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Grammar-stage history of colonialization: a few principles.

I wrote a little bit here about trying to vet potential American History "living book" read-alouds for cultural bias.  I didn't do the difficulty much justice.  It is hard to find anything that doesn't have objectionable content of one kind or another.  And what are the criteria anyway?  Is the most important thing to counter stereotypes, or to put them in context?  Ought we to omit books' errors from our read-alouds, or explain them?  Is the very most important thing to keep the discussion age-appropriate?  Or does that risk leaving out complexities entirely?  Should we stick to "the facts?"  Or should we discuss the rightness and wrongness of how people treated each other?

Yesterday, Hannah and I -- who approached the difficulty in very different and to us, unsatisfying, ways to begin with -- came up with some ideas. The conversation started when I tossed a couple of books at her -- here, do you think these are salvageable? -- while she was nursing Hazel.  We continued it in bits and pieces over four hours between schooling the kids, solving fights and making dinner (try that in a two-hour playdate!)  We debated, argued, picked up books and quoted passages to each other, theorized, offered suggestions, tried them out, and junked them. 

Here's what we came up with:

(1) This is the "grammar stage."  Avoid a level of discussion that's proper to the dialectic or the rhetoric.   In other words, the emphasis is on objective facts:  What was life like back then?  What happened first, this or that?  What did this person do to that person, and what was the result?

(2)  That doesn't mean that our discussion is devoid of morality.  Morality is impossible to avoid in interculture contact!  It does require sticking to a grammar-stage treatment of right and wrong.  That is, an objective, black-and-white sort of treatment.    In my house, that means we use language of right and wrong, virtue and sin.   When I read, for example, the following passage from Story of the World (II):

...Cortes heard rumors that over on the mainland of Central America, a fantastically wealthy king ruled over a city with streets made of gold and walls made of jewels.  So Cortes collected a band of soldiers to go with him, loaded Spanish warhorses onto a ship, and sailed to the coast of Central America.

... I can follow it up with "What was Cortes planning to do with those soldiers?," elicit the response "Take the king's gold by force," and then ask, "Is it wrong to force people to give up their stuff to you?  What do we call that?" 

(3) Avoid higher-level discussions appropriate to the later stages of dialectic and rhetoric.   In the grammar stage, it's important (because interesting and true) to learn about people's different belief systems, but it's not appropriate to analyze how different belief systems might mitigate the rights and wrongs they do each other.   This is high-school age and college-age thinking.  We will get around to this eventually, but not yet.  So, for example, we're not going to suggest that Cortes's cultural background or the Aztecs' brutality excuses him for thinking he had a right to the (imaginary) king's gold.   And we're not going to say "In the cultural context of Aztec spirituality, it was good to sacrifice people."    Taking other people's stuff is wrong.   Human sacrifice is wrong too.  Third graders can understand this.   Sometimes we can say, "They didn't know any better."  But that's about as far as we can go to mitigate it.

(4) Pre-read the material with a pencil in hand.  Use it to mark spots where you'll plan to pause and ask leading questions.  Also, as you're reading aloud, you will want to make word substitutions or skip sentences or phrases.    What to skip?  Read on...

(5) First, cross out all the outright falsehoods.   Then, cross out everything that's not about actions, accurate descriptions, or information levels.  All else is probably speculation.  A little interior thought or reaction is okay to keep the story going, but it has to be plausibly, fully human.  If what's left makes a coherent narrative, congratulations!  You can read it.  Otherwise, toss the book and find another one. 

For example, continuing the passage from SOTW, my comments in brackets...

When his ship anchored, the tribes who lived near the water came out to see who these new visitors were.  [Plausible.]  But when Cortes and his men unloaded their horses from their ships and rode them ashore, the Indians people scattered in terror.  They had never seen horses before.  [Plausible and understandable; my kids were scared the first time they saw a horse too.]  They thought each rider was a huge monster with six feet, two arms and two heads.   [Implausible.  Makes the natives sound like imbeciles.  And it's not as if there aren't any four-legged pack animals native to Central America.] 

These Indians spread the word all through the mainland:  "Monsters are coming!  Perhaps they are the gods!"  [Implausible.  Natives who had actually seen a bunch of scurvy-ridden Spaniards would probably not think this.  More in the next graf.] And Cortes and his men plunged into the Central American jungles, searching for the city of gold...

..."The visitors are approaching!" they warned.  And they described Cortes, his men, and their armor.  The king of the Aztecs, Montezuma, listened to these descriptions carefully.  He wondered:  Could this be the god Quetzalcoatl, on his way back to Tenochtitlan?  Ancient Aztec prophecies said that the god Quetzalcoatl would return...the time was almost up.  Also, the description of Cortes sounded like the carved pictures of Quetzalcoatl on the temple walls.  (By chance, the helmet Cortes wore was shaped like Quetzalcoatl's hat!)  When Montezuma dreamed one night that Quetzalcoatl was approaching... his mind was made up:  The god was on his way.  [Much more plausible and non-derogatory than the earlier "they're gods" thing, since (a) Montezuma has not seen the Spaniards, he's only heard a  second- or third-hand description and (b) the text provides fully human, fleshed-out discussion of his reasoning.]  So when Cortes and his men arrived, Montezuma threw open the city gates and welcomed him in.   

(6) Don't read bad books to fill time.  If you have to treat a subject briefly in order to keep it true, so be it.    If you don't have a good book, what's the point of reading?

(7) Don't forget to read about people who exemplified the virtues of their cultures during interculture contact as well as about people who exemplified the vices.  European values produced gold-hungry Cortes; they also helped produce St. Martin de Porres.   If anything, this throws the cultural bad guys into a worse light, since it proves that "he didn't know better because of his cultural context" isn't much of an excuse.   (Not that you'll discuss this at the grammar stage.)

Other thoughts?

Caucus.

I went to the Republican caucus last night.  My first thought as we approached the building was:  Wow.  So there really are some Republicans in South Minneapolis.  It was packed.  I exaggerate a lot.  This is not exaggeration.  The radio this morning announced that caucus sites were unexpectedly crowded all over the state, and that some of them ran out of chairs and ballots.   Mark and I snorted simultaneously, "Chairs?!?"  The room we were in was standing room only.   

Minnesota's Republican caucus is kind of complicated.  It's a 200-year-old system.  (Here is the best explanation I have found.) I know, I know, the media all reported that Romney won it.  Actually, what Romney won was a straw poll -- it means nothing, nothing, for the delegate count.   Minnesota's delegates to the national convention have not been elected yet.  That comes later, at district and state conventions.

Last night each precinct elected delegate(s) to the district and state conventions.  It's at those conventions that the national delegates will be picked.

The caucus site I attended -- the single packed room -- covered several precincts.  When we got there we had to look for someone who was waving over his head the file folder with our ward/precinct number in it.  (It was hard to see with all the Ron Paul signs.  Only Ron Paul people had signs.)  We fought our way through the crowd until we got there, where the file folder guy turned out to be simply the guy who'd arrived first, a youngish professional-looking man.  Five people from our precinct showed up, including me and Mark.  (Some precincts seemed to have maybe five times as many). 

Mark left with the kids after the straw poll.  They were frightened by the crowd, although Milo was happy to get some Ron Paul stickers.  Only Ron Paul people had stickers.  I stayed.

That left four people in my precinct to pick one delegate.  Also we were supposed to elect a precinct chair, vice chair, secretary, and treasurer.  We sort of looked at each other until one man, an elderly African-American, said, "Oh, come on.  Like this.  I nominate him--" he pointed to the guy with the file folder -- "to be chair.  Do you --" he pointed at me "--second the nomination?"

After that it went pretty quickly.   We elected File Folder Man to be delegate to the district convention.  I would have done it except we're busy that weekend.  File Folder Man says he'll vote for McCain, and that was okay by me and Mark.   A little after we had that all figured out, another voter showed up, a 21-year-old woman with a Canada tee shirt and black-painted fingernails.  She was a Romney supporter.  We said, "We already voted, but if you want to be the delegate for Romney, tell us and we'll discuss."  She shrugged and said she really liked Romney but she didn't want to be the delegate.  So that was settled.  "Wow," she said, looking around.  "I didn't know there were any Republicans around here."

"It's not that, it's that there are a lot of Ron Paul supporters here," said a guy with a sign and some stickers. 

He was partly right.  When the site chair, a young black-haired woman, stood up and announced the straw poll results, it turned out that Ron Paul won it with about a third of the vote.  (The Paul supporters seemed to be concentrated in two or three precincts.)  Still, 2/3 of the people there voted for Romney, McCain, or Huckabee (also 2 write-ins for Barack Obama and one for Condoleeza Rice!) -- it's not just the Ron Paul people.  (And more people came too late to be counted in the straw poll.)  The organizers were astonished at the numbers who showed up.  In past elections as few as six individuals had shown up at the caucus site all together.

The whole thing was kind of crazy and kind of fun.  I was amused that in my precinct, we were four people just sort of dividing up the jobs, while another precinct had maybe thirty people and they were passing resolutions, doing shows-of-hands, all very earnest and well-organized.  Ha!  We still have the same number of delegates as them!

Having caucused, now, I think it's kind of a shame that states are moving to the primary system.  Yeah, it's simpler, it's fair, it's easy to understand, more people can participate... but it's also a lot more impersonal.  The caucus was a rare chance for me to meet people in my neighborhood in person, to talk to them about local and national issues.  I left feeling less disconnected, less alienated, even less cynical (!) about the political process.  No system is perfect, of course, and there's flaws to the "caucus/convention" system.  But I can't help but think it would be a loss to the country if it disappeared.

I'm not giving up blogging for Lent.

Lots of Catholic bloggers do.   Not this year for me, I think.

I do have a plan for Lent, but it's a secret.

If you do away with the yoke,
the clenched fist, the wicked word,
if you give your bread to the hungry,
and relief to the oppressed,

your light will rise in the darkness,
and your shadows become like noon.
The Lord will always guide you,
giving you relief in desert places.

He will give strength to your bones
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water
whose waters never run dry.

You will rebuild the ancient ruins,
build up on the old foundations.
You will be called ‘Breach-mender’,
‘Restorer of ruined houses’.

--- from the Office of Readings for Ash Wednesday:  Isaiah 58:1-12

Neighborhood turnaround.

Commercial real estate developers like Theresa Carr, profiled here in this piece by local columnist Katherine Kersten, can make a difference.  By declining to renew the leases of "problem tenants," and attracting the right mix of businesses, she and her nonprofit team have turned around a whole neighborhood.

I remember hearing this neighborhood called a dangerous part of town.  Now I take my kids there for pancakes.  It's lovely to see a piece on a person who's helped make that change.

Discernment.

I have been thinking some more about the how-close-to-space-kids question.  Regular readers know that this is an area that feels unsettled in my life.   My three children are spaced three years apart, and it works great for our family, and all the unsettledness in my heart is -- ought I to challenge myself more?   Or ought I to go with what I know "works" for our family?  What is God calling me to do? 

* * *

I wrote that paragraph very carefully.  Did you notice what's missing?

Did you notice who is missing?

* * *

Lately I've been reading a lot of discussion about child-spacing.  Lots of excellent, in-depth, personal, deep, from-the-heart discussion, from deep within the archives of various Catholic mom-blogs.   This thread at Danielle Bean's blog is a good sample.

And I noticed something about the discourse at the same time I noticed something about my own family.

I don't write about my husband's point of view in this area.  I have a good reason not to.  I am trying to protect his privacy, and our marital privacy. 

We do talk about our fertility and our next child a great deal.  We talk about how to space the children in our family.  When to have another child.  How many children we think we are likely to have.  What principles guide us.   Where we differ in our philosophy about child spacing.  Where we differ in decision-making.  In concepts of risk and safety and comfort.  Whether we are open "enough."  Whether we are on the right path or not.  We talk about how one of us is inclined to be more conservative in chart-interpretation (and execution) and one less so; and that's not always the same person.  My husband's voice, his perception of a "calling," or a "not-calling," is as important as mine.  It is not my fertility, it is ours.

But you wouldn't know it from a lot of what I write.  It might seem that I only think about myself, my spiritual situation, my calling, what God leads me to, what I can and can't handle.  Because I only write about myself.  But that's because I can't write about my husband's experience without putting words in his mouth or violating his privacy.  I can't even really write honestly about "our" experience, even though (when it comes to fertility) there is nothing but "our" and "us," there really is no "me" that stands alone here.  And so -- I am stuck writing about a shadow, not a reality.  My shadow.  The reality is much greater than the shadow I can write about.  It is two become one. 

But when I write, I am just "one."  I don't think I can write truthfully about family-size decisions.  The Church is very clear that such decisions are between husband, wife, and God.  If I'm only writing about my own spiritual struggles with respect to child-spacing, with respect to any aspect of marital sexuality in fact, you're missing 2/3 of the discourse.  I cannot write well and truthfully about the rest.  I ought not try.

So as I was reading over and over the testimony of many thoughtful individuals, it occurred to me that all of them have the same limitation.  They can't, they ought not, truthfully explain their callings, their decisions, because none belong to an individual; all are rightfully made by a couple working with the Lord.  There is a privacy and an intimacy that mustn't be betrayed.  In an effort to maintain that intimacy, I know that I unconsciously write as if only the individual and God matters.  I see this kind of "me"-ization in other women's comments.  For instance, one commenter writes,

In prayer I really seem to hear God saying that my fertility was given to us by Him and given back to Him by spiritually by me.

And another:

With regard to NFP… I feel called to dismiss it for now...

It's not that women don't choose to write some about their husband's feelings.  In the thread I linked above you can read one mother writing that she and her husband are "of one heart and mind... with respect to having more children." Another writes, "both my husband and I want a baby but we are concerned for my health too."   I believe them.  But these words, the words chosen by these women to represent their husbands, are only representations.  Shadows of something much greater.

I'm not saying this is a problem, that we can't really write about our spouses' hearts.  Thank goodness we can't.

The problem is when we forget that we can't.  The problem is when we (mostly women) read and read and read and read these threads and we start to think that they adequately represent reality.  We start to internalize the idea that it's about me.  We run the risk of the heartfelt discussion, the interpersonal discourse about child-spacing, being between me and these other mothers rather than between me and my husband.  We feel inadequate sometimes.  Inspired other times.  But even being inspired, encouraged, can be a problem, because it's still leaving our spouses out!  My husband is not reading these threads, after all.  Shouldn't our own marriages be the source of the inspiration and the courage?  If we think we aren't getting enough inspiration and courage from our spouse, maybe we're making it worse by seeking it elsewhere?  Especially when what we read is necessarily so limited?

I'm not saying we should stop reading and discussing among ourselves.  Just that we have to be aware of the missing voices, and especially aware because for each of us one of those voices is the voice that we need to listen to most.  And there is another ear that needs most to hear what is coming from our own hearts.

Mental games for a crowd.

Over at xkcd, the game "Ghost" has been solved... but the real treasure is the comment thread:

It’s satisfying to have the tree, but my brother is sad because I ruined our game. Wikipedia suggests a few variants on Ghost. Can anyone suggest any other replacement games playable by voice and memory only?

209 responses and counting.  Some of the games I know already.  I want to try Contact. Also Biverbal Showdown, although I would probably lose because everybody in my social circle knows some word combos that make me laugh for no reason.

ADDED:  Also Goths.  "At this point the game could either go to buckwheats, swashbuckled, or swashbuckling, so by saying T or D player 1 can lock the word onto one of the first two and guarantee a win."

ADDED.  For some reason, the comment thread appears to be heavily populated with current or former high-school quiz-bowl or debate team members.  I can't imagine why this would be.

Diapering days may be coming to an end...

"How old is she?" asked the other toddler's dad, peering in at MJ through the open door of the bathroom just off the music-class studio.  MJ was perched backwards on the toilet, straddling it, and staring intently down into the water, watching.

"Not quite eighteen months."

"You," said the dad, "are one of those parents I hate."

"It was her idea!" I protested.  "If it were up to me, I would have waited for warmer weather!" 

Mary Jane is the second of my babies to become suddenly interested in toileting, all at once.  She wanted to sit on the toilet last week.  It became supremely important that we keep the bathroom doors closed 24-7, as she's not very sure-footed and has fallen in a few times --- I'm afraid she'll go in head first!    Fortunately I managed to convince her that a potty is just as good a place to sit, even if it is a bit less tidy.

The first hurdle has been passed:  if she is allowed to run around the house naked, she will run to a potty when she needs to go.  (The only exception is if she happens to be standing on a stepstool or sitting on a kitchen chair.  It seems the effort of climbing down without falling is too much for her to manage with a full bladder.   Puddles have ensued.)

The second hurdle has been passed:  if she is placed on a toilet, even an unfamiliar one, she will try to eliminate, and often does.  The key here is to put her on backwards (facing the lid).  She's still pretty little and her bottom falls in, but if she's facing backward she can grab onto the back of the seat and keep her balance well.   

The third hurdle has been passed:  She has found a way to tell me "I need to go."  She pronounces it "POE-ee."    She likes sign, too, and a few times she has made the sign for "wet" (which she knows from Signing Time, I guess, because I've never really used it with her much -- or maybe the boys taught her?)  She used to make it only after she wet her diaper, but it's starting to precede the wetting by enough time to serve as a warning.

Hurdle number four is in progress:  At home, getting her to wear underwear, taking it off when (and only when) she needs to eliminate.  She was very happy to get a dozen pairs of panties, and spent a whole day changing from pink ones to blue ones to yellow ones for no apparent reason other than the variety.  There was a bit of a backfire when she refused to wear any other clothes, apparently because they impeded her view of the lovely new panties.  Several days later she was refusing to put them on at all.  She still seems to have mixed feelings about wearing them.

I'm still diapering her when we go out.  If it were spring, it'd be a lot easier, but it's freaking cold out there right now, and it is too much trouble (a) to remove layers and layers of clothing quickly when she communicates a need to go and (b) to deal with a wetting that soaks through several layers of clothes including the snowsuit.

No real reason to bring this up other than a snapshot of life today.

Head of state.

Recently, David Kopel at the Volokh Conspiracy noted:

Like France, but unlike the Ireland or the United Kingdom, the United States combines the job of Head of State and Head of Government into a single person.

...and then went on to praise Barack Obama as a potential Head of State, without taking a position on his fitness as Head of Government. 

It's an important distinction, and one that I wish more people would make, because a lot of Americans appear to be thoroughly confused by the concept that "head of state" and "head of government" are distinct roles (as evidenced by the comments in the thread that followed, e.g., by "Titus Pullo,"  "I find it hard to believe that a poster on this website would get all weak in the knees for Obama. What about principles? Do they mean anything?"  Well, duh, that goes into the "head of government" category.   (Here's Wikipedia on "Head of State.")

I find it more useful to categorize presidents and potential presidents according to three more-or-less independent sets of criteria:

1. fitness as "head of state" 
2. competence as "head of government"
3. morality, justness, and efficacy of policies

"Fitness as head of state" includes such criteria as character, charisma, communication/speechmaking ability, and "embodiment of national values" as Wikipedia puts it; it is important both for the president's ability to lead the nation and for the president's ability to represent the nation to others.  "Competence as head of government" includes criteria such as ability to get bipartisan support, ability to work with people critical of the administration, ability to choose wise advisors and other appointees, experience in the executive position, things like that.  "Morality, justness, and efficacy of policies" is, I think, self-explanatory.

I believe policy to be the most important, followed by governmental competence, followed by fitness as head of state.  I think there's room to disagree about this ranking, especially the latter two; I'm open to arguments that the fulfillment of the symbolic role of the head of state is more deeply and permanently influential than the fulfillment of the executive role as head of government.  And then there's the argument that you want a good executive if and only if the policies are good, and you want an incompetent executive if the policies are bad (so they're less likely to succeed).  I'm not sure I agree on principle, but in terms of realpolitik there's certainly something to that.

(Policy being the most important is often what makes it tricky to decide between two candidates, because it's almost guaranteed that Candidate X is superior on some of the issues and Candidate Y is superior on others.  Candidates are much more easily ranked according to their probable fitness as head of state, which is why -- I think -- so many people make their decision based on an emotional response.  Head of state is largely defined by emotional response.  I reject the easy decision as the right way to decide.)

My position on GWB is that he's proven a poor head of state and a marginal-to-poor head of government.   As for policies?  Overall I'd say "tolerable, and probably more tolerable than what we'd have seen under Gore or Kerry."  Some good, or at least good considering the constraints.  Some, very bad.   Feel free to disagree in the comments.  I know there are still some people around who think he's been a fantastic head of state, and likewise some people around who won't concede he's accomplished anything that isn't totally poisoned. 

Because it's the easy part, here are my impressions on the head of state job alone, and remember this is independent of policy and executive competence:

Among the Democrats: 

Mr. Obama -- I think he'd make an excellent head of state.  Said to be a good and charismatic speechmaker, likable, probably well accepted by other nations as a representative of the U.S.  As a symbol that the U. S. has moved past most of its interracial hatred, very important, perhaps even more important to other nations than to us.   

Mrs. Clinton -- She'd be a terrible head of state, in some ways not directly through her own fault.  Half the country has an emotional reaction to her that is little short of revulsion, much as (mostly the other) half of the country as a similar reaction to GWB now.  Whether that's rational or not, it makes her a bad symbol of the country, unless you think divisiveness is an essential characteristic of the U. S., which I suppose is an arguable point.   And then there's the Dynasty Problem, which we already have in spades thanks to the two Bushes.  We do not want to be a country that appears to pass political power around in dynasties.   And even if you think it would be wonderfully symbolic to have a woman president right now -- is this really the First-Woman-President symbol we want?  She's heavily laden with Bill-baggage of all kinds.

Among the Republicans who are still viable:

Mr. McCain -- Unpredictable, fitting for someone who's constantly described as a "maverick." He might turn out an excellent HOS.  He's not a very good symbol of the Republican Party (lots of division there) but has a track record of getting bipartisan support for stuff, which (though it technically falls under the "competency" heading) means that he has at least grudging respect from both Democrats and Republicans (though not the extreme end of either wing), and you know what?  after all the hating inspired by Presidents Clinton and Bush, a little "grudging respect" would be a step up.    On the other hand, he risks getting everyone to hate him for the same reason.  His former POW status will play into his emotional acceptance when it comes to armed conflicts.  I'm not exactly sure how, though.   A big question mark.

Mr. Romney -- Um, he just looks like an ordinary, run-of-the-mill, smooth politician to me.  Smoothness works in your favor for head of state-ness, as long as it doesn't cross the line into a perception of "slick."  He'd probably be a decent HOS:  no surprises, just sort of ordinary presidential-ness.  Nothing really special, controversial, or inspiring either.  Just your basic POTUS.  (ADDED:  And he has the squarest website, too.  Scare quotes around "BLOG?")