What didn’t you know last week?

Arachne at her loom, after an admirer said her working was as beautiful as her work, “It is the same thing.”  Beautiful notion; one that will frame my teaching this year. (Hobbes21/Keith)

Didn’t know that only 30% of seersucker fabric in a garment actually touches the skin or that it was invented in New Orleans. (Puck/Puckermom/Laura)

Rousseau isn’t as completely strange as I thought he was. He sees the same problem as Hobbes, i.e. collective decision making and rejects the artificial notion of representation. It’s genuine participation or it’s slavery. Well, that’s still a little strange from this American perspective! (Stepwinder/Shellee)

What are you reading?

The first quarterly edition of the 2010 edition of the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography was devoted to Dolly Madison and her efforts to publish her husband’s notes from the Constitutional Convention. “A Constant Attention: Dolly Madison and the Publication of the Papers of James Madison, 1836-1837” by Holly C. Shulam, deals with Dolly, and her efforts, either directly or through various family connections or friends to secure publication. The more interesting, and perhaps more controversial article, “Securing a legacy: The Publication of James Madison’s Notes from the Constitutional Convention” by David. W. Houpt deals more with the efforts of Dolly and her agent Nicholas Trist to secure Congressional publication of the manuscript. Reading like a “whose who’ of Jacksonian America, Houpt recounts the debate and vote in the Senate that led to Senate approval of publication. Houpt asserts that John C. Calhoun, SC, still smarting from Madison’s public denunciation of nullification, voted nay out of spite. Calhoun, Houpt suggests, believed he was the intellectual heir to Madison’s legacy. Jefferson, maybe, but Madison? Check it out here. (Brenda)

A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck (sequel to A Long Way from Chicago).  Grandma Dowdel is a terrific character; this is great kids’ lit.
The really super-cool Geography Coloring Book by Wynn Kapit.  I dig the little arrows to indicate river direction: very helpful to students, even though they understand that rivers flow downhill. (Hobbes21/Keith)

Reading “Everything’s an Argument” (Puck/Puckermom/Laura)

Based on Heidi’s recommendation and my new found love of soccer, I am reading How Soccer Explains the World by Franklin Foer. His subtitle is “an (unlikely) theory of globalization,” but I think it is less about globalization and more about regionalism and the way in which soccer explains cultures around the world. I just finished the chapter on Barca – the team from Barcelona. His discussion of Catalan identity felt a lot like our recent discussions at Montpelier about American citizenship – that citizenship is about comitting to a set of ideas – it’s about how you see and understand a place and a people. I recommend it, particularly for any new soccer lovers out there. (conteach/Shayne)

I attempted to read Res Publica: An International Framework for Education in Democracy in tandem with this year’s National Academy reading. My progress has stalled considerably now that we’re in our second week. But, I’m still interested in reading this presentation of the fundamentals as though it’s a completely strange. I guess I had a theme this week! This one has been provoked by our international participants this year–from South Africa and China. (Stepwinder/Shellee)

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What didn’t you know last week?

The Servile State by Hilaire Belloc, and Everything’s an Argument by Andrea Lunsford, et al. (Laura/Puck/Puckermom)

Noah Pickus adds his work to the effort at Montpelier with a lecture titled “Constitutional Citizenship” and I always leave that institute determined to read his book. Well, I finally made it happen this round and I highly recommend True Faith and Allegiance by Noah Pickus. I have a more detailed post planned for the next couple of weeks looking at the five models of citizenship he discusses. (Shellee/Stepwinder)

A few of us are still working on Ralph Ketcham’s biography of James Madison. A thorough but incredibly well-written book that skillfully answers questions about both the political history and political theory of Madison. (Heidi)

Using the oil spill to discuss the modern presidency as one of perception (or illusion), Obama, the Oil Spill and the Chaos Perception in the NY Times. (Shellee/Stepwinder)

It’s the end of the Supreme Court’s term and decisions are being handed down almost everyday. Scotusblog is a great place to learn what’s been decided and to read commentary about the implications of the decisions. Today I am reading about the texting privacy case City of Ontario v. Quon. (Shayne/Conteach)

I just finished Grace Tiffany’s The Turquoise Ring.  It’s her retelling of  The Merchant of Venice from the perspective of five women in Shiloh (Shylock)’s life.  My fiance brought it back from a conference of medieval historians and it’s a fascinating peek into the lives of Jews, Moors, and Christians in Venice, Amsterdam, and England in the 1500s.  Dr. Tiffany is a Shakespeare scholar who lives in Michigan and who spoke at the conference. (Dianne)

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What didn’t you know last week?

Great in-depth reporting by NPR and ProPublica about Traumatic Brain Injury from Afghanistan and Iraq and the lack of care available to vets. (Shayne/Conteach)

The North Korean government devalued the currency last November to save the state-run economy while devastating families who had managed to save money. I didn’t know this impoverished economy also forced the country to abandon a full school day. Students go to school for as much of the morning as they can stand. A former teacher says many of her students were too hungry to study. This New York Times article provides haunting details of daily life in North Korea. (Shellee/Stepwinder)

Dear Abby was a supporter of Gay Rights.  Not that she was marching in Pride Parades but she was always supportive in her columns in the 70′s and 80′s and received quite a bit of hate mail as a result. (K-Rod/Kerryn)

The President is proposing a potential reconstruction of nature and society… WOAH. Definitely something I didn’t know last week. But how can he legislatively do something at this level? Maybe only in theory… Could Obama Really move the Mississippi to Save the Wetlands?. (Heidi) **That’s a crazy interesting site too. They just picked up a Twitter follower while I was checking the link.**

How many places there are to stub a toe or bump your head on a WWII submarine, or how cool parents can be when you stay up all night with them on a field trip. (Keith/Hobbes21)

The word “plutoed” was selected by the American Dialect Society as the word of the year in 2006.  In that statement I learned a couple of things:

1. The word “plutoed” (meaning–To demote or devalue someone or something, as happened to Pluto when it lost planet status),
2. There is an American Dialect Society.

On a side note, less than 5% of the world’s astronomers voted on that issue. (K2/Bookworm20/Keith)

What are you reading?

Actually mostly listening, but… NPR’s Planet Money podcast. It was great at reporting on the financial crisis and it continues to provide very clear economics reporting. (Shayne/Conteach)

I’m trying to make a commitment to “longform journalism” to diversify my reading on the web, and I have every intention of reading “Your Brain on Computers: Hooked on Technology, and Paying a Mental Price.” The author of “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” in The Atlantic has published a book on the topic so a number of newspapers and magazines are talking about this. I know they’re all talking about it but I can’t tell you what they’re saying because I haven’t made the time to read the whole article! (Shellee/Stepwinder)

Making Gay History by Eric Marcus . Great book.  Easy read, told through personal stories and accounts of what was happening from the folks that made it happen. (K-Rod/Kerryn)

Reading the required stuff for MontP. James Madison IS a “Champion of Liberty and Justice! From that list, Ralph Ketcham has written an incredible biography of James Madison. (Heidi)

Student writing portfolios, Ketcham’s Madison biography (Keith/Hobbes21)

“Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future”
This book looks at the disconnect between the scientific community and mainstream American society. The oil spill, oil drilling, and energy policy are perfect examples of how important scientific understanding are for policy decisions and yet how little attention is often given to the subject of science in our society. (K2/Bookworm20/Keith)

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You can make this a conversation by leaving your thoughts on any of the ideas shared here as a reply in the comments section. If you’d like to join us as a regular contributor to the Wavelength, drop that note in the comments and you’ll hear from me before we post next week’s collection.

It’s been almost three years since the National Academy (’07 in da house!), so I’m not sure whether Will and Co. have progressed with the orange box or not.  Last I knew, there wasn’t any great philosopher linked to that great conundrum called civilization.

The word alone conjures the pulse of Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture,” or Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries”

Click here to view the embedded video.

At first thought, one word seems synonymous: empire.

Whether Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Greek, or Indus, empires promote greed and xenophobia, excusing their behavior with riches and ethnocentrism.

Rudyard Kipling writes:

Take up the White Man’s burden–

Send forth the best ye breed–

Go bind your sons to exile

To serve your captives’ need;

To wait in heavy harness,

On fluttered folk and wild–

Your new-caught, sullen peoples,

Half-devil and half-child.

Of course, Kipling’s infamous burden masks the exploitation of colonial subjects and their lands.  The poem verbalizes manifest destiny, those  magic words employed by empire to justify pillage.  (Subjects who can be assimilated into willing subjects are called children, while the devils’ resistance must be crushed.)

If Kipling’s poem illustrates the imperial compass, Sun Tzu’s brief, but powerful, The Art of War serves as the map for would-be dominion.  And here there be monsters: mafia, warlords, slayers, idols.  Certainly, some corporations might be added to that list, and it is interesting to note that Sun Tzu’s work remains a perennial “business” bestseller.

Hitler built his lies upon this template; he appealed broadly to a Master race, with ambitions too large for just the Germans.  Fueled by hatred, Hitler understood the fear of wilderness, remaking his scapegoats into aggressors so that his society would be just in their defense of the Aryan construct.  In the process, humanity fought back and, thankfully, won.

Greece’s Alexander may’ve been slightly better, in that he attempted to graft a braided culture of Hellenism onto Persia’s severed Gordian Knot.  (As Aristotle’s student, perhaps this was the yellow-box influence.  Still, this was an orange box with a firm “blue-box” fist, nothing close to constitutional government.)

In literature, George Orwell best explores the misconceived civilization.  The author knew the pitfalls of colonialism firsthand: as a policeman in Burma; then as a republican fighter in the Spanish Civil War, where he took a bullet to the throat.  Fortunately, Orwell did not just survive, but he lived to tell: he translated his being and becoming into print, illuminating abhorrence with truth.  1984‘s dystopia remains a phenomenal lens into the power of culture, while high schools in the U.S. have canonized Animal Farm for its political allegory.  Lesser known, but no less powerful, Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” relates the power struggle between ruler and subject.  The narrator, as a colonial officer in Mulmein, feels compelled to shoot an elephant, temporarily wild in heat:

To come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing – no, that was impossible. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man’s life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.

Human beings unable to escape such a complex might suffer the fall of Alexander Hamilton.  A poor, fatherless child of the British Caribbean, local leaders saw his potential and sponsored his education in New York.  He rose to become General Washington’s aide, then a founding member of the first Presidential cabinet.  As our first Treasurer, his principles allowed a young nation to flex incredible economic muscle, and later raised his countenance to the pantheon of U.S. currency.  More than any, his arc demonstrated the possibilities of America.

With his confessions of constructing a mighty American empire, the framer stands as a colossus, with one foot firmly in the orange box.  For me, the question yet remains where his other foot treads: the blue or the purple?  Reading Madison’s Notes of the Debates in the Federal Convention, it would be easy to peg Hamilton as the man who would be king.  However, I’m not so sure that Alexander Hamilton wasn’t playing Madison’s foil.  And, as proven by his work on The Federalist, he wasn’t so one-dimensional: that role belonged to Aaron Burr.

Hamilton recognized this dark side in his longtime rival.  In the historic, tie-breaking vote of 1800, he prevented Burr’s ascension to a would-be throne, proclaiming that at least Jefferson was honest.  Later, the pair’s duel at Weehawken would bring about a twin demise: Hamilton’s wound was fatal and took him in a day; while Burr’s wound was political, and would take three long years.

It must be said that Hamilton himself proved honest.  When enemies threatened to reveal his extramarital affair, he did the unprecedented, admitting his mistake publicly.  In the end, though, his reputation proved unable to withstand the tremors, and, more American sun than American son, Helios toppled.

No giant, Henry David Thoreau stands upon humbler ground.  And it is with Thoreau that I find the positive side to civilization: an honor worth upholding.  His words helped to fuel the abolitionist movement of the past in addition to the environmental movement of the present.  In fact, “Walden” and other excursions into the wilderness left the writer with a greater understanding of not just nature and humanity, but civilization as a whole.  Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” rippled, inspiring the great minds and non-violent activism of Gandhi and Martin Luther King: both rebels against empire and its churning mechanism and both willing to risk the disgrace of prison in the name of justice.

Whether Spartan slavery or Nazi genocide, no civilization can last through exclusion.  Even the United States had to reconstruct our civilization, in order to reunite our people as one truly free: a process that first quaked the earth with Civil War, and continues through milder aftershocks.

An example of recent controversy, the Confederate flag symbolizes the old-school, Dixie mentality that some try to explain as Southern honor.  The problem is that racism cannot be separated from the aristocracy: the crossed bars conjure images of burning crucifixes and stinging oppression.  The image only remains due to our respect for natural rights.  It is tolerated because our culture must be tolerant; for, to exclude, we would become that which we oppose.

Thoreau’s work illustrates the folly of walking the fence, a specialty of empire in its attempt to extract the most from any situation.  It’s the place where individual moral choices must take precedence over individual economic ones, for the time will always come when good must be chosen over power or the basic tenets of a civilization crumble.

In societies with a voice, Thoreau realized that one can not watch idly or ignore, for such languor corrupts the premise of a people.  Dr. King paraphrased it eloquently: “noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.”  Could any notion better contradict the fallacy of empire than Thoreau’s theory spoken through the Drum Major for Peace?  It’s the very reason we can look at World War II and call it a good war, yet struggle to justify modern battles fought for other means.

Of course, the choice to be with us does not mean you must be against us, as suggested by President Bush.  Instead, real civilization models its behavior, leaving an open invitation to join when one is ready.  For more on this principle, please see  www.politicolor.com/2008/12/how-the-hobbes-stole-christmas/

The difference between “civilized society” and the great American experiment is our willingness to profess when we’re wrong.  Our version of honor lies in our ability to see and admit error, not to insist that we’re Right.  What makes the atrocities of Abu Ghraib so wretched is that Right is not the same as good.  The actions of our soldiers there came not under the panic of fire, but from an administration prepared to lower itself to terror.  Medieval behavior, both dishonorable and decidedly un-American, it shook down through the layers, all the way to our concept of civilization.

Our continuing re-write allows us to move forward, re-evaluate, and revise our core.  This process must remain open, democratic.  It is we: not us and them.  The scientific community has this notion right, with its open source sharing of knowledge and discovery, no matter what the language or political boundary.  This is why theory can be misunderstood: it claims not absolutes, yet remains open to new ideas.  As long as findings hold up to experiment, they join the hypothesis.

Like our Constitution, civilization must occasionally amend.  It must, for survival depends upon a tendency toward justice, not justification.  A static, authoritarian reputation only breaks; while a yielding, yet authoritative honor allows room to bend.

In all the branches of knowledge and in every kind of craft the end in view is some good. In the most sovereign of these, the capacity for [leadership in] political matters, the end in view is the greatest good and the good which is most to be pursued. The good in the sphere of politics is justice; and justice consists in what tends to promote the common interest” (112).

The course of the National Academy then pursued a series of questions for the sake of political knowledge.

From Aristotle, How do you know?

From Cicero, How do you see?

From Hobbes, How do you make?

From Deuteronomy, how do you judge?

And here’s a big question for National Academy alumni… how are you using these questions or these texts to promote an inquiry of political knowledge in your classroom?

A Federal Teacher shared his Path to Description with us in February. He provoked his students  to better examine what they know by describing what something is as well as what it is not. It took a year after the Academy but Hobbes21 unpacked the National Academy’s boxes to share them with his students. The Constitution became a protagonist in the story of We the People as Hobbes21 wove together the We the People text and his National Academy notes. His three part series, My Serial of Boxes, chronicles his concerns as he plunged into the depths of political philosophy in his Montessori classroom and the brilliant achievements of his students as they worked together to make order of this brave new world. You’ll want to check out the fantastic photos in the final post too!

Politicolor is a place to share your success and talk through your concerns. The healthcare debate still struggles to emerge from a summer of what believe was politics at its worst. As teachers and National Academy alumni we have the ability to share the story of politics at its best… how people organize themselves to achieve the good life.

If you have topics you’d like to discuss here… drop a line in the comments. We can also get you set up to write a post of your own.

Kallan, an Academy participant this year writing as Federal Teacher, made a pledge to give Politicolor 20 minutes a month and asked alumni to do the same. A couple of preceptors have stepped into the forum too. Melani, writing as logos, offers “What if who we are is not who we should be” as a snapshot of her presentation at this year’s Academy. Todd, aka hexxus007, looks at another dimension of who we are with some “great unit six stuff.” See his post “Civic Bad Boys…”

The work of one of this year’s panels is on the front page too. Stacy contributed her thoughts on their proposed design for Constitutional Currency and Linda joined the conversation in the comments of that post. It really is that easy… use the comments and join the conversation. Stacy followed Kallan’s lead and pledged 20 minutes a month while Kevin is leading the challenge board for the preceptors. He promised to write one post a quarter. Will you make a pledge to be here too?

Don’t worry about what to write. Read, leave a comment or two and contemplate a post of your own. Step into the forum.

The role of citizenship emerged, and I invited the students who wished to submit a pledge to be active.  As you may note, not all of my little citizens chose to record a pledge, which is beauty unto itself.

Have a great summer, everybody!

A few words from my fourth-graders (non-speakers) when asked today by the panel what they had learned from the experience: “I learned what private domain is.”  “Compromise.”  “Better research skills.”  “How a bill becomes a law.”  “How long it takes to pass a bill.”  “A lot about pollution and landfills.”

In our first few sessions, my 4th-6th grade students narrowed their choices for the project to these rough ideas: Save Bears, Clean-Up Michigan’s Rivers, Fix the Litter in Detroit.  The more we delved into the text, students discovered that those topics really weren’t clear proposals for public policy.  They also gained a ton of knowledge regarding sovereignty, as well as private sphere/civil society/ government.  The more they learned, the more focused their idea became, and their eventual choice–EXPAND MICHIGAN’S BOTTLE LAW–ended up as a wonderful combination of the early favorites.

The four areas of the portfolio–PROBLEM, ALTERNATIVE POLICIES, OUR SOLUTION, and ACTION PLAN–serve as a fantastic outline for anyone of any age attempting to bring about change.

The panel presentation in a committee room at the state capitol was the pinnacle of the experience.  Having misjudged time, our project came down to the wire (lesson learned: start early!); as a result, the kids didn’t first benefit and learn from a local session.  However, they could not have done any better than what I witnessed today.  Thorough preparation pays dividends, and I was so proud of my students for presenting without reading from a page.  (It does make a difference, I can tell you, as we were able to observe a high school group who did just that.)

We will be participating in Project Citizen next year, and in the years after!  Sincerely, the entire process has been one of the most valuable of my entire teaching career.

If you have any questions about Project Citizen, right down to the tooth ‘n’ nails, feel free to contact me at montessorinorth@comcast.net, or pose your questions here.

The Rangeview building is nearly quiet this afternoon. It isn’t that the exchange students all went to the beach today but that this year’s National Academy has run out of time.

The machines still hum but the electricity of rigorous academic work is missing. From a discussion of constitutional citizenship befitting an intelligent people to an afternoon of panel presentations, our Friday was heavy with hard work and world-making ideas.

This is the Academy that forever has the story of the L.A. quake during a lecture and 100 different strategies for propping a door open. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so many ice cream sandwiches in three weeks time!

As the group made their way to the exit this morning, we all wondered about Infanta’s super early super shuttle. It looks like she made it. There was an emergency mission to reunite Zeke with his toiletries at LAX. There might be room here for a joke about his short-shorts but I’ll let it pass. Todd had just one more moment of frustration when the van driver couldn’t find his reservation but it was no problem for Mir. He took the opportunity to have one more cigarette.

But there’s too much that’s happened here to simply walk away. What will you do with it all?

Politicolor is a space to talk through it. The 2007 crew has used Politicolor to share their work during the Academy and express their appreciation. And, remembering time with new friends or out of this world experiences is exactly how Politicolor got its start.

What do you want to remember? Alumni, don’t hesitate to join the conversation by telling us how the Academy has “haunted” you this past school year. This crew from 2008 might need your help to find solid ground as they return to school. If anyone would like to share their work from the Academy (either the writing project or the panel presentation), e-mail me and let’s share it.

So, one more afternoon of crafting questions to continue the conversation….

What thoughts did you have as the National Academy drew to a close?

How is the work of the Academy threatening to reverberate through your teaching and thinking?

What are you most proud of when you review your writing assignment or panel presentation?

Did a colleague’s presentation provoke a new degree of clarity or spark a new curiosity?

Generally speaking, a theory has the following components:

1. It organizes communication.
2. It organizes ideas.
3. It generates new ideas.
4. It displays the complexities of a problem.
5. It guides investigation.
6. It generates explanations and predictions.

This stuff is nothing new to students of Kuhn or to those who teach and study theory. My brief, amateur exegesis focuses on the first point about organizing communication. The specific type of communication presented below is what I would call “stylized public dialogue,” which I consider any writing, music, or art deliberately offered for public interest or consumption.

In an earlier politicolor post, Stepwinder considered a story by Kurt Vonnegut that had a constitutional theme/idea. Hobbes21 posted the results of his considerable research into popular songs with Federalist and anti-federalist themes.

I modestly build on the efforts of Step and Hobbes21 by offering two poems with constitutional themes. Rather than attempting to analyze the poems myself, I simply offer them to you for possible reflection. Maybe you will want to post a poem with an organizing idea or theme of American constitutional theory. -Mutter-

(1) OPTIMISM as reflected in Whitman’s

“Song of the Open Road”

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading me wherever I choose…

From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,
Listening to others, considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me

I inhale great draughts of space,
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.

I am larger, better than I thought,
I did not know I held such goodness….

(2) The FEDERALIST MIND in Ammons’

“Poetics”

I look for the way
things will turn
out spiraling from a center,
the shape
things will take to come forth in

so that the birch tree white
touched black at branches
will stand out
wind-glittering
totally its apparent self:

I look for the forms
things want to come as

from what black wells of possibility,
how a thing will
unfold:

not the shape on paper-though
that, too-but the
uninterfering means on paper:

not so much looking for the shape
as being available
to any shape that may be
summoning itself
through me
from the self not mine but ours.