"Joy and pleasure are as real as pain and sorrow and one must learn what they have to teach. . . ." -- Sean Russell, from Gatherer of Clouds

"If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right." -- Helyn D. Goldenberg

"I love you and I'm not afraid." -- Evanescence, "My Last Breath"

“If I hear ‘not allowed’ much oftener,” said Sam, “I’m going to get angry.” -- J.R.R. Tolkien, from Lord of the Rings

Saturday, March 03, 2018

Today's Must-Read: The Kind of Citizens We Need

Tom Sullivan has a really good post at Hullabaloo on why the survivors of the Parkland shooting are turning into such a major force in the debate over gun control. (And it says something about the pathetic state of America that we have a debate on gun control.) I found his first paragraph more than a little humorous:

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) suggested in a tweet Wednesday, "We claim a Judea-Christian heritage but celebrate arrogance & boasting. & worst of all we have infected the next generation with the same disease." That last barb seemed aimed at students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. They returned to school for the first time Wednesday after a mass shooting on Valentine's Day claimed 17 of their classmates.

First off, Senator NRA's $3 million water boy, your "Judea-Christian" [sic] heritage celebrates arrogance and boasting. Read your Bible.

Sullivan quotes extensively from an article by Dahlia Lithwick that's also a must-read.

Sullivan's conclusion is right on the mark:

What upsets Rubio and the Examiner is that Stoneman Douglas students don't know their places. Schools that are preparing students to serve their country rather than the economy are not fulfilling their mission. Their issue with Stoneman Douglas is it is not turning out sheep.

It seems that despite Betsy DeVos' efforts to turn public schools into trade schools, some kids are getting the kind of education I had. We had art, we had music appreciation classes, we had debate (what they called "speech classes" when I was in high school, where we learned how to actually think about what we were saying), we had literature, we had foreign languages (which were a state requirement). And please note that I didn't go to elite private schools -- I went to public schools in a very Republican (back when that meant something besides "fascist") small town.

And Sullivan's right -- that kind of education does not turn out corporate cogs. It turns out trouble-makers -- you know, people like the founders of this country.

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