Get on the Bus

By Jacob

November 26, 2006 5:44 PM | Link to this

‘1491’ is a book describing the native American populations before Columbus- purposely named such because that was the year before true Europeon discovery ans settlement.

By Rick

November 26, 2006 10:17 AM | Link to this

Oldprof: What do you mean “read 1491”? That was a year before Columbus discovered America. The fact that Puritans were burning witches a hundred years later is irrelevant to the fact that the Pilgrims prospered once they ditched communalism and based their economy on private property.

By Pete Dixon

November 24, 2006 1:45 PM | Link to this

Pilgrims are one symbol of Thanksgiving because they gave thanks to God for His blessings at this time of the year. So did Abraham Lincoln,”.. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union..” So did FDR, “..For the preservation of our way of life from the threat of destruction; for the unity of spirit which has kept our Nation strong; for our abiding faith in freedom; and for the promise of an enduring peace, we should lift up our hearts in thanksgiving. For the harvest that has sustained us and, in its fullness, brought succor to other peoples; for the bounty of our soil, which has produced the sinews of war for the protection of our liberties; and for a multitude of private blessings, known only in our hearts, we should give united thanks to God. To the end that we may bear more earnest witness to our gratitude to Almighty God, I suggest a nationwide reading of the Holy Scriptures during the period from Thanksgiving Day to Christmas. Let every man of every creed go to his own version of the Scriptures for a renewed and strengthening contact with those eternal truths and majestic principles which have inspired such measure of true greatness as this nation has achieved. NOW, THEREFORE, I, FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, President of the United States of America, in consonance with the joint resolution of the Congress approved December 26, 1941, do hereby proclaim Thursday the twenty-third day of November 1944 a day of national thanksgiving; and I call upon the people of the United States to observe it by bending every effort to hasten the day of final victory and by offering to God our devout gratitude for His goodness to us and to our fellow men..” Thank you, God.

By Oldprof

November 24, 2006 9:19 AM | Link to this

Just to keep the historical record straight, the Puritans were tolerated in England under Elizabeth (at least they were thought less onerous than Papists) but they were still required to support and attend regular services at the Church of England…and some of them were imprisoned and even executed. Even so, England was more pluralistic, religiously, than the early Massachusetts colony. Perhaps the lesson could be how far we have come, and how freedom from others’ religion is a great value.

By Ms. Cornelius

November 23, 2006 10:02 PM | Link to this

Okay, that was kind of amusing. But, first, I would not teach that lesson to third graders. Many Europeans did act that way toward Native Americans, however. Now, to Rick’s second tale. First, the Pilgrims’ “invention” of socialism before Marx was merely a mirroring of the earliest Christian communities (1-3 centuries CE), in which much was held in common. This was based on various passages in the Old Testament, such as Deuteronomy, chapter 4. I don’t think I would classify a joint stock company as “socialism,” either. Third, the Pilgrims were squatters. They were supposed to settle in Virginia, where there would have been “friends” nearby to greet them, and where I would much rather spend November, by the way. They had no legal right even from the Crown to be there— hardly exhibiting respect for property rights. Yes, capitalism was born from the gold that came from the New World— just not exactly on the shore of “America” just yet. And of course it was a wilderness— a loaded term in the imagination of the early 17th century, by the way— which the Pilgrims believed they would develop into a “garden”— also another loaded term. Happy Thanksgiving, Scott!

By Oldprof

November 23, 2006 5:51 PM | Link to this

Rick, that’s a nice expression of your personal interpretation. You have errors in fact. Read “1491” and also consider that any colony that’s based on an intolerant religious pretext is not exactly comparable with “The Farm” in Tennessee in the 1970s. Remember that these fine free market capitalists were embroiled in witch trials in less than a century. Moderate your absolutism.

By Dave

November 23, 2006 11:58 AM | Link to this

The Pilgrims did NOT come to the US to avoid religious persecution. They worried that they MIGHT be persecuted as an oddball sect in England and they found freedom to worship as they pleased in Holland. But after a few years, they saw their kids speaking Dutch. These self-styled “Saints” (something like 43 of the 102 on the Mayflower) were very wealthy and they brought their indentured servants, a handful of guards, etc. with them as they sailed for Virginia. When they found they missed Virginia, they decided to stay the winter in Mass. because it was too late in the season to sail further. After that first horrible winter, many of them went back to Holland to stay. That rarely gets mentioned in classes, either.

By Rick

November 23, 2006 10:33 AM | Link to this

I would teach the truth. Where the Pilgrims settled there was a barren wilderness. What Bill Morgan describes other migrant Europeans, not the Pilgrims. The Real Story of Thanksgiving: But this was no pleasure cruise, friends. The journey to the New World was a long and arduous one. And when the Pilgrims landed in New England in November 1620, they found, according to Bradford’s detailed journal, a cold, barren, desolate wilderness, destined to become the home of the Kennedy family. There were no friends to greet them. There were no houses to shelter them. There were no inns where they could refresh themselves. And the sacrifice they had made for freedom was just beginning. During the first winter, half the Pilgrims – including Bradford’s own wife – died of either starvation, sickness or exposure. When spring finally came, Indians taught the settlers how to plant corn, fish for cod and skin beavers for coats. Yes, it was Indians that taught the white man how to skin beasts. Life improved for the Pilgrims, but they did not yet prosper! This is important to understand because this is where modern American history lessons often end. Thanksgiving is actually explained in some textbooks as a holiday for which the Pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians for saving their lives, rather than as a devout expression of gratitude grounded in the tradition of both the Old and New Testaments. Here is the part [of Thanksgiving] that has been omitted: The original contract the Pilgrims had entered into with their merchant-sponsors in London called for everything they produced to go into a common store, and each member of the community was entitled to one common share. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belong to the community as well. They were going to distribute it equally. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belonged to the community as well. Nobody owned anything. They just had a share in it. It was a commune, folks. It was the forerunner to the communes we saw in the ’60s and ’70s out in California. Bradford, who had become the new governor of the colony, recognized that this form of collectivism was as costly and destructive to the Pilgrims as that first harsh winter, which had taken so many lives. He decided to take bold action. Bradford assigned a plot of land to each family to work and manage, thus turning loose the power of the marketplace. That’s right. Long before Karl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had discovered and experimented with what could only be described as socialism. And what happened? It didn’t work! What Bradford and his community found was that the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than anyone else, unless they could utilize the power of personal motivation! But while most of the rest of the world has been experimenting with socialism for well over a hundred years – trying to refine it, perfect it, and re-invent it – the Pilgrims decided early on to scrap it permanently. What Bradford wrote about this social experiment should be in every schoolchild’s history lesson. If it were, we might prevent much needless suffering in the future. ‘”The experience that we had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years…that by taking away property, and bringing community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing – as if they were wiser than God,’ Bradford wrote. ‘For this community [so far as it was] was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense…that was thought injustice.” The Pilgrims found that people could not be expected to do their best work without incentive. So what did Bradford’s community try next? They unharnessed the power of good old free enterprise by invoking the undergirding capitalistic principle of private property. Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work and permitted to market its own crops and products. And what was the result? ‘This had very good success,’ wrote Bradford, “for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.” In no time, the Pilgrims found they had more food than they could eat themselves…. So they set up trading posts and exchanged goods with the Indians. The profits allowed them to pay off their debts to the merchants in London. And the success and prosperity of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans and began what came to be known as the ‘Great Puritan Migration.’ Now, other than on this program every year, have you heard this story before? Is this lesson being taught to your kids today — and if it isn’t, why not? Can you think of a more important lesson one could derive from the pilgrim experience? So in essence there was, thanks to the Indians, because they taught us how to skin beavers and how to plant corn when we arrived, but the real Thanksgiving was thanking the Lord for guidance and plenty — and once they reformed their system and got rid of the communal bottle and started what was essentially free market capitalism, they produced more than they could possibly consume, and they invited the Indians to dinner, and voila, we got Thanksgiving, and that’s what it was: inviting the Indians to dinner and giving thanks for all the plenty is the true story of Thanksgiving. The last two-thirds of this story simply are not told. .

By Oldprof

November 23, 2006 8:14 AM | Link to this

Ah, the old conundrum: so much history to teach, so little time. Mr. Morgan is of questionable competence as a third-grade teacher because children, at that age, do not have the necessary level of mental development to be able to deal with historical irony. Yes, much of history is whitewashed: our Pilgrim ancestors fled religious persecution in order to establish religious persecution of their own stripe; yes, all through history one population routinely moved in and took over from another. College-level history courses can explore those nettling details; in elementary school (and probably not until the later grades there) students are capable of the basic timeline of history—when were the great wars, the major migrations, the foremost human achievements. If I were in Bill Morgan’s shoes (and costume), I’d quit teaching and get a job as an actor, preferably with the Bread & Puppet theatre company, where indulging in didactic drama would be part of the job description.

By Mark

November 23, 2006 1:49 AM | Link to this

I just came across your article “Death to cursive writing” via a link from a Wikipedia article. Even though it has been 9 months since the article was published, I wanted to add a comment. Like you, I am left-handed. In my case, I was taught cursive handwriting in Catholic school in the early ‘60’s. Unlike you and (apparently) every other person who posted a comment to that article, I LOVE to write in cursive! Although I do plenty of keyboarding now, for real speed and efficiency, nothing for me beats cursive handwriting. Just give me a Sheaffer fountain pen or a liquid-ink rollerball pen, and a spiral notepad (with the spirals on top), and I’m in heaven. (I rotate the notepad so that the spirals are on the bottom edge, so they are never in the way.) I can comfortably write away for hours like this, and I did so through high school, college and graduate school. And no one who has ever received a hand-written note from me has ever reported any difficulty in reading my script. I never learned to touch-type, because when I was in high school, my father told me it wasn’t necessary, because there would always be someone wherever I worked that would do any typing that I would need, i.e., a secretarial pool. (Yeah, right! - this was long before the age of personal computers.) Through college, graduate school, and my working career, I have always typed using a relatively slow (about 20 wpm, tops) four-fingered method of hunt and peck, with lots (and lots!) of backtracking to fix errors. But whenever I have needed to capture information quickly, cursive writing has always worked fine for me. Even now, entering this comment on the computer has taken me more than 5 minutes. With pen in hand, using my cursive writing, I could have written the same amount of text out on a notepad, quite legibly, in about a minute or less.