In the News

Today I read in the Hutchinson News that the Kansas State Board of Education declares, in a variance from national standards, that children should learn to write cursive.  Specifically, they should be taught the skill in third grade, and they should be proficient in it by fifth grade.  The latter detail was met with guffaws when I read the short news article out loud to my typing students during break.  Slow learners, if it takes them two years.  I didn't have the heart to point out that, by all appearances, many of the class members haven't learned it very well by ninth grade, despite protestations to the contrary.

I'm proud of Kansas.

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Gene Logsdon, the Contrary Farmer, says in a blog post today that China is busily engaged in clearances, a term he borrowed from a history on the same phenomenon in England and Scotland in the 1800s.  Oliver Goldsmith, in his poem, "The Deserted Village," laments this land grab by wealthy oligarchs, who seized the smallholdings of peasants, combining all of the smaller acreages into huge spreads dominated by formidable  castles, where the landowners resided.

In China, the peasants are being moved from their farms into behemoth high-rise apartment buildings in cities, and the government is taking over the land.  They say "that they are only doing what capitalism did in the United States, only faster and more mercifully."

The Chinese assessment of the situation in America is more accurate than I wish it were.   I am unhappy about the control of land by fewer and fewer individuals, although, so far, it is usually individual-capitalist-owned rather than state-owned. 

I am even more sad about the paucity of interest in "working the  land" by those who have land. Working the land is an act of cooperation with God in provision, and it sets in motion the acquisition of a host of  disciplines and virtues and understandings.  People are diminished without them and enriched with them.  

In my ideal world, almost everyone would have at least a few acres of land on which to produce their own food, and food to sell or share with others.  Am I alone in idealizing this?  If not, what can we do to facilitate interest, at least in our small circles of influence?

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Michael Gerson has written some excellent columns recently, as has Chapman Rackaway (a Kansas teacher who is probably not known outside of Kansas).  Without going back to verify the details, I recall some great comments on the contrast between the converted Catholic Kansas Governor Brownback's economic policies and Pope Francis' comments on capitalism and faith.  I also loved Gerson's and Kathleen Parker's take on the pope's comments and positions, and their observations on Limbaugh's paroxysms on the same subject.  

In my own observations, I see some similarity (minor, perhaps) between Mandela, the South African rebel-turned-statesman-and-peacemaker, and Obama.  Both were from the families of African tribal leaders who  served their tribe in a patriarchal role.  This background gave them some innate gravitas, in my estimation.  Less admirably, neither Mandela or Obama's father were monogamous--or at least they each married and then left several wives.  Thankfully, Obama has not followed in their footsteps in this matter.

Mandela clearly came to peaceable ways later rather than sooner.  He was bettered during his long years in prison, and emerged prepared to lead with forgiveness and generosity.  In dismantling apartheid, he took on as his vice-president the last white man who presided over the insufferable system that had long subjugated black South Africans.  Along the way he became well-loved, and now is esteemed on par with Martin Luther King and Mohandas Ghandi.  Desmond TuTu and Kofi Annan, both fellow-Africans and world leaders, collaborated with Mandela as leaders who inspired others and led with grace and courage. 

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In the span of a few weeks, I have read Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin, read many news items about the life and death of Nelson Mandela, and heard the story of my Mast "cousins" who owned and abused slaves.   All of this constitutes quite a load of reflection on ethnicity, racism, and other such matters.  I really hate what I see of the injustice visited on blacks by whites.  While I'd certainly like to think that I do not look down on African Americans in any way, I am conscious of the tendency of my own heart to deceive me, and I must simply commit myself to be honest, and to agree with God about whatever He sees in my heart and reveals to me.