Our home-schooling roots

Montana is still in the throes of a negative sum conflict over home schooling that most states and Canada have solved decades ago. Here both sides lose. Our district loses the average daily attendance count from home schoolers, and this reduces funding. Home schooling parents lose their property tax investment in education for their children, and end up paying double in the time/money crunch.

No one benefits from the current conflict over the home school movement.

Twenty years or more before I first set foot in the one room country school of my childhood, farmers in Mud Creek Valley had organized to end home schooling. Busy farm life of the 1920s meant sporadic schooling, if at all, for the children of rural America. The school was considered an extension of parents' teaching and training in socialization.

I remember starting my first day at Montgomery School in first grade, in the late 40's. There were a dozen others in the school, grades 1 – 8. I looked around, and saw a desk with a name carved in the blond maple surface. It belonged to an 8^th grader named Jimmy, strong and angular, old for his grade. I was shy, and I quickly adopted my hero. I had my trusty pocketknife.

Quietly and carefully, while the two 8th graders were reciting, I carved my name (DaviD) starting with a forward capital D and ending with a backward capital D. I almost got spanked at school, and did get a good tongue lashing at home. No hiding that crime. For every school day the next several years, until I outgrew the desk, I had to face that dyslexic spelling.

Human interaction was integral to our learning environment. We learned reading with older students reading to us, and they practicing their reading. They watched out for younger students' safety on the school sledding hill in winter, and the younger ones learned to trust older ones' judgments.

No one questioned the government's essential role in supporting this alternative to home schooling or no schooling. The government was us--the community working together to build something of value for the next generation--with funds from property taxes. With uniquely human interaction in a mixed age group of a dozen or so students, we had space to build social learning skills.

Over the following decades, the strong bond of ownership between school and family has changed. Schools have grown larger, age stratification has become mandatory, and parent roles in formulating school policy have diminished. Choices of school curriculum, and administration are more likely to come down from state or even federal government than from the local community.

For some parents, the disconnect is enough that they choose to withdraw their children from district enrollment to school them at home. That's where we are now, and everyone loses.

This is not the only solution. Other states are looking at partnerships with mutual benefits. My daughter works for the Delta County School District in Colorado as a science curriculum coordinator in the "Vision School" home-school network, an arm of the district. Parents can choose to register with the school district. If they do, the district reimburses costs for materials they purchase, up to $500, provided the materials do not promote a particular religion. At their discretion, parents can have their children enrolled in extra-curricular activities and participate in standardized tests. Parents can choose and pay with district funds a teacher to serve a group of home-schooled children in particular subject areas. The district provides a building for this service. The district receives state funds for the Vision home school network based on numbers of students enrolled, just as in the regular classroom. Everyone wins.

Both sides should be winning here. We have in Big Horn County the skills and the community support to catch up with Colorado and other states. It's time to brainstorm rationally how we can all win. Marketers are making millions promoting wedge issues that stalemate support for home schooling linking with school districts. Both sides can start examining the distortions and allow truth to win for the good of all the children. Now may be a good time to transform this conflict so the families of Montana have reasons to trust their school districts, whether they home school or not.

Check this web link: http://www.visionhcp.org/

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT 59034

Why kids learn

Enormous attention is paid to how we humans learn.  Less to why we learn.  We learn best when we feel OK.  It's the emotional factor: when we feel safe, secure and respected by those around us, we have the right space in which to learn. This is a foundational truth for our species. 

Things are different in the world of lizards and snakes.   Theirs is a world where it's kill-or-be-killed.  Greed reigns in the lizard world.  But this should be different among humans—we were created to learn to look out for the good of others.

I'm a bit skeptical of Bush's "No Child Left Behind."  This program was mandatory, and well-funded at first, but while it is still mandatory, is no longer funded.

I'm similarly concerned about Obama's "Race to the Top."  Both these well-funded education reform programs diminish the extensive research into how emotional intelligence drives all learning.

Both were set up with prioritizing the "Three Rs" not alluding to the research demonstrating the emotional and cognitive learning is foundational for the "Three Rs,"and neither program paid much attention to emotional and social learning.

Both programs heavily depend on evaluation of instruction through cognitive tests.  This testing projects a vision of the ideal adult: one who can compete financially in the world today.  It's not far removed from lizard brain thinking.  It's even in the rhetoric: learning for survival.

 But education reform should prioritize learning beyond financial success.  Unfortunately the federal government's education department is crammed with people from the business sector.  Education models were shoved aside in the Obama administration's education department to make room for the profit model for education.  I have little hope for long-term results from this emphasis.

While teaching English in China in fall of 2002, I sat in an academic conference on English language instruction in a major Chinese city.  A paper was presented that discussed how students can best learn conversational English skills. They discovered that a sense of safety and security was critical: students learned best in a low stress, socially inclusive, accepting environment.

The same observation applies to Chinese education in all subjects.  For millennia, Chinese schooling ignored social and emotional intelligence in learning.  In my two years' teaching there I saw fear of failure routinely used as a prime motivator.  This approach worked passably well for learning to read or write another language.  It also worked to enforce government control of the population.  But not for learning conversational English skills.

Chinese education is now trying to reform:  away from nationalized, centralized curricula; away from frequent testing and teaching to the tests; away from evaluating teacher competency based on students' achievement test scores; away from a cultivated fear of failure.  Ironically, our education system seems to be adopting the patterns Chinese educators are leaving behind.   

Interestingly, all we would have to do is access the most important and influential document in our civilization here in America:  the Bible.  Loads of the content of Jesus' teaching and service to humanity is based on emotional and social intelligence learning.  Read the Gospels.  Find the stories.  Virtually every one of his parables is a social commentary, teaching humans how to treat each other with respect and honor.

Is the dumbing-down of American education the result of our national obsession with the myth of redemptive violence?  Get them before they get us.  Watch your backside.  Learn to survive at all costs.  Remember that TV and movie action dramas are designed to appeal to our lizard brains. It sells better…

I teach at Crow School.  I know the parents and faculty there. I am grateful for the many teachers and parents of Big Horn County who model and promote the kind of education motivation that really works.  We have a school district that continues to prioritize performance arts and athletics, where students build emotional intelligence through learning trust and cooperation skills.  We need to pay better attention to the research that demonstrates the importance of this learning.

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT  59034

www.greenwoodfarmmt.org

Pickpocket Politics

It's when one political party spins political news of the opposing party so that we the people become concerned we are about to be victimized.

Remember the old 50's theater screen announcement, "Watch for pick pockets!" just before the show starts? Knowing in advance when this line was flashed on the screen, the operatives would time their entrance to carefully watch for hands reaching for pockets. Then each pickpocket would have a target, and know exactly where the valuables are located on that victim. Pickpockets depended on a good theater manager concerned enough about thievery to flash that warning on the screen. The problem was complicated by bringing this concern to consciousness in the crowd and created the ideal environment for pickpockets.

Our media today, whether wittingly or not, has become part of our burgeoning problem of pickpocket politics. We are now down to the weeks leading up to the mid-term elections. Pickpocket political paranoia is just beginning to heat up in the media. Watch, listen, and laugh at it, or cry, for our country.

They'll be taking your social security! Destroying the economy! (the left wing media)

Socialized medicine! Failing schools! Gays in our military! (the right wing media)

But trust us, we will protect you from gays, terrorists, Republicans, Democrats, Tea Partiers, Muslims, Jews, Frenchmen, Mormons, Irishmen, Japanese, Germans, Russians, illegals, non-English speakers, you-name-it ethnic minority. (all our media)

We hear the particular sound bite that tickles our fancy, and our hand dutifully goes to our pocket. It's as if the pickpocket sentry dutifully notes identifying marks to guide the operative to the correct victim, and we are had by our own fears of being had.

Investigations reveal the big moneyed interests in keeping us, the people, hyped up with indignant rage over how the bailout money was spent, how the health care reform laws were made, how the school reform package was assembled, how the wars are (were, or will be) going. Multiple billions from this small group funds political parties and fringe pressure groups to keep our dander up, and it pays off handsomely. For one example, look up "Koch reality scare" on Alternet, Ha'aretz, Guardian, Consortium, Huffington, Newsmax, Human Events, or your favorite non-mainline media source.

The mainline media, including NPR, FOX and talk radio, is largely bought off by these few who own billions in the energy and transportation sectors and the military/industrial complex. They have vested interests, and manipulate news to justify firing of honest reports who depart from their corporate party line. That small group needs the wealthiest 10 percent of our country as well as many of the middle class to cooperate with the scary language to make the scam work. Many of us who get duped are well-meaning, honest people, just like the manager of our local theater in 1955. Others, the few who are the real source of our pickpocket politics, scream against government regulation, and then scream equally loud about their patriotic fervor, and then further, rip us off.

In contrast, there are about 100 of the wealthiest, but responsible, loyal citizens of our country. Many, led by the Gates family, are members of "United for a Fair Economy" (look this up). They signed a statement earlier this summer promoting a large tax increase. Remember seeing this in the news? Know why not? They also repudiated the "End death taxes!" pickpocket proclamation of a decade ago.

Few are the politicians who avoid pickpocket politics. These few process decisions based on principle and truth instead of power and influence. We have them in Montana, and a few other states. Yes, some are in congress, in both parties. But I must confess that all I have heard so far from the "Tea Party," and disappointingly much from the new Republican platform "Pledge to America," are the alarms of pickpocket politics: legitimate concerns timed and phrased to end up building big money power and influence, and rip off our tax moneys.

Here in Big Horn County live people whose values are old-fashioned and honest. If we do spread pickpocket politics, it's not because we have selfish motives. Many of us have learned to be wise to the alarms. This more rational, careful commitment to the common good pervades our schools and college, the county officials, the farming and ranching community, the reservation, the Crow Tribe, and the variety of religions practiced here.

This is still God's best place. There's a lot about life here, not just on the back 40, that I'd just as soon not see change, especially under the paranoid pressure of pickpocket politics.

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT
Sept 24, 2010

Terrorism Needs a Stronger Deterrent

We citizens of America agree:

We want a strong, secure country. Some of us also want all the world's citizens to live in peace and have resources to provide for themselves. A few of us see the two as deeply connected. We believe this ancient conservative idea from Jesus - "Do unto others as you would that they should do to you."

Our nation has been obsessed with a foreign policy do to other nations precisely what we don't want done to us. We want it done on their soil, not ours. It's amazing how so many citizens and media pundits believe it's just fine to make the nations of the world fear us. It's not just because Jesus disagreed that it's not working.

Famine, wars, insurgencies, terrorism and even genocide are driving the nations of the world frantic. Hopelessness is rampant. That's the hotbed of terrorism. That's where the "war on terrorism" should have begun, with more powerful, non-lethal weapons against what menaces human beings.

Remember our world before 9/11/2001?

Nine years ago this past Sunday evening I was in China. Bonnie and I just wanted to get a good night's sleep as we knew our preparation for the following day of instruction was fraught with uncertainty.

I had just dozed off when the phone rang. I fumbled, and my sleepy mind accidentally substituted my newly learned "hue" for "hello." Our colleague, a fellow English instructor from our Foreign Language Department at XiHua University, got right to the point.

"Are you watching the evening news?" he asked.

"No, I was in bed," I said.

"I am very sorry, but you must turn on the news (CCCTV English), something terrible has happened in your country," he said.

"Wow, what arrogance! This must be something," I thought, but did not say it.

"What's happening?" I asked.

"Your nation has been attacked. A large building in New York City is on fire," he told me.

"Attacked? How?" I still didn't believe him.

"Some terrorists commandeered a passenger plane and crashed it into the World Trade Center, killing themselves and all the passengers."

Immediately I thought of the "War of the Worlds" broadcast on radio decades ago. I thought of the virtual reality special affects of Star Wars, etc.

"Listen, we have hoaxes like this in the US. This is too preposterous to be true. Let's look at this in the morning." I did not turn on the TV.

An hour later the phone rang again. It was the Communist Party Head of the Foreign Affairs Department, in charge of our security. He told me it was two buildings, two passenger planes, thousands of people had lost their lives, and the Pentagon was also being attacked. The United States was at war, he said. They were concerned we would want to return to the USA immediately.

I finally woke up and agreed to watch the news. I told him I would return his call in a few minutes.

Distrusting Chinese TV, I turned on the computer. I found ABC news, the only non-Chinese news source not regularly blocked by Chinese censors. Yes, it was real.

He called back. I told him I suspected our placement organization, Mennonite Partners in China, would support us staying in China all the more since the attack. No, we were not at all convinced we should immediately return home.

We were amazed the next few weeks with the outpouring of sympathy from students, our colleagues, and even the university president.

In the next weeks I heard the words of students, echoed from other nations, "This tragedy has brought us together with America. Through 9/11 you understand now what we have been going through."

Remember? Our TV media focused on a few hateful extremist Palestinians demonstrating and celebrating after 9/11, with a "serves them (the USA) right" attitude.

But our Chinese students heard the Palestinians who abhorred the violence and celebrated their hope of new solidarity with America. Not being in the US, I got the information that people such as the Palestinians were celebrating hope that America would practice justice, economic fairness, and the end economic blockades and military occupations.

Our media, loyal to our government, deleted this information. It was available from international news sources.

Our President's statement the following week to "…do what it takes," nurtured the media-driven perception: foreign anger at America is spawned by hate of our democracy, jealousy of our economy, and disagreement with our basic values and religious beliefs. So the Iraq war was prepared and justified with this and other false understandings. Bombing began, the invasion was launched, and our students' statements of support gave way to distrust, suspicion, and outright hatred of the president and our foreign policy. Being in China became less pleasant.

Some Resources on a non-lethal, more powerful war on terrorism:

Central Asia Intitute

Victim Offender Reconciliation Program

Human Rights Watch

The Internationalist Magazine

The Third Side at Harvard Law School

Jimmy Carter's peace center

Kroc institute Notre Dame

Peace Corps

Greenpeace

There are hundreds more.

 

All major religious have peace centers established for research and practice of waging peace in human conflict.  Search on line, for example "Peace Judaism"

 

Nearly all major universities have centers for the scientific study of peace and human conflict research.  Search on line "graduate peace studies"

 

Many of these centers are relatively new, but the research and practice itself dates back to well before Jesus of Nazareth, 30 AD, probably the world's most important peace activist. Look up the word Irene Bible in a Greek language lexicon, or peace Jesus in English.

--

David Graber

Want a phobia?

 Try thistle-o-phobia!

Wars need phobias. They are built on seeing human cultures, politics or religions as dangerous weeds in the flora and fauna of one's own national interests. 

Consider my phobia against Canadian thistle. This phobia became apparent to me because of the recent Islam-o-phobia and the polls demonstrating the power of talk media to spread this bigotry. I think my phobia is less of a hazard to human life on this planet. Now grown into bigotry, it can stay right here on the back 40, out of reach of media pundits.

I have thistle-o-phobia. I wanted to be tolerant and let nature take its course, trusting competing species to out-argue the thistles. But I'm just about to the point of believing the only good thistle is a dead thistle. I let one or two encroach on the economy of my best soil and it's like creeping socialism. Whole colonies have sprung up, crowding out my good intentions for this ground.

Last year, armed with liberation theology, I was determined not to pursue war on thistle-ism. I heard goats and sheep are natural and effective deterrents to thistle ideology, and hoped to try them out on this ground. I would rather harness these local critters with specialized equipment and experience to deal with this vermin. I did not want war.

But there's a problem.

Any livestock on this new pasture will compact the soil. Their hooves and teeth will damage the viability of the forage species I planted. At the same time, thistles just love compact soil with poor oxygen and near-anaerobic conditions. They thrive on ground that stresses out other plants. So, until my hopes for this ground are established with strong enough roots systems so grazers can neither pack the soil nor pull my choice forage species up by the roots, I need to wait. But two weeks ago I grew impatient. I almost got split-hoof critters tramping around in areas that are hotbeds for radical thistle infestation.

Don't get me wrong; I still believe intensive grazing is the best approach. I still believe that ultimately, with good forage competition and healthy soil, diverse quality perennial forages will out-compete even the worst weeds. But it will now have to wait for the supportive environment of a healthy soil and plant economy with established root systems.

Thistles have gotten out of hand. This ideology has taken over five acres and is encroaching on four more. Areas the size of a baseball diamond and larger are now a total thick carpet of evil green. No good forage species could possibly, on it's own, survive in this hostile environment.

So today I committed myself to a war to end the war against thistles. That doesn't mean I will use a scorched earth strategy and try to punish the entire plant population into oblivion. That could backfire, sowing the seeds for more war.

I have just purchased enough herbicide specially formulated to cover the size of my total thistle infestation. I rented the county weed control sprayer, and will take advantage of the unique capacity of Canadian thistles late in the summer to pump carbohydrates into their root systems, building rhizomes that bud and shoot up sprouts in the spring. As the thistles pump the carbohydrates into the roots my herbicide will ride along, in time destroying the thistle root networks. The plant above ground may stay green for weeks. But each warm day will allow the poison into the rhizomes in the roots, gradually killing the whole colony.

I have confidence in this strategy. I tried it last year this time on an intensive colony about three yards by 12 yards on the north border of our back 40. After frost, I seeded orchard grass seed directly into the still-green thistles. This spring, the orchard grass germinated and is still growing. The thistle colony is totally gone. I won one!

My neighbor said it right. Each year the herbicide marketers come up with a new sure-fire approach to the Canadian thistle problem. Each year we see a new outbreak and have to buy the new product. It's been a decades long addiction. The thistles don't care, Monsanto and the other chemical companies win, and the farmers? Well, they lose. Is there a way to win thistle battles? I've put together wisdom and information of the ones who claim the least expertise: local seasoned farmers. I think they are most trustworthy.

Here on the back 40, I enjoy feeding my thistle-o-phobia with my own aggressive defenses. I have no time to watch the media pundits feeding our nation's current Islam-o-phobia.

http://www.bighorncountynews.com/

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT

Christians who pray to Allah?

Two years ago at an evangelistic tent meeting, I was confronted with a difficult dilemma as the guest speaker attacked those who "pray to Allah." I was reminded of this dilemma last week by news of Christian opposition to the construction of a mosque in New York City.

With Rev. Pat Robertson and Sarah Palin leading, national Christian politicians have challenged the construction of a mosque near where the two WTC towers came down, because it would desecrate the site where many victims are interred. So now, Christians and Muslims who have worked together since 9/11 to make the NYC mosque a center of religious understanding and a place of peace between Muslims and Christians must struggle against the loud voices of bigotry in America.

The many people of good will in Big Horn County have a message for these folks. We here know about religious bigotry since the introduction of Christianity, when Crow and Cheyenne people began to suffer religious divisions. In the past decades respect has built for our different religious expressions. We are now better able to work together for the common good. This contrasts with our national religious and political leaders, and major media pundits. They should listen to us.

I'd like to tell them about my dilemma of two years ago.

With my wife and me were our good friends, a family from Kenya, the father a Christian pastor and theology student, his wife a teacher, and their two young daughters. I knew our friends have Muslim friends, and participate freely with them in religious dialogue, parenting and schooling children, and other affairs. I knew also from them that there are many Arabic speaking Christians in Kenya whose Arabic Christian Bible proclaims the message of Jesus the son of "Allah," because their Christian Bible uses the Arabic "Allah" instead of the German "God", or Crow "Akbaatatdia," or Cheyenne "Ma'heo'o," or Spanish "Deo," for the Supreme Being, initially unnamed in ancient Hebrew.

I could feel their discomfort at hearing an American Christian evangelist speak so negatively about a religion with which they are intimately acquainted. I was equally shocked with his ignorance about the millions of Christians worldwide who read their Christian Bible in Arabic, with its many references to "Allah," the equivalent of our German word "God."

I felt compelled to leave. But I had many friends present in the congregation that evening, and did not want to just get up and leave with our guests. I caught myself imaging the piece of my mind I would like to tell the evangelist, since I had no reasonable way to give it to him. I sat and pondered.

I thought about the millions of born-again Christians who pray to Allah in the name of Jesus. I thought about the fact that Muslim-majority armies have not for centuries invaded nor are currently occupying by force any Christian-majority nation, while Christian-majority nations' soldiers are doing so in Iraq and Afghanistan. I thought about the significant portion of all Muslim fundamentalists who are pacifists, while Christian fundamentalists have largely forgotten their pacifist history.

Most of all, from two years service in the Far East, I remembered that the vast majority of the world's Muslims, far from being obsessed with a passion to kill Christians, know how to live together peaceably with Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and other faiths, shopping at the same stores, their children attending the same schools and playing in the same parks.

In the tent meeting, the rhetoric increased in intensity. All who use the word "Allah" to invoke the Supreme Being in prayer were lumped together with the militant Islamic extremists responsible for the World Trade Center bombing. I began regretting my silent assent to what the speaker was saying.

Suddenly I felt myself standing up, interrupting the evangelist with these words,

"You must be mistaken, since I know Christians who pray to Allah in the name of Jesus." The congregation froze. He responded by reasserting his condemnations, insisting I was mistaken. I asked him if he approved of the German, Crow and Cheyenne words for the Creator, but not the Arabic word. After the service I left a note requesting dialogue on the issue. There has been no response.

This prompted an interesting discussion with our friends, who were at least as shocked as I was with my behavior at a Christian service of worship.

Next morning, just before their departure, we prayed for deliverance in the Christian media from the frequent undercurrent of bigotry against Islam. We praised God for the few Christian media speakers who follow Jesus' example with religious conflict as recorded in John chapter 4 of the New Testament. Then we parted.

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT  59034

Tea party? Really?

This new one is far from the original Boston tea party. Now it's 2010 and both parties are right in step with the lambs on our back 40, who would bloat and die if I would indulge their emotions and let them go after the new alfalfa I seeded.

Listen to the propaganda bloat that passes for democratic debate, promoted by the new "Tea Party" leadership, corporate and media backers, etc. It goes something like this:

"The best government is the least government. End taxes! End regulation! It's time for real change."

Look at 1773.
Yes, the original Boston tea party was about taxes, but not whether there would be taxes. It was about who was doing the taxing. There was a history of the British crown taxing American colonial citizens' purchases of imports, and then that money pot sailed away right back the Atlantic with the next clipper.

Yes, it was about big government, a big British government with no vote or voice from the colonies. It was NOT against the growth of government on the land in which these citizens lived, for which they soon elected representatives. In fact, they are among those we venerate in our high school history classes who helped our fledgling government on this land grow constitutionally, to the benefit of all of us today.

Yes, it was against government regulation passed by the British parliament to "teach the colonists a lesson" and force them to submit. But it was also for new regulations to break the oppressive collusion between the British crown and one of the first multinational corporations, the East India Tea Company. That collusion smashed what sovereignty the colonies enjoyed and destroyed fair competition in overseas trade.

Now it's 2010.
Look at Republicans and Democrats who distrust the modern tea party. The "racism" controversy recently in the news is nothing more than a sham. The real issue is loss of collusion benefits, which would happen if either party started adopting priorities similar to the original Boston Tea Party. The fact is, there are huge benefits to both parties today from collusion between government and big business. And that, my friends, is the biggest bipartisanship our Congress can muster. Few politicians of any party want that changed.

Our citizenry, raised by mainline radio and TV, love pretense and surface rhetoric; we like that luscious look and smell, deep green and tender, of government sham-regulation of big business for the benefit of all the people, but in reality no change, so the few, the richest, benefit the most.
Unfortunately, we sheep give our votes to the sham of ending big government. We roll over and ignore the deception and theft from our own pockets.

Take the government's recent sham crackdown on Goldman Sachs. After packaging and selling mortgages they knew were bad, they got off scot-free with their deception and theft:

1) No further investigation of fraud.

2) No jail sentences (The S & L scandal decades ago led to 1000+ sentences).

3) A fine payable to the Securities and Exchange Commission of a fraction of the profit made from the scheme.

4) No requirement to pay back their ill-gotten wealth; no restitution.

5) The system of secrecy and deception stays in place.

The media still hypes the biggest fine ever levied against a Wall Street corporation. Hidden in its back pages are the data: millions in profits from the deception.

Sometimes it takes a fringy documentary news source to plumb reality and feed it to the mainline media, who then cannot afford to ignore it, like the recent WikiLeaks version of the Pentagon papers.

I would applaud a reincarnation of the Boston Tea Party. I hoped the Obama presidency would deal with the sham in the collusions. So far I see same old same old across the political spectrum.

Meanwhile my sheep, resentfully munching the tough old brome and wheat grass of the wild meadow strip along our channel, stop and turn west, sniff their noses in the morning breeze and exclaim in chorus, "Baa-a-a! We want our fresh green alfalfa, and want it right now, early this morning when our stomachs are empty." Sometimes we, like sheep, would be better off munching on what's best for us, not what our TV and radio pundits put out to titillate our tastes and thinking habits.

Oh, for some help in our country and on this back 40 to take rational charge of these colorful delicious delusions! Slowly, carefully, transparently and honestly, with the kind of courage and determination absent in Washington right now in either party, and disappointingly absent in the new tea party.

Previous columns and comments: http://greenwoodback40.blogspot.com/

David Graber

He dissed me!

Diss. v.t. prison slang. To verbally dehumanize, disrespect, or otherwise devalue the life of a human being directly or by implication.

Summer, 1996, Miles City. The courtroom was quiet and stark. Two prisoners were brought in handcuffed and seated at the defendant bench. Present were some family members of these former students of mine previously convicted of murdering another young man over a confrontation at a bar. 

The boys' defense attorney called me as a character witness at this sentencing at the request of the family, because they had been my students and because the boys' grandfather had been a close friend of mine. I saw tears of anguish that day from family members of both the perpetrators and the victim. Throughout the proceeding, the most important verdict became clear to me: no one was winning anything. These boys would never be free men. The young man they killed would not be resurrected. 

Why did this happen? What destroyed human respect for another's life in these two young men? I remembered them as generally cooperative, sensitive, fearful, socially clumsy boys. They were diagnosed with fetal alcohol effect, which could explain a propensity toward criminal mentality. But I wanted a more useful explanation. 

I did a little research. We in the U.S. kill and incarcerate each other far more than the rest of the world except where there is active civil warfare. A year later I stumbled onto something.

June, 1997, Boston. As tourists escorted by our children, we stopped in at one of many used bookstores so I could feed my addiction. My attention was drawn to Violence: Our Nation's Epidemic and its Causes, by James Gilligan, M.D. I bought it for $2. The book had come out 6 years before, the same month Willie Horton's release and murder rampage destroyed Dukakis' presidential campaign. 

In 1970, suicide and murder rates in Massachusetts's prison system had skyrocketed higher than anywhere in the country. Gilligan was hired by the state to reform the prison system. In ten years, these rates were reduced to zero, and recidivism was drastically reduced. The book recounts Gilligan's research and methodology. It was his research that found the most common reason murder happens in prison, as spoken by the perpetrators, was simply that the victim "dissed" the perpetrator. 

He then built a program to address the problems this phrase implies. It was a controversial program that emphasized rehabilitation and reform. The presidential campaign of the 80s with Willie Horton and Dukakis highlighting the "coddling criminals" mania was the end of Gilligan's research and credibility in the media. Massachusetts's politicians forgot his research-based system, though it continued to be reworked in academia. 

Since then, we as a nation have slumped back into the Old Testament vengeance system God warned against even 2000 years ago (Romans 12.19).

Fall 1980, Kansas. A light came on in my brain that had been shut off in my childhood. Here in a parenting workshop was a list of common phrases used by parents or teachers in correcting children: "Can't you ever do it right?"—"You'll never amount to anything if you don't shape up"—"Why do you always. . . .?" etc. 

I had no idea these phrases programmed children's minds to perceive themselves as inferior, disrespected or depreciated. I was raised in a good, God-fearing family. But I learned this negative language.

It was habitual, and at first I was defensive: our children knew they were loved. It didn't matter, so I thought. We two parents talked with our children for the first time about the meaning of my words. It did matter. I began to see how children's minds are either programmed to respect and expect respect from other humans or the reverse. 

The way we treat our children can set them up to be respectful or disrespectful, and in the same way, the way we treat our prisoners can do the same.
The controversy in 2007 over Hardin's detention center was underlined by the phrase, "coddling criminals." Have you heard of the confusion between "tough on crime" and "tough on criminals"? It seems some of us think the one equals the other. 

It's not that simple. In fact, making criminals suffer dehumanization, disrespect, and being devalued has proven counterproductive to the stated goal of crime reduction. Hardin's detention center program was set to address this reform.

I took the time then for research. The detention program put forth by CEC the company that had contracted to operate the jail, had an awesome record for cutting recidivism through a tough but respectfully human program to habilitate, educate, and reorient appropriately pliable young criminals for restoration to society. It could have turned a Montana prison away from schooling for crime and toward schooling for responsible citizenship. The record is one of true toughness on crime. Too bad we lost that program. 

Here on the Back 40 I'm working on the weeds and the imbalance in the soils. Patience, experimentation, advice and dogged attention to scientific research is needed. It's taken years for me to make a dent in the weeds of my own language habits in my parenting and teaching. I found freedom in repetitive practice of simple positive phrases with my young students. 

I'm still farming and learning. There's hope.

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT  59034
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org

Does stuff just happen?

By David Graber

Illusory correlation. The phenomenon of seeing the relationship one expects in a set of data even when no such relationship exists.

MetraPark destroyed by a tornado? Didn't you wonder? What's the meaning? Did God disapprove of the entertainment booked at the Metra Park Arena? I often hear an illusory correlation justified by the phrase, "These things don't just happen."

The tornado stayed in one spot for several minutes, right over the Metra, pounding and pulling until the roof tore apart. What an unusual tornado phenomenon! Add to this the rarity of a tornado in Montana, and there must be at least a divine role, if not a bona fide miraculous intervention in the weather.

Busby 1914-Back in the 1970's I was transporting Oliver Risingsun, then in his 80's, to the clinic in Lame Deer. He was into telling stories from his youth.

On an August afternoon in 1914 he was sent by his father to the pine hills nearby to bring home the horses for cattle work early the next morning. On the way back he noticed from his saddle a storm brewing. It got very dark and windy. He gathered the horses just below a pine ridge for protection from wind and hail, and watched as a funnel dipped down and churned right into the Busby Mennonite Church, a log structure built in the early 1900s. So much dust and debris flew he couldn't see the town. It kept churning until the entire structure was torn apart, logs, roof, and lumber strewn down the Rosebud valley. Then the funnel lifted. The house near the church was not touched. Nothing else was damaged in the town, or in the valley. The tornado focused on one building.

Several weeks before this event, so Oliver told me, a medicine man came to the Mennonite missionary* asking him to stop preaching against Indian religion. The minister refused. The medicine man warned him one more time, adding that he liked the missionary, and was concerned that something bad might happen to the church unless he stopped his criticism.

Then the medicine man went to the hills to fast and pray. While the medicine man was on his vision quest, the tornado destroyed the church.

The Christians of Busby, including Oliver, came to pick up the pieces. They found the pulpit tipped over, but still on the church floor. The hymnbooks were inside, none missing. The pulpit Bible was there, not a page missing. They found the reed organ, with damage to some wood carving, but otherwise ready to be used again. Nothing else was left of the church building except the floor.

To this day, Christians will say this is evidence God wants the Gospel preached and Cheyenne hymns sung in Cheyenne country. They believe that though a tornado struck the church, God preserved the hymnbooks, the pulpit Bible and the organ to show that the Christian faith has a place on the reservation.

Others, namely those who held to the indigenous religion, expressed the view that the Divine Spirit sent the tornado to destroy the church because He does not approve of divisive preaching against Native American religions, something the Christians had engaged in at that time.

In the end, the tornado caused something of a "coming together moment" as the two sides realized that railing against the religious beliefs of the other was ultimately unproductive.

After all, there is no objective proof to confirm either point of view. Illusory correlation?

Here on the back 40 this summer my family enjoys confronting my skepticism about correlations I call illusory. Sometimes they don't catch my little secret that I'm also skeptical of my skepticism. In fact, I love the fact of mystery, and that miracles happen. I don't mind either if someone believes it's all an illusion, this correlation of events with a possibly divine prerogative. My opinion is that the most important Divine Mystery is the Creator of All, who made it all so that sometimes, maybe often, stuff just happens.

For comments and previous columns: http://greenwoodback40.blogspot.com/

* When the Reverend Linscheid arrived with his family in 1904 a log church was erected at Busby. This building was destroyed on August 14, 1914 by a tornado. It was replaced that year by the current frame church, now the chapel of White River Cheyenne Mennonite Church in Busby. The original pulpit and organ are still there.

www.greenwoodfarmmt.org

A sower went out. . .

Spirit and Dust

By David Graber, June 24, 2010

A sower went out to sow, and when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up: Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them.  But other fell into good ground, and brought forth, some a hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold."
—Matthew 13. 3ff, KJV

It's amazing how acting on hope can bring unexpected gains from unexpected sources.

"Letting things be" in the fields

Early this spring I watched a pair of geese obsessed for hours pecking around in the ground we seeded before freeze-up last fall. That's when we couldn't find a high-tech seeder to place the seed in the ground at the right depth with the best compaction and spacing.

Because we didn't have the right technology, we needed to double the amount of seed we bought, and broadcast it with a seeder made to fit on an ATV. It took some mental adjustment. My heritage doesn't approve of wasteful extravagance. I'd rather win by doing things right.

As spring advanced into summer I monitored the weeds, kicked the grass to count baby hoppers, rechecked my soil tests and regretted not investing in correcting our soil phosphate deficit.

I noticed acres of long strips devoid of anything except a few weeds. It felt wrong, wasting that seed on poor soil. But we did win a round: Nary a seed was visible to any birds thanks to the winter-long snow blanket.

Last week a neighbor finished leveling the lumps in the bottom of our irrigation drainage ditch. In order to do the work, the flow had been blocked, making stagnant water for a population explosion of mosquitoes.

When the work was done, the water started moving much better. Yesterday I walked down to the point where our drainage water enters the channel that connects to the river. The water was clear, and I could see hundreds of minnows in several swarms hanging around the inlet, enjoying a feast of mosquito larva and eggs.

I knew we'd had a mosquito population explosion. I hadn't thought about how flowing water solves the problem. Also, I didn't expect this assistance from minnows.

"Letting things be" in the classroom

I averted my eyes from the child jumping off his seat and falling on the floor, crawling around, disturbing other children's singing in my music class.

I told my students, "Those who sing and sign get to drum or dance." Most children followed my example, ignoring the one out of place. We drummed and danced without him.

Months before the end of school this spring he was drumming and dancing with the others. Cooperation slowly replaced defiance.

Prior to taking the new "let it be" tack, I would have intervened by removing him from the group. That seldom helped. The best intervention I have found is like seeding our pasture. You just do it, everywhere, and let it be. In the classroom setting, I give each child attention, and then do my best to let them be.

I give each a smile or a pat on the shoulder upon entering my music room. I don't distinguish good from bad, or a history of chasing, tripping, and hitting from a history of following classroom directions.

I've noticed that this leads to fewer disruptions and less attention given to those children who aren't following directions. If I don't focus on the kids who are out of line, the children who are participating won't either.

I've tried to learn the value of what I would have previously called wasteful extravagance. Now I'm looking at unexpected beneficial rains this spring greening up even the most saline pasture areas. A little rain extravagance in Big Horn County is OK with me.

See comments and previous columns:     http://greenwoodback40.blogspot.com/