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COLUMN: Teaching The Trivium: A Review

25 Wednesday Jan 2023

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Teaching The Trivium: A Review

 

Dear readers, our topic for today is one of the most important books of this century: Teaching the Trivium: Christian Homeschooling in a Classical Style, Harvey and Laurie (RIP) Bluedorn, Trivium Pursuit, Muscatine, Iowa (2001). If my review drives home nothing else, then I must at least emphasize that this book is critical to those who either have young children or who intend to have young children. It’s also important for those with older children, or grandchildren, along with those who have no children, or those who only want to further their own intellectual development. It is a cogent defense of and general plan for preserving high Christian Civilization. 

Do not send children to schools. Let that stand as my second critical point. Please take all contrary excuses and burn them. I am angered by the fact that generation after generation of our children (this includes you, your children, your grandchildren, your parents, and even your grandparents) have been, are being, or will be misled or forced into the same trap. Most people do not realize what they’ve missed and what we’ve collectively lost. Teaching the Trivium sheds a bright light on this tragedy while offering a wonderful escape from it. 

When I finally sat down with the book and started thumbing through it, I was struck by how comprehensive the Table of Contents alone is, and how much the relayed organizational wisdom differs from what passes for institutional educational doctrine. For purposes of commentary, I reproduce a small segment, for Chapter One:

(Bluedorns, Trivium, page 11).

Contrast any part of the foregoing with what passes for valuable systemic pedagogy in, say, fag queen pedo hour, a horror with a purpose even conservatives finally begin to notice.

Perhaps the greatest veritas of this partial page is the line: “All true education must begin with the revelation of God.” The entirety of the text is a roadmap for implementing proper Holy education. One of the tell-tale Hasbara one-star reviews I read at Amazon, while subtly chastising Christianity, stupidly lamented the lack of a comprehensive, easy, ready-to-go curriculum. “Breaking out of the mold” means just that; this is a task that no formal syllabus is capable of adequately presenting or fostering. As a guide, it is an extensive map of a long, meandering road – one well worth the effort. The Table of Contents is fourteen pages, and it sets a better cursory direction than any other work I have ever seen. It covers everything from the Christian formation of the nuclear family to fueling the family by having children, to raising children, to shielding children from the evil of the world, to properly coaching children through grammar, logic, and rhetoric, to successfully sending children forth on their most important earthly endeavor – having and raising more children. The whole matter is a testament to God’s plan; the “conventional-minded” detractions I’ve read are also, negatively and indirectly, testaments to His intention. 

The Bluedorns note, on page 34, “Education is for a purpose. If the purpose does not have God in view, then it is  godless education, and it will eventually produce godless results.” They also maintain, correctly, that the only real education begins with, and consistently maintains, the revelations of Almighty God. One may be aware that in the USSA, God has been banned from schools and from the larger society, and the result has been a kind of hell on earth. The book also does a masterful job of clarifying and interweaving the Greco-Roman classical model of learning with that of fundamental Christianity. In that context, their wise view of the purpose of education does not so widely differ from Old Tully’s: “The purpose of schooling is to free the student from the tyranny of the present.” For a century and a half, our wicked, stupid culture has dispensed with all such wisdom, with our schools becoming the tyranny of the present.

With very few exceptions, homeschooling children, under the authority of the family, is not only the best way to educate the young, but it is the only way that fulfills various Biblical commandments. That may be the key takeaway from the book, along with the general “how-to” structure of the curriculum. It offers a one-size-fits-one approach; the exact Bluedorn route might be slightly different from mine, as mine might be from yours. This is fine and, in fact, great for us, but it is anathema to the luciferian status quo. And make no mistake, the schools, by design, are satanically evil. They were always that way, literally instituted to turn people into wage slaves, dumb down the population, terminate the family unit, and destroy Christian Western civilization. They have been extremely successful, an Enlightenment gift that keeps on killing. They cannot be fixed unless the fixing involves a Caterpillar D9 and an ample quantity of fire. But my own experience, and likely the reader’s, is almost exclusively set within the confines of the unnatural, anti-traditional, and unproductive K-12 classrooms. We are to be forgiven then, or at least a little lenient with ourselves, as we think about the schools and about saving future generations from them. 

To properly assess the wickedness of the schools is to ultimately dismiss them. Perhaps the best words to that end belong to Anthony Esolen. “There are only two things wrong with our schools: everything that our children don’t learn there and everything they do.” Esolen, Out of the Ashes, page 68 (another must-read). The Bluedorns partly refer to this as teaching trivia instead of the trivium, coddling along with pre-packaged nothing facts rather than teaching the elemental processes of thinking. This maleducation is a grievous sin. It also fails even by its own pitiful metrics.

The cat is out of the bag that the USSA’s school systems produce results, in all areas, far below other developed, or even developing countries – even as compared to foreign systematized schools. George Carlin summed it up well when he said “they” only want people who are “just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept [all the Carlin-Esque explicatives]”. Again, the schools have not failed in their intended purposes. They have worked almost perfectly. And that near-perfect working literally kills real learning and any notion of legitimate education. The Bluedorns have a subsection about this phenomenon called “Regressive Learning,” pages 97 – 98. They’re not alone.

The late, great John Taylor Gatto went into some depth with this lurid concept in his 2009 book, Weapons of Mass Instruction (read it too). Gatto noted, as early as 1990, that homeschooled children were five to ten years ahead of their state-abused peers. Things have become much worse since then. In addition to noting the disparity and that compulsory schooling indisputably lowers things like literacy rates, he focused on a little-known university study about university studies (the UCONN study_. Read all about “Another Inconvenient Truth,” pages 37 -38, and how roughly half of the colleges in the USSA teach nothing and the other half force negative learning on their victims. 

I’ve added to this sad observation, elsewhere, by tracking mathematical failure, in a Georgia school system, from elementary (14% math proficiency), to middle (11.9%), to high school (7%). From end to end, our worse-than-useless schools reverse learning. Frequently, the longer a child is in school, and the more he is instructed, the less he will know. 

Something like eighty to ninety percent of US schoolchildren are doomed to languish in evil government-run schools. Roughly ten percent (my hasty estimate) attend private schools, of one degree of value or another (most increasingly dreadful as they conform to public expectations). Around five to ten percent of our kids, the homeschooled champions, receive one degree of real education or another. I once said that the C19 Hoax was the best thing that ever happened to the schools because it temporarily closed them. No education is better than maleducation! And, happily, a few more parents woke up and started allowing their children to learn. Still, the hyper-majority of them continue to send their precious young off to indoctrination and grooming centers. For that, they should perhaps be horse-whipped. Or, perhaps, forgiven. They either don’t understand the importance of education, or else they just don’t care.

But the other side does care about homeschooling if malice counts as caring. The nefarious educrats, most of whom deserve to be burned at the stake, know that the valid alternative of home education not only makes them and their evil work look like what it is, but they also know that homeschoolers, like latter-day monks in little, quiet monasteries, hold the potential to carry the seeds of civilization through the spreading fires. Therefore, the acolytes of the devil’s enlightenment hate with a passion the ordinary Christian families who properly raise and teach their children. These low, crawling Deevs make war on noble homeschoolers. Know their intentions and actively resist them.

Chapter two is an exposition of why the family, and certainly not the state, has genuine authority to educate children. Subsequent chapters explain what, exactly, that entails, along with how to go about doing it. For most of us, this is foreign territory. For instance, while we may associate classical grammar with Latin instruction, too many of us would neglect Greek. I, for one, was somewhat surprised by the logical and forceful arguments for including Hebrew studies as well. 

The recommended course of instruction is broken down by age and ability levels, and also by sex differences. The book assumes that some or most parents will not have anything but a rudimentary understanding of what they are teaching their children. Rather than viewing this deficiency as an obstacle, it is presented as a great opportunity, with the adults gaining a real education alongside their children. As many autodidacts have discovered, it is never too late to learn. The Bluedorns note that as many as three generations of homeschoolers may be required before parent instructors are masters of the material they present. Happily, those who started early are now one generation into the new era. May many more follow the trailblazers. 

The Appendixes are almost 200 pages of relevant articles and resources, beginning with The Lost Tools of Learning by Dorothy Sayers (1947). In short, there is something for everyone within these immaculate 600+ pages of encouragement and wisdom. Some of it may appear unusual, but all of it is unusually beneficial. Several myths, even as held by general homeschool advocates, are dispelled. For instance, my understanding of the theory of “un-schooling” was misplaced, barring, I still suppose, exceptional circumstances. Read chapter ten to understand why. And there are so many more topics even the intelligent and curious might not have independently fathomed. 

Personally, I have already taken one such lesson to heart: “Protecting a Child in the Library”, page 325: “Libraries have become dangerous places for children. The covers alone on some books on display are very wicked.” This was observed over a decade before the pedo queers in dresses and clown makeup first polluted the library assembly rooms. But it was observably true, just as to the book covers, and it was so at the beginning of this century as well as at the end of the last one. Therefore, I have resolved that no book cover of mine, regardless of subject, shall ever appear risque or salacious, to say nothing of appearing “wicked.” I am proud to say that no existing cover of mine risks contributing to this problem, though I had never reflected on the possibility; however, having now reflected, I intend to keep it that way. The odds are that no matter who one is, one will find something of interest and value, even if it is something as mundane as my example. If one happens to have young children, then the odds are one will be walking into a goldmine with Teaching the Trivium. I still have never developed a rating system, therefore I will merely mark this book as an absolute must-read. Read it!

And, if one has a little extra time, then I have another book to recommend – and it’s a short one: Christian Nationalism, Andrew Torba and Andre Isker, GAB AI, Inc. (2022). It’s not perfect, but it is one heck of a statement in defense of Christendom in the post-modern age. Among other things, it provides a list of the official state religions, through time, of the several sovereign American States (one will note that they all fell away by the latter half of the 19th century when the unofficial religion of the US Empire was instituted), and a rebuke of the heretical nonsense of the “Judeo-Christian” idea. 

Read, read often, and teach your children a love of reading. Deus vult.

Deo vindice!

COLUMN: A Review of CHARLOTTESVILLE UNTOLD (With Bonus Material!)

14 Wednesday Dec 2022

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A Review of CHARLOTTESVILLE UNTOLD (With Bonus Material!)

 

Here follows my review of Charlottesville Untold: Inside Unite the Right, by Anne Wilson Smith, Shotwell, 2021.

For a variety of reasons, I encourage everyone to read this book. Reason the first being that the subject matter had long eluded my immediate attention, fading away in the storage room of my mind, and yet I found Smith’s presentation informative and commanding. If you know nothing about UTR and Charlottesville, then you need to read the book. If you think you know everything about Charlottesville, you need to read it. If you were there, read it. If you’re convinced of the mainstream lies about Nazism and “hate,” read it. Just read it. For it is a concise evaluation of a history long in the making.

To that latter point, I turn to the observations of Pastor Chuck Baldwin from August 24, 2017:

“In 1864, Confederate General Patrick Cleburne warned his fellow Southerners of the historical consequences should the South lose their war for independence. He said if the South lost, “It means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern schoolteachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision.” No truer words were ever spoken.

History revisionists flooded America’s public schools with Northern propaganda about the people who attempted to secede from the United States, characterizing them as racists, extremists, radicals, hatemongers, and traitors.”

Who knew Cleburne was a prophet? Today, one need not advocate anything close to succession to warrant those ridiculous labels. Simply being a Christian, a Caucasian, or just not being evil qualifies one as a racist, an extremist, a radical, a hatemonger, and a traitor. Dear reader, remember there are few accolades higher than being called bad names by wicked fools. Rejoice!

Rejoice, but be cautious.

When I finally got around to buying Charlottesville and reading it, I emailed the author and told her I had essentially reviewed her work some five years in advance. On August 13, 2017, I wrote out a few of my hasty observations. I hereby summarize them, with bracketed commentary as necessary:

  1. Stay away from events like this… They are dangerous and largely pointless. [The best way to avoid a bad situation is to avoid it].
  2. There are going to be more of them. They will grow increasingly worse… [These are already substantial understatements, and we really haven’t seen anything yet].
  3. This is that beloved diversity in action. … Ram enough incompatible people into close proximity and all hell will eventually break loose. … [Diversity + Proximity = War. Always, like a law of physics].
  4. In a sense, for the first time in 50 years, this was a race riot featuring White people in roles other than those of fleeing victims. Maybe you didn’t specifically ask for it. Really doesn’t matter now. [Among the many things chronicled in Anne’s great book were the tactical withdrawal of White/Right people and their remarkable restraint. As things continue to devolve, while the need for calculation will increase, restraint is becoming a negative factor].
  5. I said it was a bad idea to attack all things Confederate. [“Men were here before you, and they were better than you!” The extreme hatred of our best historical examples, by our worst enemies, is understandable in context].
  6. Perhaps hundreds of assault rifles were carried in force and not one single shot was fired. Restraint amid the madness. [The positioning of those guns, the role of the organized militias, and more is well covered. Maybe not from an assault rifle, but shots were fired – this is also covered. The rest of the world is beginning to mock overly armed Americans who can never seem to use their arms for anything other than talking points. That will change].
  7. Whichever side you’re on, please remember that the police are not your friends….  [This point is driven home again and again in the book. It is not our government anymore – any part of it. Police officers and soldiers are the open, dangerous agents of our enemies. To borrow from BLM and ANTIFA: ACAB. If you’re LEO or DOD, and this does not describe you, then you will have ample opportunity to prove it].
  8. Communists, BLMers, and SJWs: Cars can be deadly weapons. … [The Charger case is well covered, as are many of the others. All of them amounted to show-trial railroading of otherwise decent and innocent people. This is the legal new normal. This is the domestic application of the systematic destruction of ancient Western jurisprudence that commenced in mass at Nuremberg. Our enemies control the government, including the courts. Remember that].
  9. Alt-Right and Nationalists: lose the Nazi and KKK sh!t. … Hitler was a fool. Leave him in the bunker. … [Here, I learned (or was reminded of) something new. I’m not perfect, and in 2017, like so many others, I fell for some of the MSM BS. Smith explains in detail how little of the UTR crowd was in any way affiliated with neo-NSDAP idiocy. I’d now hazard a guess that those who were or are also receive a paycheck from the FedGov. Trust nothing from the government or its media. Also, when warranted, fully write out s-h-I-t].
  10. On a partially related note: some have spent the better part of a year calling Donald Trump “Hitler,” “Literally Hitler,” and “a Nazi.” … [H]ow could you possibly expect your “Literal Hitler” to start condemning Nazis??? No sense whatsoever. [Trump is fairly well covered in the book. Per his usual habit, his words were great, but his actions were beyond lacking. Hindsight is better than 20/20; the same cretins who called elderly Americans “Nazis” in 2017 are the same wicked degenerates who have spent 2022 funding, arming, assisting, and praising the literal descendants of Stepan Bandera. Go figure].
  11. Politicians: shut the hell up. This is your mess. Blame no one but yourselves. [Again, back in 2017, still possessed of a little faux libertarian optimism, I foolishly assumed the politicians still mattered. They do not, though they are still guilty beyond redemption. They’ve become like the eunuch acolytes of Jezebel, but who follow her without any notion or capability of ever casting her down. They are perhaps the most useless human beings who have ever polluted God’s Creation].
  12. Globalists: go to hell. Go now. Do not pass go. [I’ve since come to acknowledge that the globos, like the Nazis and the commies, are but tools deployed by our true enemy. This is another chapter of the ongoing war of Christians (and allies) against satanists].
  13. Mr. Jefferson: please pardon the mess. Seems you were right about watering the tree. [I think TJ would be with the rest of the world, wondering why 400 million firearms are still cold and holstered].
  14. I don’t think these trends will reverse. The old America is on the path to civil war or a breakup. I sincerely hope I’m wrong. Prepare as best you can. [Veritas].
  15. There is no point 15. I just added this so some moron won’t call this Perrin’s 14 points. See No. 9, above. [I apologize to myself for caring in the least what people who cannot think might have thought. Shake the dust off, so to speak, and move on].

Part of my hesitation going into this book, or any other about UTR, was my misperception about already having dissected the events. If that pause grips you, then know you really need to read the book. And right now, December 2022, is as fine a time as any. The calamity in Charlottesville only accelerated trends that have been in hard play ever since. Smith’s book is as much a compilation of the mood, structure, and betrayals of UTR as it is a roadmap of sorts for the subsequent atrocities like the Coup of 2020, the J6 setup and betrayal, the economic collapse, the tranny-fication or the world, the Great Hoax and Biowarfare Crime of 2020-, the Saint Floyd summer of love, the Stage Nine White genocide, 2015 – present, the dismal “election” of 2022, the satanic prosecution of the war against civilization amidst the Great Bifurcation, and more. Rather than diminishing the valiant efforts of our people in 2017, the horrors that have followed have only added clarity; Smith’s book, by design or chance, somewhat ties those threads together.

Where I might be tempted to pick a few minor quibbles from the text, I will instead turn them into lessons, well presented and integrated over nearly 400 pages. I am not an activist. And while I shun participation in most “street” activities, I still admire those good people who continue to try to do something. Even as it fades, hope is a wonderful thing to hold dear. The greatest lesson from Charlottesville might be that the game has forever changed for us. We are in a war we didn’t ask for. We are losing (though we will win in the end – it is assured). We still cannot exactly grasp the nature of the war as it manifests in corporeal form. We must never despair; rather, we must march forward, ever hopeful, while exercising a rather generous caution.

Regarding marching and caution, many voices have, from 2017 onwards, decried the rise of certain leaders who may be best described as “fake right.” Tensions in and between our factions and theirs are deeply explored in the book. I note that even Mr. Kessler, who while not necessarily a fraud, is or was certainly new to our side, took or was elevated into a position for which he was not ready. I’m not faulting him, here and now, but there is another great lesson to be learned from his experience. We have always had fakes and traitors in our midst. Long before the queer CIA asset Buckley misled generations of “conservatives,” Judas accepted his paltry silver payment. Some of the newer iterations of this age-old plague, with names like Peterson, Shapiro, and Spencer, either present with vapid emptiness or a malodorous hint of sulfur. They are easier to spot, ignore, or deal with. It’s those like (I suspect) Kessler, who genuinely “convert,” who present special cases that we would do well to remember. Accept the honest scab who crosses over. Just be very hesitant or slow to place such newcomers in positions of authority. This is easier said than done, but again, Smith’s book goes a long way, via examples of what can and will go wrong, toward being able to do it.

When presented with the option by Amazon and Goodreads, I rated the book (or tried to) with a full Five Stars. It is that good, a rare melding of forceful yet dispassionate advocacy with tempered even-handedness. The author is capable of adding extra realism to her well-researched, well-written, and engaging work because she was present for the underlying events. This proves that in limited circumstances, we benefit from select people disregarding my first rule of conflict avoidance. We should be grateful for that. Charlottesville Untold is as interesting as it is educational, another rarity. As I said, read it.

And, now,

Bonus 1

The other day I learned that the Goodles team, led by the amazing GG, deployed the mobile noodle stand in Los Angeles. Watch a quick video of the auspicious event. Still photos are here. I have no idea when they will motor from the Left Coast to the rest of us, but I can say the “Mover & Shaker” Goodles I had were the best boxed instant mac I’ve ever tasted. (Perrin is an unpaid, perhaps unwanted spokesman for Goodles and all things GG). 

Bonus 2

Next week, in lieu of polemical rambling I have a special bit of Christmas fiction for you! Newbies, prepare to meet the inimitable Dr. Ironsides. Old hands, some new stuff and characters are coming. And, thanks to the talented Anna De La Cruz and the venerable Blowing Rocket (NC), you can see a preview picture HERE that sets the mood. 

A Review of “A Fatal Mercy, The Man Who Lost The Civil War,” by Thomas Moore (1948 – 2021)

28 Saturday Aug 2021

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A Review of “A Fatal Mercy, The Man Who Lost The Civil War,” by Thomas Moore

 

*We can add to Tom’s long list of achievements his proper raising of three sons and his very positive influence on his step-children. Within two or three hours of learning of his death yesterday, I had a few ideas and thought, “wow, I need to run that by Tom.” I’m still in the hit in the face stage; shocked to follow, I suppose. Here, I repost my 2019 review of his last major novel, an instant classic on several fronts. He was approached, though I don’t think the porject evolved far, about turning A FATAL MERCY into a TV or Netflix mini-series, which, if done correctly, would be excellent. Don’t wait for that; buy the book. 

 

The boy had it right in quoting his grandfather: “courage and fortitude are never in vain … no good cause is ever lost because all good causes are lost causes.” Even if he didn’t exactly understand the last part of it, that quote expresses an oft-felt theme, if not a rule, of life and of a higher civilization. It is the theme of his grandfather’s story from 1863 through 1913.

 

Was Drayton FitzHenry the man who lost the War for Southern Independence? The man himself certainly thought so, perhaps with good reason. Then again, the reader can, likely will, come to understand that there may have been a good reason behind the losing. The story is simple in its complexity, and visa versa.

 

Moore has really written two books in one. A Fatal Mercy is an in-depth study of the human condition and of Christian morality, Western in origin – Southern by the grace of God. On the one hand, the book is a stirring rendition of The War. In that alone, it is fantastic martial fiction, at once woven by an elegant and commanding imagination and steeped in painstakingly researched history. The story is compelling, riveting.

 

That is especially high praise from me. Unlike my father, I am not a “Civil” War buff. As a child, the old man dragged me from battlefield to battlefield, constantly uttering information gleaned from his (separate) War library. I certainly gained a respect – and the good manners to at least phrase “Civil” with those all-important quotation marks – but I never developed the … obsession. This book, all through its 727 pages, engendered some of that. This is a work my father would have read – and liked. Those of you who knew him, know that is higher praise.

 

Perhaps highest of all, is what that aforementioned history and the associated culture, presented alive and burning, generates with regard to what I see as the second grand interpretation, a thoughtful, reasoned, and unapologetic defense of relevant antiquity, classical knowledge, honor, and the grandeur of Western Civilization.

 

I am a student of classical Greco-Roman tradition. Here, Moore writes as well and true as any: “One reason we study the Classics, apart from the value of the knowledge itself, is for what they may teach us about our times.” With this sentiment, Cicero concurs: “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?”

 

Today, most Americans, Southerners included, are ignorant of history, children easily led astray from their ancestral heritage. Moore addresses this issue, with direct examples, slightly dramatized, through the eyes of his protagonist. Drayton’s book-long dilemma revolves around a momentary eye of the storm at Gettysburg. Rather, around the eye of the fish hook, as Shelby Foote put it if we stretch Foote’s geographic definitions to include Little Round Top (and it is, topography-wise, a sub-eye). See: The Civil War, a Narrative, Stars in Their Courses, p. 479, Random House, New York (1963).

 

Of that terrible battle and its defining outcome, Bruce Catton wrote: “There was no pattern to any of this, except for the undesigned pattern that can always be traced after the event.” Never Call Retreat, Encounter at Gettysburg, p. 186, Doubleday, New York (1965). If this is true – and who doubts Catton – then Drayton’s dilemma is understandable. Drayton lived out the maxim: “Iniuriam facilius facias quam feras – Easier to do a wrong than to endure one.” – Syrus, Maxims. As he refrained from the former, so he endured the latter. Both counts are attributable to – and tribute to – his wisdom and honor.

 

And, there is an honor, and a wisdom, about Drayton FitzHenry that is rare among literary creations. Odysseus has it, as does Frodo. That wisdom moves beyond the narrative of the War, the horrors of Reconstruction, and into the following age. Along with other, innumerable truths, a lesson and a warning speak directly to us. It finds different ways of expression:

 

  • The kindly nature of a freed slave towards her former master;
  • The correct realization that the War ended the original American Republic, freeing one class of slaves only to create another;
  • Understanding the force and effect of the demonic legal trilogy of 1913: to this end, three separate quotes, conjoined (by me, for my purposes): “Power transmutes into Empire. Empire begets hubris. Hubris brings ruin. … [O]ur virtues will be needed by America, perhaps even the world, more than ever. … We must do the best we can and leave the consequences to God.”

Moore’s articulate, enrapturing characters witness the end of a Republic. We stand at the very possible end of an Empire. Then, in the fable, and now, in our reality, both intelligent free will and resolve to honor Providence properly combine. Sayeth the poet: “Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo – If I can’t move Heaven, I’ll raise Hell.” – Virgil, The Aeneid, VII, 312. The men at Gettysburg, of both sides, did exactly that. A Fatal Mercy does the same, does both in fact, recalling the horror and heroism of combat while instilling pride in the genteel, the cultured, the learned, the respecting, and the respectable. It is all of powerful magnitude.

 

The Author states: “My principal goal was not just to write the best contemporary novel of the War, but also to place my protagonist in an excruciating moral and emotional dilemma and see how he would resolve his inner conflict.” Moore has done that, and greater still. This book is a timeless Classic.

 

Also: The letters… The burning of the letters, Chapter Seventeen, moved me. The reader will, I trust, understand soon enough.

 

(Picture: Amazon/Green Altar Books – Shotwell/Moore)

 

A Fatal Mercy, The Man Who Lost The Civil War, Thomas Moore, Green Altar Books, Columbia, SC (2019).

Review of UNSCHOOLED by Kerry McDonald

08 Monday Jun 2020

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Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom

Kerry McDonald, 2019

It’s no secret that, around here, the government schools are frowned upon as satanic prisons where children are abused and civilization is crushed into oblivion. What if it’s not the government part that’s the main problem? After reading this book and thinking about all I have seen, lived, and experienced, I think the idea of “school” itself is problematic. Such is McDonald’s premise in this excellent, methodical, and entertaining work.

I just gave it 5 stars at Amazon and Goodreads and I may go back and incorporate some of these words in a house review. First, there was one thing that caught me a little off guard in the pages. It’s something McDonald doesn’t shy away from and qualifies upfront. There is, to me, an inordinate amount of reference to the … alternative lifestyles. That said, by way of qualification, the author notes that the modern trend was largely started by radical leftists and leftover hippies, then followed increasingly by the Christian right. She also praises Andrew Carnegie, for whom I have no sociological use at all. But, at any rate, the whole tome is very well-balanced and apolitical.

And, though the current “movement” started in the 1970s, the concept is ancient. Until about 150 years ago, there were next to no schools anywhere. Or, at least there were no monstrosities of the kind that dot American towns and cities these days. There were colleges, elite academies, private tutors, and local private collective efforts, but the bulk of human education was left to the family … and to the children themselves. And it worked.

It still does.

I made something like 169 Kindle notes and highlights as I worked my way through. Most of them, I’ll leave off, here. What really stood out to me was the concept of what McDonald styles the “instruction assumption.” We, most of us, naturally (or unnaturally) assume that to learn one must be instructed. I wrestled with this, as likely you will as well. McDonald did. It is a fallacy.

Who taught you to stand up? To walk? To talk? To run? The answer is “you.” Believe it or not – and the book really helps – children can and will continue to self-educate, constantly and with all subjects. The purpose of an “instructor,” a parent, is to maintain a state of freedom, riddled with inspiration and opportunity, so as to facilitate what the child can do on his own.

“Public” schools are antithetical to this natural process, as are many (most) private schools, and even curriculum-directed homeschooling. A period of “de-schooling” may be required to dispense with the horrible habits of conformity and debasement.

Some quotes:

“The reason kids hate school is because it’s school.”

“It’s Not the kids. It’s the schools.”

Let those words sink in. If you’ve worked in a school or if you have a child in a school, then you subconsciously know. If not, then remember back to your own experiences so many years ago.

McDonald breaks down, as have many other analysts, how modern schools are designed to break spirits, foster useless conformity, and miseducate. This is the opposite of learning. For doubters – and I had my doubts – she presents example after example, to include academic studies and historical examples, that prove the laissez-faire approach not only works but that it generally works much better than the alternatives. It works for happy children and also for the greater society. Most of our titans of intellect and accomplishment, from Athens to London to Philadelphia, were unschooled and yet managed to change the world or parts thereof. Her example of “young Tom” was insightful and hilarious. *I understand that Tom Ironsides also read the book and is reconsidering his classical school model along more decentralized lines.*

Children can forego school completely, take no standardized tests, receive no useless credentialing paper, exempt the SAT, and still gain admittance to a good college. There, they typically outpace their schooled counterparts. College is not the only secondary path; it may not be the best one given a particular child. There are all kinds of alternatives. The keys are freely-informed consent, individual interest and pacing, and independent and critically-acquired knowledge. Those keys are natural. What goes on in the dull halls of the K-12 world is not.

The solution, as is often the case, is freedom, in this case freely allowing the child to pursue his own interests at his own pace. Even in our crazed, rule-plagued country, this is legal in all 50 states. I developed a sense of awe in the reading. I was also a little jealous; this could have and probably was the best (non) system for me. But, times change. Think of this, for those in the know, as a Sudbury School in the home.

Given human nature and especially the nature of Americans (or what passes for them), I doubt this self-directed methodology will appeal to the masses. But it should. UNSCHOOLED gave me a great, renewed sense of hope. If you have children or if you care anything about the future of intelligent civilization, then I highly recommend not only the book but at least an exploration of the ideas within it.

This Week

07 Sunday Jun 2020

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We have a great TPC/PL column scheduled for tomorrow in honor of the chief historic incident of the date. You’ll enjoy it.

And, I’ve finished UNSCHOOLED by Kerry McDonald. I made around 169 notes, so I’ll have to shift through before I can review it in full. It’s good.

Until then, P

“A GRITTY, REALISTIC LOOK INSIDE THE PUBLIC SCHOOL”

19 Tuesday Nov 2019

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The first 5-Star review of THE SUBSTITUTE is now live at Amazon:

Thomas
5.0 out of 5 starsA GRITTY, REALISTIC LOOK INSIDE THE PUBLIC SCHOOL

November 17, 2019

It takes courage to write a book. Few things are as intimidating as sitting down in front of a blank computer screen day after day and trying to fill it with something worthwhile. Perrin Lovett is doubly brave. He has written an original, exciting, entertaining story. But he also had the courage to take on the most sacred cow in the vast American herd – the public schools. THE SUBSTITUTE gives us a vivid, realistic, inside look at the failing public schools based on real, day-to-day experience. Many non-fiction studies of public education have been appeared in the past few years. But THE SUBSTITUTE is the only novel on the subject I’m aware of that compares to the famous “muckraker novels” of the early 20th Century that exposed such social evils as child labor, worker safety, and political corruption. Writers like Upton Sinclair, Ida Tarbell, and Lincoln Steffens changed America by using fictional truth to expose the social ills they addressed. I hope that Perrin Lovett’s novel will have a similar effect on how we look at public schools, which demand an ever greater bite of tax revenue while producing an ever worse result.

Perrin Lovett is a natural story-teller, with a superb command of language and a tone, sardonic at times, that is appropriate to his subject. And he has created a splendid protagonist, Dr. Tom Ironsides, the substitute of the title. Dr. Ironsides is also Colonel Ironsides, retired from the Marine Corps and from subsequent “black ops” with the CIA. He is an academic, trained in the Classics, and a warrior, trained to function in a world where survival demands competence.

At first I was concerned how Lovett would get such an engaging character from the battlefield against terrorism to the battlefield against ignorance. But he does it quite well, quite credibly. Ironsides is one of those people with the self-confidence and the idealism to want to spend his later life setting things right. What better venue for his knowledge, skills, and natural authority than the schools? But since he’s not officially certified, he has to start out teaching as a full-time substitute. As a substitute, he covers many different grade levels and subjects, giving the reader a genuine cross-section autopsy of an unsustainable system. It’s crushed by its own bureaucracy, treats its students more like inmates of a prison, destroys love of learning, and drains the heart out of the teachers. Most of them love their kids and aspire to teach them well, but they’re over-burdened with ever more testing and data-keeping and bureaucratic procedure. Instead of making the classroom a place of excellence in learning, public schools are creating sinkholes of mediocrity.

I won’t spoil the ending except to say it’s very satisfying. It’s fictional, of course, but it ends the only way the whole national public school debacle can end if America is to remain a strong, free, prosperous, self-governing nation. Only a well-educated people can keep it that way. If we do follow the new course described in THE SUBSTITUTE, we’ll have Perrin Lovett to thank.

 

Wow. That feels like a heavy responsibility. For my part, I’ve started making a few minor changes to the book. First, there are always little improvements to make, my pedantic CYA in the Afterword aside. Second, the formatting needs a little work, which I can accomplish soon. (For that, I blame the computer and the template).

Screenshot 2019-11-19 at 10.10.33 AM Screenshot 2019-11-19 at 10.10.59 AM

Let’s keep those going!

A Review of THE SUBSTITUTE

17 Sunday Nov 2019

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My advance copy of a review headed to The Substitute Amazon page. This is, frankly, better than any description I’ve ever attempted:

It takes courage to write a book. Few things are as intimidating as sitting down in front of a blank computer screen day after day and trying to fill it with something worthwhile. Perrin Lovett is doubly brave. He has given us an exciting, entertaining story. But he also had the courage to take on the most sacred cow in the vast American herd – the public schools. THE SUBSTITUTE gives us a vivid, realistic, inside look at the failing public schools based on real, day-to-day experience. Many non-fiction studies of public education have been appeared in the past few years. But THE SUBSTITUTE is the only novel on the subject I’m aware of that compares to the famous “muckraker novelists” of the early 20th Century who exposed such social evils as child labor, worker safety, and political corruption. These writers changed America by shining the light of truth on the social ills they addressed. I hope that Perrin Lovett’s novel will have a similar effect on how we look at public schools, which demand an ever greater bite of tax revenue while producing an ever worse result.

Perrin Lovett is a natural story-teller, with a superb command of language and a tone, sardonic at times, that is appropriate to his subject. And he has created a splendid protagonist, Dr. Tom Ironsides, the substitute of the title. Dr. Ironsides is also Colonel Ironsides, retired from the Marine Corps and from subsequent “black ops” with the CIA. He is an academic, trained in the Classics, and a warrior, trained to function in a world where competence equals survival.

At first I was concerned how Lovett would get such an engaging character from the battlefield against terrorism to the battlefield against ignorance. But he does it quite well, quite credibly.

Ironsides is one of those people with the self-confidence and the idealism to want to spend his later life setting things right. What better venue for his knowledge, skills, and natural authority than the schools? But since he’s not officially certified, he has to start out teaching as a full-time substitute. As a substitute, he covers many different grade levels and subjects, giving us a genuine cross-section autopsy of an unsustainable system. It’s crushed by its own bureaucracy, treats its students more like inmates of a prison, destroys love of learning, and drains the heart out of the teachers – most of whom love their kids and want to do well – burdening them with ever more testing and data-keeping and procedures instead of allowing them to instruct.

I won’t spoil the ending except to say it’s very satisfying. It’s fictional, of course, but it ends the only way the whole national public school debacle can end if America is to remain a strong, free, prosperous, self-governing nation. Only a well-educated people can keep it that way. If we do follow the new course described in THE SUBSTITUTE, we’ll have Perrin Lovett to thank.

Who writes that? Thomas Moore, author of A Fatal Mercy and Hunt for Confederate Gold. Hopefully, this will spark a string of five-stars!  I’ll have a picture added, here, once the review hit Amazon. Now, if it all falls apart, am I to blame?? This is the kind of accolade one wants but then feels the burden of. Thanks, Tom!

PS: TPC “preview” – I keep waffling on ideas this week. Whatever it is, it will be good. See that, mid-week.

Really Trying to Get it Right

20 Tuesday Aug 2019

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Daniel Markovits of Yale Law has a new book coming out. It may be interesting. The following is a snippet, pre-release:

The main obstacle to overcoming meritocratic inequality is not technical but political. Today’s conditions induce discontent and widespread pessimism, verging on despair. In his book Oligarchy, the political scientist Jeffrey A. Winters surveys eras in human history from the classical period to the 20th century, and documents what becomes of societies that concentrate income and wealth in a narrow elite. In almost every instance, the dismantling of such inequality has been accompanied by societal collapse, such as military defeat (as in the Roman empire) or revolution (as in France and Russia).

Nevertheless, there are grounds for hope. History does present one clear-cut case of an orderly recovery from concentrated inequality: In the 1920s and ’30s, the U.S. answered the Great Depression by adopting the New Deal framework that would eventually build the mid-century middle class. Crucially, government redistribution was not the primary engine of this process. The broadly shared prosperity that this regime established came, mostly, from an economy and a labor market that promoted economic equality over hierarchy—by dramatically expanding access to education, as under the GI Bill, and then placing mid-skilled, middle-class workers at the center of production.

An updated version of these arrangements remains available today; a renewed expansion of education and a renewed emphasis on middle-class jobs can reinforce each other. The elite can reclaim its leisure in exchange for a reduction of income and status that it can easily afford. At the same time, the middle class can regain its income and status and reclaim the center of American life.

Rebuilding a democratic economic order will be difficult. But the benefits that economic democracy brings—to everyone—justify the effort. And the violent collapse that will likely follow from doing nothing leaves us with no good alternative but to try.

Even “liberals” are sensing the problem. He’s on to something, a little late, about the conditions and the rigging. He’s off about the solution, I think. But, he grasps that violence is coming. That, I think is now unavoidable – partly because of the changes that Markovits hints around but doesn’t address (this ain’t the country it was in 1962). I do like his optimism though. Maybe consider the read in September.

 

Restoring the Promise Review Preview

23 Thursday May 2019

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I have just finished reading Richard Vedder’s Restoring the Promise. It’s good, spot-on in many places. Vedder is an economics professor so his take on academia is geared as such. Many, may charts and graphs, but most of the astoundingly worthwhile variety. He goes well beyond a purely financial analysis and he isn’t afraid of the tougher social issues. He essentially lays out two paths of redemption: the “conservative,” and the radical. Guess which one I favored?

More on this when I have time. There’s going to be a lot more, from me, on education.

BUY YOUR COPY TODAY

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Vedder.

Vedder Vets the Academy

18 Saturday May 2019

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Today, I began my foray into “Restoring the Promise, Higher Education in America,” by Richard Vedder. I’m only the “praises,” the introduction, and chapter one in so far. And, so far, so good. This is a preliminary review preview, but for the most part, I like what I’m reading.

Sayeth Amazon and the Publisher:

American higher education is increasingly in trouble. Universities are facing an uncertain and unsettling future with free speech suppression, out-of-control Federal student aid programs, soaring administrative costs, and intercollegiate athletics mired in corruption. Restoring the Promise explores these issues and exposes the federal government’s role in contributing to them. With up-to-date discussions of the most recent developments on university campuses, this book is the most comprehensive assessment of universities in recent years.

An initial thought: The forward is a list of quotes by industry “leaders,” heavies in academia, many from government or NGO-ish positions, like Bill Bennett. That’s fine and to be expected. However, many of these folks have been around the business for a long time – all while the problems worsen. Not blaming, just saying. Vedder too, by his admission, is a seven-decade veteran. I’m wondering if those who are certainly in the know, because of their long involvement, also know how to extricate from the current dilemma (if that’s even possible). On the other hand, when a deep insider recognizes systemic failure, that says volumes.

We shall see. More on that, here, later.

51IEZ0lTJdL

Amazon/Independent Institute/Vedder.

PS: And, I mean HERE. Amazon would not run my (Amazon custom) review of  A Fatal Mercy, allegedly because it linked back to my review here. There’s also the “Terms” thing about authors not doing reviews, which never made full sense to me so long as one refrains from reviewing one’s own book(s). Anyway: Stars (only and only so long as that’s allowed), there, and review text, here (the CH thing with WP…). I am also wondering if this is part of the SJW/Tech push to shadowban. Promise and Fatal Mercy are both right-of-center. I note no reviews for either, even as I’m prompted to enter at least a star review, immediately upon purchase and without the benefit of reading. Odd.