the journey

and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

I don't usually get topical on here. But yesterday, April 15, was a day I shall always remember on the media and public arena front. I wanted to record it because even the most vivid memories get overcast and recast by future events.

First, when we drove Liam down to the AMtrak station we passed the central valley Tea Party and there were many, many cars there at the Savemart center. Our state of California has its own deficit crisis and is proposing measures like making businesses pay punitive rates if they move their business to another state -- basically an economic iron curtain to keep people in who are tempted to leave because the taxes are escalating to such giddy heights.

Then there was the news about Dr Dillon. Though we have never met him, we grieved personally for his loss. We've seen him around the TAC campus and his presence was certainly felt in a lot of the things we loved about the college. Studeo is collecting news stories and remembrances from alumni on Thomas Dillon. Quiddity has an In Memoriam including a speech Thomas Dillon gave for convocation in 2005, which was the year Liam first went there as a freshman. And Love2Learn's collection of tributes includes one from my daughter. The excerpt that Clare pulled out from Dr Dillon's 2005 address is well worth pondering:

"the true, the good, and the beautiful have much greater reality than do the false, the evil, and the ugly, which latter are too often idolized in the larger world. So I urge you to bring reality to that world - to take whatever you have grasped here of the true, good, and beautiful out into that larger world, so much in need of what is real rather than what is illusory."

While I was still in tears and shock over the news about Dr Dillon, Kevin called me into his office to show me a YouTube video which probably most of you have seen already. On the video I saw Simon Cowell in the judges' seat along with a blond movie star type lady and someone else, and a frumpy-looking lady appearing on a stage in front of them, and the title, Britain's Got Talent, and honestly, wasn't in the mood to see something silly or undignified, which is what I expected. It would be hard to imagine someone less interested in the "Got Talent" genre than I am. But this was something far different, as I'm sure you know – anyway, there's a link here that gives some background story and also has a link to the video clip that seems to be everywhere. It really is an extraordinary story. Seriously, watch the video.

This is a disparate bunch of memories, but they are all linked by the public element and also, by some mystery of the spirit that kept me awake for a good part of the night. The human being is a wonderful, wonderful thing. Even a sort of hokiness about the civil protest and the instant stardom of an unlikely talent doesn't detract from that. When reading Johny Tremain to Kieron I was very struck about how easy it would have been for some British aristocrat to be quite cynical about the Boston Tea Party. Civilians wearing Indian paint dumping tea, forsooth. But something happened there, and the Bostonians recognized it – the novel describes hundreds of silent people standing at the pier, watching, watching. The world changed right then.

I also thought – not related directly to anything else, except that this is Easter Week – about Pontius Pilate. Think about cynicism and tiredness… a civilized Roman governing a balky, difficult imperial outpost. He must have seen all kinds of cranks and criminals, people whose way of life and thought was bizarre to him. His job was no sinecure. Then one day Our Lord walked in with his hands bound. We know very well that Pilate knew how extraordinary Jesus was. Much as he might have superficially appeared as a crank or rebel, Pilate recognized that he was something else. It's obvious by what he said in the Gospel accounts.

Sometimes cynicism recognizes that cynicism is simply way insufficient, as when the judges in the Got Talent show simply sat there and gazed like children through the beautiful "I Dreamed a Dream" of Fantine in Les Miserables. And they respond, and either feel like the world is new for a moment or two and they are almost awkward children again in a different place. Or else they pull back and wash their hands and go on with their lives. But with them or without them, the world changes right then.

One more thing, while I'm talking about the mystery and grandeur of the human spirit. Through Leave the Lights On -- human dignity of anencephalic babies I came across this truly beautiful blog. ... The Story of Faith Hope. A beautiful, gentle, loving blog by a single mother who has a baby daughter with anencephaly who is now almost 2 months old. She is so precious.... the name Faith Hope suits her. In the videos, she smiles and tries to hold her head up. Her mother writes:

I'm 23 years old and a single mom to a very special little girl.

When I was 19 weeks pregnant, I was told that my baby had no brain. This condition is known as "anencephaly." I was told that my baby was only alive because she was attached to me, but that she couldn't survive on her own. The doctor said that I could continue the pregnancy safely, but that my baby would die shortly after being born. Or I could choose to terminate the pregnancy then, which would mean being induced at 20 weeks and letting my baby die without ever seeing or holding her (I don't even want to know what they do with babies in this case). Well, to some people this would be a difficult decision, but it wasn't for me. I knew there was nothing to gain by terminating the pregnancy and I already loved my daughter more than anyone else in the world. Even if she was unconscious like the doctors said and lived for only a few seconds or minutes --even if she was stillborn --it was worth it to me. And so we began our journey...

Fr. Stanley Jaki, Requiescat in Pace

HT: The Deeps of Time.

Information about his life and works, and links to more, here: Stanley Jaki.

Some earlier details at the Blue Boar.

Books and Pseudo-Books

I'm in a sort of cave made of piles of books around my laptop.... one series of stacks is to discard, one is to keep for possible selling, and one is just to keep. My project this weekend has been to type book titles into Amazon and see which ones are worth $$$ and which aren't. Sort of fun, but sort of disillusioning at the same time. So many books in the world that apparently aren't worth much to anyone.

One thing that makes me mad and sad is the textbooks. I own a few big, shiny, glossy textbooks that (1) I collected from the dime rack at the library or (2) I was given by friends who knew I am a homeschooler who loves books. These are monster 5 pound things that look like they could last a century, or kill someone if you dropped them from your second story window, with no expense spared in colorful, elaborate illustrations and smart DK-style headings and sidebars.

And they are going for $.01 at Amazon because there is a 2009 edition out now and these books are 2007 or 2008. Obsolete now. Whereas brand new, they go for $75 and up. Education funding crisis, indeed. Hmph. Someone is making lots of money. I can only imagine how the schools toss out their last year's models in favor of the new, improved model that of course is changed just enough so that the online resources and so forth will no longer support the old ones.

I wonder what they do with the old ones? They're utterly worthless at second hand. When I look inside them, they aren't much worth reading even when pristinely new. Like glossy stockholder's portfolio packets, almost. Text that pushes back at your eyes and actively resists understanding. Do they end up in landfills? Shouldn't we pass a bill limiting this waste of trees and imposition of chemical coloring processes on perfectly good paper? My guess is that this would come off as educational curmudgeonry, equivalent to saying that we should skimp on our childrens' education.

Another sad thing is when the children's hospital, the library or some such place has a Free Book program in place and they hand out the kind of book that hardly seems like a book to me. Aidan got a Blues Clues book one time, so glitzy that it looked like a McToy but much more boring to most kids, I am afraid, and with rather less creative value. At least, for Aidan, who would have preferred a copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar -- when his speech therapist gave him that book he carried it around with him for days. Kids tend to like REAL books in my experience, books that are a joy to read and listen to, but if they do happen to be attracted to a glossy book with a familiar TV character on the front I am not sure if it really helps them develop what I would call literacy. Maybe it does help, a little, in the same way reading the back of a cereal box might.

And one more thing makes me sad and that is when some book that has been a bestseller and published in a glossy hardcover then a mass market paperback, like a Dr Phil book or some other type of self-help or popular inspirational book, and has quickly become totally worthless ... there are 200 copies selling for the fateful $.01 price on Amazon. Meanwhile the author has written a new bestseller. Another kind of obsolescence there.

It makes me want to call for a book-printing freeze. Stop the presses. There can be too much of a good thing. All these glossy illustrations, catchy content, and sheer volume and speed. I am wondering if it has an adverse effect on literacy. Even the Great Books are mass-produced nowadays. How could young people not feel some contempt? Maybe book-burnings aren't necessary -- instead, just endlessly produce books that are almost instant doorstops and landfill fodder. Then you can keep insisting that all you want is universal literacy and no one can really say anything to the contrary.

All this book-sorting has started to help me break free of a long-standing attachment. Books are treasures to me. The look of them alone inspires reverence in me. I imagine heaven as the book stacks at Trinity College. I never would have thought there could be such a thing as a glut of books, which are or ought to be things of the spirit, but now I am afraid there is. If I go back to Aquinas's definitions of types of gluttony I can make an analogy to literary publishing along these lines:

too soon, too expensive, too much, too eager, too dainty, too fervent

Quality matters, and seems sometimes to be in inverse proportion to quantity.

There is a lot of love for books out there still -- the very liveliness of the Amazon Marketplace shows that. But it flows along in a distinctly different, though perhaps occasionally overlapping, stream from the mainstream publication stream.

Of Philistines and Fire

...this lively and promising part must also, according to by our definition, go with the Philistines; because it is its class and its class instinct which it seeks to affirm — its ordinary self, not its best self; and it is a machinery, an industrial machinery, and power and pre-eminence and other external goods, which fill its thoughts, and not an inward perfection.

....Our society distributes itself into Barbarians, Philistines and Populace; and America is just ourselves with the Barbarians quite left out, and the Populace nearly. -- Matthew Arnold

"(Fire's) real beauty is that it destroys responsibility and consequences."

"Today's figures for operations in the urban area alone account for the elimination of a total of 2,750 pounds of conventional editions, 836 pounds of first editions, and 17 pounds of manuscripts were also destroyed. Twenty-three anti-social elements were detained, pending re-education." Fahrenheit 451

I have been following the CPSIA updates from various blogs and trying not to feel it too much, but this got past my guard:

I just came back from my local thrift store with tears in my eyes! I watched as boxes and boxes of childrens books were thrown into the garbage! Today was the deadline and I just cant believe it! Every book they had on the shelves prior to 1985 was destroyed!

As Red Cardigan says:

Many of the books my children loved were gently-loved classics from our local used book store. It's sad to see such a terrible act of destruction wreaked upon treasures from the past, all because greedy companies used lead paint in plastic garbage peddled to American children in the recent past.

Melissa Wiley has collected some links to further information on the subject of CPSIA and how it affects small home businesses and resale of used toys and books.



Also, Studeo has this Illegal Books Meme and more links. If you want to see my daughter's blog posts inspired by love of Antique Books, go here. (I'm borrowing some of her photos for this post).



Another reason to love the internet, now as the modern equivalent of the old monasteries -- so long as Google Books and Gutenberg are out there, the old books won't be gone completely, but it hurts to hear of the beautiful old editions going out with tomorrow's trash. It really, really hurts. There's something about the physical presence of an old book that links us to our ancestors and to a world where books were loved enough to be put into beautiful editions. When I pick up an old book, often shabby on the surface but well handled, well made, well-loved, quiet but rich in form and content, I feel connected to the Permanent Things in body as well as spirit. I am afraid that though the cyberworld and nice reprints might preserve the soul of the books, some of their sheer physical presence will be gone forever. It bothers me that it should have been such a casual, slipshod, reflexive decision on the part of a government not operating with the consent of the people and in weird, dysfunctional cahoots with big business .... certainly not with the consent of the democracy of the dead that GK Chesterton called tradition.

"Somewhere the saving and putting away had to begin again and someone had to do the saving and the keeping, one way or another, in books, in records, in people's heads, any way at all so long as it was safe, free from moths, silverfish, rust and dry-rot, and men with matches."

if you are a parent....

Stephanie of Recollected Life, who often comments on this blog, has started a Yahoo group called Recollected Parent which I am co-moderating with her. You're welcome to join in the discussion, whether a relatively new parent or an experienced parent who would like to reflect, recollect, and share wisdom.

I can't do better than copy over Stephanie's description on her blog:

If you are a parent,

If you actually like your kids (most of the time, anyway), and are glad God gave you a life that includes your offspring,

If you enjoy the work of such educators as John Bosco, Maria Montessori, and Charlotte Mason, and find it fascinating and startling to participate in the growth and development of the younger human,

If you educate your kids at home (whether or not they attend school elsewhere as well),

If your family loves great books and living ideas,

If you would like to discuss conscious, intentional, recollected parenting,

You can subscribe by email or follow the link to the group home.

Sad News -- Richard John Neuhas

Father Richard John Neuhaus died today. He was born a Lutheran and converted to Catholicism at the age of 55. He was confirmed as a Catholic September 8, 1990, and ordained a Catholic priest a year later by Cardinal O'Connor. I remember this in particular because I had been confirmed as a Catholic earlier that same year; the magazine First Things that he founded was a great influence on me in those early years after conversion.

Some of Fr. Neuhaus's writings online are here.

He came very close to death once before, and in 2002 wrote a book about it called As I Lay Dying which I read a couple of years ago on the recommendation of Lissla.

First Things article:

Our great, good friend is gone.

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus slipped away today, January 8, shortly before 10 o’clock, at the age of seventy-two.

From an essay originally published in First Things in 2000 "Born Towards Dying."

We are born to die. Not that death is the purpose of our being born, but we are born toward death, and in each of our lives the work of dying is already underway. The work of dying well is, in largest part, the work of living well....Death is the warp and woof of existence in the ordinary, the quotidian, the way things are. It is the horizon against which we get up in the morning and go to bed at night, and the next morning we awake to find the horizon has drawn closer.

"to invite reason continually to take up the pursuit of truth"

Pope Benedict on Academic Freedom

The matter is one of giving the right form to human freedom, which is always freedom in reciprocal communion: law is the condition for freedom, not its antagonist. But here the question immediately arises: How can the criteria of justice be identified that make possible a freedom that is lived together, and that help man to become good?

At this point we need to jump back into the present: the question is how a juridical norm can be found that guarantees the ordering of freedom, human dignity, and human rights. This is the question that occupies us today in the democratic processes of opinion formation, and that at the same time fills us with anxiety over the future of humanity.

In my view, Jürgen Habermas expresses a vast consensus in current thought when he says that the legitimacy of a constitutional charter, as the precondition for legality, is derived from two sources: from the egalitarian political participation of all citizens, and from the reasonable manner in which political disagreements are resolved.

Concerning this "reasonable manner," he notes that this cannot be solely a struggle for an arithmetical majority, but that it must characterize itself as a "process of argumentation sensitive to the truth" (wahrheitssensibles Argumentationsverfahren). This is well said, but it is a very difficult thing to transform into political practice. The representatives of that public "process of argumentation" are – we know – predominantly the political parties as the agents for shaping political will. In fact, these will unfailingly aim above all at attaining majorities, and in this they will almost inevitably pay attention to interests that they promise to satisfy; but these are often special interests and do not truly serve everyone. Sensitivity to the truth is constantly overruled by sensitivity toward interests. I find significant the fact that Habermas speaks of sensitivity to truth as an element necessary in the process of political argumentation, thus reinserting the concept of truth into philosophical and political debate.


But then the question of Pilate becomes inevitable: What is truth? And how is it recognized? If for this one turns back to "public reason," as John Rawls does, the question arises once again: What is reasonable? How does a form of reason demonstrate itself as true? In any case, on the basis of this it becomes clear that in the search for the right to freedom, for truth, for just coexistence, attention must be paid to voices different from those of political parties and interest groups, without wanting to contest their importance in the least.

Hilda Van Stockum and Trinity College

While I was looking for the picture of our "Little Kings" for my last Christmas post (our last name means little king and so for the purpose my daughter counts as a king too, and indeed why not?) -- I found this picture I took at Trinity College in Dublin last summer. It was absolutely pouring rain that day in June, and they didn't let you so much as bring out a camera inside the college, but I did get this one outside shot.

Since I know Love2Learn Mom likes Hilda van Stockum (our family is combination Irish Dutch just like theirs and HVS's) I thought she and perhaps some others of my Catholic and/or Irish and/or literature-loving friends would like this photo. Unfortunately, I must have had trouble maneuvering my umbrella so I didn't get a complete good shot of the insignia on this bench, but I guess you can abstract the universal from the 2 particulars, at least a bit. And you can click on the pictures to make them bigger.




You can see a photo of the wedding of Spike Marlin, who is memorialized here on the bench in the photo, and Hilda Van Stockum, in 1932 at Trinity College, if you go here (and scroll down a bit)

This has nothing much to do with Hilda Van Stockum, but outside of Trinity College I also got this extraordinary building title:


I had to get a picture of that, though I didn't know at the time that it is the oldest charity in Dublin (I'm thinking they mean the oldest bourgeoisie/layman operated one, or the oldest one still in existence).

To tie in the charity building photo with Van Stockum, here is a St Nicholas Day Message by Hilda Van Stockum. She writes (about the advertising /consumerist rush at Christmas, I suppose):

In a sense, how we use our money determines not only our own lives but those of others too. If we wish for foolish, vulgar or ugly objects, and make others want them, a certain number of people will spend their lives making them. What we ask for, will be supplied. What we make, others will be induced to ask for. But is there no place in these transactions for a thought as to their usefulness, or moral value?

This is a very complex and difficult question. What one person considers good and necessary, may be despised by another. There are no hard and fast rules. But I do suggest that this side of the matter is worthy of attention.

I think we all have a responsibility, whether we like it or not. We will be answerable one day, I believe, for the way in which we spent our money, or caused others to spend it.

Hilda van Stockum died only last year in 2006, on All Saints Day.

One of her six children remembers her saying:

'If you aren't hungry for an apple, you aren't hungry at all!'

That makes me laugh, because my mother used to say exactly the same thing to us.

She also loved dressing up as St Nicholas for his feastday, according to another one of her children.

And she thought the world needs more Catholic philosophers (I am just reading Pope John Paul II's Fides et Ratio which makes the same point!)

Here is a cute story about her conversion (she was brought up by atheists and became a Catholic after her marriage).

St. Thomas Aquinas, G.K. Chesterton, Fulton Sheen, Ronald Knox. but it was Arnold Lunn's "Now I See" that finally brought Mother to the Catholic Church. She always said that when she closed the book it suddenly hit her: "I'm not thinking about being a Catholic, I am a Catholic!" With that she went out into the street and asked the first passer-by "Where is the nearest Catholic Church?" She went up to the rectory door, knocked, and said to the priest who opened it: "I'm a Catholic and I want to be baptized!" After a few enquiries he said: "You're a case for Fr X." It turned out that this was an elderly priest, a bit confused, but eager to make converts. After talking to Daddy, Mother went through the classes and the time came for her to be received into the Catholic Church. "What about the children?" she asked. And Daddy said "You better look after them". So we were all baptized together. The priest was a bit harassed with three children and Mother to baptize, and in the end he asked anxiously: "Have I done them all, or have I done one twice?"

Following the Compass

The Lost Children: A review of Hold On To Your Kids by Jen at Et Tu? HT: The Cates at Why Homeschool?

She quotes the authors of the book:

As children grow, they have an increasing need to orient: to have a sense of who they are, of what is real, why things happen, what is good, what things mean. To fail to orient is to...be lost psychologically -- a state our brains our programmed to do almost anything to avoid. [...]

What children fear more than anything, including physical harm, is getting lost. To them, being lost means losing contact with their compass point. Orienting voids, situations where we find nothing or no one to orient by, are absolutely intolerable to the human brain.

We discussed the topic of teenage mutation at Real Learning a couple of weeks ago. Another book that is interesting to read in this regard is A Tribe Apart. I wrote a tiny review of it here. The book starts by describing several kids in about 5th or 6th grade -- pretty much normal kids interested in baseball and Barbies -- and traces their lives until their graduation from highschool. The transition is remarkable. Generally speaking, the kids "come through" on the other side, but there are tragic exceptions, and even the survivors have battle wounds.

Some homeschoolers "mutate" (for lack of a better word), and some kids who go to school don't, of course. My thought is that peer dependency is much more the source than simply the fact of homeschooling or not -- you can have peer dependency AND homeschooling, and you can have schooled kids who stay away from peer dependency, whether because their families are strong, or their interests are bigger than the system, or perhaps the school itself has a strong healthy culture of its own that counteracts the tribalism. Temperament plays a part too.

Plus, there are kids who take on some of the trappings of the tribe, but only as a sort of game or adaptive trait. It is part of their natural development to try out new things, to explore and experiment and grow in understanding of different ways of life. This is not the same thing as peer dependency itself. To me, dependency means what Catholic doctrine calls "attachment" -- something that has the symptoms of an addiction.

Homeschooling can preserve a culture, though, that works against peer dependency. By taking the kids away from the age ghetto, spending time with them, discussing things with them and allowing them time and space to develop talents and skills, you give them opportunity to develop longterm qualities and skills, not the transitory ones generally valued by the peer culture. You give them some margin so that they can stand a bit apart from the follies their peers rather than accept and practice them devoutly. I wrote about this once before, in Enculturation, not Indoctrination.

There is still a sort of dependency, I suppose. As Neufeld says above in the quote, kids have a need to orient themselves; they are not able to develop in a void. This is his very case for developing a family culture. An imperfect family is better than an immature peer culture, though of course most dysfunctional families are so precisely because they share the competitiveness, co-dependency and immaturity of the peer culture. Perhaps it should be noted that most of the parents of this generation are products of peer dependency themselves. (To me this seems to have something to do with the amazing vitality of the constant question What About Socialization?)

I think sometimes the State and those who believe in the effectiveness of "experts" cringe a bit when they think of parents actually being allowed to influence their kids. Isn't that a sort of child abuse? What if they mess up? What if they inculcate doctrine that I happen not to agree with? What if they raise young adults that thrive outside of the cultural mainstream, who have a strong ethnic or religious identity? Doesn't that mean the society will be fragmented?

One of the victories of the state over the parents has been a rhetorical one; accusing the parents of indoctrination so that school becomes "freeing".

"Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It's up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well--by creating the international child of the future." Dr. Chester M. Pierce in an address to the Childhood International Education Seminar in 1973

HT Dana at Simple Pleasures.

Reading stories like this one at Why Homeschool give me a further sense of WHY kids form peer dependent bonds -- for they don't do it arbitrarily, of course. They do it because their psychic survival seems to depend on it in some way; it seems like a solution. When the grownups seem crazy, weak, fearful and arbitrary; and the peers seem to have strength and talent and offer some hope of a kind of safety, no matter how contingent.... well, there it is. Orienting voids, indeed. And I think that the more the system tries to take over the function of parenting, the more follies like this will crop up, because parenting is essentially personal and organic, while systems are not. Systems are not safe; they have gaps where individual, unique people fall through.

To quote Jen's quotes of the authors of Hold On TO Your Kids, again:

No wonder, then, that "cool" is the governing ethic in peer culture, the ultimate virtue...It connotates an air of invulnerability. Where peer orientation is intense, there is no sign of vulnerability in the talk, in the walk, in the dress, or in the attitudes. [...]

Peer-oriented kids will do anything to avoid the human feelings of aloneness, suffering, and pain, and to escape feeling hurt, exposed, alarmed, insecure, inadequate, or self-conscious. ...

Why Hold On?

The Lost Children: A review of Hold On To Your Kids by Jen at Et Tu?
HT: The Cates at Why Homeschool?

She quotes the authors of the book:

As children grow, they have an increasing need to orient: to have a sense of who they are, of what is real, why things happen, what is good, what things mean. To fail to orient is to...be lost psychologically -- a state our brains our programmed to do almost anything to avoid. [...]

What children fear more than anything, including physical harm, is getting lost. To them, being lost means losing contact with their compass point. Orienting voids, situations where we find nothing or no one to orient by, are absolutely intolerable to the human brain.

We discussed the topic of teenage mutation at Real Learning a couple of weeks ago. Another book that is interesting to read in this regard is A Tribe Apart. I wrote a tiny review of it here. The book starts by describing several kids in about 5th or 6th grade -- pretty much normal kids interested in baseball and Barbies -- and traces their lives until their graduation from highschool. The transition is remarkable. Generally speaking, the kids "come through" on the other side, but there are tragic exceptions, and even the survivors have battle wounds.

Some homeschoolers "mutate" (for lack of a better word), and some kids who go to school don't, of course. My thought is that peer dependency is much more the source than simply the fact of homeschooling or not -- you can have peer dependency AND homeschooling, and you can have schooled kids who stay away from peer dependency, whether because their families are strong, or their interests are bigger than the system, or perhaps the school itself has a strong healthy culture of its own that counteracts the tribalism. Temperament plays a part too.

Plus, there are kids who take on some of the trappings of the tribe, but only as a sort of game or adaptive trait. It is part of their natural development to try out new things, to explore and experiment and grow in understanding of different ways of life. This is not the same thing as peer dependency itself. To me, dependency means what Catholic doctrine calls "attachment" -- something that has the symptoms of an addiction.

Homeschooling can preserve a culture, though, that works against peer dependency. By taking the kids away from the age ghetto, spending time with them, discussing things with them and allowing them time and space to develop talents and skills, you give them opportunity to develop longterm qualities and skills, not the transitory ones generally valued by the peer culture. I wrote about this once before, in Enculturation, not Indoctrination.

There is still a sort of dependency, I suppose. As Neufeld says above in the quote, kids have a need to orient themselves; they are not able to develop in a void. This is his very case for developing a family culture. An imperfect family is better than an immature peer culture, though of course most dysfunctional families are so precisely because they share the competitiveness, co-dependency and immaturity of the peer culture.

I think sometimes the State and those who believe in the effectiveness of "experts" cringe a bit when they think of parents actually being allowed to influence their kids. Isn't that a sort of child abuse? What if they mess up? What if they inculcate doctrine that I happen not to agree with? What if they raise young adults that thrive outside of the cultural mainstream, who have a strong ethnic or religious identity? Doesn't that mean the society will be fragmented?

One of the victories of the state over the parents has been a rhetorical one; accusing the parents of indoctrination so that school becomes "freeing".

"Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It's up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well--by creating the international child of the future." Dr. Chester M. Pierce in an address to the Childhood International Education Seminar in 1973

HT Dana at Simple Pleasures.

Reading stories like this one give me a further sense of WHY kids form peer dependent bonds -- for they don't do it arbitrarily, of course. They do it because their psychic survival seems to depend on it in some way; it seems like a solution. When the grownups seem crazy, weak, fearful and arbitrary; and the peers seem to have strength and talent and offer some hope of a kind of safety, no matter how contingent.... well, there it is. And I think that the more the system tries to take over the function of parenting, the more stupid decisions like this will crop up, because parenting is essentially personal and organic, while systems are not.

To quote Jen's quotes of the authors of Hold On TO Your Kids, again:

No wonder, then, that "cool" is the governing ethic in peer culture, the ultimate virtue...It connotates an air of invulnerability. Where peer orientation is intense, there is no sign of vulnerability in the talk, in the walk, in the dress, or in the attitudes. [...]

Peer-oriented kids will do anything to avoid the human feelings of aloneness, suffering, and pain, and to escape feeling hurt, exposed, alarmed, insecure, inadequate, or self-conscious. ...

Scholar and hero
(HT: Studeo and my husband)

"My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee," Joe Librescu said in a telephone interview from his home outside of Tel Aviv. "Students started opening windows and jumping out."

Real Life Heroine

My husband has a habit of bringing news stories and current issues to my attention by coming out of his home office and either reading or retelling them to me. My kids get some exposure to current affairs and topical issues that way too and we have some interesting discussions as a result. I believe that this sort of thing is very helpful in raising informed citizens who are intelligently involved in civic life. Also, it has a bit of the same effect as reading history (for good reason, since it is history in the making) in that you see people to emulate and people whose mistakes you would not want to repeat.

Here's one in the emulation category: Poland Honors Woman Who Saved 2,500 Jews.

"Every child saved with my help and the help of all the wonderful secret messengers, who today are no longer living, is the justification of my existence on this Earth, and not a title to glory," Sendler said in a letter read by Elzbieta Ficowska, who was saved by Sendler as a baby. "Over a half-century has passed since the hell of the Holocaust, but its specter still hangs over the world and doesn't allow us to forget the tragedy."

While we're talking about World War II, Karen Edmisten has listed some World War literature resources for grade school children.

There are some middle school resources for the 20th century at Mater Amabilis, and some at Ambleside.... middle school level here, and high school level here.

Here is Lene Mahler Jaqua's list of 20th century resources here in PDF form at the CCH Newsletter site.