Lessons from Poverty and Viruses

                                 Lessons from Poverty and Viruses

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 3/29/20

            Maybe I should call it near-poverty. I’m not sure how poverty was defined from 1944, the year I was born, to 1966, the year I left home. I only know that except for food, everything was always in short supply.

            My father did his best, and he was at his best in the fields producing food. He was a man of the soil, a student and a master of the soil. His gardens and fields were kept clean which means neither a sprig of grass nor the most obnoxious weed had half a chance of survival.

            Having plenty of good food must have kept my mind off the fact that nothing else was plentiful, not even clothes and school supplies. There were only three distinct times when my mind dwelt on this fact. The first time was when I was in the 5^th grade. I was 10 and was watching my mother shake pennies from the world’s largest glass piggy bank. She was counting out the week’s school lunch money for the youngest 4 of her 17 kids. The other 13 were either grown or making their own money. Watching her struggle to get the pennies out made me feel sorry for her.

            On Mondays at school when my name was called, I handed my little brown bag of a hundred pennies to Mrs. Scott. She had to count them out. I knew she sensed my embarrassment. Most of the other children brought dimes, quarters, or a dollar bill. Mrs. Scott would comment on how bright the pennies were as she playfully counted and stacked. After a few Mondays neither my mother’s plight nor Mrs. Scott’s counting of pennies bothered me.

            The second time I gave any thought to or dwelt on our material need was in 10^th grade world history. When Mrs. Richardson assigned the chapter on the ancient Romans I got excited because soon after World War II one of my much older brothers married an Italian woman. Antonia became a beloved source of information and stories about Italy. It stunned me to learn from both Antonia and Mrs. Richardson that ancient Rome had running water and indoor bathrooms. My first thought was: And we don’t?  

            The last time I found myself pondering our lack I was 22. My mother had passed away and our family consisted of myself, a younger brother, and our father. I had graduated from college and the day had come to leave home for my first teaching job. My final chore was to help my father haul water. We not only didn’t have running water. We didn’t have water. For years we had hauled water from a neighbor, the chairman of the county’s Board of Supervisors (commissioners) who was a giver and always helped us fill the glass gallon jugs and the disinfected lard cans. While filling the jugs, I thought of 10^th grade world history again. The ancient Romans, though only the elites, had running water yet here in 1966 … we don’t?

            Said the poor Quaker to his new neighbor, “Tell me what thou need’st and I shall tell thee what thou can do without.”

            I’m not glad my family had to do without, yet somehow I’m thankful I know deprivation. Deprivation didn’t kill the spirit of my dear parents or any of my joy-filled, laughter-prone brothers and sisters.

            R.C., the oldest, would farm like our father but unlike him, would become a landowner. Paul and Pete would serve nobly in the worst of World War II and become career soldiers. Ida, Jewell, Authula, and Margurette were homemakers and models of strength, character, and beauty. Minnie became a registered nurse. Walter, Jr. would become a business man and later a pastor; Durward, a mail carrier. Almedia, Ruby, and Janelle were secretaries of the first rank. Carolyn, a homemaker, would travel the world with her U.S. Marine husband. Tressie became a registered nurse. Carlton, “the baby,” would go into banking and insurance. I would spend 52 years telling 17 to 19 year-olds to say “centers on,” and not “centers around.”

            Today a virus has made many Americans nervous about imminent hardship. I pray and wish for all of them a good roof, plenty of food and water (preferably running), and enough money to pay for water, fuel, electricity, transportation, and their rent or mortgage. I also hope that someone has bequeathed to them just half the joy of life that my parents, brothers, and sisters bequeathed to me.

            Hardship is not the end of the world. It can be a fertile field for the mind, a sanctuary for the spirit, and a season of strengthening.

Roger Hines

3/25/20 

Dealing with our Present Unpleasantness

                               Dealing with our Present Unpleasantness

               Published in Marietta GA) Daily Journal, 3/22/20

  

            In 1948 author C.S. Lewis responded to the greatest fear the world was facing, a fear far more destructive than a virus. It was the new atomic bomb.  Unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States just three years earlier, the atomic bomb was the talk of the world.  It ended World War II, but kick-started the Cold War and ushered in a new era of fear. No wonder poet W.H.Auden dubbed the 20^th century the Age of Anxiety.

            Lewis wrote, “We think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb.  How are we to live in an atomic age? I am tempted to reply: why, as you would in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed as you are living now in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”

            Lewis continued, “In other words let us not exaggerate the novelty of our situation.  We and all whom we love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.”

            I suspect we get Lewis’ point and can understand its application to us today. He was not minimizing the seriousness of a crisis. He was saying we shouldn’t be ruled by fear.  For worriers, Lewis’ words might not provide much comfort, but a little context might help.  America is now experiencing a pause. A nation born out of a frontier spirit doesn’t like pauses.  Unlike most of the world we have experienced only four major ones: a civil war, two world wars, and a tremendous economic depression. Sept. 11, 2001 and the 2007-‘08 recession didn’t stop us in our tracks as these four did or as the coronavirus is doing now.

            In contrast to these four and now our fifth major pause, the Middle East, Asia, South America, and Europe are quite accustomed to pauses. Military coups, natural disasters, and political unrest have been a constant in the rest of the world but have not plagued America. Only recently have we had the problem of the losing party refusing to accept the results of an election. In many other countries this is common.

Bordered by two vast oceans and protected by the world’s most powerful military machine, Americans are riled by anything that slows us down. The world is our oyster.  Or so we have believed and behaved. But here we are now, not at a pause but a near stoppage. How should we then live?  Actions speak louder than words, but reactions speak louder than actions. We will soon see whether the hoarders will outnumber the givers and whether our goal is survival and self-absorption or serving our fellow citizens.

            There are positive effects that can and should emanate from our social distancing.  One is home schooling.  Not what the public schools send home for students to do, but what parents require of children and teens shutdown at home. Reading is important but not as important as learning about cooking, cleaning, tolerating, and sharing.  If we’re expecting a few months of pause, we had better work on family unity and homemaking skills. Yes, homemaking. That forgotten and now forbidden “sexist” word buried by our schools in “life skills.”

            To call once more on C.S. Lewis: “The homemaker has the ultimate career.  All other careers exist for one purpose only and that is to support the ultimate career.”

Lewis is right. We work to bring money home. We marry and build a home (not a house just yet). We bring groceries home. We pursue a career for personal satisfaction but we still eventually head home. We pity the home-less.

            Truth is lots of family members are going to drive each other crazy. But if we learn to do without, or learn that America, too, is susceptible to the troubles that other nations have faced, we will be a stronger nation, realizing how blessed we are and how spoiled we have been.

The strongest antidote for fear is faith in God and a strong, loving home. Failure to come home and honor home and family will do to America what no bomb or no virus can ever do.  We are about to see just how strong our nation actually is.

Roger Hines

3/19/20 

Learning from Hamlet and Mark Twain

                     Learning from Hamlet and Mark Twain

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 3/15/20

            With so much of our attention on science and technology these days, it’s wise to remember that there are also such things as human emotions. Social progress generally and our public discourse specifically doesn’t suffer as much today from lack of knowledge as from lack of emotional control.  Emotions are as real as the soil we walk on. Love, hate, joy, and sadness are everywhere. The question is which emotions will we embrace and which ones will we reject.

            Algebra, geometry, biology, astronomy, sociology, computer science, agri-business, simple arithmetic and all other such “sciences” do not and cannot help us understand or control our emotions or human relations, nor are they meant to. Psychology presumes to but is usually found lacking.  An honorable field, psychology is horrendously term-laden and also too ridden with psycho-quackery.

            History could help except for the fact that in education, history actually means political history, with emphasis solely on dates, wars, power struggles, and elections.  Why not also intellectual history, meaning the study of ideas and of the individuals who first submitted and argued for them: the ideas of Newton, Marx, Jefferson, Darwin, Einstein, Charlie Brown (seriously) and so many others who have stirred our minds.  Ideas provoke thinking and debate.  Memorization of dates does not.  Genuine debate teaches civility, a commodity most lacking.

            There is one often disdained field of study that can teach us about our emotions, and that is literature.  Doubtless, literature has often been mis-taught. Novels much too long have been assigned.  Poems so esoteric they would cure anyone’s insomnia have been discussed too early and too long. Stories that have the capacity to change hearts and challenge minds have been killed by the teacher’s search for symbolism.  Biographies that could inspire have been crippled by professors who politicize them, imposing their own biases on the subject rather than letting students glean for themselves.  Teachers and professors of literature haven’t always measured well the amounts of reading they dispense.

            Even so, literature is like a keg of penicillin standing in the midst of an epidemic and few people over the centuries have chosen to even test the medicine.  While the sciences address the mind, literature addresses the mind and the heart.  Today humanity’s heart is in need of addressing.  We’re not living together well. We’re “connected” for sure, but we know what that means, cell phones and screens.

            But the human heart languishes.  Math and science can give us medicine and wealth, but not the joy of human interaction.  Human interaction thrives only when we see each other eyeball to eyeball, touch to touch.  Literature – good stories, time-honored poems – fosters such interaction. 

            Literature, that is the reading thereof, can help clarify one’s thinking and words. In Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” Hamlet’s mother chides him for not casting off his moodiness. “Why seems it so particular with thee?” she asks.  “Seems, madam?  I know not seems. ‘Tis!”

            As Hamlet was implying, there are beliefs and there are certainties.  One certainty is that we are all closer neighbors than ever before.  We need and appreciate the sciences. They serve us well except when politicized and used as a bludgeon. If “global warming” was an unquestioned reality (‘Tis), why is the term now abandoned for the broader/milder, “climate change” (Seems)? Living closer together on the planet than ever, clear and honest un-politicized language is needed.  Literary studies, not the sciences, help meet that need.  Mark Twain addressed this need when he said, “Use the right word and not its second cousin.”

            One of literature’s most valuable offerings is “A soft answer turns away wrath.”  Vice-President Pence has illustrated this certainty each time he and his coronavirus team have held press conferences. Pence’s employ of soft (but substantive) answer recalls the comment of P.T. Barnum – yes, that Barnum: “Literature is one of the most interesting and significant expressions of humanity.”

            Since history and literature are so intertwined, literature can afford us both a leap into the past and a vision for the future.  Most writers, even fiction writers, are lovers of history if not amateur historians. They see history as the skeletal bones on which the flesh of literature is laid.  They understand that text without context is pretext.

            More practically, literature can enrich our imagination and hence our imagining.  Remember, Colonel Sanders was 62 when he imagined a little chicken restaurant franchise business.

            So if a virus or anything else keeps us inside, it’s a good time to read some good literature, after finishing the morning paper of course.

Roger Hines

3/11/20 

           

           

             

           

Kemp and Collins: a Personal Back Story

                   Kemp and Collins: a Personal Back Story

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 3/8/20

            Governor Brian Kemp probably doesn’t remember or really know me. But I know him.  Although serving simultaneously in the General Assembly, we never met until 2010 when he    was running for Secretary of State and I was running for state School Superintendent.  Our path crossings were quite frequent but our conversations were always brief.

            After giving campaign talks at a DeKalb County GOP candidate forum, we both fared very poorly in the straw vote taken at the end of the forum.  Like whipped puppies, we walked together to our cars, mumbled encouraging words to each other, and threw a few yard signs back into the trunks of our cars.  There would be other forums and straw votes.  There would be another chance.  Despite this particularly discouraging evening, Kemp went on to achieve his political goal.  I did not achieve mine.

            I admired then state Senator Kemp.  I admire Governor Kemp now.  He’s authentic, not at all a showman, and seems not to have an ounce of self-importance.  His degree in agriculture (Georgia’s chief industry), his state senate experience, and his two terms as secretary of state have undoubtedly informed and conditioned him for the governorship of the state. 

            U.S. Representative Doug Collins probably doesn’t remember or really know me either.  But I know him.  Quite well, in fact.  Having had no more than half a dozen quick conversations with him, I’ve watched him literally and intentionally for 15 or so minutes at a time.  Steady-footed like Kemp, though more affable, Collins also exudes no self-importance. If only more politicians were like these two men.

            When Collins came to the GA House I was no longer in office but was working for the Speaker as the House Messenger.  My chief responsibility was to stand elbow to elbow with the Speaker when the House was in session and assist him with the hurry and scurry that seems to be  characteristic of all lawmaking bodies (ordering bills, sticking to the agenda, corralling House members, pacifying House members, etc.).

            From the Speaker’s podium one can look down and see every movement that every member makes.  Having observed Collins from that standpoint, I can testify that he moved and talked as fast then as he does now.  A fellow Republican once “accused” him of being “from Connecticut or someplace like that.”  Collins spent as much time chatting it up with Democrats as he did Republicans.  A minister and former pastor with a seminary degree, a lawyer, and a chaplain and lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve, Collins is if anything, versatile.

            The potential serious rift between these two good men, Kemp and Collins, is unfortunate.  A governor’s appointees are no business of the nation’s president.  Governor Kemp had every right to appoint Kelly Loeffler to the seat vacated by Johnny Isakson, but it’s fitting to point out that if President Trump had not so strongly endorsed Kemp late in his gubernatorial campaign, Kemp might not now be governor.

            Sadly, the Loeffler team is attacking Collins viciously.  Loeffler’s anti-Collins ads are outrageous.  Her campaign didn’t become negative and dirty.  It started out negative and dirty.   The shame of it all is that the Loeffler campaign is apparently hoping many Georgia voters are either uninformed or gullible enough to swallow the vicious treatment the Club for Growth has given Collins.  Doubtless, they’re trying to make Georgia Republicans forget about Collins’ incredibly effective defense of President Trump during the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment proceedings.

            Establishment Republicans can’t blame Collins if a split ticket leads to a Democratic victory.  After all, Kemp has done what Democrats seldom if ever do and what Republicans always do: fall victim to paralysis of analysis after losing or nearly losing an election and then change course and go moderate. Fearful of the suburban and female vote and recalling that conservative Cobb County voted for Hillary, Kemp picked a wealthy, totally inexperienced female.  Was it moo-la over orthodoxy?

            Loeffler’s mail-out ads are almost as big as a TV screen.  I received one through the mail that was 12 X 15 inches.  In a smaller ad she is pictured beside President Trump with text that implies he has endorsed her.  He has not.  Pictures of her teen years, clad in jeans and doing farm work, look a little fakey.

            Loeffler is talking the talk for sure, but how should Kemp’s base view her recent hobnobbing with progressives, even Stacy Abrams, and her past support of them?  Despite his good qualities, by choosing Loeffler for the Senate seat Kemp was not dancing with who brung’im. 

            When will Republicans learn?      

Roger Hines

3/4/20

Kemp and Collins: a Personal Back Story Governor Brian Kemp probably doesn’t remember or really know me. But I know him. Although serving simultaneously in the General Assembly, we never met until 2010 when he was running for Secretary of State and I was running for state School Superintendent. Our path crossings were quite frequent but our conversations were always brief. After giving campaign talks at a DeKalb County GOP candidate forum, we both fared very poorly in the straw vote taken at the end of the forum. Like whipped puppies, we walked together to our cars, mumbled encouraging words to each other, and threw a few yard signs back into the trunks of our cars. There would be other forums and straw votes. There would be another chance. Despite this particularly discouraging evening, Kemp went on to achieve his political goal. I did not achieve mine. I admired then state Senator Kemp. I admire Governor Kemp now. He’s authentic, not at all a showman, and seems not to have an ounce of self-importance. His degree in agriculture (Georgia’s chief industry), his state senate experience, and his two terms as secretary of state have undoubtedly informed and conditioned him for the governorship of the state. U.S. Representative Doug Collins probably doesn’t remember or really know me either. But I know him. Quite well, in fact. Having had no more than half a dozen quick conversations with him, I’ve watched him literally and intentionally for 15 or so minutes at a time. Steady-footed like Kemp, though more affable, Collins also exudes no self-importance. If only more politicians were like these two men. When Collins came to the GA House I was no longer in office but was working for the Speaker as the House Messenger. My chief responsibility was to stand elbow to elbow with the Speaker when the House was in session and assist him with the hurry and scurry that seems to be characteristic of all lawmaking bodies (ordering bills, sticking to the agenda, corralling House members, pacifying House members, etc.). From the Speaker’s podium one can look down and see every movement that every member makes. Having observed Collins from that standpoint, I can testify that he moved and talked as fast then as he does now. A fellow Republican once “accused” him of being “from Connecticut or someplace like that.” Collins spent as much time chatting it up with Democrats as he did Republicans. A minister and former pastor with a seminary degree, a lawyer, and a chaplain and lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve, Collins is if anything, versatile. The potential serious rift between these two good men, Kemp and Collins, is unfortunate. A governor’s appointees are no business of the nation’s president. Governor Kemp had every right to appoint Kelly Loeffler to the seat vacated by Johnny Isakson, but it’s fitting to point out that if President Trump had not so strongly endorsed Kemp late in his gubernatorial campaign, Kemp might not now be governor. Sadly, the Loeffler team is attacking Collins viciously. Loeffler’s anti-Collins ads are outrageous. Her campaign didn’t become negative and dirty. It started out negative and dirty. The shame of it all is that the Loeffler campaign is apparently hoping many Georgia voters are either uninformed or gullible enough to swallow the vicious treatment the Club for Growth has given Collins. Doubtless, they’re trying to make Georgia Republicans forget about Collins’ incredibly effective defense of President Trump during the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment proceedings. Establishment Republicans can’t blame Collins if a split ticket leads to a Democratic victory. After all, Kemp has done what Democrats seldom if ever do and what Republicans always do: fall victim to paralysis of analysis after losing or nearly losing an election and then change course and go moderate. Fearful of the suburban and female vote and recalling that conservative Cobb County voted for Hillary, Kemp picked a wealthy, totally inexperienced female. Was it moo-la over orthodoxy? Loeffler’s mail-out ads are almost as big as a TV screen. I received one through the mail that was 12 X 15 inches. In a smaller ad she is pictured beside President Trump with text that implies he has endorsed her. He has not. Pictures of her teen years, clad in jeans and doing farm work, look a little fakey. Loeffler is talking the talk for sure, but how should Kemp’s base view her recent hobnobbing with progressives, even Stacy Abrams, and her past support of them? Despite his good qualities, by choosing Loeffler for the Senate seat Kemp was not dancing with who brung’im. When will Republicans learn? Roger Hines 3/4/20

                   Kemp and Collins: a Personal Back Story

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 3/8/20

            Governor Brian Kemp probably doesn’t remember or really know me. But I know him.  Although serving simultaneously in the General Assembly, we never met until 2010 when he    was running for Secretary of State and I was running for state School Superintendent.  Our path crossings were quite frequent but our conversations were always brief.

            After giving campaign talks at a DeKalb County GOP candidate forum, we both fared very poorly in the straw vote taken at the end of the forum.  Like whipped puppies, we walked together to our cars, mumbled encouraging words to each other, and threw a few yard signs back into the trunks of our cars.  There would be other forums and straw votes.  There would be another chance.  Despite this particularly discouraging evening, Kemp went on to achieve his political goal.  I did not achieve mine.

            I admired then state Senator Kemp.  I admire Governor Kemp now.  He’s authentic, not at all a showman, and seems not to have an ounce of self-importance.  His degree in agriculture (Georgia’s chief industry), his state senate experience, and his two terms as secretary of state have undoubtedly informed and conditioned him for the governorship of the state. 

            U.S. Representative Doug Collins probably doesn’t remember or really know me either.  But I know him.  Quite well, in fact.  Having had no more than half a dozen quick conversations with him, I’ve watched him literally and intentionally for 15 or so minutes at a time.  Steady-footed like Kemp, though more affable, Collins also exudes no self-importance. If only more politicians were like these two men.

            When Collins came to the GA House I was no longer in office but was working for the Speaker as the House Messenger.  My chief responsibility was to stand elbow to elbow with the Speaker when the House was in session and assist him with the hurry and scurry that seems to be  characteristic of all lawmaking bodies (ordering bills, sticking to the agenda, corralling House members, pacifying House members, etc.).

            From the Speaker’s podium one can look down and see every movement that every member makes.  Having observed Collins from that standpoint, I can testify that he moved and talked as fast then as he does now.  A fellow Republican once “accused” him of being “from Connecticut or someplace like that.”  Collins spent as much time chatting it up with Democrats as he did Republicans.  A minister and former pastor with a seminary degree, a lawyer, and a chaplain and lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve, Collins is if anything, versatile.

            The potential serious rift between these two good men, Kemp and Collins, is unfortunate.  A governor’s appointees are no business of the nation’s president.  Governor Kemp had every right to appoint Kelly Loeffler to the seat vacated by Johnny Isakson, but it’s fitting to point out that if President Trump had not so strongly endorsed Kemp late in his gubernatorial campaign, Kemp might not now be governor.

            Sadly, the Loeffler team is attacking Collins viciously.  Loeffler’s anti-Collins ads are outrageous.  Her campaign didn’t become negative and dirty.  It started out negative and dirty.   The shame of it all is that the Loeffler campaign is apparently hoping many Georgia voters are either uninformed or gullible enough to swallow the vicious treatment the Club for Growth has given Collins.  Doubtless, they’re trying to make Georgia Republicans forget about Collins’ incredibly effective defense of President Trump during the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment proceedings.

            Establishment Republicans can’t blame Collins if a split ticket leads to a Democratic victory.  After all, Kemp has done what Democrats seldom if ever do and what Republicans always do: fall victim to paralysis of analysis after losing or nearly losing an election and then change course and go moderate. Fearful of the suburban and female vote and recalling that conservative Cobb County voted for Hillary, Kemp picked a wealthy, totally inexperienced female.  Was it moo-la over orthodoxy?

            Loeffler’s mail-out ads are almost as big as a TV screen.  I received one through the mail that was 12 X 15 inches.  In a smaller ad she is pictured beside President Trump with text that implies he has endorsed her.  He has not.  Pictures of her teen years, clad in jeans and doing farm work, look a little fakey.

            Loeffler is talking the talk for sure, but how should Kemp’s base view her recent hobnobbing with progressives, even Stacy Abrams, and her past support of them?  Despite his good qualities, by choosing Loeffler for the Senate seat Kemp was not dancing with who brung’im. 

            When will Republicans learn?      

Roger Hines

3/4/20

Let’s Get Real with Education

                                      Let’s Get Real with Education

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 2/16/20

            When I heard the learned astronomer / When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me / When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them / When I, sitting, heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture room / How soon I became tired and sick / Till rising and gliding out I wandered off by myself in the mystical moist night air / And looked up in perfect silence at the stars.

             In other words, poet Walt Whitman just couldn’t take it anymore.  Acknowledging the value of astronomy, he still believed that looking up “in perfect silence at the stars” was more enlightening and inspiring than lectures on arcane academic knowledge.

   We appreciate teachers, scholars, and lecturers, but after a while we need to know the point of it all.  Learners need lessons and educational practices that keep them hinged to the real world, not wallowing forever in the abstract or the theoretical.  Visit the abstract and learn from it, but then get back to the valley of everyday life away from intellectual clouds.

            The field of education too often pitches its tent in the land of the abstract instead of the land of the living.  Instead of majoring on the tried and true (reading, writing, and arithmetic, anyone?), it more often than not chases the now and the new: the current educational fad, the ideas proposed by professors of education who haven’t taught children or teens for decades, or the “inclusion” topic of the month such as transgenderism.  Ignoring Cicero’s phrase, “the tyranny of the present,” modern education is quick to jump on a new trend and hold tightly.  The best example of this is the testing bandwagon onto which professors, editorial boards, and Department of Education bureaucrats latched themselves in 2002, though classroom teachers did not.

            The No Child Left Behind law – or NCLB – made standardized testing the main measure of school success.  Testing, of course, seems logical.  Teachers teach, then they test to see what was learned.  But testing per se wasn’t the problem.  It was the magnitude of it all.  The testing bandwagon was long. Perched upon it and waving jubilantly were elected officials and corporate CEO’s.  The testing movement had begun.  Its watchword was accountability.  Its strategy was “Test those boogers.”  Education finally had found its fix.  A business model it would be.

            Classroom teachers knew better.  But they kept on teaching, except they now had to deal with the time factor as well as the effect of all the testing.  Standardized testing took vast amounts of time from teaching, and the unfortunate effect was the impulse and often the necessity to teach toward the test, a killer of broad learning if there ever was one.

            NCLB had been preceded by the Clinton administration’s “Goals 2000” which provided the states with money to write their own academic standards, but President George W. Bush’s so-called Texas plan went further.  To stress accountability, schools would have to test more.  Bush’s strategy was to measure and then punish or reward.  Data became king and the states and individual school systems scurried to produce higher test scores.  Diane Ravitch, the respected education historian who first favored NCLB, stepped away from it saying that it was “all sticks and no carrots.”

            Thankfully, the testing craze has abated somewhat.  Locally, sensible voices like those of Cobb Superintendent Ragsdale and Marietta Superintendent Rivera are making a difference.  For the most part No Child Left Behind was left behind when Congress passed the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2017, a bill that retained most of the accountability requirements but meted out less punishment. The Trump administration has lifted even more accountability regulations.

            Our 18-year emphasis on testing points to two truths.  One is that over-regulation and over-testing kills the spirit, the joy, and the purpose of teaching and learning.  Teachers deal with human beings, not products or commodities.  NCLB fostered the idea that whatever can’t be measured doesn’t count.  What a horrid approach to such a human activity as teaching.

            Secondly, all of the history recounted above is proof that the 10^th amendment of the U.S. Constitution is being violated.   That amendment declares education to be a function of the states, yet for just over half a century the federal government has stomped its way into an activity that was intended for the states.

            Ask a veteran teacher why he or she teaches.  Their answer will put to scorn most of the educational fixes of the last half century.

Roger Hines

2/12/20

My Ten Years in Prison

                             My Ten Years in Prison

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 2/9/2020

            I’ve not told many people about my prison experience. I’m not hesitant to tell anybody.  It’s just that telling others about it affects me emotionally.

            It’s deeply saddening to think of the inmates whose backgrounds were quite unlike mine.   Many of them grew up poor as I did, but did not have the family stability I enjoyed.  Of my 16 brothers and sisters, only 9 were still at home while I was growing up.  The others were grown and even had families of their own.  All of us loved each other dearly, honored our parents, and laughed constantly while managing without running water and many other “conveniences.” 

            Most of the prison inmates I came to know were not so blessed.  Many never knew their fathers.  Many had to take care of themselves while they were children, enduring violence, neglect, loneliness, intellectual and spiritual emptiness, and emotional pain.  By the time they were teenagers, their paths were laid out.  Hopelessness reigned. 

Most of the inmates I talked with stated that, one way or another, their path to prison began with America’s pet drug, alcohol!  We call it whiskey, beer, wine, champagne and lots of other things but its destructiveness we refuse to acknowledge.  Americans simply keep sipping or gulping, building breweries, and looking down their noses at prisoners who couldn’t control alcohol. I wish every drinker of alcohol could have paid me a visit during my ten years.  They might have acknowledged alcohol’s power, but maybe not.

            Not all of the inmates I got to know in prison came from dire dysfunctionality.  A small minority was blessed with stable homes but had chosen lawlessness in spite of good parents.  During my ten years, I was in classes not only with inmates who had been down and out, but with lawyers, preachers, teachers, nurses, and successful manual laborers.

            Recently – in fact this past week – two things whirled my mind back to my ten years in prison and got me all emotional.  One was a news article in the Marietta Daily Journal; the other was, of all things, a Super Bowl commercial.

            The MDJ article told about Pastor 7.  Read the February 2 issue and you might weep unless you’re one who believes all prisoners are undeserving of a second chance.  Pastor 7, the director of a nondenominational Christian ministry in southeast Cobb, had a horrendous childhood and youth.  The MDJ article chronicles his path from age 10 when he ran away from home, to age 12 when he was first incarcerated, to age 16 by which time petty crime became a way of life, to four years in the Army, to further crime and federal imprisonment, and to the pages of a weathered King James Bible where his life began to change.  The MDJ article also describes Pastor 7’s transformed life and a recent serious challenge as well.

            The Super Bowl commercial that also got to me was about former convict Alice Johnson.   Johnson was freed from prison by the First Step Act, a bi-partisan bill that is part of the current administration’s criminal justice reform.  Having been sentenced to life in prison for a nonviolent drug offense, and having completed 21 years of incarceration, the African American Johnson expressed gratitude to President Trump for her freedom.  The commercial, a Trump 2020 campaign ad, was brief, moving, and effective.

            Although ten years in prison haven’t diminished my belief in capital punishment, they have shown me in bold type letters that not every crime is committed by hardened souls out to do evil.  Pastor 7’s childhood and youth primed him for a path of uncertainty and crime.  Alice Johnson’s story illustrates that there is such a thing as bad, over-reactive law.  I wish that I could have had both of them in my college freshman English classes at the two state prisons where I was teaching.  I also wish I could convince some fellow conservatives that not everyone who lands in prison is irredeemable.

            Nine years of my time in prison were at a state men’s prison. The tenth year which ended in December of 2019 was at a state women’s prison.  I am the richer.  I now have 87 more brothers and 16 more sisters whom I wouldn’t have, had I not taken up prison teaching.  I learned that spouses and children of inmates usually fade away, never to be heard from again, but not so with parents.  Moms and dads keep on writing.

            I now have a renewed fervor for strengthening America’s families.  Far too many future Pastor 7s and Alice Johnsons are yearning for a loving mom and dad while the culture re-defines and slays the family.

Roger Hines

2/5/20