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Miscellaneous Rambling

Fr. James Schall offers his insights into the Pope's visit last week. Schall is clearly leary of Pope Francis, including his naivety in economic matters. "Aid to the poor and weak is almost always the justification for modern absolutist states." * * * * * * * A couple of great quotes recently from Catholic Thinker: "There is nothing better or more necessary than love." St. John of the Cross. "Anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity." Thomas Merton. * * * * * * * "Great," obviously, because they indict. * * * * * * * I also saw this great quote at the Mencken Twitter feed: "The idea that school-children are happy is of a piece with the idea that the lobster in the pot is happy." * * * * * * * The quote reminds me of people who claim this country was built on public education. Although I don't consider myself knowledgeable about the history of public education, I think it's fairly uncontested that "the school system remained largely private and unorganized until the 1840s." Link. So the development of European-American society for the first 250 years required virtually no public education. By the late nineteenth century, public education had gained sway, at least in the urban areas, but at that point, America was nearly 300 years old and was rapidly developing due to the efforts of individuals who were not, for the most part, products of public education. And if they were products of public education, it was the education of the one-room schoolhouse, which is hardly the same thing as the monstrosity today known as "middle schools" that were put into place in lieu of K-8 in the 1950s experimentation and the "age grading" pushed by Horace Mann one hundred years earlier. The one-room school house resembles public education today as much as today's federal government resembles the federal government of John Adams.

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