Lift Up Your Hearts!

Remember the story of the guy who got in trouble for (correctly) using the word "niggardly"?

Porter's boss once called him on the carpet for "using words I don't understand."

Now Missouri legislators are up in arms because their vocabularies failed them.  They passed a bill legalizing lay midwifery because they didn't realize what "tocology" means.

I suppose I ought to have some sympathy for them.  The legislation was attached to a popular health insurance bill, which was no doubt long and complicated, like most legal documents these days.  I fully admit that software companies could slip the most outrageous provisions into the EULA's I regularly "sign" after skimming, rather than closely analyzing, them.  On the other hand, knowing what legislation they are passing is their job, it's why they were elected, so if they don't personally know exactly what's in a bill, they had better have hired some trustworthy staff members to know and to keep them informed.

I happen to approve of the pro-midwifery legislation.  But if I didn't, and if these were my senators, I would not be directing my anger at Senator Loudon, who introduced the legislation and took advantage of his colleagues' ignorance, but at the ones who obviously aren't doing their jobs.

The most fun part of the story, however, is behind the scenes.  In yet another example of how the media routinely mess up the details even when they get the general story correct, use of the word "tocology" is credited to a homeschooled teen with a "college test prep guide."  Almost right, but the source of her knowledge of the word was good old A.Word.A.Day, to which my father, a great lover of words, instroduced many of us.  Here's what the girl herself has to say (from an A.W.A.D mailing):

My name is Sarah Greek, and I'm a homeschooled student in Mountain Grove,
Missouri, who just graduated from high school. I'm a subscriber of AWAD
and just read your latest email and its reference to 'tocological trickery'
with interest.  [see reference]

"If only they were reading AWAD"? We were. That's how this happened!

I live in Missouri, and have been working with Senator Loudon and
others on midwifery legislation all year. You might be interested to
know that I discovered the word 'tocological' as a result of your
daily emails. When we were working on midwifery legislation several
weeks ago, I remembered the word and informed Senator Loudon. We
inserted it into our amendment, resulting in the events that the news
article which you referenced narrates.

The whole situation, especially the word tocology, has been all over the
Missouri news this week. I spent the week in Jefferson City, and can
personally attest to the fact that the word tocology has been in the
mouths of nearly every politician all week. It's become the latest inside
joke in the Missouri Legislature. I've been called 'a tocological pain'.  :) 

Thanks to AWAD, midwifery is well on its way to becoming legal in
Missouri, and the whole state has added a new word to its vocabulary!

Among the more bizarre stories of the day, here's a study that claims to be able to predict your child's future SAT performance based on the relative lengths of his fingers.  Those whose ring fingers are longer compared with their index fingers are statistically likely to do better on the math portion, and those with the reverse situation to do better on the verbal.  This supposedly reflects prenatal testosterone/estrogen exposure.

It's a lot harder to measure finger length than I thought.  I finally settled on measuring from the knuckle, and it seems my ring finger is a bit longer than my index.  It's true, I did very well on the math portion of the SAT.  But I did even better on the verbal, so I must have measured wrong.  :)

The researchers plan to expand their studies into "other cognitive and behavioral issues, such as technophobia, career paths and possibly dyslexia."

We have been blessed with a surprising number of very bright friends, their talents ranging from math to music, from business to origami, from computing to law.  It was with the last that we had a disturbing conversation recently.  The conversation itself was delightful; what we learned from it was not.

To begin, the background.  Most of my readers are familiar with the following story, which I told several years ago in our family newsletter.  But for the benefit of the one or two who meander over here from random places, I'll reproduce it here, sufficiently altered to protect the innocent and the guilty alike.

At the time these events occurred, our friend Curt was a junior at Swansea High School.  He was a top-notch student (he would later be valedictorian), a phenomenal musician, and as clean-cut as a teenage boy gets:  no body piercings nor tattoos, short hair—but not too short—typically wearing neat, khaki shorts and a white polo shirt.  His family was comfortably upper-middle-class.  Both parents were professionals; his father employed full-time, his mother part-time.

Curt was taking a course in biotechnology at his school; as part of the class he often left school early to do research for the Scopes Cancer Institute, sometimes at home, sometimes at the Institute itself.

One day, Curt was riding his bicycle home as usual, and had made it into his own neighborhood, when suddenly he was stopped by a police car.  The policemen asked him what he was doing out of school, and, when he explained, they responded, “Do you expect us to believe that?”  He told them that if they would call Dr. Hedges, his teacher, he would confirm the story.  Curt never heard the phone call directly, as it was made from headquarters; what apparently happened was that they did not speak with his teacher, but called the school attendance office, which only confirmed that Curt was a student at the school who should have been in attendence that day.  The word came back from headquarters to the policemen:  he’s supposed to be in school.

Curt was frisked, and his backpack searched.  He was allowed to ride his bike home, followed by the policemen.  One of them held onto the the front door of his house (“so you can’t sneak out the back”) while he put his bike in the hallway—he wasn’t allowed to take it to the garage.  Then he was put in the police car and taken to the Swansea County Juvenile Assessment Center (JAC).  There, he was interrogated.  (“Do you have any tattoos?” was one of the pointless, insulting questions.)  Curt is brilliant, but not quick of speech, and his slow responses apparently infuriated the officers.  When Curt said, at one point, “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you,”  the officer yelled, “You’d BETTER hear me!”

Finally, Curt’s mother was contacted.  (The message she received at her workplace was, “Did you get the strange phone call from the police about your son?”  It took ten years off her life, she said.)  She called the school and spoke to Dr. Hedges, who then called the JAC.  Curt's parents immediately left work.  At the JAC they found Curt sitting between two very scruffy-looking boys, with a police officer, arms crossed, glaring at them.  By this time, Dr. Hedges had succeeded in convincing the police of the truth, so he was able to go home.  All's well that ends well?

Not quite.  Curt was a shy child, and this incident shattered both his trust in general and his respect for the police.  One absolutely innocent child abused and terrified, his parents pulled out of work, scared to death—and needless to say, Curt’s cancer research did not make any progress that day.  For what purpose?  According to the county sheriff, the purpose was to prevent crime.  Teenaged boys who are not in school are likely to be commiting crimes, so we stop them before they have a chance to do so.

Does anyone else find that as chilling as I do?  And what if Curt had had long hair, or an earring, or parents who couldn’t be reached, or didn’t care, or were too poor to make a fuss—and was still just as innocent.  Would he have fared still worse?

So that's the story.  Nothing in the intervening years has lessened my belief that the police—and the sheriff—were wrong, wrong, wrong in their attitudes and actions.  Curt was not threatening, he was not running away, he was doing nothing wrong whatsoever, not even anything suspicious.  But here's what I learned in the conversation with our legal friend.  Curt did absolutely nothing wrong—but neither did the police.  All the police need to arrest someone is probable cause, a reasonable belief that a crime has been committed.  There are truancy laws in the state of Florida, and—despite private schools on different schedules, and the legality of homeschooling—the fact that public school students are expected to be inside a school building during certain hours provides probable cause for believing that a teenager riding his bike toward home during those hours is truant, and is therefore committing a crime.  Especially if the school tells the police what they expect to hear instead of the whole story.  The fact that the crimes the sheriff was hoping to prevent were more serious than truancy, and that there was absolutely no probable cause to suspect Curt of any of them, does not change the legality of the situation.

It probably falls into the same category as one of the more absurd motor vehicle laws that were on the books in Pennsylvania when I was studying to get my driver's license:  the speed limit through all intersections was 15 miles per hour.  No one expected it to be enforced, but it was there, and the police could use it as an excuse for stopping someone if they wanted to check the car or driver for some other reason.

I still believe the police were morally wrong in their actions—though I admit my views are biased by my belief that truancy laws themselves are wrong—and especially in the way they treated Curt.  But when a hot-shot attorney who knows criminal law and correct police procedure inside and out tells you that such actions are legal, and not only in Florida, it's smarter to listen and act than to argue.  Even in these days when homeschooling is widespread and well accepted, if my homeschooled child were in a position to be alone in public outside of public school hours, I'd be sure to equip him with a letter, on our school letterhead (thanks be to computers and printers!) explaining that he is not truant.  Not that a policeman who would respond to a reasonable explanation with "Do you expect us to believe that?" would necessarily believe a letter (they know about computers and printers, too), but it might help.  And in fact such a letter did help Janet at one point.  She wasn't in danger of being hauled off to jail, but being forced to miss this particular math class would have been unpleasant enough….

(Memo to self:  When discussing a subject dear to your heart, test your arguments on Janet's unrelenting logic before subjecting them to one of the most brilliant legal minds in the state of Florida.  Better yet, don't argue at all until you can do it dispassionately.)

This just in:  middle-aged men have no business stopping to chat with young people.  After all, the young and their elders have nothing in common, right?  No reason to talk to someone who is so different from you.  Certainly no reason to smile and speak to a stranger passing on the street.  Even if you both have dogs.

Here's the story.

The 43-year-old man was the subject of a police "be on the lookout" memo because two children said he spoke to them while they were walking their dogs. Police said no criminal activity had been reported.

I don't blame the police for being cautious.  Maybe the kids had been overly hyped to "stranger danger" by well-meaning parents and teachers.  Maybe they truly sensed something wrong.  In any case, I'm glad the police took them seriously.

If you read the article, you know that this is not the main thrust of the story.  What happened next was that someone obtained the man's personal, identifying information, and e-mailed it all around the neighborhood, with the implication that he was a child molester.

The primary concern seems to be that the information was released illegally, which is certainly a problem.  But I'm more concerned, overall, by the attitude revealed here that he had no business talking to the kids.  Believe me, as a parent I understand the terrible fears, but in defending ourselves against one horror, we musn't lose sight of the cost.  "If we can save just one child/woman/person from [insert particular horror here], it will be worth it," is often flung out like a banner, with little thought given to just what "it" is that we are sacrificing.  In a world where lost children hide from adults instead of seeking help, and where kindergarten teachers are afraid to hug their students, we must at least consider the question of how many children we hurt in our efforts to help others.

Then there's the bedrock of our legal system, the idea that one is innocent until proven guilty.  Frightening as the circumstances may be, this must apply to possible child molestors just as much as to possible murderers, shoplifters, and tax evaders, to Americans with possible connections to terrorists, and to Americans of Japanese descent during World War II, or it means nothing at all.  Note that if this man turns out to be other than the completely innocent person he appears to be, it does not change my argument.

Melissa Busekros, the German teen kidnapped from her family by government authorities because she was being homeschooled (see my previous posts here and here) has given herself a birthday present.  On the day she turned 16, she ran away from her foster care situation and returned to her family.  The response of the authorities remains to be seen, but having turned 16 gives her more legal rights, so there is hope she will be allowed to stay.

My friends and family know how unobservant I can be.  When I'm focused on one thing, all else recedes to near invisibility.  At the grocery store I can pass a good friend without knowing he is there, because, well, I'm looking for food, not friends.  Advertising is more or less wasted on me; in a newspaper, magazine, or online I simply do not see the ads on the periphery of what I am reading.

However, that's no excuse for reading stories of the Virginia Tech tragedy and letting slide the oft-repeated comment that this was "the worst mass murder in U. S. history."  (Thanks to Tim at Random Observations for opening my eyes.)  I tend to ignore hyperbole as I ignore advertising, but this should have whacked me over the head.

I'm not belittling the tragedy; for those whose loved ones were killed it makes little difference how many others died.  Death is strikingly individual.  But I am more than annoyed at reporting inaccuracies and their mindless replication.  The death toll at Virginia Tech is not much more than one percent of that of the 9/11 attacks—less than six years later and the media have already forgotten?  What about the Oklahoma City bombing?  An obvious counterexample from 'way back in the early days of our country would be certain Indian attacks, not to mention slaughters of the Native Americans themselves, which killed more people in absolute numbers and even more dramatically when considered as a percentage of the population.  Limiting the field to school deaths, and adding "in modern times" does not help, since the Bath School bombing killed 45 people in 1927.  I'm ready to be corrected, but I think one can safely go with "the worst mass school shooting in America."  Bad enough, certainly, but far from the original headlines.

I've been around over half a century, and every single time I've seen a media report (print or TV) about a subject I knew personally, it has been inaccurate. Usually—though not always—the errors were only minor ones, introduced by a reporter who lacked either the time or the inclination to truly understand the story. Or, to give the reporters their due, it might have been equally clueless editors who fouled up the story. In any case, accuracy is sacrificed to expediency: there are deadlines, and most people won't notice or care as long as we get the general flavor of the story correct. 

These days, when the line between news story and editorial is blurred to nonexistence, even the general flavor is likely to be wrong. And our broad and high-speed communications network ensures the near-instant propagation of these errors all over the world.

Many of the news reports of Isaac's birth and death had the dates wrong, and at least one had him born in Philadelphia instead of Pittsburgh.  It can be argued that these are details that do not change the truth of the story.  (As a genealogist, however, I am reminded that the old newspapers from which I garner vital records information on my ancestors may be equally inaccurate, and for this purpose the details are the story.)  Nonetheless, the question looms large:  If I cannot trust a report in the small things, what confidence can I have in its major points?  (He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.)

The only solution I can see involves many sources, much diligence, and hard work.  Which is why we will continue to accept as truth that which we read and hear, at least if it agrees with what we already think we know.

Joshua T. White, of the Institute for Global Engagment, spent a year in Peshawar, Pakistan, as the guest of the provincial chief minister, a radical Islamist leader. His insights, which he shares in this Christianity Today article, are well worth reading.

Once again, Tim at Random Observations has provided post which I must pass on.  (Warning:  Yes, it's depressing, but worth reading, really.)  First, read his commentary, You're Just Another (Lego) Brick in the Wall... about an after-school program in Seattle, where teachers took over the children's imaginative Lego play and turned it into a chance for socialist indoctrination.  For a more direct view of the teachers' perspective, read their original article, Why We Banned Legos.

To Tim's insightful post I will only add this:  What about the parents?  Where were they when all this was going on?  Were they expecting childcare and maybe some help with math and reading from this afterschool program?  Did they know their children were getting a heavy dose of politics and indoctrination in values—politics and values possibly in direct opposition to the parents' own?  Certainly most parents would have a few issues with this part of the lesson:

[W]e explored questions about how rules are made and enforced, and when they ought to be followed or broken. We aimed to help children see that all rules (including social structures and systems) are made by people with particular perspectives, interests, and experiences that shape their rule-making. And we wanted to encourage them to consider that there are times when rules ought to be questioned or even broken....

The children were between the ages of five and nine, perhaps not the best ages at which to tell them that obeying their parents' rules is optional.  On the other hand, perhaps the teachers will eventually receive due retribution in the form of students who have decided that the school's rules are not worth following.  Alas, it's probably the high school teachers who will bear that cost.

The day care debate would be only of mild interest to me, given that despite my own strong feelings on the matter, I equally strongly believe that circumstances can be complicated and parents are the best ones to make childrearing decisions for their own families—I say it would be only of mild interest were it not for the growing number of people who believe that "free" day care (paid for by taxes, of course) is the hallmark of civilization.

The other reason I present to you this article on the lastest results from the largest and longest-running study of American child care is the final paragraph.

The bad news, for families who avail themselves of day care centers, is that no matter how highly rated the center is, their children are statistically more likely to exhibit disruptive and aggressive behavior, even as late as sixth grade.  The good news is that the effect is small, and as compensation they'll have better vocabularies.

As one might imagine, those for whom any negative news about day care would be as welcome as positive news about smoking were quick to find fault with the study.  I could do so myself, noting that they would likely find even greater differences if they also considered the quality of home care, or the fact that all of the children in the study were consigned to day care centers in the form of school once they reached kindergarten age.  But it was the complaint that the study's measure of day care center quality left out important factors that drew my attention, to wit the last paragraph of the article:

The study did not take into account employee turnover that can have a negative effect on children, said Marci Young of the Center for the Child Care Workforce, which represents day-care workers.

There is no recognition in the article of the lovely irony here, for what is day care but "employee turnover" on a daily basis?

I remember the response, too.

I've written about the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine campaign before.  Now I want to share this excellent article by Gina R. Dalfonzo from Christianity Today, (22 March 07) which begins,

You've probably seen the commercials. Over the last few months, it's been almost impossible not to see them. They parade endlessly across our screens—a multitude of women of all ages, from all backgrounds—and they all have the same urgent message to share: "Tell someone that human papillomavirus causes cervical cancer. Tell someone. Tell someone. Tell someone."

To which I can only respond, "We tried."

Many years ago, members of the Family Research Council, a Christian public policy group in Washington, DC, tried to publicize the connection between HPV and cervical cancer, and the fact that condoms are not an effective protection agains the virus.  They were trashed, bashed, and outshouted by the media and organizations such as Planned Parenthood and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the U.S. (SIECUS), which claimed they were just trying to get people to stop having sex, and anyway the number of people who would actually get cervical cancer from HPV was so small it was not worth worrying about.

The article is quite right, and well worth reading in its entirety.  I remember both the warning and the reaction.

What would be amusing if it weren't so sad is that the same people who once pooh-poohed the HPV-cancer connection are now trumpeting it loudly—but are still bashing the FHC, this time for not jumping on the bandwagon to coerce every girl, not just the small number who would benefit from it, to receive this new and mostly unnecessary vaccine.

In Arizona, the winning team in the kindergarten through sixth grade category of the recent state scholastic chess championship must know that their victory is tainted.

At least I hope so.

The defending champions were not allowed to compete this year, because they are a team of homeschooled students, and this year they were ruled ineligible because they do not all come from the same school.  Well, duh!  It's hard to field a team when your school comprises no more than a handful of students covering a wide age span.

The rule was created, I suppose, to keep teams from being formed across school boundaries, and the one who creates a contest should have the right to set the rules.  However, it does make it clear that the intention is more about promoting schools than about encouraging excellence or chess playing.  Leaving homeschooling out of the question, why shouldn't friends who attend different schools be able to form their own teams and compete?  This isn't Japan, where school is life, and loyalty to one's school a cardinal virtue.

"State Champions" has a hollow ring when you know you've defeated your opponents by legal maneuvering rather than chess prowess. 

Earlier I wrote about Melissa Busekros, the 15-year-old German girl who was taken from her family to a psychiatric ward and thence to foster care because of her desire to be tutored at home in some subjects.  This morning I learned that the five children of a second family have been ordered into state custody by a German court.

The parents reportedly can regain custody of their children only by placing them in public school.

In the order, which was based solely on the parents' decision against sending their children to public school, the family also was told to pay court costs estimated at $4,000.

The judge had concluded that the children were well-educated, but accused the parents of failing to provide their children with an education in a public school. The court noted that one of the daughters expressed the same opinions as her father, showing they have not had the chance to develop "independent" personalities.

The website from which I obtained this news is not the most dispassionate and unbiased of sources, so I would be glad to hear that they have the stories all wrong.  Despite the German consul general's statement that the government "has a legitimate interest in countering the rise of parallel societies that are based on religion or motivated by different world views and in integrating minorities into the population as a whole," I know public school is not the only option in Germany, because Janet's experience tells me that private, Christian schools are legal.  Yet the arguments being brought against these homeschooling families could just as easily be used against private schools, especially sectarian ones.

So what is the truth here?

I remember a Reader's Digest article of long ago (I don't know when, but it's been many years since we subscribed) about Osama bin Laden, which was headlined, "Be afraid of this man; be very afraid."  Like everyone else, I read the article and ignored it, figuring (oh so wrongly) that those whose job was to pay attention to such things were on the ball.  I'm not suggesting a parallel between al Qaeda and the German government here, but this news makes me think of that prescient article.  I fear something very bad is going on, and those who ought to be protecting liberty will only awaken when it is too late.

Will someone who really knows Germany please tell me I'm wrong?

A friend sent me the following YouTube link.  WARNING:  Parts of the video are offensive, and if you go to YouTube and read the comments, many of them are extremely offensive.  Nonetheless, both are part of the point I want to make.  Since my commentary contains some spoilers, you have to click on the "more" link to read it.

My friend headed the link with "This nation's school system has created a nation of morons."  I couldn't agree more with her statement, but the video does nothing to prove it.  Selective editing can show anything, especially when combined with preconceived notions of what you want to prove.

It's the comments that are truly disturbing.  If the film was no doubt edited to show the stupidest responses, I'm pretty sure the comments are a random sample—though the group of people willing to comment on YouTube is not exactly representative of the world's population.  At least I hope not.  The venomous, virulent disgust and hatred they spew—often in the form of extremely foul language—is more disturbing to me than ignorance, though they display that as well.  Not that I've read all the comments, which numbered over 4000 as of this morning; a hundred or so was all I could stomach.

In A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens proclaimed Ignorance most to be feared, "for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased."  Ignorance of facts about the world is bad enough, but ignorance of other peoples and cultures is appalling, and I find that there's as much ignorance of America in other countries as there is of other countries here.

The only hope I see for either side is more and more cultural exchange programs.  And everyone should read Why the Rest Hates the West, too.

A few comments on the questions and answers:   My first reaction to the challenge of naming a country that begins with "U" was "Uganda."  Most people would say our country begins with "A."  I doubt most of the French, which asked what letter their country's name begins with, would respond, "R" ("Republique francaise").  No matter how official "United States" is, and no matter how frustrating it is to Canadians, Mexicans, and South and Central Americans, "America" is too well entrenched as a name for our country for anyone to expect otherwise.  Though I did think "Yugoslavia" was a cute answer.

I also missed the KFC question, though I maintain that "Utah" as an answer is only partly right.  The first franchise may have been in Utah, but Kentucky really deserves credit as its homeland.

And I totally understand the guy who said Germany was part of the Axis of Evil.  He, perhaps more than anyone, shows that our school system has provided Pope's "a little learning."  He remembers "Axis" vaguely from his studies of World War II, and he knows Germany was our enemy then, so....

Or you can substitute "Conservatives" and "Liberals" for a more general application.

This unfair generalization is based on observations I made over thirty years ago, and it still encapsulates much of what I find incomprehensible and wrong about politics.  It frustrates me that those who apparently care little about concerns that are close to my heart (suffering people, the environment, diversity, families, and freedom of choice) tend to promote policies that advance those causes, while those who speak loudly (and often even sincerely) in favor of these good things support actions that are detrimental, often disastrously so.

So when I awoke to a Random Observations post that expresses my concern better than I ever could, I had to share it with you.

Just for you, my dear Northerners, I have run around the house changing the clocks, and will get up unconscionably early tomorrow.  Daylight Saving Time makes little sense in our part of the world, and it seems yet more ridiculous to make the change even earlier this year.

But I do recall that it wasn't so bad to have the time change when we lived up north.  So I'll put up with it for your sakes.  But it does show what part of the country really runs the government, doesn't it?