Tag: Literacy

NO MORE BS: Literacy and Freedom – Understanding the Connection

Freedom's LightLiteracy is defined as the ability to read and write and is the competence of knowledge in a specific area.  The links between literacy and freedom continue to be hotly debated among scholars, especially those scholars who choose to be revisionist historians.  One of the essential distinctions in scholars is those centered around revisionists.  No matter the flavor of a scholar, revisionist scholars always support a policy of revision or modification, or worse, advocate for the same.  Revisionist scholars are always looking to revise a topic’s history to fit a political bend for personal gain and political profit.

Literay ArtsThe most egregious example of this is found in the revisionist historians who derive from journals or other documents the sexuality of a historical figure, based upon the scholar’s agenda, political flavor, and the understanding of today’s culture.  During the summer of 2020, America saw many revisionists trying to rewrite history where statues and historical reasoning for erecting those statues were concerned was blatantly attacked by ignorant savages!  By changing history, the culture shifts ever so slightly, and it is only a few degrees of separation across time that can eradicate truth and leave myths instead of fact.

All of which is mentioned because currently, literacy and the links to freedom are being revised heavily to reflect less need for literacy as a means of curtailing expectations of freedom.  Kaestle, Damon-Moore, Stedman, Tinsley, and Trollinger (1991) authored “Literacy in the United States: Readers and Reading since 1880, and the first topic in chapter one is discussing the revisers of history and the downplaying of literacy in early (Preliterate) Greece.  While Kaestle et al.’s. (1991) is more of a scholarly work, the point remains that there remains a significant amount of debate on a logically understood topic.

Detective 4The Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter-Day Saints reveres “The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ” as scripture.  In that book, there are two accounts of people who did not have records to teach reading and writing in their respective populations, which, when taught reading and writing, gained economically, financially, and developed new thinking and acting methods.  One of the first points in “The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ” the point is made that without written records, people’s memories cannot be passed down, historical lessons are lost, and art, culture, craft, industry, and so much more stem from the ability to read and write and records are critical to human understanding and growth.  While I am not here to debate religion, the historical underpinnings of needing to read and write as social customs with power are well established.  Consider the Old Testament and the Jewish culture and society, and the same pattern is discovered, when the people know how to read and write, they are different from those who do not know how to read and write.

Hence, from a purely anthropological perception, reading and writing are essential keys in society forming and development from hunter/gatherers to tool-wielding crafting and agrarian societies.  While the scholars will debate causation until everyone is confused, the links between literacy and social development cannot be separated without twisting logic and ruining the historical facts found in ancient writings held by religion.  Causation and the connections between one topic and another remains an area ripe for abuse by the researchers’ personal bias.  I fully admit sufficient peer-reviewed sources are supporting and denying literate societies’ links and freedom to bury an ocean liner in paper.  Mark Twain is quoted as, “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run. Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned.”

Reading - A JourneyMark Twain is also quoted as, “The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”  These quotes point to the specific problem facing America.  In every society globally, literacy has been purposefully designed to be worth less to people by conspiring leaders who want and need drones instead of people.  The world is poised on the knife blade’s edge of history, pushed there by those conspirators, and every person is now faced with a choice, stand and learn, or remain ignorant and fall.  If we fall, we will fall an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle, and our graves will be cursed by those who come after us.

Mark Twain points to the same problem discussed here, “The man who does not read has NO advantage over the man who cannot read. [emphasis mine]”  Knowing how to read does nothing if it is not practiced, knowing how to write does nothing if it is not practiced, and failure to read and write puts us worse off than those who have never been taught to read and write.  Why worse, because we make a conscious choice not to use the tools we have been provided, and the consequences are worse for knowing better and not acting in a manner that honors the tools we have been given.

PenmanshipLet the scholars argue about how to measure literacy in a person and a population, but for us, let us measure literacy by how often we read a full book, paper, or eBook and write.  Not just emails for work, but journals, blogs, our histories, and family histories.  The aim is not to get readers as much as it is to exercise the power of writing.

For example, my wife loves to write letters and cards.  She has a master’s touch on expressing through words her feelings, developed over her entire life of 80-years.  The receivers cherish her letters and cards, and I cannot count how many people write to her and express this sentiment.  I have all the letters she wrote me while I was in the US Army.  Due to my luggage’s theft at a Greyhound Station, I have very few to none of her letters written to me in the US Navy, which remains a great sadness to me.  Never having been professionally taught, my wife writes music, and I cherish the song she wrote for me that I have never heard.  Using experience and constant trial and error, my wife drew pictures for each of the grand kids.  Literacy is the power behind letters, arts, music, and so much more, even if the scholars disagree.

Non Sequitur - DecisionsJim Croce wrote a song asking a simple question, “Which way are you going?”  I know my direction; I am headed to a library, a bookstore, and then a computer to record my thoughts, for I desire more literacy.  Join me and let us make a “Liberty FIRST Culture” where literacy is cherished as the source of our collective mental batteries!

Non Sequitur - Carpe Diem© 2021 M. Dave Salisbury
All Rights Reserved
The images used herein were obtained in the public domain; this author holds no copyright to the images displayed.

Advertisement

NO MORE BS: Learned Helplessness Leads to StagNation

Government Largess 2Cash Nickerson wrote a powerful book, “StagNation: Understanding the ‘New Normal’ in Employment.”  In discussing the housing bubble, Nickerson made a point worth understanding about people’s psychology as a group.  The middle-class survives upon the hopes and dreams of lower classes of people striving to move into the middle-class.  When the housing bubble broke, and millions of lives were destroyed, with their hopes, dreams, and home investments, the financial livelihoods, and the dreams of those financial upward mobility into the middle-class were blasted into oblivion.

By failing to strive to get into the middle-class, the middle-class shrinks and dies; worse, the lower-classes learn helplessness and become devoid of hope.  Then, along comes President Trump; hope in the lower-classes of people becoming financially upward mobile was rekindled.  Suddenly, a president was recognized as an honest person, working to work with those whose dreams had died, and new energy to be upward financially mobile were reborn.  The lower-classes leaving the plantation provided by the government and liberal leftists scared those in power; President Trump had to be destroyed, hopes and dreams of financially upward mobility crushed, and learned helplessness needed to be restored in America’s working-class neighborhoods.

Do the demise and demonic possession make more sense now?

Detective 4The working class has to be kept miserable, hopeless, and dependent upon the beneficent government bureaucrat, or power and prestige are lost.  These people have no idea how to live if they are not oppressing someone else.  Five-years of “Trump Derangement Syndrome” has not improved the power hold of those governmental powers who desire to oppress.  Instead of bringing the working classes into despair, hopelessness, unemployment, and returning them to the plantation, the working classes are ANGRY!  The working classes are inspired.  The working classes are madder than a pen full of soaked chickens with an acute case of hemorrhoids.  Worse, they have met the enemy, and the enemy is the “beneficent” government and their media lackeys and lapdogs.

Speaker Pelosi, along with the rest of the US House of Representatives majority and minority leadership, is expected to represent the working and middle classes in the “People’s House” in a representative government.  These people have failed to do their jobs, abused, harassed, defiled, and demeaned their positions to the point that the working and middle classes want her jailed, or worse, depending upon where you obtain your information.  I heard someone wanted to outfit Pelosi and her ilk with stakes, an anthill, some honey, and leave them in the Arizona desert.

People are not returning to the plantation as humble orphans awaiting their daily bowls of gruel; the people are standing and fighting back.  Those in government power, their assistants, their employees, their staff, the lobbyists, etc., all expect a different outcome.  They will be shocked when they open their eyes and see the people rising in rebellion.  Throwing off the chains of learned helplessness and discovering they are strong, capable, and able Americans [A(h)-ME-I-CAN].

The Duty of AmericansFacing Truth

The housing bubble, like COVID-19, was artificially created by the government to adversely affect the working classes of people as they strive for financially upward mobility into the middle class.  The same is true for the coming Educational Debt bubble, the Consumer Credit Card bubble, and the National Debt bubble, among other looming disasters.  The government leaders refuse to believe that bubbles burst, and if the bubble bursts after they are out of office, then they can claim, “It didn’t happen on my watch.”  Enabling them to lie about their own willful misconduct creating bubbles of problems for the American Citizen to handle, clean up, and correct.

Welfare State BeginsLet us talk frankly and honestly, openly, and directly.  America is in a mess; K-12 Education was purposefully designed from the 1860s to create a dependent class of poor citizens.  Hopeless, learning helplessness from their first day in K-12 classrooms, and forever cast out of American Society’s mainstream because of their literacy abilities.  Since this population needed neurological stimulation after K-12 Education, other government programs were introduced to keep America’s populations divided, opposed, and barely managed.  Illegal immigrants were introduced, sports were made a “profession,” and media channels flocked to host sporting events.  Through lies, deceit, and drugs, “education” became 12-years of neurological stimulation, not a free mind’s education.  All actions which taken by the government are very similar to Rome’s problems where “Bread and Circuses” were the answer—raising the Roman National Debt, forcing the Roman Armies and Navies to continually find a new enemy and a new source of wealth to pay for the lower-ranked citizens to sit around watching circuses and eating bread.Welfare State Ends

“The American Republic is ours, IF we can keep it!” [emphasis mine]

Benjamin Franklin is reported to have made that statement.  I find it applicable today, and one worth knowing the full history.  Click the link!  Know your history, for your enemies in government know that if you lose contact with history, they can control you!  By reducing your literacy, the powers in government hope to keep you from discovering they are not benevolent but tyrannical.  Not helpful, but harmful, deadly, and like acid, they are consuming this country from within.

ProblemsWhile reading the cases of families in family court, I wanted to weep at the lost potential.  A great-grandmother has custody of her daughters, granddaughters, and great-granddaughter’s children.  Why, because a couple of the girls are in drug rehab, one is still a minor, and her great-granddaughter just became pregnant at 12 for the food stamps, WIC, and other government benefits.  I have read of people, all races and creeds, in inner-cities selling government benefits for cash, to buy drugs and alcohol.  I have read stories of how a grandmother pimped her granddaughters for cash, among other cases where the granddaughter was required to get pregnant quickly so the family could maintain a level of government subsistence.

LinkedIn ImageLearned helplessness leads to StagNation… The lesson is clear, the writing is on the wall, and the next major government catastrophe can make America stronger by cleaning out the trash in power, or will destroy America as we know it forever.  People need hope, upward financial mobility, and less government intrusion.

© 2021 M. Dave Salisbury
All Rights Reserved
The images used herein were obtained in the public domain; this author holds no copyright to the images displayed.

NO MORE BS: Literacy – Putting the “Art” in Literature Arts

Beauty of LiteratureMy high school experience included eight different high schools in four years.  Seven high schools on the Wasatch Front in Utah, finally graduating from Camden-Rockport High School, Camden, Maine.  During my high school career, I was unfortunate enough to be placed into several classes called “Language Arts,” “Literature Arts,” or something similar, plastic words covering the fact that I needed more English credits to graduate.  In my first “Literature Arts” experience, I was hoping to explore books, literature, and as a young bibliophile (book nerd) I was excited to study literature.

Freedom's LightShortly reality would snuff out the excitement.  Shakespeare is not the only author of note in the Renaissance period, and those other authors are easier and more fun to read.  Poems and poetry are not the same things.  Forcing high school kids to spend an entire semester on Emily Dickins and Edgar Allen Poe’s writings is sufficient to make suicidal depression seem like a jolly good time!  Not a single literature arts class covered Kipling!  Not a single class ever covered Aesop.  None of the lessons put the art in literature arts, which made the classes boring.

It has only been recently that I understood why these classes were designed this way.  I am still struggling with having my time and mental energies wasted in such a grotesque fashion.  Worse, being a young bibliophile, I had already been exposed to Emily Brontë, Hemmingway, Kipling (poems and stories), the Greek and Roman Myths, and so much more.

Love ReadingIn Junior High School, Crosby Junior High School, Belfast, Maine.  The school was ancient, used to be the high school until the district built a new high school.  Crosby Junior High was a gothic building, very imposing, but it had the coolest library.  On my first day in Junior High, I bet the librarians that before leaving, I would have checked out all the books, read them, and returned them.  I might not have gotten them all, but I explored every inch of that library, supplemented my reading from the Belfast Maine Library, and read books!  Lots and Lots of Books!

By this point, I bet most of those who will read, or glance through this post, are thinking, BORING!

Bear with me, please.

Where is the art in Literature Arts?

Reading - A JourneyBelieve it or not, you bring the art to literary arts.  Sure, authors will cast the story, set the stage, and prepare well to inspire you, but you bring the art.  For example, I can give you a paint set, a charcoal set, pencils, paper, canvas, and every other art supply available, but you have to wield the brushes, pencils, tools to create the masterpiece.  The fact that you, the student, are the art bringer to literature arts, should be the first lesson taught, but it is never mentioned.  It is sad that many people have been turned off by something that should have turned them on.  Worse, the second lesson in literature arts is the requirement for time with the materials to understand the meaning, grasp intent, and apply to a life of living.

Good TimberFor example, take the poem of Joseph Malins, “The Ambulance Down in the Valley.”  A political poem about how well-intentioned, people come together about a problem and perform an illogical action.  This poem has always left me laughing at the silliness of people in government.  Only lately have the townspeople’s hysterical treatment of the fence supporter been represented in real life, and the poem has lost some of the humor.

Three favorite childhood poems, the authors are listed with links to the poems, Ernest Lawrence Thayer, Grantland Rice, and Clarence P. McDonald, all deal with Casey’s singular topic at the bat.  A baseball series of poems that comforted me during my first horrendous year at little league baseball.  I couldn’t hit, I failed at catching, and only because my mother paid in full was I stuck playing an entire season of little league baseball.  That first awful year of baseball was nothing short of embarrassing!  The second year, I had improved, challenged, and won the position of catcher, and learned how to hit, after a ton of frozen fingers playing ball in the snows of a Maine winter.  I can honestly say, an aluminum bat in a Maine winter is no fun to grab!  But during those long hours remembering my first year of Little League, the poems about Casey at the Bat were always there, and that made all the difference.

Literary AttitudesWhen I was eleven, January, turning twelve in February, a person I admired introduced me to a poem that has defined, taught, and corrected me since that January day.  The poem “Good Timber” by Douglas Malloch.  Before this period and this poem, I never could tell the difference between a poem and poetry.  A poem changes your life; poetry paints pretty pictures.  The first poem, that first mental chord struck in life, what an experience.  How grateful I am to the man who introduced me to this poem, a potential meaning, and taught a young man how to feel.

I would bet dollars to doughnuts, for I love good apple fritters, that everyone has heard of the author Rudyard Kipling and probably have heard his poem, “If.”  When you bring the art to literary arts, this poem moves from poetry to poetic power.  As a kid, I never could understand some parts of this poem, “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster – And treat those two impostors just the same.” I could not imagine triumph as an impostor, then I witnessed lottery winners, athletes, and Hollywood people, and the waste that occurs, and understood.

Why are literature arts hard?

Literay ArtsThere are three reasons.  One, literature arts is not just reading, but also writing, imagining, exploring the art inside you; but it is rarely taught in this manner.  Two, the age of the mind during literature arts is unprepared for drawing lessons from materials for application to life through reflection on experiences.  Reflection must be taught, and too often, reflection is refused as a topic in a classroom.It has taken a lot for me to find the poetic power in Kipling’s poem “Pharaoh and the Sergeant.”  In fact, I had to serve in the US Army and then enlist in the US Navy, to have sufficient life experience to understand.  As a side note, I wish England had said to France, “I must make a man of you; That will stand upon his feet and play the game; That will Maxim his oppressor as a Christian ought to do.” The world would have lost fewer people in WWI and WWII.

PenmanshipMy penmanship is deplorable, but penmanship is rarely taught anymore, considered a wasted subject, but in killing penmanship, the art in literature arts dies just a little more.  But what is penmanship, really?  Some will erroneously claim, penmanship is writing cursive.  Detestable ignorant blaggards!  Penmanship is the science of writing the symbols of language neatly, precisely, cleanly, and writing in a manner that is interesting to read.  As a K-12 student, penmanship meant cursive, and cursive meant I was going to suck!  Why isn’t penmanship a daily practical lesson for K-12 students?  Mainly because of the third and final reason literature arts is being murdered.  Three, reducing literacy through abusing literature arts was a design characteristic in K-12 Education since the 1860s and John Dewey; for he looked upon literate people and loathed them, and children have struggled ever since.

Literary FiendWe, the inheritors of intentionally designed poor education, must wake up, put on the work boots, and go to work learning literacy and literary arts. We are then responsible for teaching these lessons to our children so freedom and liberty can flourish and prosper again in America.  Literacy and literature arts is a fight we cannot afford to lose!

© 2021 M. Dave Salisbury
All Rights Reserved
The images used herein were obtained in the public domain; this author holds no copyright to the photos displayed.

NO MORE BS: Literacy and Liberty

Gadsden FlagThere is a legal axiom that everyone should know and fear in the biblical sense, “Ignorance of the law is not a valid excuse.”  When I first heard this hypothesis, my initial thought was, “How totally bogus!!!”  As I have learned, as my literacy levels have climbed, and as my understanding has deepened, I understand the principle in this axiom more completely.  The principle is not to sow doubt and fear in a populace but to promote learning because liberty is both precious and easily removed.  As a point of reference, the preciousness and removal of liberty have been studied. Through their ignorance, those who are illiterate of the law are more susceptible to be disadvantaged by the law.

How did the housing bubble happen?

Sure, the government reduced regulations, played with interest rates, and created the problem.  Banking is a business, and the first rule of business is to return profits to the investors, so the banking industry dove headfirst into getting people into homes.  State governments helped fuel this problem with deregulation, tax breaks, and incentives, increasing their debt levels to invest in housing people.  I will fully support that everyone involved possessed altruistic motives: altruism, the belief in or practice of disinterested and selfless concern for others’ well-being.

Detective 2Except … research supports the conclusion that despite fairness doctrines written into laws, illiterates are more disadvantaged in legal dealings.  Never forget, functional illiteracy was a desire of Dewey in the late 1860s as a means of reducing the power, liberty, and freedom of populations through K-12 education.  We must start understanding the origins of the problem to empower and plot a working solution.  Academic research is purposefully vague and inconsistent on the lines of congruence between functional illiteracy and individual wealth and economic mobility, all while taking advantage of the inconsistencies where the law is concerned.

Stevens (1985) reviewed the data and found a relationship barrier, “the crudeness of the literacy/illiteracy measurements, and a finer distinction was required.”  The data he used was from the 1870s and showed that literacy barriers were dependent upon age; the older the person, the less likely they were to be literate and more likely to be taken advantage of by the law.  Does this sound familiar where the housing bubble was concerned?

Root Cause AnalysisJen Deaderick, writing for the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER; 2018), provides vital insight into how hard and deeply the housing bubble affected lower-income people and minority populations.  One of the more brutal consequences of the housing bubble was the extreme credit card debt carried by lower-income minority populations and how these populations have never recovered to 2007 income levels.

Demos and NAACP co-authored a research report declaring how credit card debt in lower-income and minority households is seen as a “safety-net.”  While these populations are actively working to pay down their credit card debt, the credit card usage remains high, and the pay-down and usage cycle hinders wealth growth.  I have now asked this question of school boards in several states and with teachers in high schools, “Why is economics not taught in high school?  Especially how to budget money, creating money, money intelligence, etc.”  The answer is always the same, “That is a good idea, but there is no time or interest in teaching those uninteresting topics.”  I have found that teachers are some of the highest credit card users in the various professionals, far outstripping commissioned salespeople.

Returning to the premise that functional illiteracy, chiefly where finances and the law are concerned, sees a tremendous and disproportionate abuse of lower-income and minority people at the hands of contractual law.  According to the law hypothesis stated above, their illiteracy is their fault, and thus the abuse is their problem.  Yet, if a person’s illiteracy was purposefully inflicted upon them by, say government, who is responsible for the illiteracy?

Oops!I fully submit that after K-12 Education, a person is recognized as an adult, fully responsible for their actions or inactions based upon what they learned in school, to become a productive member of society.  I have learned and am still learning tough and difficult lessons regarding personal literacy and financial decisions, literacy and law, liberty and literacy, and much more.  Yet, I read, I try to expand my mind, I make choices and suffer or enjoy consequences based upon those choices.  I understand the process because I have wanted to know more.

Research on reading shows that a vast majority of Americans never read a book after high school, including those who go onto college.  Worse, many students in junior high and high school never read a book; but complete reading assignments using search topics and Google.  Why; because being literate is considered “nerdy,” “reading is difficult,” “reading is not intellectually challenging,” and the excuses run on ad nauseam and ad infinitum.  All of which has been the aim of the acolytes of Dewey and Wundt since the 1860s.

Stevens (1985) expressed an idea important to literacy and freedom.

“It is obvious that if literacy skills are required to exercise voting rights, for example, the worth of liberty for the illiterate person is severely diminished.”  In the decisions of State v. Sweeney (1950) the Court argued for “equal opportunities under the law,” but added: “lt is not possible for constitutions or legislation to make all men equal in understanding, intelligence and education.”  State legislation tended in the direction of equality of education even to the point of “compelling the youth of our country to take advantage of these opportunities.” But the Court acknowledged that “in every phase of our social and civic life, the uneducated man is at a disadvantage.”

Detective 4Except the case can be made that the State, with the Federal Government’s aid, has created the uneducated person, purposefully to abuse a population for political power.  When teachers tell a student they cannot learn, need Ritalin, are dyslexic, as agents of the State, they are declaring the student’s potential—locking the student into a life of purposely being taken advantage of by contractual law and other forms of law.  Who gave the teachers the right to demand a student be placed on harmful drugs to exist in a modern classroom, the State.  Who gave teachers the authority to diagnose a student as “dyslexic,” the State.  Why were teachers granted this power; why was the power stripped from parents; because Dewey wanted to control populations through literacy ability.  Dewey considered a literate person a danger to society, following an unnatural god, and possessing the power of a tyrant because they knew their language and could express themselves.

My next younger brother, Steven, is an imaginative, brilliant, and incredible person.  But, he got frustrated when trying to learn; the more frustrated he got, the more unbearable to be around he became.  Years of being told to shut up, sit down, and pay attention, has left him a shell of a person.  Teachers actively refused to answer his questions because he has a problem correctly describing the question in words.  He does not have a learning disability.  His brain works differently from the rest of a classroom population.  When he found a teacher that could help him, that was the height of his education in K-12.  He was passed onto another teacher to “be their problem” until he dropped out of school in frustration.  Unfortunately, in my family, two other brothers followed the same pattern.  Three lives have been blighted and wasted because the teachers measured potential by poverty and failed to educate, the school boards refused to teach and educate, and the State supported the teachers and school board.

Theres moreHow often does this story repeat in your family?  How often does this story repeat in your school?  How often does it repeat in your community, state, and nation?  The short answer, “Too bloody often!”  These are the people to whom the law abuses, contracts are a noose around their necks, voting ballots are a blur, and who will never leave the captivity of illiteracy!

Would you, the audience reading this blog, be surprised to find yourself in the same category as my brothers?  Abused by contractual law, abused by other laws, held in captivity due to your limited education and poor literacy abilities.  I am not judging you or your potential; by merely reaching out to find information and reading this blog, you are trying, and I commend you for your efforts and will help your progress any way I can.  But, we all have been abused, seen our potential limited, and lost liberties and freedoms based solely upon the education received at the hands of the State.  Surprised; I was when I started researching these topics.  Now, I find myself feeling more like a soaked chicken with a raging case of hemorrhoids.

Scared Eyes!Your command of your language has been intentionally limited, and each successive year, it has been reduced.  For example, while insignificant, my knowledge of literature is greater than my sister’s, and her command of the language is magnitudes greater than my youngest brother.  Want an interesting experiment, next time you have multiple generations of your family around, ask them what words mean and how to use them in sentences.  You will find similar generational gaps in literacy, even if those family members do not read.

I met an incredible family in Northern Ohio, 18 kids born to the same husband/wife team.  When the younger kids need help with homework, they call a big brother or sister.  Dad is a construction worker, very skilled with his hands, brilliant in planning and carrying out projects, but never considered “worthy” of higher education.  Mom is well-read, intelligent, and a savvy thinker, but the school boards deemed her potential.  In both cases, the school board was exceedingly wrong, but the hold was too powerful to shake.  Their story is replicated, maybe not with as many kids, from Maine to Washington, from Florida to Montana, and every stop in between, and it remains abhorrent to me!

LookYour potential to learn is not governed by what a teacher or school board has determined.  Your potential is only limited by you and your choices.  If you know someone who struggles, please help them, for you will find that empowering a mind to learn is the most incredible feeling in the world!  To know you have brightened a mind to shake off the shackles of captivity gives you the confidence to improve your own understanding and to repeat the feat!  Please, help end the abuse of the law, through literacy which increases liberty and freedom!  Because we are all connected, increasing liberty and freedom for one person increases liberty and freedom for everyone.  The truth is apparent, “One raindrop raises the sea!”

Reference

Stevens, E. (1985). Literacy and the worth of liberty. Historical Social Research, 10(2), 65-81. https://doi.org/10.12759/hsr.10.1985.2.65-81

© 2021 M. Dave Salisbury
All Rights Reserved
The images used herein were obtained in the public domain; this author holds no copyright to the photos displayed.

NO MORE BS: The Virtuous Woman, the Modest Man

Another result of School 2 educational methodology was pointed out to me, the loss of the virtuous woman and the modest man.  I owe my life and sanity to a Catholic Nun, who left the nunnery to work in the real world with children.  Miss Murphy was a virtuous woman, not just because of her commitments to the church as a nun, but her poise, her speech, her mental aptitude and attitude, all bespoke virtue.  Miss Murphy was my principal at Governor Anderson Elementary School, Belfast, Maine, for three years.  She remained my friend for another two years, and her example has had a significant influence on me.

My wife, born in 1941, is a virtuous woman.  Her strength comes from her mother, who was virtuous, kind, and a bare-knuckle fighter.  I love my Mother-in-Law for her scrappiness and her virtues, her kindness, and her focused strength.  Her daughter is a softer version of the mother, and both of these women have had a tremendous influence on my life.

Virtuous WomanI never met my paternal grandfather; my paternal grandmother was a virtuous woman, a nurse, and an influence for good.  My maternal grandmother and grandfather were two of the most virtuous and modest people I ever met.  Some fond memories exist with both of these incredible people, and I hope I am representing their virtues and modesty appropriately.  My maternal great-grandmother was an incredible woman.  She was blind, but her clothes were always neat and comely, her house was immaculate, and sure she had some help, but the core was all her.

Where did the virtuous woman and modest man go in society?

Virtuous Woman 2They got lost as School 2 progressivism won the contest for educating young minds.  As children’s education became the reduction of minds to animal appetites increasingly, virtue and modesty were the first victims.  When I went to school, if your underwear was showing, it was considered a crime.  I was bullied and got a wedgie, the principal saw my underwear, and I got a two-day suspension and had to write a report on modesty in public and why modesty was important, as a condition to returning to school.  Now, underwear is everywhere, virtue and modesty are punchlines in-jokes, and the grandeur and mystery of the human body are belittled and mocked.

School 2 Methodologies:

Education is “… the result of modifiability in the paths of neural conduction. Explanations of even such forms of learning as abstraction and generalization demand of the neurones only growth, excitability, conductivity, and modifiability. The mind is the connection system of man; and learning is the process of connecting. The situation-response formula is adequate to cover learning of any sort, and the influential factors in learning are readiness of the neurones, sequence in time.”

Observations:

Virtuous Woman 3I love watching and observing people, children are the best, and little girls are amazing.  Why, because little girls live in their own world, interpret their worlds so dynamically different from boys, and ages of girls have distinct differences in understanding the world.  Get a group of 4-year old girls together, and they play differently than 5-year old girls, while their worlds can merge the girl’s world always remain separate.  But, too often, I see children forced into roles that they are uncomfortable with.  For example, little girls need a space of their own to think, consider, play, interpret, and be safe.  The girl is often bombarded with stuff that does not allow a safe space, and the little girl grows up insecure.

Little boys need room to roam, expand, explore, and run around.  Little boys need this exercise as much as they need air to breathe.  Yet, too often, the little boys are losing this room, and in losing the room, lose themselves, and never fully appreciate what it means to be a guy.

ModestyWandering through a clothing store one day, I was shocked, bewildered, and dismayed to see two-piece bikinis for newborns and toddlers.  How is a girl to learn her body’s majesty if her every waking moment is spent showing off her body?  How is a boy to learn control and respect for his body and a girl’s body when the clothes available are immodest at best?

The lessons of the schoolroom have invaded every aspect of our lives.  The reduction of the human spirit to neurologic impulse and animal appetites has robbed little children of the most precious time of their lives, their childhoods!

Wasting TimeThe time for silence is over.  The time for immodesty in public, displayed in verbal explosions of profanity, clothes that do not reflect respect in self, and the mocking of virtue, needs to end.  We are not animals, and we are not unrestrained appetites.  We are more than the connections of neurons that are turned on and off by a need for sensory gratification.  Those who are currently in power can be defeated and deserve to be defeated by realizing that we no longer accept that which has been “educated” into our brains.

I am not asking for high-necked collars and ties to go to the grocery store.  I am not claiming women should go back to hoop skirts and corsets.  I am encouraging a return to virtues, modesty, and respect first for oneself.

What are virtues?

VirtueVirtue, by definition, is the moral excellence of a person. A morally excellent person has a character made-up of virtues valued as useful.  Virtue is moral excellence. A virtue is a trait or quality deemed morally acceptable and thus is valued as a foundation of principle and good moral being. Personal virtues are characteristics valued as promoting collective and individual greatness.  Aristotle provided 12 unique virtues, which we should begin with understanding and acquiring.  Aristotle’s 12 virtues:

1) Courage – bravery
2) Temperance – moderation
3) Liberality – the quality of being open to novel ideas and free from prejudice.
4) Magnificence – charisma, style
5) Magnanimity – generosity
6) Ambition – Drive to excel
7) Patience – temperate, calm
8) Friendliness – the quality of being friendly; affability
9) Truthfulness – honesty, candidness
10) Wit – humor, joy
11) Modesty –behavior, manner, or appearance intended to avoid impropriety or indecency
12) Justice – a sense of right/wrong, indignation

Andragogy - LEARNLiteracy is the power to inspire the mind, grow the soul, and improve the world we live in.  Freedom arrives thru and as a result of learning, reading, and questioning.  Freedom and liberty grow as our love of literacy increases.  The answer to improving democracy everywhere is freeing the minds through reading, writing, and learning.

© 2021 M. Dave Salisbury
All Rights Reserved
The images used herein were obtained in the public domain; this author holds no copyright to the photos displayed.

NO MORE BS: A Third Powerful Tool – Reading

Image result for Image, deliberate dumbing down of americaFrom Chapter One of Charlotte Iserbyt’s, “The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America,” we find the following:

“… In 1898, Dewey wrote an essay, “The Primary-Education Fetish,” in which he explained exactly what he meant:”

“There is… a false education god whose idolators are legion, and whose cult influences the entire educational system. This is language study—the study not of foreign language, but of English; not in higher, but in primary education. It is almost an unquestioned assumption, of educational theory and practice both, that the first three years of a child’s school life shall be mainly taken up with learning to read and write his own language. If we add to this the learning of a certain amount of numerical combinations, we have the pivot about which primary education swings… It does not follow, however, that conditions—social, industrial, and intellectual—have undergone such a radical change, that the time has come for a thoroughgoing examination of the emphasis put upon linguistic work in elementary instruction… The plea for the predominance of learning to read in early school life because of the great importance attaching to literature seems to me a perversion.”

Scared Eyes!From this quote, in 1898 to the mid-1960s, phonics in K-6th grade education began to be battled by “Whole Word Memorization.”  By the end of the 1960s, teaching phonics in the classroom will be lost entirely.  Reading will continue to be irrationally marginalized, and learning the English language will take a hit so hard that many people will never know the grandeur of the language.

I spent some time reading statistical reports on reading, reading proficiency, and loving literature.  What I found shocked me!

      1. Very few people will ever read an entire book after leaving high school.
      2. Poverty does not dictate potential, how often and how much a parent reads to their child will.
      3. While important on tests, reading has been marginalized until the vast majority of students graduating from K-12 education are functionally illiterate.
      4. Functional illiteracy has become the standard accepted level for the workforce to capture and keep the minds to steal freedom and liberty from the populace.
      5. Reducing literacy was planned, implemented, and slowly been used as a weapon for destroying the American Republic.

All this because Dewey considered reading and literacy a “perversion.”  Dewey also claimed that literacy was a false god, a cult, and idolatry.  Yet, study after study continues to proclaim a single and undeniable variable.  When parents read to their children regularly, that child expects more freedoms, demands their liberties, and is better prepared to face the world.

LookJohn Dewey found high levels of literacy abominable.  He worked tirelessly to transform the school curriculum centered around the development of academic skills, intellectual faculties, and high literacy to a curriculum built around occupational activities, provided with maximum opportunities for peer interaction and socialization. He spent 30-years teaching teachers how to subvert society by little introductions into the curriculum until the pattern was perfected, and lesser topics were more important than reading, writing, and arithmetic.  The pattern: today’s school philosophies are tomorrow’s government actions.  Remember, all actions taken by a legitimate government will cause injury!

Oh, the injuries inflicted upon America’s children by not teaching literacy.  My wife made a point when I was discussing Dewey’s comments with her, “If I can read, aren’t I literate?”  My wife plays a good “Devil’s Advocate.”  Basically, yes, if a person can write their name and read their name, they are considered “literate” according to literacy’s most basic definition.  However, there is much more to literacy than reading and writing one’s name.  Dewey despises not the functional literacy of reading and writing one’s own name in commonly understood symbols of a society; but possessing the ability to love reading, enjoy books, speak, and write coherently and logically about what one has just read.

Andragogy - LEARNLiteracy is the ability to use printed and written information to function and achieve in society, to master one’s goals, and to develop one’s knowledge and potential, attain growth, and improve one’s mind and body through the written word.  A 1992 survey reported 40 million adults’ literary competency at Level 1 (the lowest literacy level: understanding basic written instructions).  The National Institute for Literacy estimates that 32 million American adults cannot read, which can contribute to chronic unemployment, low self-esteem, and a lower quality of available work.  Dewey has succeeded in reducing literacy to its lowest common denominator, functional illiteracy.  This lowering of literacy standards was intentionally conducted to destroy people’s minds to accept lives in socialism and communism.

The following are considerations for reversing the actions and influence of Dewey and appear in no particular order:

      1. Read out loud!  Spend 30-minutes a day reading for fun, and spend at least 10-minutes reading aloud.
      2. If you have children, regardless of their age, read with them. Many religions encourage daily reading of scriptures.  An excellent way to read aloud, read with children, and improve your knowledge base.
      3. Read poetry! Want a hint to make poetry reading more fun; read the words to songs, for a song is merely poetry put to music.
      4. If you have been told you are a slow learner, slow reader, dyslexic, etc., stop believing these voices! Grab a book on phonics and begin teaching yourself to read.  You have a mind; you have a soul, you have unlimited potential.  You can learn!
      5. Be the example of reading being a fun activity.

Detective 4The power of reading is remarkable, critical, and is the hinge upon which the Great American Republic swings.  Believe it or not, the American population’s literacy will be the point upon which we survive or fail as a nation.  Dewey understood the truth of this in 1896 and fought tooth and nail to eradicate literacy in America.  Castro in Cuba understood this, and that is why Cuban schools have such low literacy rates.  Every despot in history knows that the more literate a population is, the less likely that population is to accept captivity in the form of government largess.  Every single tin-pot dictator knows the pattern.  Today’s school philosophies are tomorrow’s government actions, and controlling literacy is the tool to dumb down society into brainwashed robots who do what they are told.

Since the 1960s, the war on literacy has been doubled and doubled again; some of us educated in the early 1980s, and 1990s received an education worth 1000 times more than the newest high school graduate experienced.  Those educated before the 1960s had an education 1000 times greater than the education we got in the 1980s and 1990s.  All because the war on the classroom and the war on literacy is being fought without opposition.  Fought behind closed doors and by enemies who learned early on how to subvert curriculum and teachers.

Wasting TimeHence, the best way to combat this war is through reading.  Pick up a book!  Read!  Practice writing and grammar.  I am not the best writer or grammarian; I use Grammarly, but I still try to write better because to my wife, I am functionally illiterate due to how and what I was taught.  My wife, born in 1941, received such a robust education she amazes me.  But, even in the K-12 Schools of the 1940s and 1950s, reading and literacy were being marginalized, freedoms and liberties were being stolen, and the plans to dumb down America were in full swing.

We, the citizens of America, have been duped, lied to, and abused for multiple generations at the hands of people we should have been able to trust, schoolteachers.  The schoolteachers were forced to do what they did to maintain their jobs because the school boards exerted pressure to teach in a specific methodology.  Sometimes, the school boards were coerced into those paths by money from the Federal Government.  Is the connection clear; government size has led to the marginalization of literacy rates to produce a specific product for corporations.  The only way to break this cycle of abuse is to change our literacy levels.  The only way to increase our literacy levels is to read!

Duty 3Please turn off the TV, turn off the computer, pick up a book.  Read!  Read because your life depends upon your ability and love of reading.  Your children’s future depends upon your literacy rate and willingness to read aloud to them and with them.  Your freedom, your liberty, your country all depend upon your literacy level.  If you want help, ask.  If you want suggestions, talk to a librarian.  But, please read!

© 2021 M. Dave Salisbury
All Rights Reserved
The images used herein were obtained in the public domain; this author holds no copyright to the photos displayed.