From the Archives: Arlington schools need history bridge (1996)

This article appeared in The Washington Times on December 4, 1996, under the headline "Arlington schools need history bridge." At the time, I was serving on the Social Studies Advisory Committee for the Arlington County Public Schools. The committee monitored and made recommendations about the teaching of history, government, economics, sociology, and other social sciences in elementary, middle, and high schools.

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

In his 1978 essay, "Teaching History Backwards," Ernest Lefever noted that "most high school seniors probably know more about ancient Greece and Rome and the voyages of Columbus than about the recent events that have shaped the outlook of their parents."

Mr. Lefever went on to say that learning history "is vital for any people. It is especially so for the United States, which is a democracy, a superpower, and the leader of the free world. The exercise of U.S. power and influence or the failure to exercise it has global reverberations. A responsible American citizen must understand this and must also be aware of the external dangers that threaten our freedom or that of our allies."

Rick Sincere and Ernest Lefever

The global scene has changed tremendously in the past 20 years - symbolized vividly by the fall of the Berlin Wall - but this perspective is still valid today.

To address the problem of how the recent past affects our present more saliently than the distant past, even while schools often fail to teach about recent events, Mr. Lefever suggested "teaching history backwards," starting with the past 30 years, then moving on to more distant developments that have affected the United States and world affairs.

For the past several years, the Social Studies Advisory Committee has recommended that the Arlington Public Schools add a fourth year of social studies to the required high school curriculum.

Specifically, we have recommended that a second year of world history be offered in grade 10, largely to compensate for the phenomenon that many of us have experienced - one year of world history is simply too short to cover all of the developments in the 20th century. We commonly experience this as "not getting past World War II" in a typical history course.

Arlington schools now face an additional problem: The new state Standards of Learning require an assessment at grade 11, which may become a barrier to graduation, just like the "literacy passport." We felt that something should be done to prepare our students for that test in a way that also would fulfill our long-held desire for a fourth required course in social studies.

In response, the curriculum development staff has recommended a new 10th-grade course called "The World Since `The War to End All Wars.'" This staff proposal, which has been forwarded to the School Board for final approval by Superintendent Arthur Gosling, meets the criteria set by the Social Studies Advisory Committee. The course is precisely what our committee members had in mind when we made our repeated recommendations for a fourth year of social studies. As envisioned, it combines history, geography and political science and brings students up to date in regard to the important events and trends of our own era.

A course like this builds a conceptual bridge to the 21st century and helps students find a common language to communicate with their parents and grandparents, who lived through these events and trends.

Some parents and students object to this change in the curriculum - which would begin in the 1998-1999 school year - because it reduces elective opportunities for students, particularly art or music courses. True, the number of electives available during 10th grade would fall from three to two, but the negative impact - if there is any at all - would fall on students taking social studies electives, primarily psychology (359 students), sociology (173), advanced placement European history (143) and economics (25). Out of 1,100 10th-grade students, only a few dozen - if any at all - would have to forgo art or music classes.

One reason the School Board is considering this curriculum change now is precisely to give fair warning to parents and middle school students that in two years they will have to meet this new requirement, and that they should plot out their course of electives with this in mind. Those desiring to take art, music or advanced placement European history can plan on taking them in later grades, or can use one of the other two 10th-grade elective slots for these courses.

If the Virginia Board of Education makes the 11th-grade social studies assessment a barrier to graduation, but the School Board fails to make this curriculum change, we could face major problems down the road. Should any Arlington students fail the test because no preparation was available in 10th grade, our whole school system will be poorer for it.

In designing this new course and considering all other options, the staff aimed for minimal disruption to the current curriculum, as well as the lowest cost to taxpayers.

The new 20th century history course is being added to the high school program of studies with almost surgical precision, designed to meet both state-mandated requirements and the desire of Arlingtonians to prepare our students from the classes of 2001 and beyond to be better, more informed citizens.

* The writer is co-chairman of the Social Studies Advisory Committee for Arlington Public Schools.

From the Archives - 'Teaching Geography: A Valuable Enterprise' (1997)

I first wrote about this topic in the late 1980s. This article appeared in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot on April 7, 1997, under the headline "Teaching Geography: A Valuable Enterprise."

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

Lord Chesterfield, the 18th century English statesman, once remarked: "The world can doubtless never be well known by theory: practice is absolutely necessary; but surely it is of great use to a young man, before he sets out for that country, full of mazes, windings and turnings, to have at least a general map of it, made by some experienced traveller.''

Healy Tower, Georgetown University

When I was a child in elementary school, my teachers insisted that my classmates and I draw maps of all the major countries and regions of the world. Being all thumbs when it comes to handling a crayon or pencil, my grades were always low, mostly Cs. Nonetheless, I learned geography: I learned where things are and the relationship of one thing to another.

Today's students are apparently not being taught where things are. The serious teaching of geography in the schools seems to have disappeared. This is distressing.

For example, a few years ago at the School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University - America's premier institution for the teaching of international affairs, alma mater of President Bill Clinton - almost a third of the brightest and most competitive freshmen in the school's history failed a basic geography test, even after taking a one-credit course in the subject. Earlier, of the 225 students who tried to test out of the course, only 23 passed, and of those, 16 were not U.S. citizens.

The questions on this exam were not difficult, but basic: What is the capital of China? Where is the Persian Gulf? Who are the two main ethnic groups of Cyprus? Through what countries does the Danube River flow?

Other, similar tests and surveys show similarly disturbing results. Many high school students tested a couple of years ago could not find the United States on a world map, a good fraction pointed to Brazil as the answer.

The consequences of this ignorance are grave. As Georgetown Dean Charles E. Pirtle put it, "How can we expect our students to understand news reports out of the Persian Gulf when they don't know where it is, much less where Kuwait, Bahrain and the Straits of Hormuz are?''

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick notes that "many of our most bitter foreign-policy disputes are a direct consequence of the fact that Americans decided sometime not to study geography anymore. It is impossible to think sensibly about foreign affairs without knowing what is where.''

Jeane Kirkpatrick photo by Rick Sincere

Ambassador Kirkpatrick explains: "In foreign policy, geography is destiny. What gives the U.S. a vastly different stake in Nicaragua than in, say, Burundi? Burundi is my example of a very remote place. I have been there, and I can testify that it is a very remote place. I do not think we should be indifferent to the hardships of its people, but I do believe that Burundi is less important to us than Nicaragua. The difference is rooted in geography.''

Knowledge about the static facts of geography - as real estate brokers say, "location, location, location'' - is important because other social factors can be so fluid and dynamic. When Ambassador Kirkpatrick commented on the differences between Nicaragua and Burundi, a Marxist regime in Nicaragua was threatening the security of the United States and its allies in the Western Hemisphere. Today, Nicaragua is free (if still troubled) while Burundi is amidst a maelstrom of conflict and pestilence that includes refugee flows, civil war in neighboring Zaire and Rwanda and endemic ethnic violence. Yet without knowing the facts about these countries - territorial size, population, economic products and neighbors - we cannot wisely judge the importance of recent changes and coming trends. As citizens, we cannot make well-grounded decisions about U.S. policy toward these places.

The new standards of learning and standards of accreditation for Virginia schools include a renewed emphasis on geography (among the other social sciences). The new standards suggest strongly that geography be taught in grade 10, although the Arlington public schools have a nationally recognized, model program that requires geography in grade 8. The Arlington sequence is more logical than the state's version, because teaching geography in eighth grade girds students with the conceptual tools and facts they need to learn world history, economics and other high school subjects. Every Arlington student I have encountered remembers the geography course fondly, and all agree that it definitely prepared them for future studies.

The task of other Virginia schools is clear: Reintroduce geography teaching as a separate discipline with an emphasis on facts. Children should be able to name the state capitals at an early age, the capitals of foreign countries soon afterward, and by high school should be able to fill in the blanks on a world map, naming oceans and rivers, mountain ranges and islands, cities and nations. Should we expect less?

Memo: Richard Sincere is co-chair of the Social Studies Advisory Committee for Arlington Public Schools.

From the Archives: 'School Training for Civil Defense' (1981)

Some background may shed light on this 1981 article, retrieved from my paper archives.  Fortunately the story behind it has already been told, in a remembrance of celebrated debate coach James J. Unger, which I posted in April 2008:

The high school debate topic the previous year (1981-82) was "Resolved: That the federal government should establish minimum educational standards for elementary and secondary schools in the United States." I came up with the idea, based upon research I was doing in the real world -- if the world of Washington think tanks can be described as "real" -- that we should write a case about civil defense education in elementary and secondary schools.

The problem with this idea was that there was little, if any, information available about civil defense education. (There was some material from the 1960s, but nothing recent and little that was usable by debaters.) But I was convinced this could be a winning case.

So I asked Professor Unger, "What do you do when something is topical but so obscure that there is nothing written about it that you can use as evidence for inherency?" He replied that there was not much to do in that situation, other than to intensify your research and find the evidence you need.

My solution: since I had already had one article published on the topic of civil defense -- appearing in the Washington Star on October 10, 1980, months after I submitted it and based on research I did during the summer 1980 forensics institute -- and had subsequently become an officer in the American Civil Defense Association, I could just write another one, with a focus on education, that could be used as evidence to support our case.

And that's what I did. I submitted the article to several newspapers, and it was published in the New York Tribune (a sister newspaper to The Washington Times), just days before the institute tournament. We inserted the appropriate quotations into the case (not citing me by name), held others in reserve for second affirmative and rebuttals, and moved forward.

The case was relatively successful, with two of my teams making it into the elimination rounds. After the last round that one of the teams lost, they told me that my qualifications as a source had become an issue in the debate. The judge from that round added: "Your boys defended you valiantly, but they lost on other issues."

This is a long tale meant to be background of something that happened a couple of years later. As it was told to me, late one night while preparing for a tournament, members of the Georgetown debate team had hit a brick wall, unable to find the evidence they needed to complete a brief they were working on. Professor Unger popped up and said, "Well, why don't we just pull a Rick Sincere?" -- meaning, why not write an article and get it published in a reputable newspaper or journal? I don't think they ever followed through on that suggestion, but just the idea that my name became associated with a new debate tactic was enough to warm my ego.

This article was published in The News World, a New York City daily newspaper (later called the New York City Tribune), on July 28, 1981:

Richard Sincere

School Training for Civil Defense

Perhaps no aspect of the strategic competition between the United States and the Soviet Union is ignored more than civil defense and emergency preparedness. Americans waste too much effort in debates which obfuscate strategic issues by statistical manipulation of throw-weights, megatonnages, and MIRV capabilities. Public and policymakers alike are blind to the reality of the strategic balance: Deterrence of nuclear war depends as much on the willingness and ability to survive such a conflict as it does on the technical capacity to fight the battle.

Soviet political and military policies do not reflect a frightened belief in the universal destruction of nuclear war. Instead, they maintain that nuclear weapons are instruments for war-fighting. In many ways, Soviet leaders view nuclear weapons as extensions of conventional war-fighting techniques; Soviet military literature categorizes war by who does the fighting, not by the weapons which they use. Most importantly, Soviet military strategy is fundamentally a survival-oriented strategy.

One result of this thinking has been the establishment of a nationwide civil defense network. The chief of Soviet civil defense is an army general, filling an office equivalent to our own secretary of the Army. The Soviets treat civil defense as a co-equal branch of the military. On the other hand, in the United States responsibility for civil defense lies buried in an obscure bureau of the Department of Commerce called the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Which country takes its self-protection more seriously?

In accord with the principle of protecting their people from the ravages of nuclear war, the Soviets have launched an extensive training program in all public schools from elementary to university levels, and as continuing education industrial plants and communities. Towns and villages celebrate “civil defense days” as holidays, with sports competitions and games geared toward teaching the citizens survival techniques. And if some Soviet citizens scoff at these methods, they will at least have some skills to draw on in an emergency.

A widely-circulated Soviet civil defense manual state: “Civil defense training in the public schools occupies an important place in preparing the people of our country for protection against weapons of mass destruction.” In contrast, the editor of the Journal of Civil Defense told me recently that “civil defense education has been badly neglected in the United States in the past few years. With no initiative from the higher levels, it apparently has fallen off to almost zero.”

This attitude seems unlikely to change. The shame of this neglect is that civil defense survival methods are so easy to teach. Generally, Soviet schools spend no more than 15-20 minutes each week on it, mostly in conjunction with sportsmanlike competition. One civil defense game involves nearly 20 million children each summer. The final match of this game, called “Summer Lightning,” is played in Leningrad as an object of intense national interest.

In the United States, inaccessibility to civil defense literature is the greatest obstacle to survival training. A good beginning for civil defense instruction in America’s public schools would be for the Department of Education to sponsor distribution of survival handbooks (such as Dr. Cresson Kearny’s “Nuclear War Survival Skills,” published in 1979) to all school libraries. Such a minimum requirement would allow individual school districts to expand civil defense education as much as they like, especially if assistance from the Department of Defense and FEMA were available.

Civil defense education will immeasurably increase the maintenance of a peaceful deterrent to nuclear war. As long as no civil defense training is available to United States citizens, our country remains a willing hostage to Soviet weapons with little hope of survival or recovery. Survival plays a major role in Soviet strategy and plays almost no role in our own. To neglect such a vital aspect of the strategic nuclear balance is to assure our own destruction.

Richard Sincere is research assistant for church and society at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. A member of the American Civil Defense Association, he also holds a degree in international affairs from Georgetown University.

Subsequent to this and other newspaper articles on civil defense, I testified on the topic before a subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, discussed it on many television and radio shows, and published a journal article that was reprinted in pamphlet form by the Ethics and Public Policy Center, which included a foreword by actor Lorne Greene. It was a central focus of my professional life in the 1980s but faded into the background after I finished my master's degree at the LSE and the Cold War came to an end. Civil defense and nuclear weapons policy took a back seat to Africa policy.

As an added bonus, here is a 1950s-era government training (propaganda?) video about school-based civil defense education.

Despite the jokes about it, civil defense in the schools was much more than "duck and cover."

Guest Post: Blocks are still the best present you can buy children for Christmas

Kym Simoncini, University of Canberra and Kevin Larkin, Griffith University

With Christmas looming, many people will be considering what present to buy for their children, nieces and nephews, grandchildren and friends. Soon, if not already, we will be reading lists of the top trending presents for 2017. These lists will no doubt include, and may even be totally dominated by, all the latest gadgets and devices.

The purpose of these lists is to attempt to persuade parents of young children if they want to give their child the best start in life, and all the advantages for doing well later at school, they need to purchase the latest technology.

---

Read more: ‘Digital play’ is here to stay … but don’t let go of real Lego yet

---

Missing from these Christmas lists, but what should actually be at the very top in terms of learning, are blocks. Blocks have been part of children’s play for a long time. But there’s still no other toy that compares in promoting all areas of children’s development. Any early childhood teacher can easily identify all the areas block play develops including fine motor, social, language and cognitive skills.

Blocks develop spatial reasoning skills

As children experiment by stacking, balancing, or building with blocks, they need to share, respect other children’s constructions, ask for desired blocks and describe what they are creating. Perhaps more importantly, children develop problem solving skills, creativity and imagination in creating their masterpieces. Finally, let’s not forget persistence where children try again and again to build the tallest tower or most elaborate castle.

Kids learn to play and work together when using blocks.
Shutterstock

Less well known is that blocks also foster spatial reasoning. Spatial reasoning is the ability to mentally manipulate objects or to think in a way that relates to space and the position, area, and size of things within it. We use spatial reasoning skills in everyday life when we read maps, pack the car for holidays, assemble flat pack furniture or cut cake into equal slices.

Spatial reasoning skills are linked to mathematics skills. Children who have good spatial skills tend to have better maths skills. Many people are unaware of the research, but early mathematics skills are a better predictor of later school success than either early reading or social-emotional skills. Block play helps children understand many mathematical concepts in number, measurement and geometry. During block play children count, measure, estimate, pattern, transform, and learn about symmetry.

Perhaps most surprising to readers will be the research that shows spatial reasoning skills are the best predictor of whether children will end up in a Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) related career. Spatial skills are especially important in STEM related jobs where people are required, for example, to create or read X-ray and ultrasound imaging, engineering and architectural designs, or cross sections of heating and plumbing systems.

Christmas lists usually suggest the latest and greatest technology, but blocks are still the best toy you can buy your child.
Shutterstock

Blocks also help develop spatial language

Block play also fosters spatial language. When children play with blocks they hear and produce more words related to spatial reasoning including things such as beneath, above, next to, behind, and so on.

One study showed block play elicited more spatial language than any other type of play. The other types of play included playing with puppets, playing house, shops, school, zoos, chefs and throwing a ball.

Other research that looked at spatial language showed the more spatial words children heard, the more spatial words they produced and the better they performed on spatial tasks. In this study, researchers looked at language relating to the spatial features and properties of objects such as the dimensions of objects (such as how big small, wide, tall), the forms of shapes (for example rectangle, circle, square) and other spatial properties (like bent, pointy, curved).

Different blocks for different ages and stages

The best way to get your kids playing with blocks is to play along with them.
Shutterstock

There are a wide variety of choices for blocks for children including MegaBloks for really young children, Duplo, wooden blocks or waffle blocks for preschoolers, and Eco bricks and Lego for older children.

These age guidelines are suggestions only. My ten and fourteen year old daughters will still play with the wooden blocks. Much of the reason blocks are such enduring toys is due to the fact they’re “loose parts”. That is, they can be moved, arranged, combined, taken apart, and put together in any number of ways. Frobel, the father of kindergarten, created ten gifts for children of which six were blocks.

The best way to engage children in block play is to play alongside them and show your interest and enthusiasm in block building. My friend has a ritual of playing half an hour every afternoon with Duplo with her three young boys aged five, three and one. She says it’s her favourite time of day.

---

Read more: Can toys really be ‘educational’? Well that depends on the parents

---

So, when those lists appear in your inbox or on social media, just remember the best toy of all is likely to be missing.

Kym Simoncini, Assistant Professor in Early Childhood and Primary Education, University of Canberra and Kevin Larkin, Senior Lecturer in Mathematics Education, Griffith University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

From the Archives: Kennedy Center chief Michael Kaiser touts economic benefits of arts education

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on April 5, 2011. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Kennedy Center chief Michael Kaiser touts economic benefits of arts education
April 5, 2011 8:47 PM MST

Michael Kaiser

Academy Award®-winning actor Kevin Spacey set off a minor stir in the Twittersphere on April 5 when he Tweeted “Return on investment of 1 billion of arts funding (from base of 167 mil from National Endowment) is 29 billion for local & State coffers.”

Someone must have objected to his assertion, because he later followed that up with “For those who [question] the stats I have Tweeted about return on arts funding, I am getting proof u require & will Tweet it soon.”

By the time this article went to press, however, he had not provided the statistics to back up his claim.

Spacey is not alone in thinking that government funding for the arts has concomitant benefits.

Different emphasis
One who takes that position, with a slightly different emphasis, is Michael Kaiser, president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

Last month, at a luncheon following the annual season announcement at the Kennedy Center, Kaiser responded to a question posed by the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner about the message he takes to policymakers – such as Members of Congress – when he meets them in the course of his job.

Kaiser first pointed out, as a disclaimer, that he is not allowed to lobby Congress on behalf of the Kennedy Center -- a condition of its congressional charter -- so he talks to legislators “about the arts, in general, almost exclusively.”

More particularly, Kaiser said, he focuses on “arts education more than I do on performances or exhibitions because, frankly, the money they can provide for arts education [and] the leadership they can provide is more important.”

Changing economy
Kaiser gave an overview of the 21st century American economy to explain why arts education deserves more attention.

The United States, he said, “is not a manufacturing economy anymore” – although, as Richard Lorenc pointed out in The Daily Caller on April 4, “U.S. manufacturing output grew 120 percent from 1970-2009 and 10 percent in the past ten years. American manufacturing output totaled about $2.1 trillion in 2009 compared to China’s manufacturing output of around $1.5 trillion.”

As a result of what he claimed is a decline in manufacturing, Kaiser said, “we need a different kind of work force.”

This has ramifications for politics, too, Kaiser argued.

“I believe all the political anger we see,” he said, has to do with “the fact that there’s a whole part of America that used to have their whole family income came from manufacturing, from working an assembly line, where you didn’t have to be particularly educated, but you made a very good living.”

At that time, Kaiser went on, “fathers had that living and their sons had that living and that’s gone. That part of America, that part of the economy is gone. Those people who were part of that don’t know what to do and they’re mad. I really think that’s where so much of the political anger comes from.”

The point, Kaiser continued, is that we have “to train people to participate in the creative economy,” which requires that students “exercise their creative muscles in schools" through arts education programs.

That, he said, is “something we can do very inexpensively. To save a few bucks here and there per student and to cut out everything that doesn’t allow them, I think, to become fully functioning members of our economy, I think is really crazy.”

Budget cuts
That is the message Kaiser takes to Members of Congress and other policymakers.

The new, Republican-controlled House of Representatives is making cuts in arts education that Kaiser thinks are ill-advised.

“The big area that we’re worried about specifically is arts education and VSA” (Very Special Arts, a program aimed at the disabled), he said. “In the first version of the budget came out, we lost $16 million.”

Kaiser said that he and his colleagues are “hopeful, not optimistic,” that some of that money will be reinstated “but it’s very scary.”

Congressmen, he said, “don’t even know what they’re cutting. I talk to members of the legislature and say, you know you’ve cut this and they say, ‘We did?’ And I say, yeah.”

The arts education funds are “embedded in other things,” Kaiser explained, so Congress is “cutting in big chunks and they don’t really know. It’s a scary time for us.”

Scary topic
Kaiser is not really worried about the Kennedy Center itself.

“This is a building that they own. They can’t let it fall apart.”

That is why, he said, “I’m mostly scared for the education of our children, much more than I’m scared for the Kennedy Center.”

Kaiser noted that “everyone says we want to cut the deficit in order not to saddle our children with the deficit. I would rather also give them an education and give them a chance to earn and be productive members of an economy. That’s a big concern I have. We’ll see.”

He concluded, ominously, “It’s a scary topic.”

From the Archives: Lamar Alexander honored for his work promoting civics, history education

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on March 5, 2015. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site was scheduled to go dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Lamar Alexander honored for his work promoting civics, history education

Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander (R) accepted the 2015 John M. Ashbrook Award bestowed by the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University in a brief ceremony at the Library of Congress on March 4.

The Ohio-based Ashbrook Center has presented the annual award since 1983, when the first recipient was President Ronald Reagan. Other recipients have included Speaker of the House John Boehner, former Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, and former Vice President Dan Quayle, as well as journalist M. Stanton Evans, who died on March 3.

In presenting the award, Ashbrook Center executive director Roger L. Beckett explained that, about ten years ago, as a result of legislation sponsored by Senator Alexander, the center competed for and received the first federal grant to administer congressional and presidential academies for teachers of American history and civics. From that first grant, which allowed 50 teachers (one from each state) to further their own educations, the Ashbrook Center's programs now include 4,000 middle- and high school teachers annually.

Beckett said Alexander was chosen to receive the 2015 award “for his integrity of thought and action, for his devotion to principle, and for his dedication to teaching the next generation about what it means to be an American.”

'What it means to be an American'
Alexander recalled that the subject of his maiden speech on the floor of the United States Senate “was the importance of teaching U.S. history in our schools so our children could grow up knowing what it means to be an American.” He noted that the lowest test scores for high school seniors “are not in math or science. They're in United States history.”

He conceded that “there's not much the federal government ought to try to do about that in local schools” because that kind of involvement at the local level is “not a very good Republican, federalist idea.”

He explained that he was inspired to sponsor congressional and presidential academies for school teachers, one from each state, to learn more about American history and how to teach it better.

Sense of history
He found an ally in the late Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), who, he said, “had a great sense of American history” and worked to find 21 Democratic cosponsors for Alexander's bill and helped to get it passed – ultimately resulting in the Ashbrook Center's first grant to administer the teacher education program.

Senator Alexander – who was Secretary of Education under George H.W. Bush and is now chairman of the Senate Education Committee – also recalled being at a conference in 1988 when someone asked, “What is the rationale for the public school?”

There was “stunned silence around the room,” he remembered, until Albert Shanker, then the president of the American Federation of Teachers, said, “A public school is for the purpose of teaching immigrant children reading, writing, and arithmetic, and what it means to be an American, with the hope that they'll go home and teach their parents.”

That, Alexander said, is “such a great definition of what we should be doing in our public schools.”

In addition to Lamar Alexander, three previous recipients of the John M. Ashbrook Award were present at the Capitol Hill reception: Lee Edwards, David Keene, and John Von Cannon.

SUGGESTED LINKS

Conservative icon Stan Evans dies at 80; remembered as 'present at the creation'
African ambassador calls for 'peace, love, and understanding' in D.C. speech
Virginia General Assembly passes bipartisan bills to legalize industrial hemp
Index of Economic Freedom shows global progress for 2015, while USA loses ground
Barry Goldwater 'absolutely' was a libertarian, his son explains

Original URL: http://www.examiner.com/article/lamar-alexander-honored-for-his-work-promoting-civics-history-education

Voters get the ignorant elected officials they deserve

James Madison's Montpelier is hosting a workshop for educators about how to teach history and government better. NBC29 has the story:

Teachers across the nation this week are gathering at James Madison’s Montpelier inside the Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution.

"We ask our students to be lifelong learners, and if we're not lifelong learners, then we're not uh fulfilling that on our own," said Jim Rossi; who teaches Social Studies in Maryland.

The James Madison Legacy Project allows teachers to dive into the history of U.S. government with special attention to the constitution.

Earlier this week, NBC29 had another story. This one featured a Charlottesville city councilor who could use some of the lessons taught at Montpelier.

In Kat Boardman's report on a City Council debate about gun laws, one city council member is quoted:

“The Constitution itself, in the body of the Constitution, talks about the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Gun violence in this country has denied thousands and thousands of people those basic rights,” said Kristin Szakos, Charlottesville city councilor.

Imagine this: in the City of Charlottesville, in the shadow of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, an elected government official talks about how the words "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are found "in the body of the Constitution."

Kristin Szakos

As my freshman English teacher at MUHS, Father Richard Forrey, S.J., would have berated an errant student: "Sorry! ZERO!"

The Constitution does not refer -- anywhere, in the body of the original document or in the amendments added since 1791 -- to "unalienable rights" or to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Those words appear in the Declaration of Independence, written by Charlottesville's own Thomas Jefferson.

For her ignorance of the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, City Councilor Kristin Szakos needs to take a remedial course in American Government. And she ought to apologize to the community for so embarrassingly displaying her ignorance on local television and internationally on the Internet.

I mean, we'd expect something like this from Donald Trump -- but from an elected official who lives and works in Charlottesville?

Sometimes I think the voters get exactly what they deserve.

Adventures in the Land of the Mathematically Challenged

A letter to the editor in today's Daily Progress tries to draw attention to the problem of expensive housing in the Charlottesville area.

The letter writers, however, display a sad sort of incompetence when it comes to their grasp of everyday mathematics.


They explain that

according to the U.S. Census, the median value of owner-occupied housing in Charlottesville from 2008-2012 was $286,400. With the median household income in Charlottesville at $44,535, a mortgage on the median home value is likely more than half of your monthly net income.

That may all be accurate but the howler follows in the next paragraph:

Homes under the median value are rare, and are often no more than 800 square feet and/or in complete disrepair.

The second part of that sentence may or may not be true, but the first part is demonstrably false.

It is not possible that homes "under the median value are rare," since, by definition, 50 percent of all homes are under the median value. (The other 50 percent are, by definition, above the median value.)

Perhaps the writers were trying to say that homes available for purchase that are also below the median value are rare, but that is not what they said.

Would this kind of innumeracy (mathematical illiteracy) be solved by adopting the Common Core, or made worse by it? Or would this demonstration of innumeracy be solved more simply by having a good copy editor?

Georgetown's Mask & Bauble Launches Fundraising Drive to Light Stage III

Just in time for #GivingTuesday (which follows #BlackFriday, #SmallBusinessSaturday, and #CyberMonday), the Mask & Bauble Dramatic Society at Georgetown University has announced a fundraising drive to purchase new lighting equipment.

Now in its 162nd season, Mask & Bauble claims to be the oldest continuously-operating student theatre troupe at any U.S. college or university -- and, even if it's not the oldest, it certainly is in the top three or five.

Mask & Bauble's storied history includes putting on shows at the White House during the Kennedy administration, helping to create the legend of Camelot that was revisited so extensively last month. It launched the careers of Tony-winning playwright John Guare, Tony-winning director Jack Hofsiss, and Oscar-nominated actor Bradley Cooper, among many other theater professionals too numerous to name.

According to an email sent to M&B alumni and a post on the group's web site:

Our current lighting system in Stage III is on its last leg, and needs to be replaced. As many alumni can attest, the current dimming system in Stage III has been a problem for the past several years, with many productions suffering from flickering lights and spontaneous blackouts. In order to keep the electrics in Stage III in show-ready condition, we are officially launching our "Keep the Lights On!" campaign to raise the funds necessary to purchase and install a new lighting system for Stage III!

I know the current lighting system at Stage III in Poulton Hall is far more modern than the one in use during my years as a lighting technician and designer there. I remember how we used to have to jump into a pit below the tech booth and grab live electrical cables to switch them from one circuit to another. It's statistically incredible that nobody was turned into a human lightning rod.

The M&B email continues:

Replacing this system, which is about fifteen years old, will cost an estimated $33,000. Mask & Bauble has already committed $5,000 to the project, and we are hoping to secure an additional $5,000 through Georgetown funding outlets.

That leaves us with $23,000 to raise, and together, we can make that happen!

Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to Mask & Bauble today by clicking the button below. For larger gifts, feel free to make arrangements with the Department of Performing Arts' Administrative Director, Ron Lignelli. All donors will be acknowledged via Mask & Bauble's standard tiered gift recognition structure, with two additional tiers*.

Sponsor: $50+ (your name appears in our program, newsletters and notices)
Benefactor: $150+ (a season subscription for 2)
Name Your Dimmer!: $700 will purchase a whole dimmer for M&B!
Angels: $1,000+ (complimentary invitation to our annual Banquet and Awards Ceremony)
Name Your Dimmer Rack!: $8000 will purchase an entire dimmer rack for M&B!

All donations large and small are very greatly appreciated, and every little bit will help us reach our goal. All donors over $700 will be acknowledged on a plaque that will be hung in Stage III.

To contribute something to this campaign to bring light to the stage, visit this secure donations web site:

https://www.vendini.com/donation-software.html?d=34861356102ed9f0a76fab4ab0c92dbf&t=donation

If that URL is too long, try this one: http://bit.ly/18WFBBw

From the Archives: 'Don't Let the Feds Be Thought Police'

This article was originally published in the Roanoke Times & World News on April 9, 1991, under the all-caps headline "DON'T LET THE FEDS BE THOUGHT POLICE." It was written in response to legislation that had been introduced by long-time Congressman Henry Hyde, who died in 2007 after 32 years representing Illinois's sixth congressional district.

- - -

I AM AS close to a free-speech absolutist as anyone can imagine. I believe that the survival of a liberal, democratic society depends on broad application of First Amendment protections for speech, assembly, religion and the press.

But I disagree with a bill introduced by Republican Congressman Henry Hyde of Illinois, the Collegiate Speech Protection Act of 1991. The act would prohibit any private college or university that accepts federal money from making or enforcing "any rule subjecting any student to disciplinary action solely on the basis of speech or other communication" that the First Amendment normally protects from government restrictions.

One impetus for Hyde's bill was Brown University's expulsion of a student for shouting anti-Semitic, anti-gay and anti-black epithets in a college courtyard in the middle of the night. This incident has been widely misinterpreted as punishment for the student's speech or ideas, rather than his rude and uncivil behavior. On other campuses, sanctions have been used against students and faculty for the expression of "politically incorrect" ideas.

Hyde relates his bill to the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987, which says the federal government can regulate any and all aspects of a college's operations if it accepts federal funds directly (in the form of research grants, for instance) or indirectly (by accepting tuition payments from students receiving federal scholarship aid).

Under these criteria, only Grove City College in Pennsylvania and Hillsdale College in Michigan would be exempt from the new law; they alone refuse, as a matter of principle, to take financial aid from the U.S. government.

The First Amendment does not prohibit private individuals or entities -- parents, corporations, churches, fraternal associations, colleges or newspaper publishers -- from restricting speech or expression of those in their employ or under their contol. It only applies to government.

Speech-suppression codes, now all the rage on U.S. campuses, are generally a bad idea. They are broadly and vaguely written, poorly administered, and serve to undermine the very cause they seek to advance -- deterring speech and behavior offensive to minorities defined by race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation. Moreover, the codes inhibit robust discussion of controversial and discomforting thoughts in the environment best suited for free-wheeling discourse.

Far worse than well-intentioned but nebulous standards of "political correctness," however, is the idea of extending the reach of the federal government to regulate the content of speech at private educational institutions.

Non-public colleges and universities are private, voluntary associations that should be able to set their own standards of civility and demarcate their own boundaries of acceptable behavior. Their members -- students, faculty and staff -- are free to leave if they disagree with those standards.

A "religious exemption" in Hyde's bill for denominational colleges acknowledges this, but too narrowly. Why should a church-related college be allowed, say, to prohibit a public lecture on the theory of evolution while a non-sectarian institution, no doubt animated by an integrated educational philosophy all its own, be barred by law from prohibiting a lecture on creationism?

We should not expand the realm of government interference in the private lives of citizens and their freely formed associations. The only thing more fearsome than self-anointed campus leaders taking on the raiments of thought police is federal bureaucrats doing the same.

AUTHOR NOTE: Richard E. Sincere Jr. is an Arlington writer and member of the Libertarian Party of Virginia.

Victoria's Secret Elementary School

Year after year, as Virginia's annual "tax free" back-to-school shopping weekend rolls around, I find a reason to take aim at the program and set phasers to mock.

In 2011, for example, I pointed out on Examiner.com how the tax-free holiday is "more complicated than necessary":

Whatever its merits, the sales-tax holiday’s framework is far more complicated than it needs to be. The Virginia Department of Taxation provides a lengthy list of those items that are eligible and others that are ineligible for the sales tax exemption through the weekend. It would have been much simpler for the General Assembly to decree that all consumer items priced at $100 or less would be tax-exempt for the 72-hour period of the tax holiday.

Instead, the list offers a higgledy-piggledy mix of inconsistencies, in which “athletic supporters” are eligible items, but “cleated or spiked athletic shoes” are not. Computers and computer peripherals (like printers) are ineligible, but “all calculators, including those with printing capabilities” are eligible for the exemption.

Some eligible items have little or no relation to school supplies: choir and altar clothing; diapers, children and adult, including disposable diapers; and wedding apparel, including veils, to name a few.

That led to an interview with the Newsplex in Charlottesville in which I noted:

"We have these weird combinations where an athletic supporter is tax exempted but athletic shoes with cleats are not."

My solution?

"Simplify it, simplify it, simplify it."

Sincere suggests tax breaks for anything $100 or less across the board, not just school.

"Easy to understand, much easier for our retailers who have to program their computers."

As far back as 2006, on the occasion of the first such sales-tax holiday in Virginia, I made the same recommendation:

The easiest, most logical, most consumer- and business-friendly thing to do for the tax holiday would simply have been to decree that on this particular three-day weekend, all items with a retail price of $100 or less would be tax-exempt. That would be simple to program into stores' computers, and it would be simple for the average customer -- that is, taxpayer -- to understand.

Then in 2008, I asked:

How about this idea? A tax-free year. Is that too much to hope for?

These reminiscences are prompted by a report by Watchdog.org's Virginia bureau, which points out another ridiculous anomaly in the list of acceptably tax-free items:

Planning on buying your daughter some sexy lingerie for her first day back to school this fall?

Well, now you can — free from Virginia state sales tax, thanks to this weekend’s back-to-school clothing and supplies tax holiday.

But, if you’re planning on purchasing some new shin guards for your same soccer superstar daughter who plays on her school’s team, forget it.

That isn’t exempt from the state sales tax during the Friday-through Sunday tax holiday, because state officials decided that doesn’t fall under the category of “clothing.”

Watchdog.org also points to a compelling "top ten list" of reasons that explain why sales-tax holidays are a flawed idea, if not actually counterproductive, courtesy of the Tax Foundation. It's a PDF but well worth the read.

This year's back-to-school sales-tax holiday begins Friday, August 2, and extends through Barack Obama's birthday on Sunday, August 4.

Be sure to visit my CafePress store for gifts and novelty items!
Read my blog on Kindle!
Follow my tweets on Twitter! 
See my articles on Examiner.com!

Jim Webb Visits PVCC

Earlier today, U.S. Senator Jim Webb (D-Virginia) visited the campus of Piedmont Virginia Community College near Charlottesville.

Webb's stay was not long, perhaps 90 minutes in all, but he packed in several activities in the process. 

At about 1:00 p.m., he met with PVCC students who are utilizing the educational benefits available through the GI Bill and others who qualify for financial assistance under the "Great Expectations" program.

Those eligible for GI Bill assistance are, of course, military veterans, many of whom have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are 102 PVCC students attending under the GI Bill.  The Great Expectations program is for students who are emerging from the foster care system; there are 42 people in that category attending PVCC.  Webb spoke about his principal role in creating an upgraded and expanded version of the GI Bill to fit the circumstances of a post-9/11 environment.

At 1:30 p.m., Webb gave some brief remarks to an audience of about 160 people in the auditorium of the V. Earl Dickinson Building.  He is introduced here by the college's president, Dr. Frank Friedman.

He spoke for just over 10 minutes and then opened the floor to questions for another 10 minutes or so.  (At the end of this segment, Dr. Friedman presents Senator Webb with a "Virginia cup" and a hoodie emblazoned with the PVCC logo.)

When that session ended, Senator Webb was escorted backstage where he engaged local news media in an informal press gaggle. Reporters from the Daily Progress, WINA-AM, NBC29, and the Charlottesville Newsplex were there, as well as yours truly, representing Examiner.com and The Metro Herald in Alexandria.  (C-VILLE and The Hook were conspicuous by their absence.)

While the TV cameras were setting up, I lobbed the first question in Senator Webb's direction.  I asked him about the U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Agreement, which was signed last month by both countries in an updated version.  (The Bush 43 Administration first negotiated the agreement in 2007, but it has been languishing for more than three years while both the U.S. Congress and the Korean National Assembly have delayed ratification.)  Webb indicated that he is a strong supporter of the agreement.

I reported Webb's answers to my questions on Examiner.com, as well as his replies to a related question from WINA radio's Chris Callahan. (Callahan's question and mine are not included in the press gaggle video, above, because I was operating my audio recorder at the time and picked up the video camera when the TV reporters started filming.)

Perhaps the most politically pertinent question addressed to Senator Webb -- what does he think about a rematch with former Senator George Allen in 2012? -- was answered with a curt "no comment."

Before Senator Webb arrived, I was able to interview PVCC's president, Frank Friedman, who offered his suggestion for a question that should be asked of the senator in the public forum.

Be sure to visit my CafePress store for gifts and novelty items!
Read my blog on Kindle!
Follow my tweets on Twitter! 

See my articles on Examiner.com!