When their ship from the Netherlands docked in the harbor of New Amsterdam (now New York City) in 1688, Garrett Hendricks DeWeese, and his wife Zytian, could not have known of the historic events that would direct the destiny of their future family. Nor could they have known how those future sons and daughters would be central figures in molding those events. Continue reading
Last night after my nightly broadcast, I went into the kitchen to prepare something to eat and my wife had a movie running on TV that drew me in – and THAT is rare.
I stayed glued to that television for the entire film. From the very beginning – something spoke to me – and if you watch it – it will draw you in as well. As one viewer on You Tube stated, “What a beautiful inspiring movie. I wish all teachers were more like him in this world. I pray many educators are inspired to do/be better after watching this movie.” ~ Editor
“Ron Clark was indeed ‘the white tornado ‘ of inspiration that Harlem Elementary kids needed. He saw their potential & would never give up on them, where others had.”
…and from Adrian: “One of the most difficult and least paid jobs. And all to benefit children an opportunity to develop their skills for the rest of their lives. If only the children and parents respected and understand that the future lies in the hands of themselves.”
…and finally from Laura: What a great movie. All children and parents should be inspired by this true story. It goes to show that when a teacher truly cares about his students not only will the children notice he will earn their respect. No matter what street, what city or nationality you are that if you work hard you can do anything. It doesn’t matter where you came from or how much money the parents have. These parents of these students most likely work more than one job and in doing this just to put food on the table is all the love a child needs. Children want to have a voice but sometimes you have to break through that tough exterior to see who that person is on the inside. A good solid teacher that loves what he or she does can turn a failing child into a passing one.
“Jackson Slaying the Many-Headed Monster,” 1828. Private collection, Peter Newark American Pictures / Bridgeman Art Library
On July l0, 1832, President Andrew Jackson sent a message to the United States Senate. He returned unsigned, with his objections, a bill that extended the charter of the Second Bank of the United States, due to expire in 1836, for another fifteen years. As Jackson drily noted, the bill was presented to him on the Fourth of July, a day freighted with portent.
Today Jackson’s Bank Veto and the political conflagration known as the “Bank War” that it touched off seem arcane and nearly incomprehensible. While misdeeds among the rich and powerful still garner headlines and incite congressional inquiries, the core instruments of our economic system-the network of banks capped by the Federal Reserve; the corporate form of business enterprise; the very dollars in our wallets, issued and guaranteed by the federal government – are utterly taken for granted. That these could have been the subject of controversy, that anyone could seriously contemplate organizing American capitalism differently, seems nearly unthinkable. Andrew Jackson is recalled today, when recalled at all, for other things, primarily as the architect of forced Indian removal. His face on the $20 bill is a mystery to many, an outrage to some, and, to the knowing, a curious irony. Continue reading
I was recently looking through Intellectual Takeout’s archives and once again stumbled upon Annie Holmquist’s article “Middle School Reading Lists 100 Years Ago vs. Today.” Annie’s comparison of how reading lists have changed reveals how students today aren’t held to as high of standards as students 100 years ago, and Annie’s commentary got me curious about how else education has changed through the decades, particularly since America’s founding.
What did the Founding Fathers, many of whom had a homeschool educational upbringing, think about education? And how does American education compare today? Continue reading
(Courtesy of Byrndle Photo via Mandy Davis)
A former school principal who grew frustrated with the school system quit her job and instead chose to homeschool her three kids on a 10-acre (4.05-hectare) homestead. Merging her children’s learning with their land and home, she has created an immersive “real world” educational experience based on her kids’ unique needs. Continue reading
In this speech, delivered in the depths of the Great Depression, presidential candidate Franklin Roosevelt sought to explain the dramatic ideological differences between himself and the Republican President Herbert Hoover, ‘the Great Engineer.’
In this speech Roosevelt attempts to distinguish the role of government as addressing public policy goals, in serving the public good, rather than simply administering some predetermined economic principles handed down by ‘the market’ and a class of professional economists and financiers.
The speech and the candidate were not well received by the media and the movers and the shakers of the day, the very serious and very comfortable people largely untouched by the economic hardship of the collapse of the stock bubble in 1929, who derided it as ‘too Socialist.’
Continue reading
The first settlers arriving in Jamestown (National Park Service)
As the Russian invasion of Ukraine has unfolded over the last few weeks, most Americans have certainly been united in their support for the Ukrainian people and condemnation of Russia’s increasingly brutal attacks and tactics. But one area where there has been significantly less consensus is the question of whether and how the U.S. and its allies should intervene in the conflict. Among the arguments for the U.S. maintaining its distance from this unfolding European war is that this conflict is ultimately unrelated to the United States and that it concerns two foreign nations from whom we would do well to remain isolated.
There are various ways to challenge such isolationist arguments, including highlighting the historic moments when isolationism not only failed to end unfolding world wars, but also led directly to belated and more fraught U.S. involvement in those conflicts.
But there are also stories of early Americans who found their way to the continent from across the globe; these stories contradict any perspective on the U.S. as isolated from seemingly foreign nations like Ukraine. Learning more about the first Ukrainian American and his contributions to a foundational American story helps remind us that America has been profoundly transnational at every stage of its history. Continue reading
What follows is the transcript of the 1920 newspaper clipping. The actual clip is at the end. Continue reading
The story of the Roanoke Colony is one of the most enduring mysteries in American history. In the late 16th century, a group of English settlers established a colony on Roanoke Island, located off the coast of present-day North Carolina. However, when a supply ship returned to the colony in 1590, all its inhabitants had vanished without a trace. This puzzling event has captivated historians and researchers for centuries, with various theories and speculations attempting to unravel the fate of the lost Roanoke Colony. Continue reading
“Would it be possible for government to have credit, without having the power of raising money?”
RICHMOND, Va., June 6, 1788 – James Madison, second only to Thomas Jefferson as architect of the new Federal Constitution, today urged ratification of that document in most compelling terms, as he addressed the Convention of Virginia on the need for a responsible, powerful central government but one to be held in check by a care~y contrived diversification of protections for the individual states.
His speech pointed up the vagaries of arguments mustered against the Constitution since its completion by the Philadelphia Convention a year ago. As he spoke here, the principal argument to be overcome was the fear that Virginia, already having assumed responsibility for its debts incurred in the Revolution, would be made the tax dupe of other and less provident states in future tax laws by the Federal Government. This fear was not unlike the arguments advanced in the New York Convention one year ago, when Alexander Hamilton was attempting to allay similar fears on the part of New York’s vested interests.
Mr. Madison, at 33 years of age, has few of the arts of oratory, but he already has shown by his writings his capacity to muster argument with cogent words, as when he stated, “Direct taxes will only be recurred to for great purposes.”
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Several states across the nation are letting parents have control of school funds to steer their child’s education.
Education is one of the most important aspects of having a functioning society. Good education for everyone seems like a fairly uncontroversial proposal. Unfortunately, we live in a world where not all educational institutions are created equal.
Public schools in the inner cities and rural outer ranges are much worse off than schools in the hearts of thriving suburbs. Private schools are expensive and have the right to choose who they do or don’t accept. Charter schools are largely on a lottery system. Homeschooling comes with tremendous advantages but ultimately is also expensive. Continue reading
Pat Montgomery
The ubiquity and widespread acceptance of homeschooling as a valid educational option for American families can obscure the fact that homeschooling freedoms were hard-fought.
The ubiquity and widespread acceptance of homeschooling as a valid educational option for American families can obscure the fact that homeschooling freedoms were hard-fought.
Homeschooling didn’t become legally recognized in all U.S. states until the 1990s, with families who chose to teach their own children in earlier years often harassed and sometimes criminally charged with truancy. The DeJonge family of Michigan was among them. On a fall day in 1984, the DeJonges were visited at their home by the Michigan Department of Social Services telling them they were breaking the law by homeschooling. A year later, the parents were charged and convicted of educating their children without a state teaching license. Continue reading
On Nov. 19, 1863, at the dedication of the military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, President Abraham Lincoln spoke these words:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. Continue reading
Because of the US Supreme Court, the 14th Amendment’s greatest impact is not the protection of citizens’ rights, though it is cited for that purpose. It is and has been the granting of human rights to corporations – an exercise not founded in the Constitution itself nor in the Amendment itself, nor in any other part of the Constitution. It was an extension of power to corporations that the Court, without any explicit foundation, allowed to be promulgated in a summary of its 1886 decision in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railway by the Court’s reporter. Continue reading
An article on The Gateway Pundit for May 28th provided some information worth noting on what goes on in public schools and who is doing some of it. If you’ve had problems with Target over their “gay” pride merchandise you may find that is only the tip of the iceberg. The Gateway Pundit article tells us: “Retail giant Target has partnered with GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network) for years… GLSEN is a group that provides sexually explicit books to schools, pushes gender identity throughout public school curricula, and advocates policies that keep parents unaware of their child’s in-school gender transition… It was Barack Obama who first pushed sex education to kindergartners back in 2007 – he even pushed sex education to kiddies legislation… the media mostly hid this from the American public.” Sounds like King Barack the first really did have a plan to “fundamentally transform the United States” but he didn’t want the public to grasp just what it was! Continue reading
Teachers often have thankless jobs — at least the teachers who aren’t trying to indoctrinate kids into everything leftist — and many of them leave their jobs out of frustration. So the story of a teacher who stuck it out until she retired at the age of 95 is impressive.
Grace Adkins, whose students affectionately call her “Ms. Grace,” retired from the Westwood School in Camilla, Ga., this month. She recently turned 95, and she taught for at least 75 years. Continue reading
WILMINGTON, N.C. (WTVD) – One of the most important African American leaders of the late 1800s was born in North Carolina, but his accomplishments and influence vanished from history for 100 years.
Abraham Galloway was a spy, an insurgent, a statesman, a fierce advocate of the working class and a warrior against oppression and tyranny. Continue reading
Gold speculators in New York. (image from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, May 7, 1964)
It was May, 1864. Grant was closing in on Lee in Virginia. New Yorkers were growing hopeful that the long, terrible ordeal of the Civil War would soon be over.
But their hopes were dashed when on Wednesday, May 18 they read in two of their morning papers, the New York World and the Journal of Commerce, that President Lincoln had issued a proclamation ordering the conscription of an additional 400,000 men into the Union army on account of “the situation in Virginia, the disaster at Red River, the delay at Charleston, and the general state of the country.” Continue reading
James Monroe (c. 1819) by Samuel Morse (1791-1872)
Whatever his failings as an imaginative thinker, President James Monroe’s own convictions were rooted deeply in the spirit and the letter of the U.S. Constitution. As he entered the White House in March 1817, he had little (well, less) use for James Madison’s newfound love of nationalism. While he entered the presidency too late to stop the Second Bank of the United States from forming, he could and did make sure that the government’s role in creating public works was limited. If the people truly wanted the government building more canals and roads, he thought, they would need to get an amendment to the Constitution passed, as the Constitution of 1787 did not allow for such things, he believed. And, though a Virginian and in sympathy with many of the Old Republican beliefs of John Randolph of Roanoke and John Taylor of Caroline, he was not one of them, and he feared the creation of any parties or factions. Continue reading
In his rousing keynote address at The Heritage Foundation’s 50th anniversary gala last month, then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson offered an unexpected piece of advice: “Don’t throw away your hard-copy books.”
Unlike digitized books, films, and albums that can be canceled, rewritten, or vanished altogether, physical copies are “the enduring repository that cannot be disappeared.” Continue reading