The Chalkboard Menace

She only looks innocent:
In reality, she’s coming for your children.

My fellow Americans, our great nation is facing the most serious threat in its long and glorious history, and it is time to sound the call. We must act now, or suffer the consequences. The very fate of the Republic is in our hands.

For generations, my fellow citizens, our land has been infiltrated by a subversive group so cunning and so subtle that we could not suspect their true purpose. Ingeniously, they have striven to sap our vital financial resources, far into the future. Moreover, they preyed on the most innocent and neglected of all Americans: our children. Filling young minds with dangerous ideas about science, mathematics, and history, these people could, at any minute, bring the government to its knees. I speak, of course, of that nefarious network of chalkboard terrorists: schoolteachers.

Who Are They?
Draining the American taxpayer’s wallet, year after year, schoolteachers claimed to seek but little financial reward for their jobs, which is just as well, considering how easy they have it. What is a schoolteacher but a baby-sitter who doesn’t raid your refrigerator and who probably isn’t making out with her boyfriend on your living-room couch when you get home? And how much do you pay a baby-sitter? Consider, too, what short hours teachers work and how many weeks of vacation they get each year.

Instead of high wages now, teachers asked for pensions later — but at what a price? These so-called “pensions” are out of all proportion with a schoolteacher’s salary, and paying them over time could restrict this great nation’s ability to protect the growth of our economy by ensuring that rich people never pay any taxes.

To fight for their so-called entitlements and privileges, many schoolteachers banded together in cells they called “unions.” As you well know, ladies and gentlemen, America has a long and proud tradition of resistance to such organizations, which are and always have been the well-known refuge of Socialists, Communists, Anarchists, and foreigners.

Do I have to spell it out? Schoolteachers want health care. That just shows you what kind of mentality we’re dealing with here.

What Is Our Children Learning?
Meanwhile, the youngest Americans are being brainwashed. Every day, our children are being instructed in basic math skills that might enable them to understand the flaws in our budget proposals on Capitol Hill. By learning so-called “social studies” (or, as I call them, Socialism studies), children may discover that other countries exist, and that they don’t do things the way America does.

Perhaps most alarmingly of all, it’s true that, in a few cities and towns, children are still, despite our best efforts, learning scientific “method,” mathematical “proof,” and historical “analysis” that can only confuse them and cause them to question their leaders.

You Get What You Pay For
We have attempted to combat this menace by using the principles of the free market. We paid teachers so little, we believed that they simply could not afford to continue. As our Founding Fathers wrote in the U.S. Constitution, “Those who can’t earn, teach.” Understandably, we believed that, in time, the few remaining holdouts would reveal themselves, making it easier to eliminate them altogether.

Even after we began the elimination process — starting with art and music teachers, and with school librarians — the enemy tenaciously maintained its position. Not only did incompetent teachers remain, but others did, too. It’s now clear that a broad network of ideological zealots are holding out, ruthless in their pursuit of educating young people.

Modest Proposals
That’s why I’m here to tell you, my fellow Americans, that we aren’t doing enough. Slashing salaries and budgets, laying off personnel and hobbling unions will go only so far to meet our goals of defeating this enemy and enhancing my political prospects in 2012. (After all, if there is anything more alarming than the presence of teachers in our nation’s schools, it is that you never hear anybody say, “What this country needs is Bill Madison in the White House.”)

With these things in mind, I would like to offer the following proposals.

I. The U.S. Department of Education must be abolished; henceforward, all matters pertaining to education must fall under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security — where they belong!

II. The Educational Offender Act, now before Congress, must be passed. Any persons actively teaching or with a history of engagement in educational activities must be required to register with local law enforcement, and kept under round-the-clock surveillance. Communities must be notified of the presence of educators in their midst, through the use of databases; published announcements in the press and on-line; posters near schools and playgrounds; brochures distributed free of charge to households with young children; and traffic-warning signs at major intersections throughout the land.

III. “Starve the beast” is good policy for bloated state and federal budgets, and it’s good policy for schoolteachers, too. Effectively immediately, all teachers and school administrators must be taxed at the highest possible rate: I propose 99 percent. Let’s put those public salaries back into the hands of you, the people who paid them! This will help to reduce the deficit and to stimulate the economy, and you’ll receive your refund checks just as soon as the current budget crisis is met.

IV. If teachers are so smart, they won’t need books in order to help our children achieve high test scores. Therefore, we must eliminate all textbooks, with the exceptions of the Bible, Tom Bass’ Play Football the NFL Way, and Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, which contain all the information children need to know about science, history, and everything else.

V. Finally, I would like to propose that we stop talking about schoolteachers. If we must refer to them, let us call them “bad teachers,” to ensure that each and every one of those lazy, incompetent, low-earning boobs knows exactly what we think of them.

The time to act is upon us, for if we fail, we will live up to the words of Shakespeare’s immortal Henry V, who said, “The fault lies not in our stars, dear Horatio, but in the people who tried to teach us stuff.”

Thank you. God bless America.

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Them Grammar Lessen

An article in The New York Times regarding current trends in the teaching of biology in the U.S. leads me to wonder what would happen if a similar approach applied to other subjects in the classroom. To learn the answer, I needed only to sit in on a typical English class; what follows is my faithfully accurate transcription of the day’s lesson.

*

“All right, boys and girls, take out your books, please. Today we’re going to talk about English grammar. Now, before we go any more far, can any of you tell me why we study English grammar, even though we ain’t English?”

A hand goes up: “Because we’re required to by the federal government?”

“That’s right. But remembers, boys and girls, grammar is only a theory. Can anyhow tell me what a theory is?”

Another hand: “It’s just one person’s opinion.”

“That’s right. I know many of you growed up in homes what don’t believe in no grammar. I’m not going to told youse you got to use it. That is a choice for your parent to made. But grammar be one way of doing thing.”

Another hand: “My momma says I don’t have to ever use no grammar, so long as if I get home-schooled for my college educating.”

“Very good! Between you and I, college educating are going to probably be out-sourced in countries foreign, anyway, by the time what you all growed be.”

Another hand: “Miss Babbitt, what be ‘countries foreign’?”

“That don’t matter none, Cindy. They’s just places what Jesus don’t love so much. But you ain’t never gonna need to knowed about that, for what youse be American, what am the most betterest country ever.”

The children cheer, and the teacher continues: “That be whereto I are having faith that, when youse be growed, you could made you-self understanded to be, even what you grammar not ever use and up-mess syntax yours all. Counts what is which that God understanding can all times you.”

Another hand: “Sin tacks what be?”

“Restriction liberty of personal, cigarette tax like. Oppression big over speech of freedom is.”

Another hand: “Jesus hates sin, and Jesus hates taxes, so we should hate syntax, right?”

“Right exacted! Boys now girls and, be what participle a?”

Another hand: “Unimportant?”

“Plumb nearly. Other guess at participle be which?”

Another hand: “Boring?”

“Yes! You thunk good that once, Johnny.”

Another hand: “Miss Babbitt, didn’t Jesus use grammar?”

“Now where heared you that at?”

“Some of them older boys was talking after church.”

“You disappoint! Reporting at principal office, young lady! Names me wanted of them boys! Get now to marching gone!” The teacher pauses. “Boys now girls and, to learning how sentence diagram we be.”

A hand shoots up: “But Miss Babbitt, Preacher says diagrams is a sign of the Devil!”

The teacher reflects for a moment. “Pentagram, he maybe wanting to mean, but same difference. Closed your books, children: it be time to burn ’em.”

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Exclusive: History Textbook Excerpt

Recent controversies in the Commonwealth of Virginia and elsewhere suggest that some Americans need to go back and study their history a little more closely — with particular emphasis on one specific chapter. I’m here to help, but unfortunately, the only reference I could find is a forthcoming high-school textbook that meets all the latest stipulations of the Texas State Board of Education.

Introduction
There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair. Look for it only in Texas-approved history textbooks, for it is no more than a dream re­mem­bered. A Civilization gone with the wind.

Causes of the War of Northern Aggression
Northerners, who were not gentlemen, believed in intrusive federal government and the suppression of states’ rights. Southerners, who had superior table manners and always removed their hats indoors, disa­greed with these beliefs, seeing them as incursions on personal liberties, including the right of self-determination and the right to hold private property.

These are rights that the Founding Fathers had agreed to be “inal­ien­able”; now the North proposed a radical rewriting of the basic contracts on which the federal government had been established.

Specifically, the Northern states — like many Socialist governments in more recent times — wanted to restrict the kinds of property that could be owned in the South, and these restrictions in turn would have limited the size of farms and plantations owned by Southerners, with disas­trous consequences for the region’s economy and for the social fabric as a whole. No compensation was proposed, even in cases in which the property had been passed down from father to son, or paid for at auction.

Moreover, in an attempt to impose its belief system on the states in the South, the North deployed an unofficial, private army of political agi­ta­tors (called “abolitionists”), thieves (see Chapter 5, “The Under­ground Rail­road and Other Systems of Robbery”), and even terrorists (see Chapter 6, “John Brown’s Jihad”). This led to frequent disruptions in the economy and daily life of law-abiding Southerners. Meanwhile, Northern newspapers and even preachers endorsed such illegal poli­cies, which made their practice increasingly widespread.

Throughout the first half of the 19th century, the North struck the people of the South in ceaseless blows of rage, and the federal government held the Southern states in an angry grip of unrelenting tyranny. (See Isaiah 14:6)

In our own time, no state would be expected to tolerate this kind of illegal interference by foreign powers. Just so, the states of the South were forced to take certain measures to ensure their national security, to protect their liberties, and to restore the peace.

Going forward, the Southern states trusted in the word of God: they believed that their new Confederation was established in right­eous­ness; and if they prevailed, they would be kept far from Northern op­pres­sion. They did not fear, and terror did not come near them. (See Isaiah 54:14) They also upheld, as never before, the Constitutional right to bear arms.

In the coming chapters of this book, we will see how gallant leaders and individuals across the South joined forces to defend their homes and communities. They endured great sacrifices and bravely faced the enemy’s superior numbers and resources.

Topics for Discussion

1. Why were the Southern freedom fighters so admirable and heroic? How can we be more like them? In what ways did they act on the word of God?


2. Why is it so difficult for the federal government to understand and address the needs of individual states? When there are differences of opin­ion, should the interests of the larger group prevail? (See Chapter 38, “Socialism.”)


3. If the government tried to take away your property, what would you do?


4. Why should we pay federal income tax? What has the federal gov­ern­ment ever done for you, anyway?


5. Why are lost causes the only ones worth fighting for?

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The Morini Method

With her essay due the next morning,
our heroine is distressed to find she’s run out of Scotch tape,
just when she needs it most.

The Morini Method, like churning your own butter, operating the steam-powered loom, or blacksmithing, is an ancient, nearly-lost art form displaced by more efficient technological means, yet it was a cornerstone of my high-school education. The Method involved essay-writing with the use of “Specific, Illustrative Examples,” scissors, and Scotch tape. We were asked to write and write and write, then edit our work: cutting out the dross, salvaging all the best bits and patching them together in a perfect whole — and that’s where the scissors and tape came in.

If this sounds like a primitive, pre-computerized version of word-processing, it is, and surely some day my English teacher, Anna Morini, will get credit and some much-deserved remuneration for her farsighted innovations. Please note that the application of the fundamental principles of the Morini Method to the new technology can be effective: I underwent just such an exercise the other day, in revising an article for Opera News.

Having already won prizes for my writing — and not just the creative stuff, but the “ready writing,” wherein I was given a topic and 30 minutes in which to construct a balanced, five-paragraph essay, or an inverted pyramid of journalistic clarity — I resisted Mrs. Morini at first. Why should I learn something I didn’t know, when I knew so much already?

A typical Morini word processor
(Mouse not included)

Well, youth is rebellious. But she indulged me, a little, and my grade-point average didn’t suffer too much. Lately I’ve come to appreciate not only her efforts but those of several of my high-school teachers. People in real estate always talk about the importance of neighborhoods with “good schools,” and my parents surely settled in one.

Consider Carlene Klein Ginsburg, my French teacher, who gave me the tools with which I make my way in France; and Melinda Smith, a former beauty queen (Miss Wool and Mohair!) who suffered fools not at all, and who taught me the journalism that earns me my living today. Since I went on to obtain pricey Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, it’s somewhat disconcerting to think that, thanks to Carlene and Melinda, I’d already laid the groundwork for my future before I ever left high school. But it’s true.

I was by nature and vocation a teacher’s pet, and both Carlene and Melinda knew how to handle me. There was distinct collegiality in their demeanor, but I had to earn that. When Carlene took a group of students to France, I placed into the advanced class — alongside her and the other teachers. As an editor on the newspaper staff, I had to show leadership, pretty much running the class, some days. However, despite my precocity (and inflated sense of merit), and though we got on easily, in neither woman’s class was there any question who was the boss among “colleagues.” We were not peers, and believe it or not, that suited me fine.

I wish to hell that, in addition to French and journalism, they’d taught me people skills like theirs.

Another fine teacher, Joye Davis, taught English in my junior year, with a focus on American literature. She had an advantage over any other teacher I knew, since she grew up in Mississippi. As kindergartners in Jackson, she and her classmates were taken to visit a certain “Miss Welty,” who read stories to them; as a college student in Oxford, she used to sit near William Faulkner at the drugstore soda fountain, eavesdropping on his conversations. She swore she hadn’t learned much from these encounters — Miss Welty struck her primarily as odd-looking, and Mr. Faulkner tended to talk about the weather — but I learned plenty from her.

For example, she pointed out that Amanda Wingfield, in Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, isn’t nearly what she pretends to be, and the fatal clue is not her rapturous recollection of Gentleman Callers past. For no fine Southern lady of Amanda’s generation would ever discuss “gastric juices” at the dinner table, as she does. The entire play fell open like a blossom in my hand after that.

Mrs. Davis knew when to level with us. We weren’t assigned Shakespeare’s Othello in Texas public schools, she said, because it was about a black man and a white woman. (Was any other teacher so honest with us?) But she also knew when to be tactful. When one classmate took umbrage at the politics behind Miller’s The Crucible, Mrs. Davis graciously ceded the floor and let her present an impassioned defense of Joseph McCarthy. (Something most people reading the play, even in Texas, don’t get the benefit of.)

Zona Ray taught drama class, and it was a good fit for her. Headstrong and beautiful, with a powerfully projected speaking voice, she reminded me some days of the young Bette Davis, and other days of Faye Dunaway. But not until I was a senior did I understand how much theater meant to her.

Ambitiously, she selected Jean Anouilh’s Antigone for our school’s entry in a play competition, and she went at it with a hacksaw to bring it to the mandatory 30-minute running time. Though we’d clashed a couple of times in the past, and I was no longer enrolled in her course, she cast me as Creon, the king. I understood this as the gift she intended it to be, and I took the part gratefully and seriously. I was as proud of my work as of anything I’ve done — but we lost the competition.

Almost immediately, I saw that Zona wasn’t merely disappointed, having worked her ass off for months. She wasn’t merely frustrated by the opaque injustice of the judge’s decision. She was wounded. For she had, with a handful of teenagers and a battered script, tried to create a thing of beauty. It wasn’t flawless, but it was honest and smart, tough and true. It tested her limits, and dared her to soar, which is, after all, what theater is supposed to do.

And then some fool had turned his back on what she believed in — in favor of a Neil Simon comedy.

Nowadays, I see that my high school produces spectacles on the scale of Les Misérables. I wonder how they manage that: we always had to scrape to find enough boys to put on a musical, which is how I got cast in one.* But I’d be very surprised if they ever put on a show as good as that Antigone.

There were other good teachers, too — Anne Bean, who was so tolerant of (and amused by) my attempts to learn algebra; Homer Alexander, who showed a similar attitude toward my attempts to learn physics; Terry Quon, who designed an intensive course in German, cramming three years into one, just for me; and Alicia Ceverha, who gave me my first real lessons in Italian grammar (as well as the Cuban accent I still possess in that language).

In hindsight, I realize that I received a truly first-rate education at my dinky little suburban Texas high school, and when I got to college, I had nothing to fear from kids who went to Andover instead of J.J. Pearce. I was hardly aware at the time how truly lucky I was.

Hallowed Halls

Yet one of my most telling experiences came outside the classroom. Mrs. Morini’s husband had heart trouble, so raking the yard in November was out of the question, though there were heaps of fallen leaves. She asked me and another student, Margaret Guttes, to come over one Saturday morning to help.

It was a cool, clear day, of a kind that Dallas doesn’t often see, a bona-fide autumn day, like something out of a picture book. Margaret and I worked for several hours, and then Mrs. Morini invited us into the kitchen for lunch. She’d made chicken noodle soup — not out of a can — with penne pasta, which struck me as just about the most exotic thing I’d ever seen — until she sprinkled parmesan cheese on it, which struck me as nothing short of otherworldly.

And that was the end of the story, or so it seemed. Only years later did I realize that Mrs. Morini had taken a terrible risk. Who knows what kind of trouble her average punk student might have caused? And remember that my grade-point average did suffer under the Method.** Just giving me her address must have required a leap of faith that I wouldn’t vandalize the house, in a fit of resentment, some other day.

Yeah, I was a teacher’s pet, but Anna Morini gave me something that day more valuable than the Method: her trust.

I say it again: I was luckier than I knew.

*NOTE: Because my last sung line in Something’s Afoot came before the first entrance of one of the other actors, David Arment, he was able to dub my singing lines from backstage. Now there’s a good indication of Zona Ray’s superlative theatrical ingenuity! (And ever since, I‘ve identified closely with Lina Lamont in Singin’ in the Rain.)

**To this day, my mother blames the Morini Method for my failure to gain admission to Yale. Thus perhaps the greater risk to Mrs. Morini was that my parents would turn out to be vandals. However, the celebrated Texas Cheerleader Mom scandal had yet to happen, and we were all more innocent and unsuspecting in those days.

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Reading Lessons

The New York Times last weekend ran a fascinating article on a new way to teach reading: let kids read whatever they like. The article concludes with the suggestion from a couple of experts that this is the only way to make lifelong readers of students, and with the horrifying image of a teacher’s packing up all those staples of middle-school reading – To Kill a Mockingbird, The Diary of Anne Frank, etc. – while her students curled up with Captain Underpants.

Cultural conservative (and writer) that I am, I bristled instantly. What a harebrained notion! Who the hell cares what kids want to read? The simple fact is they don't know how. Sure, Americans may have a basic grasp of reading, but when it comes to analyzing a text, understanding literary method, distilling complex meaning from a lengthy piece of prose, they need guidance. Over the generations, Americans have tended to kick the can, putting off for as long as possible this necessary instruction. This is why college graduates make up the vast majority of readers of literary fiction: because only in college, not in junior- or senior-high school, do we receive the instruction.

If we stop teaching To Kill a Mockingbird in favor of Captain Underpants, we’re only kicking the can even further: kids will arrive at college with even fewer basic tools, and it’s easy to extrapolate, then, that in due time only those with post-graduate educations will read serious books. Or, for that matter, news reports, government documents, or political analysis – the very stuff we need to be responsible citizens. (There’s a reason behind universal public education, and it’s a stronger, healthier society.) Generations of lifelong yet incompetent readers loom before us.

Yet, somewhat to my surprise, the more I thought about the Mahagonny approach to education (Read whatever you feel like!), the calmer I got.

To judge from the Times story, the humble book report has fallen by the wayside – and yet, in my boyhood classrooms, that’s how we used to get school credit by reading for pleasure. That’s how we used to construct arguments to persuade our classmates to read what we were reading. And it’s how our teachers used to get to know our personal tastes, so that they could recommend to us more challenging yet otherwise similar material. In sum, the book report is very much like the classroom method that’s now being championed as a new way to get kids to read more. And I happen to think it’s a terrific idea.

Where I get off the bandwagon is this notion that reading for pleasure should replace, rather than supplement, assigned reading – the shared experience of a class discovering one text under the teacher’s guidance. Back in the Dark Ages, when I went to school, we managed to embrace both methods. Granted, we weren’t prey to all these newfangled modern temptations, such as video games and the Internet. (It’s worth remembering, however that few of my classmates ever ran short of reasons to avoid picking up a book.) What in modern life – or modern teaching – has made it seemingly impossible to promote both the book report and assigned reading? Are teachers overtaxed by No Child Left Behind? Are kids no longer reachable? What went wrong here?

And soon, we’ll all wind up like the Eloi,
unable to read the crumbling books in our libraries,
and defenseless against the Morlocks.

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Class of 1979

Unusual suspects: Karen Strecker and Judy Horak, seated,
with Kevin Pask and Bill Madison, standing.
Richardson High School Senior Prom, 1979

“Fill this out about your SENIOR year of high school! The longer ago it was, the more fun the answers will be!! REPOST with name of high school and graduating year in the subject box. Send this to all your friends, but don't forget to send it back to me.”

A friend has forwarded to me this little questionnaire, of the kind that gets circulated endlessly in e-mails, always with the exhortation to pass it along to as many other people as possible. Ornery sort that I am, I usually let such things drop.

Today I’m trying a different tactic. Instead of ignoring the questionnaire, or alternatively clogging everyone’s e-mail with my responses, I’ll post my answers here. Yet as I answer, I’m struck by the lusterless flatness of these questions, their resolute failure to illuminate much of anything: this ain’t the Proust Questionnaire, alas. So keep scrolling. After I’ve finished with the original set, I’ll raise — and answer — a few questions of my own.

1. Did you date someone from your school?
“Date” isn’t the word to describe what happened. Enough said.

2. Did you marry someone from your high school?
Not yet.

3. Did you car pool to school?
No, I walked the three blocks to campus — with the result that I was hit by a car as I crossed Coit Road, my sophomore year. The William V. Madison Memorial Stoplight was erected shortly thereafter.

4. What kind of car did you have?
A yellow Dodge Colt station wagon, known widely as “The Banana.”

5. What kind of car do you have now?
None.

6. It’s Friday night...where were you?
Eating Mexican food, then going to the movies with Kevin Pask and Karen Strecker.

7. It’s Friday night...where are you? (now)
I’ve been asking myself the same question.

8. What kind of job did you have in high school?
I was an office assistant at my father’s engineering firm.

9. What kind of job do you do now?
I’m a freelance writer.

10. Were you a party animal?
Au contraire.

11. Were you considered a flirt?
By whom? I suspect most people considered me a rather hopeless case who’d never find love, much less lose his virginity; and my attempts at flirtation typically elicited the sorts of responses that a stray dog gets when he begins to hump your leg.

12. Were you in band, orchestra, or choir?
High school marked the end of my musical career. Though I performed in a musical play, Something’s Afoot, my one solo line was dubbed by another actor, David Arment, who hadn’t made his entrance yet; I retreated to straight drama. My activities were numerous, however. I was a member of the editorial staff of the high-school newspaper; I held office in the Italian Club (first in the history of the state of Texas) and participated in French and German Clubs; and in an advisory capacity to Jim Millerman, our senior-class president, I nearly got the poor guy expelled.

13. Were you a nerd?
Affirmative, Captain. Sensors detect signs of opera records in the subject’s bedroom. Setting phasers to say, “Ni!”

14. Did you get suspended or expelled?
No, but see above.

15. Can you sing the fight song?
Did we have one? I wouldn’t know. I never attended a single sporting event, and I sneaked out of pep rallies whenever possible.

16. Who was/were your favorite teacher(s)?
A long list — that includes many of the names listed on the right-hand side of every page of this blog. Though there were a couple of disastrous nincompoops on the faculty (are you reading this, Jim Mymern?), I managed to avoid most of them. I’m quite lucky to have studied with such a terrific group of people.

17. Where did you sit during lunch?
I honestly don’t remember. Did I begin my unhealthy practice of eating at my desk during this period? (That would have been a desk somewhere in the journalism classroom.) In any case, I was most likely to be found wherever other kids from the newspaper staff might be.

18. What was your school's full name?
J.J. Pearce Senior High School

19. When did you graduate?
1979

20. What was your school mascot?
A mustang, copied blatantly from Southern Methodist University.

21. If you could go back and do it again, would you?
Would I have to make the same mistakes?

22. Did you have fun at Prom?
Yes, beginning with a memorable pre-dance picnic dinner in a local cemetery. Because we went as a foursome, and because the girls attended a rival high school, we were able to attend two proms in one night. That proved sufficient, and I’ve never been to another.

23. Do you still talk to the person you went to Prom with?
Not often enough, in the case of Judy, but I know how to reach each of them when I need to — and I often do.

24. Are you planning on going to your next reunion?
I might go, but the word “planning” connotes a greater concentration of thought than any that I can claim on this subject.

25. Do you still talk to people from school?
Yes, including the recent and very happy rediscovery of the lovely Jean Dirks, after she stumbled across this blog. I’m also in touch with a few teachers: Carlene Klein Ginsburg and Anna Morini, and over the years I’ve been in and out of touch with Zona Ray and Melinda Smith.

Don’t we know each other so much better, now that we’ve shared? Let’s try a somewhat different approach.

What books read for class meant the most to you?
The Great Gatsby, by default, and Molière’s Le Malade imaginaire (which I not only read but enacted in both my French and drama classes). Outside the classroom, the first volumes of Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time formed all my expectations for young manhood, despite the fact that I was a middle-class suburbanite in Dallas and not an Eton and Oxford man on the go in London between the wars. I read Powell as a result of Kevin Pask’s shoving the books at me, in what I now recognize to have been a mostly futile effort on his part to foster in me an intellect worthy of his companionship.

What pop song do you remember most vividly, and why?
This is a cheater, because I didn’t begin listening to pop music until I was in high school — again, at Kevin Pask’s urging. I’d like to cite something significant, like the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life,” or amusing, like the Ramones’ “Teenage Lobotomy” (one of the late Keith Kaski’s enduring gifts to me), but I fear that the honest answer is Meat Loaf’s “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.” Less pop song than one-act opera, it dramatizes the thrills and risks of what I desperately yearned to spend my Friday nights doing.

It’s interesting to note that the pop songs I heard in high school are among the last for which I have no visual associations: MTV hadn’t started yet, so the mental images I retain of Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street,” Steve Miller’s “Abracadabra,” and Walter Egan’s immortal “Magnet and Steel” — all of which played endlessly on the radio in those days — are entirely my own.

Be honest: would you have made it into an Ivy League college if not for the influence of Kevin Pask?
Of course not.

What was your greatest success? Greatest disappointment?
I regret to inform the various North Dallas businessmen’s lunch groups who bestowed fancy plaques on me that winning prizes for essays on “What It Means to Be an American” no longer seems worthwhile to me, though I’m sure the admissions officers at Brown were duly impressed, and it didn’t hurt to know already how to strike the patriotic nerve when I wrote for Dan Rather. My greatest triumph was, in all likelihood, interviewing Beverly Sills for the school paper, simultaneously meeting my idol and launching my journalistic career. The greatest disappointment may have been not winning one of those fancy plaques for a performance of Jean Anouilh’s adaptation of Antigone, in which I played Creon. We poured our very guts into that show, but the judge gave the trophy to some competent repetition of frippery by Neil Simon instead. This prepared me only a little for the failure of Rags, seven years later.

The more personal successes and disappointments I shall save for another time. Maybe.

What was your mood in those days?
At the time, I thought I was melancholic to the extreme, and bragged about it, for it seemed a sort of intellectual achievement; but in retrospect, I was a resolute optimist. All the world seemed possible then.

What or whom do you miss most?
My potential.

Snapshots! Cite a few moments when you glimpsed a larger world.
a) Along with Margaret Guttes, I raked leaves in Mrs. Morini’s yard one autumn afternoon. Though I’d always been a teacher’s pet, this was an exceptional experience, inviting me into a teacher’s home and entrusting me with responsibility. Mrs. Morini rewarded us with home-made chicken soup, with pasta and grated parmegiano cheese in it. I think she must have paid us, too, but it’s the soup I remember.

b) Kevin and I went to New Orleans at Spring Break, without a chaperone. Wine! Women! Song! Et cetera! We attempted (and failed) to find Walker Percy; on the way back from Covington, the Banana broke down in the middle of the Lake Pontchartrain Bridge. And the waiter at Antoine’s corrected my French: what I wanted, he insisted, was “petty poise,” not petits pois. In like fashion and at the same restaurant, Kevin, fed up with my constant pointers on etiquette, loudly reminded me to “Be sure to slosh it around in your glass a lot” when it came time to taste the wine.

c) One day I visited the staggeringly beautiful Laura Semrad at the cheese shop where she worked. I sampled every variety on display, primarily as an excuse to linger in her radiance, before buying one rather pathetic little Gouda. “Come back soon,” Laura’s boss said, less kindly than you might assume, because she added, “Next time you’re hungry.” At the time, I knew nothing about cheese. Now I know too much.

That should do, for now. I expect it’s a sign that I’m turning into an old crank: get me started on memories of my bygone youth, and I don’t know when to stop. Sort of like Proust, don’t you think?

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A Return to the Neighborhood

One of the happiest moments of my research into the life of Madeline Kahn has been the discovery that, in the mid-1960s, she appeared in a revue with Betty Aberlin; shortly thereafter, Aberlin became the leading light in the little repertory company of human beings on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, where I first became acquainted with her work. She and I are now engaged in a lively e-correspondence, and I’m looking forward to meeting her. Every line of our exchanges has been a pleasure for me — with one exception.

Betty Aberlin informs me that, as of September, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood is no longer part of the regular PBS programming. Individual stations continue to have the option to carry the program, but many won’t; others may run only one episode per week, demolishing the carefully constructed developmental lessons that are the heart and soul of the show. When PBS’s change of policy was announced, a website, savemisterrogers.com, was set up to link “neighbors” and to coordinate whatever efforts may be possible; though the policy has gone into effect, all hope is not lost. If you’re in the States, you’re urged to let your local station know your views — especially if you’re a parent with small children.

Prior to September, the website solicited testimonials from those parents, and other former children. Learning of the emergency too late to do much good, I’d like to tell you why Mister Rogers is important to me — to this day, despite the fact that I’m grown, and that the youngest of my godchildren are now older than the target audience. The value of Mister Rogers is enduring and universal, if only one has access to it. To restrict or to seal off that access would be a waste, a crime, quite possibly a catastrophe.

From the beginning, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was like nothing else on television for children. It was quiet. It was still. Though it hardly seems possible, children’s television has gotten only noisier and more violent since my boyhood, to the point that nowadays, when I visit my godchildren (I’m not singling out anyone, mind you), I have to retreat, sometimes for days, to some quiet spot, just to recover. I can see that such kids might be perplexed, at first, by the tranquility of the Neighborhood.

Each episode begins with Fred Rogers’ arrival at the house — which is not his home, and not ours, but a space reserved for us, with no other purpose than to learn and to share. Rogers observes a series of rituals that reinforce this idea of specialness: he sings “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” he hangs up his jacket and puts on a sweater, he changes from loafers to sneakers, he feeds the fish, he speaks to us.

There are no child actors in the studio, to stand in for the viewer, as there are in other shows, notably Sesame Street, which also uses Muppet characters such as Elmo and Big Bird to present childlike points of view: in the Neighborhood, the viewer is an essential member of the cast. Fred Rogers speaks to the camera, and in doing so, he speaks directly to the individual viewer. Our relationship is unfiltered, intimate, and ultimately sacrosanct. Mister Rogers wears no funny costumes; he doesn’t pretend to be an uncle, teacher, or anything but a neighbor. Everything that follows will be for us, a kind of conversation in which we “discuss” topics.

In the later series, these discussions are treated thematically, with each week dedicated to a particular topic. Though of course Fred Rogers can’t hear us (if we do answer him), he anticipates the questions a child might ask, then answers them: these are monologues, and yet they are interactive, long before the concept of interactive television was defined. Episode builds upon episode. The themes are dramatized, most often in the central segment of each episode, set in the Land of Make-Believe. If Fred Rogers is talking about how it feels to get a new baby brother or sister, then in Make-Believe King Friday XIII and his loyal subjects may act out those anxieties, when we learn that Queen Sarah Saturday is having a baby. Does that mean the queen will love Daniel Striped Tiger any less? The characters talk about their feelings.

Many of the characters are hand puppets, most of whom were operated and voiced by Rogers himself. Several “real people” actors appear, but they bear exalted titles (Betty Aberlin is “Lady Aberlin,” niece of King Friday) or wear fantastical costumes (Bob Trow becomes Bob Troll or Bob Dog). A toy trolley transports us to Make-Believe and back; like Fred Rogers’ sweater and sneakers at the beginning of each program, the Trolley underlines a kind of boundary. What happens in Make-Believe is distinct from what happens in Mister Rogers’ house, just as what happens in Mister Rogers’ house is distinct from what happens in the rest of the world. There’s no chance of a child’s acquiring the unrealistic expectation that, in her own life, the cat will begin to speak, or her toy boomerang will ever perform the tricks that Lady Elaine Fairchilde’s Boomerang Toomerang Zoomerang did. (Mine certainly didn’t.)

Always a Lady: Betty Aberlin, in the Real World
Photos of Betty Aberlin courtesy of Ms. Aberlin

But the Land of Make-Believe gives us a chance to explore feelings, ideas and their consequences, without hurting anything real. At the end of each segment, the Trolley returns us to the Neighborhood house, where Mister Rogers, sometimes aided by other neighbors, reflects further on the theme of the week. By the end of the week, we have all absorbed the lessons.

Each episode ends with a song, either “Tomorrow” or “It’s Such a Good Feeling,” as Mister Rogers hangs up his sweater, puts on his loafers, and returns to the outside world — always with the reminder that, “You make each day special, just by being you.”

This is powerful stuff, every bit of it. Other educational programs are flashier, but Fred Rogers was a specialist. He was teaching his audience about feelings, not phonics or math, and he understood that his lessons would require a calmer, more sheltered environment, with minimal distractions. Some of this wisdom was born of necessity: when he started the program, his operating budget was $30. Yet some of it was sheer genius, and Rogers crafted and maintained his environment meticulously.

As a viewer gets older — as I did — certain aesthetic virtues in the program become more apparent. My friends at Opera News tout the importance of unforced, conversational singing, especially in song repertoire. Now I see that the perfect model of our ideal can be found in the baritone John Reardon, who made frequent visits to the Neighborhood. (Rogers wrote several short operas for the program, primarily to illustrate a developmental theme, but with the secondary result of giving many children, including me, a first exposure to the art form.) The other cast members sang much the same way, and a similar aesthetic turns up in their acting. In talking with puppets, Betty Aberlin demonstrates a centered naturalness and emotional transparency that my acting teachers tried (mostly in vain) to bring to our interpretations of Chekhov, for example. That she had me completely convinced that she was a high-school girl from Pittsburgh is but one measure of Aberlin’s talent.

As I grew older, I came to appreciate the grace and subtlety of Fred Rogers’ musical compositions. “Just for Once,” as I’ve mentioned, remains one of the most poignant love songs I’ve ever heard. The songs were arranged and played by the late Johnny Costa, a brilliant jazz pianist, and though I’ve traveled far, I’ve seldom heard anyone to rival Costa’s inspiration and technique. “Handyman” Joe Negri is an accomplished jazz guitarist, “Officer” François Clemmons a gifted operatic baritone and the founder of the Harlem Spiritual Ensemble. Offering musical art of this caliber to unsophisticated children may seem like squandering a precious gift, yet don’t children deserve to hear good music? And how will they ever learn to appreciate good music if they’re not exposed to it?

Ditto good acting and thoughtful writing. Fred Rogers was adamant — fierce — about the quality of his program. As you see, every aspect of it was carefully thought-out. Unfortunately, few among us have thought about the show with equal care.

It was never meant to be hip, not even in the 1960s, so naturally it isn’t hip now. There’s almost never any cartoon animation, of the kind on which other children’s programs rely; the colors aren’t garish and the sounds are quiet. In his own performance, Fred Rogers presents a gentle persona that strikes many people as fey, simply because it isn’t macho. But there’s method in his unaggressive manliness. When I began watching the program, the United States was at war, and violence among young people had risen to crisis levels. Fred Rogers presented an alternative: his puppet characters don’t bop each other, as other puppets and cartoons do; and his lessons focus on channeling or controlling anger and other feelings into non-violent expression. In his on-camera demeanor, he was equally a man of peace.

That was a revolutionary posture, in its time, and you would have trouble convincing me that it wouldn’t be so today — when the United States is at two wars, and violence among young people remains at crisis levels. We need Fred Rogers now.

Sadly, he became such an icon that his image fell into other hands, some of which have shaped it unrecognizably, with lasting effects. Somewhere, some standup comic came up with a simple, rather stupid riff — Wouldn’t it be funny if Mister Rogers were a child molester? The answer, of course, is no, yet people laughed anyway. That riff spun off into endless variations, in innumerable comedy routines, with the result that otherwise sensible people of my acquaintance now dismiss Fred Rogers as creepy. Look at the program, for Pete’s sake. He’s not creepy. He’s speaking to an audience of four-year-olds in a language they can understand, about issues of importance to them (and to the rest of us). Yeah, he’s got a distinctive speech pattern, and it’s easily imitated, and too easily mocked. But that shouldn’t prevent us from hearing what he actually said.

As a viewer, I came to Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood early in the show’s history (it was still called Misterogers’ Neighborhood, and Betty Aberlin had yet to make her first appearance), but a bit late to make up part of the target audience. Nevertheless, as a first-grader I was still trying to cope with my feelings — and I still am. The lessons rang true. They still do.

It’s easy to see Fred Rogers’ influence in a couple of realms of my adult life. By writing fiction, exploring a theme within the parameters of an imaginary setting, am I not every day returning to the Land of Make-Believe? The first operas I ever heard (as opposed to discrete arias) were his; now opera is a cornerstone of my aesthetic and emotional life.

Another influence may be a little harder to see. I continued watching the show long after I was, officially, too old for it. As a kid in Texas, I was daily confronted with a violent machismo in direct and painful contrast with Fred Roger’s gentle peace. I found hope in him: that, yeah, you could go on to lead a productive life even if you weren’t a brute. At school, I was bullied without remorse: insulted, spat upon, and beat up, day after day. But in the afternoon, I could always rely on the fact that at least one person would tell me I was special — would like me, not abuse me, precisely because I was special.*

If that sounds pathetic, so be it. There are days of my junior-high existence that I might not have survived at all, if I hadn’t had Mister Rogers to come home to. People talk about the “soothing” quality of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, yet the word is too poor to describe the sustenance I found there.

Times change, tastes vary. Fred Rogers may ultimately become one of those great philosopher–teachers whose lessons we must learn to apply for ourselves, because he’s no longer around to do the job for us. My godchildren weren’t devoted followers of his program, but I was, and so I have tried to be as sensitive to them, as Fred Rogers was to his television friends: as patient, as caring, as wise.

It is a hard thing to be a good grownup to a child. There may be no task more difficult. And that task will be only more difficult if we don’t — if we can’t — from time to time consult Mister Rogers, and locate ourselves within his Neighborhood. He already did so much of the work for us, and it’s right there, waiting for us to make use of it.

LINKS
Besides savemisterrogers.com, there are a few other good links, and the more we click on them, the more we may persuade the Powers That Be that Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood is still relevant and meaningful to us. So click away!

Family Communications is the organization Fred Rogers founded to help families get the most out of his television program, and to make parenting a little easier.

PBS’s official Mister Rogers site boasts lots of interactive features — and it’s the site whose counter the PBS programmers are most likely to notice.


*Within a few years, my girlfriend would begin referring to me as “her Special.” I don’t think she knew she was invoking Fred Rogers — that might well have been creepy, in this context.

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On a Possible Explanation for Recent Historical Events, Namely the 2004 Election

Is our elected officials learned?

We’ve had yet another of those surveys that are so dispiriting, they make one wonder why we let our fellow Americans vote — for that matter, I wonder why we let them drive. I’ll let the press release of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute spell it out:

Washington, D.C., November 20, 2008 — Are most people, including college graduates, civically literate? Do elected officials know even less than most citizens about civic topics such as history, government, and economics? The answer is yes on both counts according to a new study by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI). More than 2,500 randomly selected Americans took ISI’s basic 33-question test on civic literacy and more than 1,700 people failed, with the average score 49 percent, or an “F.” Elected officials scored even lower than the general public with an average score of 44 percent and only 0.8 percent (or 210 of all surveyed earned an “A.” [Emphasis theirs.] Even more startling is the fact that over twice as many people know Paula Abdul was a judge on American Idol than know that the phrase “government of the people, by the people, for the people” comes from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

The survey, like so many of its predecessors, is all the more alarming when you remember that the questions weren’t “Quick, off the top of your head — who has the power to declare war?” They were multiple choice. That’s right, the answer is staring the respondent in the face.

Nevertheless, “Less than half of all Americans can name all three branches of government,” the ISI asserts. (Seriously, we let these people drive?) And college education is shown to be no advantage: the press release reveals that “The average score among those who ended their formal education with a bachelor’s degree is 57 percent or an ‘F,’ which is only 13 percentage points higher than the average score of 44 percent earned by those who hold high school diplomas.”

Among the other bullet points:

“30 percent of elected officials do not know that ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ are the inalienable rights referred to in the Declaration of Independence; and 20 percent falsely believed that the Electoral College ‘was established to supervise the first presidential debates.’

“Almost 40 percent of all respondents falsely believe the president has the power to declare war.

“40 percent of those with a bachelor’s degree do not know business profit equals revenue minus expenses.

“Only 54 percent with a bachelor’s degree correctly define free enterprise as a system in which individuals create, exchange and control goods and resources.

“20.7 percent of Americans falsely believe that the Federal Reserve can increase or decrease government spending.”

What the ISI doesn’t reveal is that, of all the participants in the survey, only one incorrectly responded as if it were an essay test, ignoring the multiple choices and providing complete answers of his own. I have obtained a copy of his responses, and although his identity remains unknown to me, I am told that he is male and an elected official, residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC. Where questions and answers are not provided, the respondent simply skipped them.

1) Which of the following are the inalienable rights referred to in the Declaration of Independence?
Aliens have no rights, especially the illegal ones. Only through vigilants can we protect our independance.

2) In 1933 Franklin Delano Roosevelt proposed a series of government programs that became known as:
Socialism.

3) What are the three branches of government?
Dick Cheney, David Addington, General Petraeus, and Karl Rove.

4) What was the main issue in the debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas in 1858?
Who was a better decider and a stronger leader who would be tough with our enemies

5) The United States Electoral College:
Has no fraternities or sororities and a cheerleading squad full of dorks.

6) The Bill of Rights explicitly prohibits:
Higher taxes.

14) The Puritans:
Would make a great name for a baseball team.

23) In October 1962 the United States and the Soviet union came close to war over the issue of Soviet:
BORING

25) Free enterprise or capitalism exists insofar as:
A continued strong military presence permits that country to remain free and democratic.

26) Business profit is:
Not importent when your daddy’s friends can always find you another job.

27) Free markets typically secure more economic prosperity than government’s centralized planning because:
They are free.

29) A flood-control levee (or National Defense) is considered a public good because:
Its doing a heck of a job.

30) Which of the following fiscal policy combinations would a government most likely follow to stimulate economic activity when the economy is in a severe recession?
Its not my problem any more.

31) International trade and specialization most often lead to which of the following?
War

33) If taxes equal government spending, then:
I was specifically told there would be no math on this test.

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Seriously, the survey struck me as scarily easy: I aced it. What’s your score? Herewith, I’m appending the full text of the ISI questionnaire — but not the answers.

1) Which of the following are the inalienable rights referred to in the Declaration of Independence?
A. life, liberty, and property
B. honor, liberty, and peace
C. liberty, health, and community
D. life, respect, and equal protection
E. life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

2) In 1933 Franklin Delano Roosevelt proposed a series of government programs that became known as:
A. the Great Society
B. the Square Deal
C. the New Deal
D. the New Frontier
E. supply-side economics

3) What are the three branches of government?
A. executive, legislative, judicial
B. executive, legislative, military
C. bureaucratic, military, industry
D. federal, state, local

4) What was the main issue in the debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas in 1858?
A. Is slavery morally wrong?
B. Would slavery be allowed to expand to new territories?
C. Do Southern states have the constitutional right to leave the union?
D. Are free African Americans citizens of the United States?

5) The United States Electoral College:
A. trains those aspiring for higher political office
B. was established to supervise the first televised presidential debates
C. is otherwise known as the U.S. Congress
D. is a constitutionally mandated assembly that elects the president
E. was ruled undemocratic by the Supreme Court

6) The Bill of Rights explicitly prohibits:
A. prayer in public school
B. discrimination based on race, sex, or religion
C. the ownership of guns by private individuals
D. establishing an official religion for the United States
E. the president from vetoing a line item in a spending bill

7) What was the source of the following phrase: “Government of the people, for the people, by the people”?
A. the speech “I Have a Dream”
B. Declaration of Independence
C. U.S. Constitution
D. Gettysburg Address

8) In 1935 and 1936 the Supreme Court declared that important parts of the New Deal were unconstitutional. President Roosevelt responded by threatening to:
A. impeach several Supreme Court justices
B. eliminate the Supreme Court
C. appoint additional Supreme Court justices who shared his views
D. override the Supreme Court’s decisions by gaining three-quarter majorities in both houses of Congress

9) Under Our Constitution, some powers belong to the federal government. What is one power of the federal government?
A. Make treaties
B. Make zoning laws
C. Maintain prisons
D. Establish standards for doctors and lawyers

10) Name one right or freedom guaranteed by the first amendment.
A. Right to bear arms
B. Due process
C. Religion
D. Right to counsel

11) What impact did the Anti-Federalists have on the United States Constitution?
A. their arguments helped lead to the adoption of the Bill of Rights
B. their arguments helped lead to the abolition of the slave trade
C. their influence ensured that the federal government would maintain a standing army
D. their influence ensured that the federal government would have the power to tax

12) Which of the following statements is true about abortion?
A. it was legal in most states in the 1960s
B. the Supreme Court struck down most legal restrictions on it in Roe v. Wade
C. the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that underage women must notify their parents of an impending abortion
D. the National Organization for Women has lobbied for legal restrictions on it
E. it is currently legal only in cases of rape or incest, or to protect the life of the mother

13) Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas would concur that:
A. all moral and political truth is relative to one’s time and place
B. moral ideas are best explained as material accidents or byproducts of evolution
C. values originating in one’s conscience cannot be judged by others
D. Christianity is the only true religion and should rule the state
E. certain permanent moral and political truths are accessible to human reason

14) The Puritans:
A. opposed all wars on moral grounds
B. stressed the sinfulness of all humanity
C. believed in complete religious freedom
D. colonized Utah under the leadership of Brigham Young
E. were Catholic missionaries escaping religious persecution

15) The phrase that in America there should be a “wall of separation” between church and state appears in:
A. George Washington’s Farewell Address
B. the Mayflower Compact
C. the Constitution
D. the Declaration of Independence
E. Thomas Jefferson’s letters

16) In his “I Have a Dream” speech, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:
A. argued for the abolition of slavery
B. advocated black separatism
C. morally defended affirmative action
D. expressed his hopes for racial justice and brotherhood
E. proposed that several of America’s founding ideas were discriminatory

17) Sputnik was the name given to the first:
A. telecommunications system
B. animal to travel to space
C. hydrogen bomb
D. manmade satellite

18) Susan B. Anthony was a leader of the movement to
A. guarantee women the right to vote in national elections
B. guarantee former slaves the right to vote
C. ensure that harsher laws against criminals were passed
D. reduce the authority of the Constitution of the United States

19) The Scopes “Monkey Trial” was about:
A. freedom of the press
B. teaching evolution in the schools
C. prayer in the schools
D. education in private schools

20) Who is the commander in chief of the U.S. military?
A. Secretary of the army
B. Secretary of state
C. President
D. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs

21) Name two countries that were our enemies during World War II.
A. Canada and Mexico
B. Germany and Japan
C. England and Spain
D. China and Russia

22) What part of the government has the power to declare war?
A. Congress
B. the president
C. the Supreme Court
D. the Joint Chiefs of Staff

23) In October 1962 the United States and the Soviet Union came close to war over the issue of Soviet:
A. control of East Berlin
B. missiles in Cuba
C. support of the Ho Chi Minh regime in Viet Nam
D. military support of the Marxist regime in Afghanistan

24) In the area of United States foreign policy, Congress shares power with the:
A. president
B. Supreme Court
C. state governments
D. United Nations

25) Free enterprise or capitalism exists insofar as:
A. experts managing the nation’s commerce are appointed by elected officials
B. individual citizens create, exchange, and control goods and resources
C. charity, philanthropy, and volunteering decrease
D. demand and supply are decided through majority vote
E. government implements policies that favor businesses over consumers

26) Business profit is:
A. cost minus revenue
B. assets minus liabilities
C. revenue minus expenses
D. selling price of a stock minus its purchase price
E. earnings minus assets

27) Free markets typically secure more economic prosperity than government’s centralized planning because:
A. the price system utilizes more local knowledge of means and ends
B. markets rely upon coercion, whereas government relies upon voluntary compliance with the law
C. more tax revenue can be generated from free enterprise
D. property rights and contracts are best enforced by the market system
E. government planners are too cautious in spending taxpayers’ money

28) A progressive tax:
A. encourages more investment from those with higher incomes
B. is illustrated by a 6% sales tax
C. requires those with higher incomes to pay a higher ratio of taxes to income
D. requires every income class to pay the same ratio of taxes to income
E. earmarks revenues for poverty reduction

29) A flood-control levee (or National Defense) is considered a public good because:
A. citizens value it as much as bread and medicine
B. a resident can benefit from it without directly paying for it
C. government construction contracts increase employment
D. insurance companies cannot afford to replace all houses after a flood
E. government pays for its construction, not citizens

30) Which of the following fiscal policy combinations would a government most likely follow to stimulate economic activity when the economy is in a severe recession?
A. increasing both taxes and spending
B. increasing taxes and decreasing spending
C. decreasing taxes and increasing spending
D. decreasing both taxes and spending

31) International trade and specialization most often lead to which of the following?
A. an increase in a nation’s productivity
B. a decrease in a nation’s economic growth in the long term
C. an increase in a nation’s import tariffs
D. a decrease in a nation’s standard of living

32) Which of the following is a policy tool of the Federal Reserve?
A. raising or lowering income taxes
B. increasing or decreasing unemployment benefits
C. buying or selling government securities
D. increasing or decreasing government spending

33) If taxes equal government spending, then:
A. government debt is zero
B. printing money no longer causes inflation
C. government is not helping anybody
D. tax per person equals government spending per person
E. tax loopholes and special-interest spending are absent

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Pop Quiz

Good morning, class! Get out your pencils. It’s time for a pop quiz. I’m going to describe a world leader, and I want you to identify him.

The less-gifted scion of a distinguished political family, his ascension to power came as a surprise to most. Even his own family had designated a different “heir apparent,” but circumstances permitted him to rise. In the course of an unorthodox election, he campaigned on a platform of concern for those less fortunate; once in power, he quickly set aside his stated objectives in favor of what some described as “an imperial presidency” that ultimately amounted to a coup d’état. Seizing on threats to national security as an excuse, he clamped down on civil rights, squelched dissent, and embarked on a domestic policy marked by cronyism and a foreign policy marked by ill-advised military adventures.

Under his administration, real-estate speculation was rampant, permitting a few investors to accumulate great wealth, although the stated goal of housing policy was to improve the quality of life for the poor and for small-homeowners. During most of his time in office, the legislature served mainly to rubber-stamp his agenda. News outlets that cooperated with him were rewarded; those that did not were punished. Though he frequently boasted his Christian faith, his actions put him in conflict with the Vatican, and many people esteemed his personal behavior and public policies as immoral; though his wife was considered a model of piety, she limited herself to a few charitable works, and few believed she exerted any real influence on her husband. Artists and intellectuals reviled him, but they found themselves powerless to oppose him.

He was brought down by a series of military exploits abroad. Several of these were blatantly designed to provide economic opportunities for his cronies. Repeatedly, on multiple fronts, he attempted to impose his values on other cultures at the point of a gun. Though he claimed that his wars would demonstrate his country’s preeminence as a superpower, they left the country more vulnerable — for generations to come.

Got all that? Good. Write down your answer, then scroll down to find his name and picture.

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Why, it’s Napoleon III, of course! Who on earth did you think I was talking about?

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James O. Barnhill

The story goes that Jim Barnhill came to Providence in pursuit of a pretty girl. He was fresh out of the Navy and ready to launch his future. In the meantime, he finagled a job at Brown University mostly as an excuse to continue the courtship. The girl got away, but Jim stayed. Some 30 years later, as I sat in his acting class, he explained that he was “brought up in the South but lived in the Northeast, and I’ve never felt quite at home in either place.”

My youthful ears caught only the romance, not the wistfulness, of his words. At the time, I understood that I, too, was a transplanted Southerner, but I didn’t understand that I, too, might some day feel the way Jim did. Like him, I’d reach a certain age, still a bachelor, still unsure what place to call home.

It’s in the nature of teaching to impart lessons, and yet very few of the lessons Jim taught me had anything at all to do with acting. This was in part due to my peculiar talent: I was awfully good at Molière, and not much else, while most of my energy was devoted to a kind of acting that had nothing to do with theater. Onstage or off, I was fully committed to the role of a person I was not, a character of my own invention, an erudite, preppy, liberal Democrat from Litchfield, Connecticut. I had nothing left to invest in the characters of Eugene O’Neill, or anyone else.

Jim was mostly gracious, if hardheaded, about my prospects in theater. Any conversation about my future invariably turned toward his urgent recommendation that I look into graduate programs in arts administration — not acting. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I had less talent for administration than I did for performing, and in time we both learned to talk of other things.

At the time we knew each other best, Jim was in his 60s and the oldest man I knew. Somehow we settled into a pattern that has held with every subsequent friendship I’ve enjoyed with an older man: Burgess Meredith, Dan Rather, Henri Boutrit, even my father. There’s a bit of Quixote and Sancho, a bit of Hamm and Clov, a bit of Gloucester and Edgar (or Lear and the Fool) to each of these relationships, and sometimes I wonder: Would I have behaved the same way with these men, if I hadn’t known Jim Barnhill?

One sample of our interaction: Jim was a prodigious storyteller, but not endowed with the world’s most retentive memory.* Over time, I came to hear enough of his stories that on some occasions I became his prompter.

JOB: “I was in summer stock, performing in a play — er — ah — ”

WVM: “The Solid Gold Cadillac?”

JOB: “The Solid Gold Cadillac. And the star was a marvelous actress, named — er — ah — ”

WVM: “Josephine Hull?”

JOB: “Josephine Hull, who was so marvelous in the movie, Harvey, with Jimmy Stewart. But in the play, she couldn’t remember her — er — ah — ”

WVM: “Lines?”

JOB: “Lines. So she wrote her lines all over the stage — on the blotter on her desk — even on the inside of her — er — ah — ”

WVM: “Brassiere?”

JOB: “Brassiere! Heh-heh-heh.”

I may exaggerate a bit — though not much, and that is precisely one of the stories in question. Later, with other friends, particularly with Dan Rather, this model of reciter and prompter was adhered to slavishly. Jim trained me well.

Good-looking as a young man, he grew into a face that was meant to be caricatured, with a creased nose, a curling lower lip, and a brooding brow. The artist best able to do him justice, I think, was Sir John Tenniel, and flipping through the Alice books, you will see bits of him in the Carpenter’s face and in the White Knight’s hair, and sometimes even in the Duchess’ scowl. He had a richly resonant voice, with impeccably precise diction; and memorably eccentric gestures that could be Buddhic (“And buh-ghee, and buh-goo,” as Tom Dunlop translated it) or benedictory (“Press on!”) or both, palms upraised to his destiny.

This made him an irresistible target for mimics — and in acting class, each and every student is by nature and design a mimic. Literally hundreds, probably thousands of Brunonians can “do” Jim Barnhill, and the secret to our success lies most especially in our utter conviction that, when we imitate him, we look like him, too.

And we may be right. Years after leaving Brown, I discovered that a colleague at CBS News had studied with Jim. Instantly, she and I began to perform “Duelling Barnhills” — until somebody called security. What was charming in Jim could be alarming in others.**

Jim was a pretty good mimic himself, and one of his favorite subjects was Ben Brown, who launched the acting program at Brown (yes, there’s a relation) and divorced it from the English Department. Jim’s favorite story was of the time a Providence doyenne crossed swords with Ben. “Who does Laura Sharp think she is?” Jim/Ben roared in orotund indignation. “Everyone knows the Sharps were the Browns’ indentured servants!”


He was, I admit, a bit of a ham. I’ve never seen anyone happier to be onstage than Jim, singing Bunthorne’s song from Patience at the end of a rehearsal, his little gift to the rest of us. I’d come to realize, years earlier, that theater was a form of worship, from its origins as a religious rite. Bruce Donovan stressed that the Ancient Greeks sang their tragedies, and I instantly recognized that opera must therefore be the truest form of theater, and the holiest ritual. But Jim Barnhill showed me that even spoken theater offers ecstasies and epiphanies.

His frequent exhortations, “More! Bigger!” were not, as I came to understand, merely stage directions. They were exultations and prayers, expressions of Jim’s philosophy, the best advice he could give us for leading happy lives.

He could be a wonderful mentor, and when it was announced that he would direct a mainstage production of Bernstein’s Candide, I went to him immediately, months in advance. I told him I wanted to be involved, but that I knew I’d never be cast in the show.

“What makes you say that?” he asked.

“It’s an operetta. And I can’t sing.”

“Oh,” said Jim thoughtfully. “Well, you never know. There might be a part for you — ”

I cut him off. “I’d like to be your stage manager,” I said.

And Jim’s face was instantly transformed. He’d been struggling to be polite, but this idea made perfect sense. I was hired on the spot, and the skills I acquired backstage during Candide gave me the skills I needed — not so much technical as interpersonal — when I worked on Rags and even today, when I hang out with actors and singers. Stage management wasn’t a career path, but it led to a consistently rewarding part of my life, and largely because Jim Barnhill gave me a chance.

It must be said that not all of Jim’s qualities were sterling, though one could sometimes defend them. He was exceedingly impressed by students who already had connections in Hollywood and on Broadway. This was insulting to the rest of us, and yet it was only right, because those kids had an undeniable advantage.

Life is not fair — why should acting class be fair?

Jim let us savage each other after scene work, offering “criticism” that cut deep. He’d let us go on wounding each other for brutal quarter-hours before stopping us. (In one of the mildest of these episodes, Sasha Zieff complained of my monologue, “It’s like you’re masturbating up there.” Regrettably, though I had the rejoinder at the ready, I didn’t answer, “Better with myself than with you.” Jim didn’t intervene.)

And yet a working actor has to endure far worse.

Sometimes his suggestions for scene work were impenetrable. After two students performed an impressionistic scene of writhing and wordless groaning and shrieking, ostensibly derived from Dante’s Inferno, Jim questioned the choices. “There was lots of ‘Eeeeeee’ and ‘Aaaaaaaarrggh,’” he conceded, “but where was this sound: K-k-k-k-k-k-k?”

Why would a tormented soul in Hell say “K-k-k-k-k-k-k”? No idea. But in preparing a scene, shouldn’t an actor be open to any and all suggestions?

And he was an excellent dancer, which was not objectionable in itself except one night at a party, when he began to jitterbug with my girlfriend. Not jitterbugging in quotation marks, not a simulacrum of the form or an imitation, but the real deal: they knew what they were doing. Melia is an infinitely better dancer than I, but she had the courtesy to restrain herself when we danced together, so that I didn’t look like an idiot. With Jim, she could really cut loose.

They were gorgeous together. Their bodies understood each other, and time stopped. Jim was young and handsome, and Melia the child of art and history. Meanwhile, totally emasculated, I could only watch the son of a bitch do with my girlfriend what I could never do.

The lesson here? Well, without an audience, there is no theater.

And thus, in a roundabout way, Jim’s class and Jim himself taught us plenty. Sometimes practical skills, sometimes professional. Most, though, were life lessons, drawn from the dramatic conflict of a play, or from an anecdote he told, or from a newspaper article he shared with me over coffee in the Blue Room, or from the infuriating way he made it perfectly clear that, in 25 years, he would recognize Jared Seide but not me. If I see Jim in Providence at Reunion this week, I’m confident he will not remember anything about me.*

But it doesn’t matter, really. Jim did his job already.

One night in the lobby at Faunce House, someone pointed out to me the woman whom Jim had followed to Providence. At least, that’s who we believed her to be. She seemed pretty enough, yet rather dull. Perhaps all those years of marriage to another man had sapped her of her more seductive qualities. Perhaps Jim saw in her that which we could not see. Or perhaps no one on earth could embody, to our satisfaction, the irresistible force that had driven Jim Barnhill to change so many lives — beginning with his own.

*UPDATE: Either I have done Jim an intolerable injustice, or his memory has improved immeasurably during the intervening 25 years. I discovered him this weekend at Brown, and although he has taught generations of actors, he did indeed remember little ol’ me. He is fit and active, and already quite fully aware of any bit of news I tried to share with him: he was fully up-to-date on the current activities of Andy Weems, Melia Bensussen, and Merrill Gruver, for example. I was reminded of Sillery, the Oxford professor in Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time, whose intelligence (in the espionage sense of the word) is flawless, and whose influence extends far beyond the classroom and into every level of English society and politics. We are all Jim Barnhill’s students — we are all taking his direction — whether or not you knew it before now.

**We were even more alarmed when we realized that others might be imitating us. The best Barnhill imitator, hands-down, was Andy Weems. While in graduate school at the University of California at San Diego, Andy taught acting; he’s pretty certain that among his students was Andrew Cunanan, soon to gain fame as a serial killer. We realized with a shock that as an acting student, Cunanan must unquestionably have done an Andy Weems imitation. What is not known is whether Cunanan imitated Andy Weems imitating Jim Barnhill.

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