many of the rules that seem so onerous now are just throwbacks to the in loco parentis authority colleges assumed into the Nineteen-Sixties, when courts overturned some of them in public schools, & others were gradually abandoned with changes in attitudes & lifestyles. Liberty keeps the dress codes, curfews, strict separation of sexes in dorms, required chapel attendance, etc. Other rules against dancing & public affection are old-time Baptist. Jerry Falwell wasn't only straight-laced, he was downright nostalgic. Liberty students know these rules going in, it's their choice. Breaking the rules incurs monetary fines. A student can run up hundreds of dollars in fines without coming close to dismissal. They think twice about bumming a ciggie in town ($25). The Liberty Way also has the effect of shifting & somewhat leveling the social playing field.

Basic academics at Liberty are predictably awful. "History of Life" could use a Flintstones cartoon as a Young Earth teaching aid, & although taught as a science requirement, could easily be combined with the basic Old Testament course. There's all kinds of twisted logic & rationales to make facts fit allegory & metaphor. But I wouldn't call Liberty a "Bible Boot Camp." It's advanced training - in ignorance. Students already know the Bible when they arrive, Roose was starting almost from scratch. I'd like to know how they explain plate tectonics, which, if you want to believe God set everything in motion eons ago to prepare the world for humans, is very inspiring.

The other stuff: the constant praying & self-evaluation, enthusiastic church services & assemblies, the honesty & civility, the sense of community, are qualities of all Evangelical colleges, & apparent to a lesser degree on the campuses of many religious-affiliated schools without looking too hard for them. For certain types of adolescent Evangelicals, Liberty is in some ways almost a party school. Roose voluntarily spends Spring Break in Florida with a mission team, not drunk in Cancún on dad's credit card.

"Unlikely Disciple" loses suspense as Roose discovers conformity & participation overcome every obstacle. His clumsiness handling the exterior forms raises hardly any suspicions, even with those whose jobs are to look & listen for students marching to different drummers in their interior lives. He does what he must to fit in, as sincerely as he can. Roose is forced into a healthier, more disciplined lifestyle; he wasn't a true slacker before he arrived at Liberty. He becomes less guarded of his feelings. But he's more intent on finding common ground than in figuring out where he is in the broader American religious landscape, & why Liberty is what it is & attracts the students it does. I think it's attractive for many young people who simply loved Sunday School & Christian Summer Camp, love Jesus & belonging to something larger than themselves, & are comfortable with authority - adults telling them what to do & think. Those students risk the most under Liberty's fundamentalist indoctrination; they become narrow-minded or resistant enough to matriculate, or discontented enough to drop out. Roose's lack of religious experience prevents him from doing much comparing & contrasting. He didn't know young Christians capable of slicing & dicing fundamentalism without placing dinosaurs in Adam & Eve's backyard, ignoring social justice, or voting Republican. A friend of mine with 16 years of quality Catholic education could saute Liberty students in Augustine's Latin, too. Roose dives into Liberty having little familiarity with the alternatives; the depth & breadth of orthodox Christianity Liberty rejects. It's a weakness in the book. But the tale never stalls, & is often touching & funny.

"Unlikely Disciple" reaches a slam climax through incredibly lucky timing for Roose, made possible because he's too good a writer & too smart to be intimidated & awed by Jerry Falwell's distant religious authority & power. He has chutzpah. Ironically, Roose becomes a campus celebrity without exposing himself. What happens next is completely unexpected & mind-blowing.

***
Kevin Roose website
Liberty University
Council for Christian Colleges & Universities

Labels: blogging against theocracy, education, religion, what I'm reading

This was frontpaged in the Star-Ledger today:

By Dunstan McNichol
Star-Ledger Staff

For almost a century, the facade of Camden High School has towered over the Parkside neighborhood just southeast of the city's downtown, offering inspiration to generations of residents as the community's "Castle on the Hill."

But it is a fading castle.

Emergency scaffolding protects students entering and leaving the school from pieces of plaster and masonry falling off the decaying high school. A new chain-link fence keeps pedestrians clear of other portions of the wall, and broken windows dot the three-story facade.

Now, officials at the state agency in charge of school repair and replacement in Camden are wondering whether the building is worth the $120 million experts have projected it will cost to modernize it.

"There's some concern about the proper uses of limited resources," said Preston Pinkett, a Prudential Financial Services executive who serves on the state Schools Development Authority board. "We should build in a way that makes sense, as opposed to throwing good money after bad."

Pinkett suggested the $120 million the state plans to spend refurbishing the 92-year-old high school building might better be used to build an entirely new school.

Camden officials, however, are adamant the venerable structure should remain, even as the school is upgraded to meet modern educational needs.

"This building is a symbol for the community; it's an icon for the community," said Camden schools spokesman Bart Leff, whose family has deep roots in the Parkside neighborhood. "This community is committed to the symbol of this building and the castle on the hill."

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but outside the Camden city limits this is a no-brainer: Get rid of it. Don't ask the old-timers, the graduates from decades ago, & the honorable neighborhood holdouts. Ask the parents, the students, the teachers.

Hate to remind the folks who consider this school an "icon" but for your fellow Jerseyans the main symbol of Camden is an illegal handgun, recently fired, not a "Castle on the Hill." Taxpayers outside of Camden are footing the bill for whatever you do &, as a wild guess, their opinion probably runs 50% for a new school & 50% for declaring that Camden shall henceforth be part of Philadelphia, & then towing Battleship New Jersey, one of your few attractions, to Bayonne.

Look, a thing doesn't have to exist to be iconic. There's no Diving Horse on the Steel Pier in Atlantic City anymore, they're both gone. The Camden HS website doesn't show a photo of the building on the main page, & the school alma mater, "Purple and Gold," makes no mention of a castle. To be honest, it isn't an architectural work of art. My hometown had a high school with lots of "tradition" & clanky radiators, but my classmates & I were thrilled to attend a brand new one with a much less distinctive exterior. Take the money, construct yourself a nice new castle of learning for the children now in grammar school, include a swimming pool if you can get away with it, & put a picture of the Ye Olde Castle on the school stationary.

Labels: education, in the news, New Jersey

I thought about my 7th grade History / English teacher today. Beats me why. I recall his appearance but not anything I learned in his classes. He taught both subjects to 7th graders & they were all he taught. I was stuck with him two periods every day. He was an awful teacher. The classroom had blackboards (I think they were green) covering two walls of the room. Many days, for one subject or the other, more often history, he would the fill the boards with notes written in a cramped if readable cursive, probably from a daily plan he'd been recycling for years. The teaching consisted of him reading what he had written while we copied it into our notebooks. Of course, all his classes that day got the same crap. Having arrived in middle school from the one-teacher, one-classroom routine of K-6, this was a horrendous introduction to the remaining years of public school edjikation.

In 8th grade, I had a pair of memorable teachers for those two subjects. Mr. Gelfond, the History teacher, was a fine storyteller - a necessary talent, although when exasperated he felt forced to halt discussion & make the class read the previous night's assigned text again. The English teacher, Miss Heathwood (yes, old with jiggly fat on her upper arms) was very strict, demanded that boys button the top button on our shirts & called us "Bowery bums." She made us memorize a bad poem, "Opportunity" by Edward Rowland Still. I liked rhyming poetry & I didn't stutter when I recited it to Miss Heathwood - we all recited it to her, individually & quietly, standing in front of her desk. The lesson was about memorizing, not poetry. For years afterward, I misremembered the poem as being by Tennyson, because we also read Tennyson in Miss Heathwood's class, selections from Idylls of the King. I loved Tennyson. I can't imagine any kid encountering AlfredTennyson in school nowadays. Maybe that's a good thing. Not such a good thing if kids aren't meeting Emily Dickinson & Walt Whitman. Poetry is a leisurely area of literature prior to college, & only a portion of teachers even like poetry enough to enjoy teaching it. I had exactly three, in 4th, 8th, & 12th grades. Maybe poets get left behind so no child is at test time.

Labels: education, growing up

Much to admire, enjoy, & think about in Ken Burn's new documentary, The War. The style seems cliche now, one tends to forget Burns polished & popularized it 17 years ago in what remains his best work, The Civil War.

The War is mostly a documentary version of the popular soldier's eye view history books that have been published about WWII over the past few decades. It also matter-of-factly incorporates important revisionist history. The Tuskegee Airmen, 761st Tank Battalion, & the Japanese-American 442nd Regimental combat team & 100th Infantry Battalion weren't in my high school history books. The forced removal of Japanese-Americans to concentration camps was given passing attention there & was definitely not a class discussion topic. (The most egregious omission in those Cold War history books concerned the Soviet Union's role in defeating Germany).

Burns packed The War with photos & film I'd never seen before. World War Two was so well documented by government, the armed forces, industry, news media, & individuals, it was no surprise he found so much stuff. It's still just a fraction. He could probably throw together two more supplementary series with what he didn't use. That's certainly one reason he decided to concentrate on only four American locations & do his digging there. Any four towns & cities would reveal historical treasures & personal stories equally touching. A former girlfriend of mine has entire World War Two scrapbooks she fished out of curbside trash piles in suburban Union County, thrown out probably by sons & daughters when their parents died or were packed off to small senior apartments. Unfortunate this documentary wasn't made a decade earlier; everyone seeing it will think twice before discarding those old photos & mementos.

Burns also didn't hold back on the blood, killing & horror. Or on what we now call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, so stigmatized in civilian life that few vets would openly seek treatment for it; even so there weren't any really good methods for treating it. It was a private agony & we have no way of knowing how many lives it ruined. Only the families know.

The personal view of The War is what I most appreciate. But it assumes we already have a general classroom knowledge of the history of World War Two.

I'm a baby boomer. I was a child in the 1950's. World War Two was not only the central experience for my parent's' generation, but also for people born in the 1930s - like the Scanlon sisters next door, two teenage sweeties who used to pick me up, carry me on to their front porch, hug & tickle me. They were in grammar school during The War. Did they have a victory garden & collect tin foil? How did they feel when a handsome young guy in their small town was killed & the Gold Star went in the window? How did that news travel? How did the neighbors treat each other. Burns thought of these questions. Fortunately, I've spent many interesting hours listening to an older friend tell me about her World War Two childhood, from rationing to the kinds of games they played, how it affected school, the propaganda, the delays in getting accurate news from the battle fronts, & how children were able to forget the war & be children. My central childhood cultural experience was the aftermath, American Triumphalism (despite the Korean War). I was always curious what it was like to live in my house, on my street, in my hometown, Roselle Park, during World War Two. I just heard the echoes. In a church social hall in Linden NJ I saw hanging on the wall a fading amateur oil painting of a WWI doughboy & a Boy Scout looking up at a blue sky filled with WWII fighter planes. It may have been copied from a popular illustration, but fighters had been built just down the road at the GM plant & flown off from Linden Airport. Imagine the sound overhead.

We need to see the broader picture of the war; the ideologies & governments, the grand strategies & great battles, the maps with the lines & arrows. We also need to remember why decisions were made as well as why they were right or wrong decisions. There's an increasing disconnect in America favoring historical hindsight bias over understanding what was known & what was considered realistically possible when events were actually happening. I knew a man who designed a piece of the atomic bomb without knowing that's what he was doing until after it was dropped. His limited view could be compared to a G.I.'s. But do we now believe we even need to learn our own history in all its breadth & depth? Or only those parts that concern our particular interest group?

Labels: culture, education, growing up

College creative writing classes can be peer pressure cookers, espcially with an inept or careless teacher. I know, I was in a few that broke down into cliques, & one in which the teacher incited terrible arguments between the male & female students while she sat cross-legged on the desk impassively munching trail mix. I dropped that course & filed a complaint with the Dept. Chair. Apparently I wasn't the only complainer, since her contract wasn't renewed. The good writers I studied with were good teachers, too, once I got used to their eccentricities. It was reported that Cho, an English major, had faced a concerned English teacher. The identity of that teacher was revealed as Nikki Giovanni, who had near pop star status in the late Sixties when poets could be celebs (She was billed as "The Princess of Black Poetry," a typically absurd conceit of the era - only "Godfather of Soul" went unchallenged), is so much shorter than me that I noticed, indomitable spirit, & managed in her younger years - not always convincingly - to negotiate a tricky path between the competing rhetorics of Black Power, feminism, & populist idealism, yet keep the "confessional" voice college kids liked in their poets. How many large schools have their famous poet teaching an undergrad Intro to Creative Writing? Just passing that course means you get to put it on your resume same as an MFA student. I heard Giovanni read a number of times when she was teaching at Rutgers, didn't care much for her early poems generally, enjoyed her views & attitude, have no idea what she's writing now, but that's neither here nor there. It's good - empowering even - to see a self-assured poet commanding a bard's role on behalf of her Virginia Tech community in a trying time; "witnessing" was the catch-word for it a few years back.

Labels: education, Rutgers

I hadn't voted in a school board election for maybe ten years. One doesn't pay much attention to local school issues if one doesn't own property, work in the system, or have school-age children. In one-party towns, it can be a good thing when a dissenting faction of the ruling party contends for control of the school board, gaining influence over the large budget, jobs, & direction of the school system. Elizabeth has a politicized school board. Enormous amounts of federal & state money flow into this urban school district, much of it discretionary, so naturally there's bitter competition over who decides how to spend it (& which friends & allies feed at the trough). I didn't much care until the past year, when the Board of Ed got my attention. The Board got it by making me believe it included, or was too influenced by, right wing Christians. There was evidence. That was enough to send me to the polls today. I cast votes for three candidates I'm pretty sure are not right wing Christians, definitely not aligned with them, & are unlikely to support the funneling of money to afterschool programs run by right wing Christians, based on evangelical church models for youth activities, reflecting those narrow "values" & lifestyle choices, & which are organized like recruitment campaigns for the sponsoring religious group. Also, lets not brand any more schools with the names of prominent local clergy. Or recent Republican presidents.

* My candidates lost in a close race, no surprise, really. 13 names competing for 3 seats.

Labels: education, Elizabeth NJ, religion