School: Young People Go to School and Some Make 'Mugs in the News' and Others Achieve

“I would rather a boy learnt in the roughest school the courage to hit a politician, or gained in the hardest school the learning to refute him – rather than that he should gain in the most enlightened school the cunning to copy him.” – G.K. Chesterton

Wouldn't that be something?   Schools are created by people who have something to offer to younger, or less knowlegeable people.  The best schools offer something of value that honors Truth, Nature and our Creator.

Schools are formed by people who share common values and skills that converge to bring people from one place in their lives to another, be it one of the 1st Tier Elite Prep Schools that shape future Secretaries of State and Members of Secret Societies, a co-educational Chicago Public School in Auburn Gresham, Roseland, Englewood, or Garfield Park that warehouse 9-12 year so that one out of score students score above a 20 on ACT exams and less than half graduate, or a Catholic all-Male college prep high school where 90% of African-American students who begin their schooling in its halls graduate and every graduate is welcomed to four-year college or university.

Our American public schools have become places that glare Halogen lighting on politicians.  Elected officials comprise the Board of Directors to Public Schools.  Elected politicians are the Carnegie Endowments of the 50 States without whom nothing remains done.

My assertions are arguable with regard to public schooling, but the fact that everything about public schools links directly to some career political grifter.

Marcus Aurelius endowed the first school at Athens in because he believed that a good person should lead a life honed by reason. Aurelius was a Stoic by temperament and outlook; yet, he created a School for each of the Dominant Philosophies Aristotelian, Platonic, Stoic and Epicurean.  He was no Ted Turner, or Bill Gates.
By the way, Emperor Marcus Aurelius persecuted Christians as brutally as Bill Maher of HBO would love to do.

Schools operated on endowments so that scholars ( people who showed up at school to teach or learn) develop themselves through immersion in the many disciplines that merged to a core belief, or philosophy.

When Romans allowed barbarians to protect them from barbarians, schools vanished.

From the 5th Century until John Dewey, schools were centered on God.  Paris, Oxford, Cambridge, Wittenburg and Escorial were Royally endowed.  John Scotus Erigena, Boethius, Augustine,  Cassidorius, Aquinas, William of Occam, Roger Bacon,  Anselm, Ignatius, Gonzaga Descrates, and Gregor Mendel managed to have great impact on human justice, human development and the humanities in spite of the fact that they were pious Christians.  Catholic schools remain, or should remain, in this tradition.

Public schools came about when Napoleon defeated the Prussians at Jena in 1806.

I could almost hear Mike Klonsky and Jesse Sharkey's noggins explode.  No, that was not a bomb planted by UICC Department of Education retiree, terrorist Emeritus and Obama sponsor Bill Ayers. That was the Battle that created a Godless school - Public Education.

The result has been Mugs in the New and a Chicago Homicide Rate that spikes each weekend - come rain or shine.

On my side of street, dominated by a four story fortress of Virtue designed by Joseph McCarthy who was Daniel Burnham's Catholic-go-to-guy when spending Cardinal Mundelein's money, a Catholic high school serves the exact same clientele as Simeon, Crane, and the former Calumet high schools - young men of African American heritage and mostly ( 80%) CPS elementary graduates.

All young men ( teenage Man Childs) are willful, proud, loud, playful, fidgety, distracted, horny as goats and in need of guidance, instruction and an occasional kind word.  Inner city black kids educated according to the secular Hegelian John Dewey constructs are exponentially more so.

Public school teachers told them "We don't do that!"  Catholic school teachers can tell, Pat Hickey to quit farting, explain is tardiness in 250 words double spaced and shape up or he will die on the gallows, IN THUNDER because Christ, His Mother, the Holy Spirit and God of Abraham expect more of him.

A Public school teacher says, ' We don't do that."  A Catholic school teacher explains why one's actions have consequences well beyond his immediate impulse to folly.

Here is a better explanation.  Yesterday, I was delighted to shake hands, fist bump and hug a seventeen year old kid who was expelled two years ago.  This young gent has had a horrific life.  He was shuttled from one foster care home to another from the time he was six years old until he turned fourteen for a total of seven placements. A relative took him in and sent him to Leo High School as a freshman.  Troubles ensued - tardy, absent, disrespectful & etc. The kid is smart, tough as algebra and has an inner sweetness that belies his troubled young life.  He is among the brawny stalwarts hugging Francis Cardinal George in 2011 in the photo that accompanies this prose. In fact, Cardinal George counseled the young man on the quiet.

For two years, this talented and handsome young guy attended a neighboring public school and went  "All Street."  He caught a beef - a serious beef.  He was arrested and sent to Juvey and eventually lawyered his way out of the Juvenile Detention Center and is in the expungement process.  More so, this young man remembered why he was expelled from Leo High School and added up the consequences trailing his will to impulse in fall of 2011.

He is working community service hours. He was delighted that I still have his size twelve Stacy Adams black dress shoes on my office book shelf.  He left them with me upon expusion.  I asked him if he'd like to put the broggans back on and finish out at Leo.  He said, " If you'll have me back."

Hell, yes! Arne Duncan and Karen Lewis have had for too long.  This is a young man who might not punch a politcal clown in the nose, but he will dispute the secular nonsense pretending to schooling.

Young people is no stroll through Winnetka. . . .well, it is if you go to New Trier.

N.B.  By the way, two of the 100 Chicago Tribune Mugs in the News were known to my young friend.

Perseverance: You Don't Get 'Atta-boys, Trophies, or Ribbons for Doing Your Job

"In Perseverance; thunder crashes, sails billow, waves toss the fragile boat. We see that the clouds are about to break. The sea will calm; the sailor's perseverance will soon be rewarded by a return to God's safe heaven. Perhaps this painting can assure each of us that if we can simply persevere, God's hand of love will soon disperse each storm." 

    - Thomas Kinkade ( 1958-2012) American Artist

Perseverance -noun

1.

steady persistence in a course of action, a purpose, a state,etc., especially in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement.

2.

Theology . continuance in a state of grace to the end, leading to eternal salvation.

Origin: 
1300–50; Middle English perseveraunce  < Middle French perseverance  <Latin persevērantia.  See persevere, -ance

Every morning I have the golden opportunity to engage the youth of America, Illinois, Chicago, Bronzeville and St. Gabe's Parish in Canaryville.   I bring a baker's dozen young gents to Leo High School.  All but one senior are under the age of 17 - ten white boys and three black gents. 

The senior is a quiet studious and good humored young man from Bronzeville already accepted at Rutgers University in his native New Jersey.  His Dad worked there for years, but moved back to Chicago last year. Though proud to be a a Wendell Phillips Alumnus, this successful and proud man wanted no part of the Chicago Public Schools 2012-2013 for his son and chose Leo High School, a Catholic " pay school."His son was brought up to fear God, honor his family and work.  His son's efforts and achievements are the payoff for Old School values rooted in family and reinforced by a  Leo Catholic education.

Catholic education is centered around Christ.  Christ is the reason for the school and everything that happens  with regard to a school's mission must be centered on Christ.  Most kids at Leo are not Catholic, but nearly all are Christian and a couple of the guys are Muslim -Nation of Islam.   Having God as the stablizing center -post of their school, reminds the guys that stability is essential.

Most of our guys are not as blessed with the stability and steady-direction at home the above mentioned gent enjoys. Our kids are, what the PC would call, financially challenged - in Lionese, piss poor. Sadly, most have no male presences in the home and too many have toxic male influences - one poor kid had to fight with his Dad in order to get Pa's Bear Game pals to stop smoking dope in the kid's bedroom. 

The TV Shows Shameless and My Babies Mommas are all too real  in order to be in any way amusing or valuable - other than be deemed  Chicago Values. More so, the kids living out these scripts of those shows here in Chicago have moms who just might drink up their tuition money, buy no groceries, purchase no winter clothing while Dad does a nickel for boosting freight or slinging dope. Funny?  If you are the type of person who enjoys tormenting the handicapped, I suppose it might.  Interestingly enough, it seems to me that  the very people who are offended by ethnic humor, find racism in their morning bowl of Wheaties, worry about how many sheets of Charmin other people are using, or developing educational agendas for public education match this Shameless fan- demographic. Revolution and radicalism only grow out of economic and social comfort - Hyde Park, Evanston, the Lakeshore & etc.  There are no Marxists in actual school foxholes. I have yet to run into one, after forty years in teaching. Teachers who confront miseries seem to load up on common sense.

Despite a rainbow of handicaps, these young gents achieve.  The semester grades are coming out this week and my van load has achieved a modest record of achievement - mind you, I did not factor in the young senior's 3.86 Average into the mix; thus a sampling of twelve ( two black and ten white) - 2.36 Cumulative Van GPA!  I'll take it.

One kid spent two weeks in the hospital
One kids brother was murdered in November
One kid's Mom spent some time CCDC
One kid ditches school at the drop of a hat, but has maintained 3.9 in Algebra

All of them are at core sweet and smart kids; all of them enjoy busting my aged Aggies and all of them manage to pull themselves out of bed, find something like clean socks and school clothes, eat something other than Flamin' Hotz and Mountain Dew Red and learn.

None of these kids, other than the senior who will attend Rutgers, appear to have been told that purpose is essential to living, but they manage to have great perseverance. . .my God, do they ever.

Power - Hegel, Fichte, Horace Mann, Compulsory Education -The Roots of Our Nanny and Ninny American Society

“Education should provide the means to destroy free will”.  -Fichte

I

Fichte and the powerful men (Emerson, Horace Mann and John Dewey) who have inherited his ideals, when they see children, think: 'Here is material that I can manipulate'... All this, to any person with natural affection for the young, is horrible; just as we teach children to avoid being destroyed by motor cars if they can, so we should teach them to avoid being destroyed by cruel fanatics... This is the task of a liberal education: to give a sense of the value of things other than domination, to help create wise citizens of a free community, and through the combination of citizenship with liberty in individual creativeness to enable men to give to human life that splendour which some few have shown that it can achieve (Russell 1938:251 - parenthetical my own).

Yesterday, a Cook County judge dismissed any and all charges against the Occupy/NATO protesters because the City of Chicago did not arrest Obama Victory Party celebrators in 2008.

If that makes perfect sense to you, then you fully understand the nature of the American Progressive Power and Education Collective.  There is no room for rugged individuals like cops in this America, this Illinois, Cook County and City of Chicago.  

The cops were praised universally in May when there was clear and present danger of great violence and mayhem resulting from the organized and orchestrated voices, fists, feet, buttocks, beer and pop bottles of the American Left starring Occupy, Anarchists International and the anti-NATO gangs.

Chicago Police under Superintendent Garry McCarthy were masterful routing the goofs and ninnies.. It is axiomatic that the American public praise not soldiers, cops, firemen and medics too long.

As in the case of the American National Memory following 9/11/01,  unified pride and determination must be extinguished in place of greater goals, agendas and satisfying outcomes - a return to the Nanny and Ninny State*
.
The Nanny State makes sure that American Individualism is shackled by governmentally legislated mandates limiting the free exercise of conscience -Gay Marriage is a natural and civil right, Abortion is Health Care, Sugar, fat and salt and is poison, obesity can be cured by law, the Middle Class must disappear, while believing that it is being strengthened, and opportunity can only come from the Federal Government.

The Ninny State complies to everything that comes from the Nanny State.

Like drunks and degenerate gamblers, we hold these truths to be self-evident, because we learned them in schools -public schools and practiced what was preached over many decades without ever challenging the roots of power itself.

Power is what it is all about.  The power to turn Labor into SEIU was exercised patiently and incrementally.  The power to eliminate individualism and piety from the culture.  America must transcend its identity and become a global component in a New World Order.

Great people must be diminished and obscured and replaced by a poster image.

 I have never met a great person, powerful, influential, celebrated and publicly recognized for achievement, who was not a very humble, grateful, giving person.   I met met many, far too many, public persons who grabbed or were handed authority, influence and celebrity, who were cowardly bullies, frauds, grifters, users and sneaks.  While they may wield power, far too long in most cases, they never do anything for anyone or anything that does not add to their personal and public agenda. For them it is all about power.

Some of the worst bullies, frauds, grifters, users and sneaks choose teaching as a path to power.    Whether it is a gym coach who flirts and eventually seduces and impregnates a cheerleader, a social science teacher who uses the essays of her students to publish her book on adolescent sexual awakenings and shares none of the royalties or credit with her 'ghost-writers,'   the unprepared lazy clown who gives silent reading periods seven preps a day,  five days a week, while taking classes for his Type-75 Certification from Big Community Mail or Phone It In University,  education, like politics, can be a very warm and welcoming home for the useless, lazy and mean. Private and Catholic schools have the luxury of getting rid of such mopes and the best of them do and quickly.

Power differs from authority.   I can fire up a boiler in the winter but I am not the best person to do so.  The custodian, or the school stationary engineer.  I 'pigeon-see-makee-workee' buttons and pumps and water tubes, it will go on, but if things go south . . .hold the  phone, Richard. In short, I am no authority. Though I am no proficient, let alone authority on boiler maintenance and operations, I was taught simple tasks necessary for a satisfying outcome.  I went to Catholic schools. My public school counterpart would have nothing to do with any task out of his  step, level and license.  Catholic educators multi-task - always have and always will. . .until outlawed by Federal Mandate.

I learned that if something needs to be done, even without full authority or license I am obligated to fire the the damn things up!  If I see an unconscious man on the sidewalk, I may not pass him by. Rather, I must apply the rudimentary CPR tasks and face the all too real possibility of having my ass sued by the person I helped.  It's that Catholic thing.  I coached, mentored, supervised and taught in Catholic schools and still do. 

I am very well schooled in the canons of British, American and some World Literatures. My areas of interest are not limited to my tastes.  I love Thackeray, admire Dickens, worship Milton and  Pope and delight in Shakespeare.  I prefer neo-classical, Augustan poetry over the much more popular Romantics; Jane Bronte over Jane Austin; Montaigne before Bacon always with essays; Seamus Heaney & Wallace Stevens top Yeats, Frost, T.S. and Chesterton is more than equal to GB Shaw.  That stuff can not unplug a sewer line, nor can it bend electrical pipe.

My authority lies solely in my study and training as a teacher.  That authority did not include offering a National Honor Society insurance policy along with the syllabus for AP English Literature.  I did not give "extra credit" and neither would set of Michelin 59/80R63 XDR tires satisfy the semester essay requirements; nor, did it include the license to organize students as an agenda collective.

The idea  that one should develop as woman or man is repellent to schools of education, especially American education. The concept of Free Will lies at the core of Catholic teaching and task of each person is to recognize obligation to family, faith and nation within the individual's cosmic duty to the Creator.  Catholic education was established in America in Baltimore during the 1850's in reaction to evangelizing of citizens under the Hegelian Prussian models advocated by the likes of  Horace Mann a Unitarian minister.  Horace Mann visited Prussia in 1843 and returned with doctrine of universal compulsory education -

It was Mann and his like-minded comrades in the Massachusetts elite, who imagined education as a tool of an emerging republic to develop its human resources and direct that development. They saw themselves as the best and the brightest, so who better than they to say what education should be for everyone else.

Thus the advent of the Nanny State and Ninny State that America has become.  Students are compelled to track into niche and absorb all manner of nonsense that has absolutely nothing to do with " the examined life."

Progressive icon Emma Goldman railed against the individual -rugged and otherwise - in favor of collectivism and Americans eat this up!

'rugged individualism'... is only a masked attempt to repress and defeat the individual and his individuality. So-called Individualism is the social and economic laissez-faire

Individualism during the harsh Medieval times turned hostelers into Archbishops, like Thomas Becket, through the scholastic gradus.


Beggers can't be kings, but under the American collectivist education, buggers can be Dads. Power and compulsory education make it so.  Social engineering comes through schools.  As always, those born to the purple have education suited to their rank and privilege.


Where gentleman farmers and leading burghers attended the American but less feudal incubators of Groton, Phillips-Andover, Trinity & Harvard and Yale elite private schools, the rustics and immigrant  huddled masses were compelled to attend government schools founded by  Unitarian established doctrines and systems to mold workers, clerks and soldiers and their places in the Unitarian scheme.  The wealthy went to the elite schools:

Tier one would be our elite private prep schools and elite private (and top public) universities that, though they are not completely limited to our society’s social elite, are still generally bastions of the most privileged in our country, including many of our top political leadership. Lefty Parent

 These private educational institutions, colloquially known as "prep schools" in the United States, can be boarding or day schools, affiliated with a particular faith or completely secular. At the high end of the spectrum, they're known for ultra-competitive admissions, high tuition and top-notch facilities. Their aim is to provide students with education that funnels them into the very best universities.. . . These institutions all offer high-caliber instruction and uniquely valuable experiences to their students. But in a world where education is so competitive and expensive, and where the name of your high school can open doors for life, it's worth measuring the best of the best. Forbes

* Tier two would be the best of our public K-12 schools, located mostly in more prosperous neighborhoods, which have the resources to assist the most academically inclined of the children of the middle class to put them on the programmed path to get their degrees and then get good jobs as doctors and lawyers and other “knowledge workers”, our contemporary “apparatchiks”. Lefty Parent

These schools are the ones like a New Trier in Winnetka - home to Mayor Rahm Emanuel and funded by a wildly affluent. They are no pay prep schools. Likewise, CPS has created Magnet Schools which operate in most exclusive manner with regard to acceptance, yet remain linked by taxes to the universal compulsory model despite all of bells and whistles found in Naperville, Winnetka and Lake Forest public schools.

Then, of course the compelled helots and huddled masses of urban and rural America - real Mike Klonsky and Bill Ayers Annenberg Challenged children are warehoused, as they always have been in the Horace Mann, John Dewey Worker Beehives of Tier Three Schools.

* Tier three would be the rest of our public schools, mainly in the inner cities and poor rural areas, generally under resourced and failing (by design as it is argued by some). Though there are the occasional exceptions of schools or individual students that rise above these circumstances into the second tier, which perpetuate the myth that anyone can succeed, many of our youth in these schools have the odds of success heavily stacked against them. From these ranks many of our lower-paid worker-bees come, including many of the enlisted soldiers in our volunteer army. Lefty Parent

The Tier Three schools are the horrific barns parents of limited income must send their children. There they are housed until such time as they may reap the benefits doled to them.  The only chance these children have of becoming rugged individuals who contribute while they save what they earn is catholic schools.  I group all denominations under this small c rubric.  Roman Catholic schools reject the Horace Mann compulsory  second and third tier models.  Catholic schools like their medieval rooted schools teach free will, humility, commitment to  God and the scholastic gradus* - One must move up the steps once one has mastered the skills and the understanding of each level of progress and proficiency.  Other Christian Faiths adopted the Catholic system of education -parochial school.

In our Nanny & Ninny State, rugged individuals need not apply until they take the required univeral and compulsory anti-individual, racist, sugar eating, carbon foot-printing, pan-homophobia, breeder happy counsel and licensing.


N.B. Much of what sparked my rather gabby post above was sparked by a posting from a blog entitled Lefty Parent which I link below. Thanks, Lefty!

*The Trivium consisted of:

• Grammar

• Rhetoric

• Logic

The Quadrivium consisted of:

• Arithmetic -- Number in itself

• Geometry -- Number in space

• Music, Harmonics, or Tuning Theory -- Number in time

• Astronomy or Cosmology -- Number in space and time

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-grant-park-arrests-judge-0928-20120928,0,3817020.story
http://www.leftyparent.com/blog/2011/10/15/napoleon-prussia-the-u-s-education-system/