Clear and Present Danger....

Here is a picture of a Minnesota farmer who was tarred and feathered for speaking out against American involvement in World War I. In Freshman Social Studies, we are wrapping up World War I. During the war years, sedition laws were instituted to prevent people speaking against the war.

"The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that the United States Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree. When a nation is at war, many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that th"eir utterance will not be endured so long as men fight, and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right."

Students have wondered about what limits can be placed on our free speech. For example, is it fine to criticize the war (it is). It is interesting to see how this ruling could be tested in today's internet world.

Regardless, many citizens lost their civil rights in the troubled World War I era--a time when many Americans looked at a European war as their problem and not ours.

Florence Nightingale and the Crimean War

Students in AP European History are learning about the Crimean War, a war that led to the break up of the concert of Europe. Russian designs on the straits of Constantinople were met with a combined force of British, French and Italian troops. The result was a "Vietnam' war of sorts that took men and material. Russia lost over 400,000 men.

The dead were evacuated to the hospital on the Asia side of the Bosporus, at Scutari. There a wealthy Englishwoman, Florence Nightingale, traveled and using new methods of nursing helped to reorganize the hospital and save lives. She was called the lady with the lamp because at night she went from bed to bed comforting the soldiers. A poem was written about her by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, entitled "The Lady with the Lamp."

The wounded from the battle-plain,
In dreary hospitals of pain,
The cheerless corridors,
The cold and stony floors.

Lo! in that house of misery
A lady with a lamp I see
Pass through the glimmering gloom,
And flit from room to room

Pancho Villa and the ladies....

Students in ninth grade are busy learning about America's role in the Age of Imperialism. They spend some times learning about the Mexican revolution and one of its more colorful heroes, José Doroteo Arango Arámbula (5 June 1878 – 20 July 1923) or better known as Pancho Villa.

Pancho Villa is considered by many Mexicans to be a national hero. Mexico, at the time of the revolution, was held in a stranglehold by wealthy hacienda owners, private interests, and a corrupt government. Villa was not a "clean" hero. He engaged in theft and revenge murders. Regardless of the violence he used to achieve his goals, he was also known to be sentimental, charismatic, and extremely appealing to the many women who lived in the villages of Northern Mexico.

Early movies focused on his appeal when they advertised Pancho Villa as being a "revolutionary, bandit, and lover..." It's true that romantic figures often were often soaked in blood. In this case, Pancho Villa had many "wives" in many villages, while he had only one wife, María Luz Corral.

Charlotte Corday and the French Revolution

As the French Revolution unfolded between the years 1789 and 1794, a lot changed in France. Along with political upheaval, the Catholic church was also regulated to the sidelines. Baptism of infants was replaced by a ceremony of dedication. Men wore long pants. Women dressed in simple styles, and even bricks from the former Bastille were sold as doorstops.

This past year, I had the opportunity to re-visit Paris. This time, I was able to see the small soldiers that were played with by the Dauphin (the crown prince) while he was locked in the Temple. Later, he would die from horrific abuse and neglect after his mother, Marie Antoinette was executed.

My favorite person on the French Revolution was a 19 year old girl named Charlotte Corday. She was a royalist who hailed from the Vendee region of France, a region that was deeply Catholic and against the excesses of the revolution. She chose to assassinate Marat, who died holding a list of proposed victims. After stabbing Marat while he lay in his bathtub, she was apprehended and quickly executed. Charlotte Corday remained a favorite subject of many artists. My granddaughter, Charlotte, is named after this French Revolution heroine.

Tally sticks and the House of Parliament

Tally sticks, or Taille sticks were the ancient medieval way that tax collection was done. In England, the sticks were made out of a soft wood, then notched and eventually broken in two after several years of tax collection. One half of the stick was kept by the owner--the other half, by the government.

As modern accounting methods developed in the later 18th and early 19th century, the taille sticks were no longer used. They were stored, however, in an official place. In England, they were stored in the basement of the Parliament building. Talk about a bunch of dry kindling--sticks that were centuries old, were heaped into bags. It was time them were "shredded" or in this case, burned.

In 1834, on 16 October, the responsibility for disposing of the tally sticks fell to Richard Whibley, the Clerk of Works at the Palace. He decided against burning them on a bonfire out in the open, as he feared such an action would upset the neighbours. The decision was made to burn the sticks in the underfloor coal furnaces that heated the House of Lords chamber. The Parliament buildings burned down (they later burned down again, during the London Blitz).

Balthasar Bekker and Superstition

Balthasar Bekker (1634-1698) was a Dutchman who did a great deal to end the terrible witchcraft persecutions that were set alight in Europe, and even Puritan New England, in the years between 1450-1700.

He was thrown out of the ministry for his preaching against religious customs that helped inspire superstition and mistrust.

His best known work was The World Bewitched (1695), in which he examined critically the phenomena generally ascribed to spiritual agency. He attacked the belief in sorcery and possession by the devil. During the witchcraft persecutions, countless victims, mainly elderly women, were killed when they were really showing signs of dementia (Alzheimer's) or other physical maladies. Even men and women with cataracts were seen to be as possessed by the devil.

The book had a sensational effect and was one of the key works of the Enlightenment in Europe. It was almost certainly the most controversial. Bekker became a heroic figure defying the superstition of the age.

Charles Darwin and his daughter....

One of my favorite books is Darwin, his daughter, and Human Evolution by Randall Keynes. He was a great great grandson of Darwin.

Students are learning about Social Darwinism in 20th Century I. Of course, the Robber Barons were accused of using unfair business practices and workplace malpractice to gain profits on the backs of the poor.

However, the Robber Barons called themselves "Captains of Industry." They felt that the money they earned allowed them to increase production, build plants and provide jobs. Both Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller were famous Robber Barons.

Yet, what about Darwin? He died before his ideas were applied to the workplace. He never entered a church after he wrote Origin of the Species. However, years later, his great great grandson found among Darwin's things was a small box filled with mementos from the life of his daughter Annie, who died from a lingering illness at age 10. Darwin's wife worried that he could not draw religious comfort from their tragic loss. This story is the basis of the move Creation made a few years ago.