Have Faith in Catholic Education

Catholic schools are closing their doors all across America, leaving future generations with nowhere to turn for the high-quality academics and values-based education so many families are seeking. The number of students attending Catholic schools in the US fell from about 5.2 million in 1965 to around two million in 2008.

Pioneer Institute believes these schools are worth preserving. For over a decade, we have raised our voice in support of these excellent academic options, and tools such as tax credit scholarships that would enable more families to attend.

Pioneer has held public forums, published research on the benefits of Catholic education, on successful models such as Cristo Rey, and on policy changes that would stop the Massachusetts education department from depriving religious school students of special needs services and school nurses. The Institute has also convened key stakeholders, appeared in local and national press, filed amicus briefs, produced a feature a documentary film, and much more.

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John Dearie: Halt Immigration? Fall Behind

October 21, 2021/in Economic Opportunity, Featured, JobMakers /by Editorial Staff

This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with John Dearie, founder and president of the Center for American Entrepreneurship, a Washington, D.C.-based research, policy and advocacy organization. Immigration is core to his mission to build a policy environment that promotes entrepreneurship because he knows all too well that the United States was and continues to be built by entrepreneurial immigrants who had the drive and determination to pick up, leave everything they know behind, and build a new life in a new homeland. So to John, it is no surprise they are twice as likely to take another risk: start a business. He’s also seen across the country frustration among business owners, both U.S.-born and foreign-born, at an immigration system that works against this country’s interest. Why? Because it doesn’t seek to actively attract or retain talent from the rest of the world. John sees the decline in U.S. entrepreneurship and believes that more immigration, not less, would power the nation’s economy and innovation, which have made us the global leader. Instead, he’s seeing an unnecessarily partisan and toxic approach to immigration that, he says, harms us all and is inherently unamerican, as you’ll discover in this week’s JobMakers.

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Guest:

John Dearie is the founder and President of the Center for American Entrepreneurship. He is the former Acting CEO of the Financial Services Forum, a financial and economic policy organization comprised of the chief executive officers of the largest financial institutions with operations in the United States. From 2001 to 2015, he was the Forum’s Executive Vice President for Policy, coordinating the group’s policy agenda, which included: financial supervision reform, the competitiveness of U.S. capital markets, free and fair trade, comprehensive tax reform, debt and deficit reduction, and accelerating economic growth and job creation. Prior to joining the Forum, John spent nine years at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York where he held positions in the Banking Studies, Foreign Exchange, and Policy & Analysis areas. He was appointed an Officer of the Bank in 1996. He is the co-author of Where the Jobs Are: Entrepreneurship and the Soul of the American Economy (Wiley, 2013), which was called “one of the great economics books of the past few years” by the American Enterprise Institute. His writing has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Hill, Politico, American Banker, USA Today, and China’s Caijing Magazine.

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Read a Transcript of This Episode:

Please excuse typos.

Denzil Mohammed:

I’m Denzil Mohammed, and this is JobMakers. [inaudible]

Denzil Mohammed:

The United States was and continues to be built by entrepreneurial immigrants who had the drive and determination to pick up, leave everything they know behind and to build a new life in a new Homeland. So it is no surprise. They are twice as likely to take another risk. Start a business for John Dearie, founder and president of the center for American entrepreneurship, a Washington DC based research policy and advocacy organization. Immigration is core to his mission to build a policy environment that promotes entrepreneurship because he knows this fact all too well. He’s also seen across the country frustration among business owners at an immigration system that works against this country’s interest. Why? Because it doesn’t seek to actively attract or retain talent from the rest of the world. John sees the decline in us entrepreneurship and believes that more immigration, not less would power, the nation’s economy and innovation, which have made us the global leader. Instead, he’s seeing an unnecessarily partisan and a toxic approach to immigration that he says harms us all and is inherently un-American. As you’ll discover in this week’s Jobmakers, John Dearie from the center for American entrepreneurship. How are you?

John Dearie:

I’m great. I’m great. Thanks so much for reaching out and invited me to participate.

Denzil Mohammed:

So tell me a little bit about the center and the kind of work that you’ve been doing. One. Why, why did you found this in the,

John Dearie:

So I spent the vast majority of my career in banking and financial policy. I started my career at the federal reserve bank of New York, and then spent, I was there for a decade and then spent 17 years at an organization called the financial services forum, which was a financial and economic policy group. I was the policy director there from 2001 to 2017. So I was there before, during and after the financial crisis, but as we came out of the financial crisis even as the economy started to grow again, the great recession ended in the spring of 2009. So by the spring of 2011, the recovery had been underway for two years. But the economy was growing very, very slowly and unemployment was still north of 9%. And there was a tremendous amount of frustration that you could feel in Washington.

John Dearie:

They had really thrown the kitchen sink at the problem policy-wise, but we’ve just, we’re not getting the kind of traction in terms of economic growth and job creation that everybody had been hoping for. And you could sort of feel a collective shrug in Washington by policy makers. Like, you know, we don’t know what else to do. And so I went to the CEO’s and said, you know, we need to do something new and innovative to come up with some new ideas to share with policy makers, how do we accelerate economic growth and job creation followed my nose through the through the research and eventually found my way to some research that that was new at the time, but was mounting and being repeated. And there was a lot of excitement about this showing the following three things, one that new businesses, not existing small businesses, but new businesses, startups are disproportionately responsible for the innovations that drive economic growth and job creation in the economy that they so they’re incredibly important from the standpoint of economic growth.

John Dearie:

Also incredibly important from the standpoint of job creation to two things that I was after. And and this was the really fascinating part that new business formation, which is to say entrepreneurship in the United States had been in decline for four decades. And I, and another colleague at the forum decided to do something quite simple and profound. And we decided to hit the road travel the country and conduct round tables with entrepreneurs all over the United States to get to the bottom of what was in entrepreneur’s way. And that’s essentially what we asked them what’s in your way. It was by way of a round table in Boston that I I, I think I met you and I met our mutual friend Bettina Hein. Who’s now on the board of CA. And they told us, and, and we collected extraordinary insights and data by way of that experience.

John Dearie:

We conducted round tables in 12 states around the country. Nobody in Washington knew this. I knew that because I was from Washington and I’d never heard it before. Entrepreneurship was utterly not on the radar screen in Washington as recently as 2017. And I decided we need an organization in order to change that we need a group on the ground doing the day-to-day blocking and tackling of engagement and education, and working with policy makers on that pro entrepreneurship agenda. And so I decided to leave the forum and become an entrepreneur myself Katie and I let my colleague Katie and Al and I like to refer to ourselves as policy preneurs. And we started the center for American entrepreneurship in July of 2017. Entrepreneurship is a very American idea. It’s not a Democrat or Republican idea. And and, and the role of immigrants in American entrepreneurship, the importance of immigrants and the history of immigrants as great American entrepreneurs is a major part of what we focus on.

Denzil Mohammed:

You talk about this being an American, a very American thing. And we know this from, from our history Levi’s and Budweiser, and course bear and up until the present, Google and LinkedIn and eBay where, w where exactly does immigration fit into policy agenda. I know for instance, that during the great recession that you, that you mentioned the financial crisis very markedly entrepreneurship among the U S born dropped by almost 50%, and yet it increased among the foreign born. What does that say to you, or how does that fit into your policy agenda?

John Dearie:

Yes well, it fits into our policy agenda in two ways, both from the standpoint of entrepreneurs themselves because immigrants are entrepreneurial by nature. And when you say that, you know, people sort of squint up their faces, like, you know, how do you mean when you think about it to be an immigrant to pick up your life, leave a culture that you’re familiar with your country, your family, your friends, often at tremendous personal and financial risk and go to another country, a new culture, often a new language that is a profoundly entrepreneurial act. And so it shouldn’t surprise us that once folks like that get here, they continue to be profoundly entrepreneurial. And in fact, the research has borne this out that, that immigrants are twice as likely to start a business as native born Americans.

John Dearie:

And so not withstanding the fact that they represent about 14% of the American population they represent about somewhere between 25 and 30% of the ownership of small businesses. And when you look at high-tech startups, you know, scalable high-tech high impact businesses started in Silicon valley. As many as half of those businesses are started by immigrants. So immigrants themselves are highly entrepreneurial. The other reason why it’s so important to us is, is entrepreneurs of all kinds, need skilled talent. And one thing that we heard at the round tables that we conducted around the United States is that there is a real talent gap or skills gap. And this is particularly relevant. You’ve heard this and read about it in the context of stem, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics American colleges and universities simply are not producing enough folks with those backgrounds.

John Dearie:

And so there is a skilled labor gap in this country for startups and other businesses. And and therefore there is great interest in great demand in foreign born talent. And the very first piece of research that we published after we launched was a research paper project by our research director at the time Ian Hathaway, who’s one of the great young scholars of entrepreneurship in the country and found that 47%, sorry, 43% of of fortune 500 companies and 57% of the top 35 companies were founded by either a first or second generation immigrant. So immigrants the history of entrepreneurship in the United States is a, is a an astonishing history of the contribution of immigrants to the United States in the U S economy. And you know, the 21st century economy is the knowledge economy.

John Dearie:

It’s the information economy, and it is going to be the competition for the 21st century is going to be won or lost based on human capital. And so it’s one of the realities, the unfortunate aspects of this issue that the political issue of immigration and the way that too large of a portion of our population and too many of our politicians think about and talk about this issue as if immigration is some sort of a threat to the United States when in fact is Ronald Reagan and, and lots of other politicians in the past have recognized immigration is one of the great sources of strength and, and, and, and and, and vigor and vitality and dynamism of the American experiment. And and we need to get back to that.

Denzil Mohammed:

You mentioned Ronald Reagan, who said, it’s at our peril. If we ignore this, this, this fact of this vigor and vitality that immigrants continue. I mean, it’s not a new phenomenon. Let’s make that very, very clear. Immigrants have always brought that entrepreneurial spirit with them whether as entrepreneurs or whether as workers and the children end up doing exponentially better very often than their parents did. And that’s the whole point of coming to the United States? What has been the policy response? I would say from politicians as you’ve done your work in the past four years,

John Dearie:

Too many people in the United States these days are of the view that the, they think about the U S economy as sort of a closed sandbox. And so if somebody is coming in from the outside, then w w within that construct or understanding of the economy, they are necessarily displacing somebody who was already here. And that’s of course not true. And the reason it’s not true is that the economy is not a sandbox. It’s this, it’s a dynamic organism it’s living and breathing. And when you, and when you change the inputs into the economy, specifically with regard to talent or labor, there was an economic reaction to that. And there is lots and lots. In fact, the vast preponderance of research on both the right and the left into this phenomenon of immigration make very, very clear that the contribution of immigrants to the United States is pro job creation for Americans.

John Dearie:

Immigrants do not take jobs of, of Americans do not displace Americans. They create new businesses that create new jobs, new opportunity, new wealth for Americans, for whatever reason, that is difficult for people to accept. It’s just too easy to think about the, you know, the economy in that sandbox, you know, sort of way you know, most folks are not economist and they’re, you know, they’re not particularly sophisticated in terms of their understanding of the economy. And so it’s a very easy topic to demagogue politically, and unfortunately too many politicians do that. Of course it makes it easier when there are legitimate crises having to do with immigration, like what’s going on in recent months at the Southern border, that is a legitimate problem. And the result is that our immigration system in this country is broken.

John Dearie:

Our immigration policies in this country are crazy. And when we do round tables around the United States, as we continue to do with entrepreneurs to stay in touch with the issues and the, and the priorities that matter to them, the issue that gets them, the angriest and where they really literally pound the table is immigration. They just, they can’t find the people that they need. They can’t get folks that they know that are, you know, are in foreign countries who are business partners, partners with them who are starting companies with them or talent that they’re aware of that they need desperately. They can’t get these people into the country in a secure and and predictable sort of way. And they, and they, they just, you know, for the life of them, can’t understand it because there is no understanding. It it’s completely contrary to the interest of the United States.

Denzil Mohammed:

Jeez, you’re unpacked a lot there, particularly that, you know, I spoke to a group of journalism students from Emerson, and the idea of immigration being the Southern border is paramount in the majority of Americans thinking they think of, of immigration, and that’s all they can come up with. And it’s so much more complex than that. So you mentioned that the, the response to, to, to your policy work has not been great. What briefly, what are some specific policy areas that you’ve been working on? Start-Up visas, for instance.

John Dearie:

So we have a number of, of, of, of immigration reform items that we advocate for. One is a startup visa, which I’ll come back to in a moment. The other one is graduation, Greek cards, as far as we’re concerned for all the reasons that you’re talking about. If immigrants who come here and are educated at American colleges and universities want to stay here after graduation, why on earth would we require them to leave? That’s our current policy is that they’re allowed in, on a student visa. And then after they complete their degree, we basically deport them in the very narrow interest of the United States. If folks want to stay here of their own volition, we’re not forcing them to stay, but if they want to stay here, why on earth would you not let them? So we’re in favor of graduation, green cards and other aspects of immigration reform.

John Dearie:

But back to the startup visa of the United States is one of the few industrial democracies around the world that does not have a visa category specifically intended to attract and retain foreign born entrepreneurs, specifically entrepreneurs who want to come to the United States to start their businesses and create jobs for Americans and contribute to the American economy, our economic competitors around the world. And I mean, many practically all of them you’re in Europe and Latin America. China obviously have overhauled their immigration policies in recent years, specifically to roll out the red carpet for foreign born entrepreneurs, including our entrepreneurs. They want them to come there often very generous off, you know, free office space capital access to capital at very low rates access to to mentoring and coaching. It’s all kinds of benefits, very, very attractive. Come here and start your business here.

John Dearie:

Meanwhile, the United States does not have such a visa category. And so we think that’s insane and we’ve been working very, very hard on, on creating this special visa category. For years since we launched in 2017, it’s been our, it’s been our top immigration priority. The good news is that working with other groups who are similarly minded and entrepreneurship focused like the national venture capital association, the angel capital association engine, and other groups around the country, we worked very closely with Congressman Zoloft grin from California who backed by say about six weeks ago, introduced a a bill that would create a startup visa. So the good news is that there is a bill in Congress now to create a start-up visa. The bad news is, is that not withstanding the incredibly hard work by us, NVCA engine, the angel capital association and others.

John Dearie:

We couldn’t get a single Republican in the house to co-sponsor the piece of legislation going back to what we were just talking about in terms of the unfortunate political dynamics around the topic of immigration. It is, it is unfortunately where the GOP base is at the moment after four years of a president who you know, in my opinion talked about the issue of immigration in the wrong way that it has become politically toxic for Republican members of Congress to support policies that would make it easier for immigrants to come to the United States, even immigrants who were coming here specifically in the context of entrepreneurs to start new businesses.

Denzil Mohammed:

That is absolutely fascinating that so many other countries are, as you say, rolling out the red carpet for people who want to start businesses. And you mentioned Bettina Hein who was on your board, what a story that is. She founded an incredible business in Boston right here. Pixability she explored every possible avenue, including the old visa which is for exceptionally talented people, including Nobel laureates. She was able to secure that, but that visa obviously ran out she’s now back in Europe because she was not able to remediate. There was no avenue for her to remain here, despite the fact that her children were born here, she raised a family here. She started a business employing hundreds of people over several years. That’s absolutely fascinating. Now, just get back to this idea, you know, obviously we’re shooting ourselves in the foot, but how American is this concept of immigrant entrepreneurship? Can you explore that a little bit?

John Dearie:

Sure. well, first of all, just let me say just very quickly to sort of emphasize what, what you just said about we’re shooting ourselves in the foot and, and, and how are our insane immigration policies, particularly over the last four years have been a great boon to Canada. There were more technology jobs created in Toronto in 2018 is the latest data than were created in Silicon valley New York city and Washington DC combined. And the reason for that is that when, when the president of the United States talks about immigration and talks about immigrants in the language that their former president talked about, it sends the message to the rest of the world don’t come. And so they don’t, and yes, Bettina Hein is a marvelous example of this issue. And I, and I just won’t bump, I’d love to tell this story just very quick, the round table at which I met patina, but there were two other people at that round table.

John Dearie:

And this example was so vivid. I included it in my book that I subsequently wrote that these were two guys who were, were roommates at MIT as undergrads started a business when we met them that they had graduated from MIT, they had just gotten their second round of funding. They had expanded their company from just the two of them to, to 15 other people. And so they were growing and these two best friends from college straight guys were considering getting married in order to keep the foreign born founder in the country because his visa had run out and he was about to be deported.

John Dearie:

I mean, I will never forget that story. That that’s the desperation of these people. These two straight guys were thinking of getting married, just to keep the foreign born after in the country. I mean, it’s a funny story, but, but it’s of course horrifying. And, and, and I just tell that because it was the most vivid example to me of just how crazy our immigration policies are, but back to the history of immigration in the United States you know, it’s been, it’s easier or harder over the course of our, our, our history for immigrants to come here. But of course there’s been a very, very important and very special part of our history here in the United States is the history of immigration. The the, you know, the great analogy of the United States of being the melting pot of, of many people from all over the world with all their different ideas, their, their their, their various talents, their languages, the food, the music, you know, the, that, that the American experience is, is the melting pot of all of these experience from all over the world.

John Dearie:

And what comes out of that melting process is the secret sauce of America. That’s what Ronald Reagan I think was referring to. And in his great speech, the last speech he gave before he walked out of the white house was the importance of immigration to the United States, not just, you know, the American experience and how we think about ourselves, but economically how important it was and politically, and he said, if we ever lose sight of that, if we ever lose sight of how important this is, to who we are, it is, as you said before at our peril, what could be more American than taking in a baseball game on a great afternoon, having a couple of Budweiser’s a couple of hot dogs and singing, God bless America at the seventh inning stretch. What could be more American? It’s hard to think of something more American than that, right? Baseball is a British game that came to the United States by way of Canada, the beers and the hotdogs are German. And the song, God bless America was written by a Russian born Jew named Irving Berlin. But the result when you put them all together, these contributions from immigrants all over the world, you create something uniquely American that’s America,

Denzil Mohammed:

John Dearie, from the center for American entrepreneurship. Thank you so much for joining us and Jobmakers. I really appreciate you taking the time to do this and best of luck as you are advocating for.

John Dearie:

Thank you very much. I really appreciate the opportunity. It’s great to see you. I’m sorry. It’s been so long.

Denzil Mohammed:

Jobmakers is a weekly podcast about immigrant entrepreneurship and contribution produced by pioneer Institute. A think tank in Boston and the immigrant learning center, a not-for-profit that gives immigrants a voice. Thank you for joining us for this. Week’s fascinating story of the benefits of welcoming, talented, and driven immigrants to the United States. If you have feedback or know someone who we should talk to email Denzil that’s, D E N Z I L at jobmakerspodcast.org, I’m Denzil Mohammed. Join us next Thursday at noon for another episode of Jobmakers.

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Award-Winner Prof. David Reynolds on Abraham Lincoln & American Civil War Culture

October 20, 2021/in Academic Standards, Blog: Education, Blog: US History, Featured, News, Podcast, Related Education Blogs, US History /by Editorial Staff

This week on “The Learning Curve,” co-hosts Gerard Robinson and Cara Candal talk with David Reynolds, a Distinguished Professor of English and History at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author of Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times, selected as one of the Top Ten Books of the Year by The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. Professor Reynolds shares what teachers and students alike should know about the culture of Civil War America, primary education in that era, and the wide variety of influences on Lincoln’s thinking and leadership. They delve into the most bitterly contentious political topics of Lincoln’s time, including slavery, states’ rights, trade tariffs, and women’s rights, and how the 16th president addressed the nation’s many political divisions. They also explore how Lincoln used his rustic image to shape his public persona and appeal to voters; and how he marshaled his rhetorical talent, invoking biblical language and the ideals of the American founding, to win the war, preserve the Union, and ultimately abolish slavery. Professor Reynolds concludes with a reading from his biography.

Stories of the Week: Washington Post columnist Jay Mathews recognizes the work of Will Fitzhugh, founder of The Concord Review, to encourage students’ interest in historical fiction and reward long-form research and writing. A new project of the Teagle Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities promises to restore the humanities in undergraduate education.

Guest:

David Reynolds is a Distinguished Professor of English and History at the Ph.D. Program at the CUNY Graduate Center. He’s the author or editor of sixteen books, including Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times (2020), which was a noted book of the year by The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. Prof. Reynolds is the winner of the Bancroft Prize, the Lincoln Prize, the Christian Gauss Award, the Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Award, the Ambassador Book Award, the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, John Hope Franklin Prize (Honorable Mention), and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is a regular contributor to The New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, and The Wall Street Journal.

The next episode will air on Wednesday, October 27th with guest, Dr. Bror Saxberg, MD, Vice President of Learning Science at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Tweet of the Week:

50% of Black Americans say they want to homeschool after COVID-19 lockdown.

And, I can't say I blame them. Our Children Our Choice! #FundMyChildNow #BlackHomeschoolers #BlackTeachers #SchoolChoice pic.twitter.com/q9HTpf08GF

— Denisha Allen (Merriweather) (@DenishaMweather) May 15, 2020

News Links:

Wash. Post/ Jay Mathews (Will Fitzhugh &TCR): “Stuff your 5,000-word limit! Students dare to write longer history papers”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/concord-review-will-fitzhugh-student-essays/2021/10/14/8590a776-2c4d-11ec-baf4-d7a4e075eb90_story.html

Reviving the Humanities Through General Education

https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2021/10/18/revitalizing-humanities-general-education-opinion

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Read a Transcript of This Episode:

[00:00:00] Gerard Robinson [GR]: Hello listeners. This is Gerard Robinson from beautiful Charlottesville, Virginia. It is definitely the fall. The leaves are changing colors. I am looking out of our window and I see red. I see green. I see yellow and I see blonde. Well, speaking of blonde, it is so good to have Kara on the phone again for our weekly conversation.

[00:00:21] Cara Candal: some version of blonde at this point.

[00:00:26] And Gerard I’m. looking at my window. It’s also a beautiful fall day here. And it’s also just a lot of red Sox fans losing their minds. I, as you know, I don’t really follow baseball. but my son, my eight year old son is a baseball player and he’s gotten really into it. And when I heard him shouting last night, we let him stay at past bedtime.

[00:00:48] Mommy, mommy, it’s another grand slam. I was like, this kid doesn’t know what a grand slam is. Even. I know what a grand slam is, but yes, the Boston red Sox, three grand slams in two games. [00:01:00] Oh yeah. If you haven’t been watching, this might almost turn you into a baseball fan. it’s pretty cool. Sorry, Astros fans.

[00:01:07] I know Jamie gas or producers, huge Astros fan. Very difficult for him, but this is actually, you know, people that. My kids were like, Hey, Googling the red Sox odds of like winning the world series. And, they weren’t good. I tell you, but the past couple of nights, they seem to be defying the odds. So I suggest that you tune in Gerard, if you haven’t been paying attention because miracles have been happening here.

[00:01:33] Well, they’ve been happening in Houston, I guess we’re coming back to Fenway parks, you know? So anyway, , that’s my sports story of the week.

[00:01:40] GR: Well, my story actually is a really good followup to what you just said, because this is also a comeback story. And this one is from inside higher education. The authors are Andrew and Lani position, and both of them work for the teal foundation.

[00:01:57] And this article is titled reviving the [00:02:00] humanities through general education. So you and I went to college and several of our course, our listeners have as well. And we know a lot about general. Education courses. And these are the courses that you take outside of your major? Well, what I didn’t know until I was preparing for the show today is that the whole idea of general education really has its roots in elite college education, following world war II.

[00:02:22] And this is when you had people coming back to school and it was at Columbia university where there were a set of professors who said, listen, we need to make sure the students have a good ground in, in the human. These are the arts, because this war showed us what it’s like to be inhumane. Well, then you go to world war two, you have Harvard university.

[00:02:39] Uh, they of course, put out a big push, , for the whole idea. In fact, a report called a general education in a free society and like its predecessor before the big push was to make sure that students had a well-rounded education. Well, by the time it got to the Vietnam war and there were cuts in education, naturally general educations found themselves on the chopping [00:03:00] block and she go off the Vietnam.

[00:03:01] To the present and through him during the wars of the 1980s and baby, the humanities really took a backseat to really general education and general classes. So what happened in 2014, in fact, a former professor at your school. Chicago, to Purdue and he identified that fewer than 10% of the students had taken classes in the humanities, as we knew it.

[00:03:25] And even fewer had taken a course in the history. And so for do decided they were going to do some work That’s a support from the table foundation and the national endowment for the humanities. And they launched something called the cornerstone learning for living. And the whole idea is to restore the humanities in schools, particularly for undergraduate students.

[00:03:44] And so producers say, you know what we’re going to do. We’re going to take our professors from the humanities and our professors from stem. And they’re going to develop a 15 credits or two. Called cornerstone integrated liberal arts. And the goal was to say, they’re going to be, you know, just a [00:04:00] basically agreed to set up texts or we’re going to read.

[00:04:02] Oh two semester gateway sequence and it will range from and Dante to Dubois, Toni Morrison, Mary Shelley, and others, and they’re going to meet and it’s going to be for first year students in particular. And then they’re going to course take classes that they can take at a higher level. But if they go through the path, maybe we’ll actually come out with a certificate.

[00:04:21] Now, naturally people will think, well, this is. Oh, strong stem school. Truly a lot of stem students are going to take this course. Well, what happened is we started off in 2014. They had 60 students in the program. Now it attracts 4,000 students and 32. Of those students, in fact, plan to major in engineering and other people, professional fields.

[00:04:44] Well, that’s just one example. Let’s go to Austin community college. And , our listeners know that I’m a community college grad, so I’m always glad to see our community colleges on the forefront. They decided to create a similar program and there’s this. Great questioning seminar and they start off with the [00:05:00] Odyssey and they move through a number of courses.

[00:05:02] And the whole goal is for them to ask very deep questions about society and social values. Well like Purdue, they started off with a few students. In fact, in 2016, at 30 students. And today they have over 625 students who are the program. So this has done three things. Number one, it’s got humanity.

[00:05:22] Professors and stem professors in a room talking about big ideas, which I think is good. Number two, you’re at least increasing the probability that more students will not only take courses in, we call it the humanities and the arts, but guess what? Some of them in fact may decide they want to major in the subject.

[00:05:38] I was a philosophy major. Some people may decide to actually go and pursue it at the graduate level because there’s definitely been a hit in the number of students in the human. He’s at the doctoral and master’s level over the past two years because of COVID and other factors. The third thing is that all of a sudden you have pre-do and even Austin having to hire more [00:06:00] instructors who in fact have a background in the humanities.

[00:06:02] So I think this is a comeback story for the manatees. , we know that pioneer Institute has been a big supporter of the humanities and the arts. And so I’m glad to see this story interested in hearing your thoughts.

[00:06:13] Cara: I love this storage of art. And I love this story. First of all, I have to share with you that my absolute favorite phase, of course, in high school was my humanities course.

[00:06:25] And the teacher was Susan Walker and actually at my 20 year high school reunion, which was many years ago, I got to see her and the thing that struck me so much as I love this course, I learned so much in this course, things that I took to college with me and remember today, obviously, if I can even remember my teacher’s name, , but this was a course that was for it.

[00:06:45] We talked about this last week that I got to be in a special program, right? a select program, a talented and gifted program. And this was a course that was only offered to kids who were in this program. And as an adult, I think back. Like, why, why, why [00:07:00] on earth? Would this be something, is it, an assumption about what kids can do?

[00:07:04] Is it assumption about what kids need to know? Is it that , there’s a certain bar we hold for some students and not others because I had found that class and everything that came with it to be such an important part of my life. So, this is a really heartening stories. I love that we’re making a humanities come back here.

[00:07:20] And I love that you opened with the idea that, after world war II, it was decided that we actually needed to teach the humanities because we had been through such an inhuman. War. Right. And this is, love that concept. I hope that this is something that we can reiterate and take with us in teach kids.

[00:07:38] as the spreading is the growth in the teaching of the humanities continues. I mean, I think unfortunately for too many things, That’s as much of a fan I am of accountability and as important as I think tests can be, but with a narrowing of curriculum, this is something that we lose and we especially lose the idea of once, we’re not teaching humanities courses, , we lose the idea that this is [00:08:00] really important to the formation of humans, quite frankly, , and also expanding our notion of what the humanities is.

[00:08:08] And we’ve had guests on that show. Talk about how. offer students, especially at the college level, you have much more of an opportunity to do that. A real breadth of material. and the discipline. That is the humanity. So what a fantastic story. Thank you for bringing it to us.

[00:08:23] I love hearing Purdue mentioned too, that you say, you know, you think of it as a stem school, but look at what they’re doing because too. And this goes, I think, to the point of the story that I want to share with us today, Deeply thinking and reading about making connections between topics and texts and ideas that we study in the humanities.

[00:08:40] it spills over into other facets of one’s life and career that really, it’s analytical thinking. And Gerard, that takes me to my real story of the week, which is really not about baseball at all. , but this is kind of cool. We’re going to get a little bit meta because my story of the week is written by.

[00:08:58] A former learning curve, [00:09:00] guest, Jay Matthews about the work of a former learning curve guest will fits you. And so I think this is really cool because it shows , maybe it means work culture art. I don’t know that we’ve got these two guys on, but it’s also a great title. And the title of this from the Washington post again by Jay Matthews is stuff your 5,000 words.

[00:09:19] Students dare to write longer history papers. I was really drawn to this article, Gerard, because I have to tell you, I spent some time as you know, as a research assistant professor and then an adjunct lecturer at Boston university, which I loved, and I love the school, but there I worked with. Juniors, mostly, but undergraduates , in , education policy studies.

[00:09:42] And, um, I don’t consider myself to be a great writer. I find that every time I write something, I learned w I’m not such a great writer, especially when, somebody at pioneer is editing my work. But, of the things I really noticed about as a high school English teacher, but it was more profound in college.

[00:09:58] Was that, we [00:10:00] teach kids even at, and I was working with kids from some very high-performing, mostly ritzy, suburban high schools. Quite frankly, we teach them to write in such a formulaic way. And, , for so many kids. I mean, some people listen, some people can ramble on for 17 pages and not have an idea in there.

[00:10:18] It could be one long sentence, but other people really, you know, I found a lot of students just had trouble. You would say to them, I need a five page paper, and it would be a collective gasp and fear. And like, how am I going to be able to write something of that length? It’s impossible, professor, it’s impossible.

[00:10:34] And I think I’ve told you before Gerard, that I actually switched the way I taught my classes. And instead of having students produce multiple. I switched to a model where we were producing one long research paper over the course of the semester that was edited over and over and over again, because I found that one of the things I needed to do was help students really learn how to write and write for the real world.

[00:10:54] They weren’t getting it in high school. And this article in many ways goes to [00:11:00] that. So it opens with this. Very few us high schools ask their students to write long research papers. I mean, I would say that very few us high schools are probably asking students to break actual research papers. So it’s a totally different topic then, but, and we don’t know why is it because teachers don’t have the time to read and give feedback.

[00:11:18] it’s just not valued. And in this article, J also raises the question, is it because we think kids can’t do it. And I think that we can argue about whether or not. It’s super valuable to have everybody writing a 20 page paper all the time. Certainly my husband always tells me that every time I write something, he, he dozes off by page two.

[00:11:35] , which is fine. Okay. Maybe not everybody needs to read 20 page papers about education policy, but in this sense, I think Gerard in much like in your story about the humanities in my mind writing is thinking , in learning to write well and learning to wrestle with the written word. And the page is.

[00:11:52] Really, , honing our analytical skills helping us think. So Jake goes on here to profile our friend [00:12:00] Wilf, it’s you? Who is the founder of the Concord review. And one of the things that will, this former history teacher has done is said to kids like go deep in something, pick a research topic and go really deep.

[00:12:13] And so the students that he works with at the Concord review, it says that now the average paper used by the concrete. It’s up to 9,000 words, right? So that this was a big deal for a lot of students and his organization has grown the number of students he serves has grown. It’s mostly history papers.

[00:12:34] It’s a quarterly journal, as you know, and it’s so far published, almost 1500 history papers by high schoolers. And they’re even a few middle schoolers that participate in this program. But since you he’s, you know, he’s really. Glommed onto this concept that kids are capable and they’re capable of doing not only really deep thoughtful work, but they can write, they can write long papers.

[00:12:56] And so you can think about what that means, not just for preparing students to write in [00:13:00] college, but really preparing students to be thinkers. and I just think that this raises some really interesting questions. What we value in writing and the kind of high bar we hold kids to. And indeed, are we preparing students to be good thinkers?

[00:13:16] Are we preparing them for graduate study? If we’re afraid to ask folks to go deep and sometimes to go long. So. This is a really great article, I think, in the post, I think J for it and thinking about, , the concrete review, I think that all of our listeners , should become more aware of it , and take a look at it.

[00:13:36] , I’ll end by saying that even AP and IB, so advanced placement and the international baccalaureate program. Have said that they want to encourage the kind of writing that students are doing in the Concord review. And as we know, , these kinds of exams known to be very rigorous , and those who work for AP and IB, have a really good handle on the kind of writing that constitutes quality.

[00:13:59] [00:14:00] In, from high school students and, and that kind of writing, that’s going to help them be successful in college because we know that kids who do well in AP and IB programs often place out of, early college classes. So, um, a really interesting article by to learning. Alum Gerard. And I’m wondering you yourself are a great writer and prolific writer.

[00:14:19] So you’d like sending me a new thing every day and I’m thinking, how does this guy do it? So I don’t know, maybe, maybe this resonates with you a little bit. I don’t know how many 20 page papers you’re writing lately, but what do you.

[00:14:31] GR: Well, I’m a big fan of writing now as an adult in ways I, of course, was not as a struggling high school student, my wife and I worked pretty diligently to make sure that our girls write both by hand and type, because there, of course, some aspects of brain, hand coordination work.

[00:14:50] And how you think that come up with. When you actually write versus when you type. And in fact, we had a, one of our guests who has a book [00:15:00] on teaching children, how to read, also talk about the importance of writing. So I’m with you to whole way. We know that in this season of NAPE interpretation, and there are a lot of tweets going around on the internet for some of our friends.

[00:15:11] we rarely talk about the 2017 scores for writing on NAPE and, , they were. Challenging to say the least, but there are two things I think we have in place right now. Number one. Writing is tough for a lot of students in part, because they’re so used of using their cell phone or some handheld device to type X number of characters, and for them that’s writing.

[00:15:34] And then number two, you have teachers who have a number of demands on his or her plate. And now we’re asking. Oh, by the way, have them write a really long paper to do so. There are college professors who are friends of mine who say students today, not only write less than they did when they were in school, but write less well.

[00:15:54] But I think every generation would say the one coming behind it is not as academically prepared as the other, but [00:16:00] there’s something to this. And I’m glad that Jay is, , weighing in on this, , , in a very , interesting way. I would say for me that. One of the ways that I became a better writer was by reading.

[00:16:11] Well, Written books. And one of my favorite authors who not only builds my vocabulary because there’s words in there, like every third page I’ve never heard of. But what often helped me with flow is, Dr. David levering Lewis. He is the two time winner of appealed to prize for his biography on web Dubois.

[00:16:31] He’s also written other books, but he’s a really good writer. But I also get a great writing tips and ideas from poetry. So I think it’s a good article and glad we talked about it.

[00:16:42] Cara: Yeah. Just say that , you make me feel really old talking about how kids write on their phones, because anybody who knows me and you know this quite well.

[00:16:49] I can’t text to save my life. I can’t write on a phone to save my life. So that must make me pretty old-school because it’s just, I don’t think it’s something I will ever become capable of. Like yet [00:17:00] that’s so autocorrect anyway, but coming up after this Gerard, we are going to be speaking to somebody who knows a lot about writing, we’re going to be speaking with David Reynolds and he is the distinguished professor of English and history at the graduate center of the city, university of New York.

[00:17:15] He’s going to talk to us about among other things. , , his new book eight, well, his 2020 book, I should say, but everything is new and 2021, I don’t know. time moves so faster. He is the author of Abe, , Abraham Lincoln in his times. So we’ll be back in just a sec.[00:18:00]

[00:18:18] And we are back with David Reynolds, a distinguished professor of English and history at the PhD program at the city university of New York graduate center. He’s the author or editor of 16 books, including Abe, Abraham Lincoln in his times, which was a noted book of the year by the wall street journal.

[00:18:35] And the Washington post professor Reynolds is the winner of the Bancroft prize. The Lincoln prize, the Christian Gauss award, the Abraham Lincoln Institute book award, the ambassador. The Gustaf Myers outstanding book award, John hope, Franklin prize and finalist for the national book critics circle award.

[00:18:54] He is a regular contributor to the New York times book review the New York review of books and the wall street [00:19:00] journal professor Reynolds. Thanks so much for joining us today on the.

[00:19:03] David: Thanks. Great to be here. Yeah, we’re

[00:19:07] Cara: really, really happy to have you. So, , , Abraham Lincoln, , is a much written about figure.

[00:19:12] So, over 15,000 books in fact have been written about Abraham Lincoln, but you, in this new book, you’ve earned a lot of praise. Placing him sort of firmly in the wider cultural landscape of his age. Could you talk a little bit about, why that approach as well as what students and teachers, we focus a lot on learning here, learning meaning 12 education, what students and teachers should know about the culture of civil war

[00:19:41] David: America.

[00:19:42] I’m a strong believer that the culture. profoundly shapes every individual or family cultural background or local culture, school, culture, church, and how these, local phenomenon intersect with certain strands in the larger [00:20:00] culture. And, , there have been some 16,000 books on Lincoln, but none, none of them really branch out too much into, his culture and what I do in my book.

[00:20:10] Is I trace, uh, his frontier culture. He was raised on the frontier in Kentucky and Indiana, and how he interacted with that and responded to it then onto Illinois, where he lived for the rest of his life and, where he was kind of a rising professional there as a lawyer. Uh, but also the entire culture of law in Illinois.

[00:20:34] Because he was engaged in law for , more than two decades and was involved with, more than five, 5,000 cases as a lawyer. And then the whole culture of Washington politics when he goes to Washington in 1860. , and then is reelected in 1964 and directs the civil war. I think what I reveal all the way along is.

[00:20:56] Ability to control the wild. [00:21:00] The frontier with that he grew up on was extremely wild. He grew to be a very good wrestler and fighter. He never fought dirty, but, uh, and that kind of earned him his early political rise, because he really impressed the Backwoods gangs of young people in Illinois when he defeated the local champion.

[00:21:19] And, for the rest of his life, he was faced with these. Wild situations, a culture that he called the mob ocracy, because it was filled with , mob action. And he really believed in the law. He believed in constitution. He didn’t believe in independent anti-slavery action. Like John Brown, who used violence against slavery.

[00:21:43] And it didn’t believe in people like Garrison who burned the constitution because they thought it was pro slavery. He wanted to use the electoral process in laws to advance antislavery. And that was his form of kind of corralling the energies [00:22:00] of his culture and sticking to the founding fathers.

[00:22:04] but at the same time, taking his own unique way of controlling culture, partly through language, his favorite, Genre was poetry. And what poetry does, is it organizes feeling and emotion and meaning and beautiful language. He loved Shakespeare. He loved burns. He memorized, he had less than one year of schooling, but he took it upon himself to memorize so many poems and he wrote poetry himself and his greatest, , , speeches that got his Berg address.

[00:22:31] Only 272. And, the second inaugural dress around 700 words or like prose poems, they condense so much meaning and feeling, into , this concise language. So language then becomes one of his ways of corralling and channeling culture. Ultimately toward redefining American democracy. He wanted to expand American democracy.

[00:22:57] And get rid of a social [00:23:00] injustice. So that, was the whole thrust of his, , interaction with.

[00:23:04] Cara: That’s fascinating fact, before you came on Gerard and I were just having a conversation about how the importance of reading and writing and teaching us to, to become thinkers and how giving students the opportunity to engage in decreasing.

[00:23:19] In fact deep writing can, really cultivate their ability to think analytically. And, you’ve certainly talked about Lincoln in those terms. So now you mentioned, and I think many people know that Lincoln’s formal education , was not, he didn’t have much of it. Um, it was pretty limited, but you also noted that he was an avid reader.

[00:23:38] some of the great books that he’s known for reading are ASAPS fables, of course, the, Bible and, Classic poetry and Shakespeare. Can you talk a little bit about the specific impact that some of these books had on his thinking? And I’m also curious to know about, , primary education in the United States at that time [00:24:00] in mid 19th century America was, was it common for folks not to have that formal education that Lincoln was leaving?

[00:24:07] David: Well, it was spotty. new mainland had very good schools. He was raised on the Kentucky frontier and the Indiana frontier. And when you lived on the frontier, you were expected above the age of five to work for the family. So, the schooling was by season , before the farming season and the planting season after the harvest season.

[00:24:28] And so he went for three months, like in fifth grade and, or what. And maybe three months, a three years later and three that the total school he had had in these one room school houses was less than one year, less than one year. And yeah, he could quote Shakespeare by the page. Robert Burns by the page.

[00:24:50] Aesop’s fables by the page. and he’s a good lesson. To all of us that now today, we really should get as much schooling [00:25:00] as we possibly can today. However, in his time, as I said, schooling was spotty and people had to really teach themselves and we can learn from these people who as much as it’s important for us to go to school.

[00:25:14] And I would say, get as many degrees as you can. Always remember to try to teach yourself as well outside of the classroom, not just as an assignment, find a topic that interests you. Walt Whitman, our greatest poet who was contemporary of Lincoln. Didn’t go beyond age 11 in school. and yet he uses more different words in his poetry than any other poet in English except shakes.

[00:25:40] Herman Melville. Well, Melville made it through high school and yet he wrote Moby Dick, and these great novels without ever having gone to college. Uh, Frederick Douglas didn’t. He was an enslaved person who escaped from slavery and he didn’t have any formal schooling whatsoever. And yet he taught himself [00:26:00] and all these people, including later, , our examples to us, to you, to me that yes, we should get whatever schooling is available to us, to be sure all the way along, but never forget that some of the most , important schooling comes from ourselves and our own curiosity.

[00:26:18] And in each of those cases, I just mentioned it was. there deep curiosity just for feeding their minds. and that really provided a wonderful lesson, think for all.

[00:26:29] Cara: Well, I think you’ve just given me the lesson that I’m going to teach my kids at the dinner table tonight. I’ll tell them that a very important historian and writer told them that they need to learn outside of school.

[00:26:40] if I don’t just push on one more thing here, because Lincoln was not only known for, quoting Shakespeare, but when he was running against, Stephen Douglas for us Senate, he talked about. in geometric axioms in the debates and the famous Lincoln Douglas debates, why would a 19th century, Illinois [00:27:00] politician, um,, reference in ancient Greek mathematician and ended debate for public office?

[00:27:05] Can you help us understand that one?

[00:27:07] David: What was really interesting about him is that his mind, , span the whole range of topics. from the scientific to the humanistic and even from the high to the low, he even like buddy humor and sentimental songs, but he went to the opera and he went to Shakespeare and everything.

[00:27:26] And he’s the only president who has a patent for an invention. He invented a kind of a certain thing for boats, for boats that he observed, but, and he had to figure it out all mathematically. So there was a mathematical and scientific side of it. And when he was traveling on the last circuit for like almost six months a year at Nike would sometimes read Shakespeare, but sometimes read Euclid and he met Euclid was a GM nutrition, and he would memorize all the propositions of Euclidean [00:28:00] geometry.

[00:28:00] And in his case, it really supported his idea of , equality, because Euclid. Has his whole theories about, you know, things equal to the same thing or equal to each other and, uh, equal angles and equal sides and so forth and dissimilar, , and so forth. And he applied this really to politics because, he made a kind of syllogism that, , all people are men, blacks are people.

[00:28:28] You know, whites are people. And so what whites and blacks are both humans. And so therefore blacks are humans because African-Americans were not viewed totally as human, uh, on the same level as white people back then. But so at Gettysburg, when he says, a nation dedicated to the proposition that own them are created equal.

[00:28:50] He memorized all 150 or so propositions of Euclid viewpoint, you see, and for him, the whole racial [00:29:00] issue was almost a, a Euclidean, matter of equality. So it really feeds into his politics as well,

[00:29:07] GR: professor, to take this step further, you’ve talked about. His mind, his thoughts and his ideas. And he had to use this doing a very contentious point in American history. He was coming of age politically when slavery states’ rights, trade tariffs, and women’s rights were on the forefront. What lessons can our teachers and students today learn from limp and can about, uh, how he addressed many of those divisions that were tearing apart his country at that time.

[00:29:34] David: I think we can learn is is this whole transition as a politician because in the 1830s, he was using what was called slasher GAF language, which was really kind of, fiercely criticizing and attacking his opponents. And he got into a duel. He almost, he could have been killed, but fortunately the duel was, was called off and he realized that he should turn to [00:30:00] persuasion and logic and reason.

[00:30:02] When dealing with these political issues. And so when he re-emerges in the 1850s, he has a new kind of rhetoric and he has learned to channel his passion through persuasive rhetoric. And I think, that gets back to the idea of language, marshaling your ideas through persuasive language and, so forth.

[00:30:22] And also, he compared himself to blonde and blonde and. The most famous tightrope Walker who went back and forth on a tightrope above Niagara falls without a net. And sometimes he was carrying a man on his back, sometimes pushing the wheelbarrow sometimes on stilts, so forth. And Lincoln said, you know, I’m like London, I try to keep to the center because in a very divided America, even more divided than today, he found that the best way was to try to stick as close to the center as possible.

[00:30:54] And to avoid being inflammatory or too radical, [00:31:00] because if he was, he could fall off the tightrope, particularly as president and the nation could be lost. And he was approached by people as president who said, can’t you make this a more anti-slavery war from the start? And he said, I hate slavery. I detested.

[00:31:19] They say the wrong thing. We could lose Kentucky or Tennessee or one of the border states, and then we’re going to lose the war. So he had to really , be blonde. And I think it’s an example of in a divided time politically. Yes. Follow your passions by, , objecting to , things you see wrong. And he was very, very firm about, his moral objections to slavery, but at the same time, Avoiding inflammatory language.

[00:31:46] That’s going to cause further division.

[00:31:49] GR: So as I hear you talk, I think about his gift and the whole idea of linguistic dexterity and rhetoric, and in ways that was unheard of at his [00:32:00] time. And in ways many of our national politicians could not emulate today. Talk a little bit more about how his deep knowledge of the Bible, our founding documents, , and his rhetorical skills helped him preserve the union and abolish slavery.

[00:32:15] Because as I hear you talk, it could have gone either way, given the political tight rope he was walking on.

[00:32:22] David: Yeah, well he has really three or four major speeches. , some of them. draw directly off the Bible. The phrase a house divided against itself cannot stand. He was talking about the divided nation, but that praises from the Bible.

[00:32:37] So, uh, he’s almost going back to the Bible at that point and using a very powerful phrase to describe, Americans say we cannot stand together, if we remain so sharply divided as a house divided and then in his Cooper union address. He went down, back to the founding documents. , , in that speech, he is [00:33:00] trying to show and prove that the founding fathers, even though , some of them held people in bondage, such as Jefferson and Washington and so forth.

[00:33:09] But fundamentally the founding fathers were basically anti-slavery. And eventually, uh, foresaw the extinction and abolition of slavery. And he does such a, any to write that speech. He really, really studied the constitutional convention, the constitution and the declaration of independence, all the founding documents.

[00:33:32] He went through very, very carefully. And then his third, most important speech Gettysburg in the very first sentence, he dedicates the nation. To, , the proposition that all men are created equal. And in that phrase, he’s going back to the declaration of independence, which says that, , in pronounced declares, all medic re we say, all humans are created equal and, [00:34:00] uh, they are, uh, granted the, , right to life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

[00:34:06] By putting that phrase right in the very first sentence of the Gettysburg address, he really, really brings, , the vision of the declaration, right. To the very heart of America and as some wonderful. And then, uh, his final, , important speech. The second inaugural address has many references to God in the Bible in support of.

[00:34:31] The defeat of slavery, he says until, , every lash inflicted upon the back of the enslaved person is repaid by a thrust of the sword. Well, , that’s the kind of thing God, , would say was a righteous act in the old Testament. He says it a little more eloquently than that, but he, he often, it’s almost like a sermon.

[00:34:53] , the second inaugural and a lot of African-Americans were in the audience. And Frederick Douglas after [00:35:00] was, uh, said Mr. Lincoln, that was a sacred effort. That speech was such a sacred effort. So yeah, the Bible and the founding documents, give incredible resonance and meaning to his speech.

[00:35:13] GR: And I think about his speeches, Dan, and what it meant to preserving the union and avoiding, slavery for another generation.

[00:35:22] I also think about that December 5th, 1955 speech that then a young art Luther king Jr. Delivered at the Holt street Baptist church, where of course Rosa parks had decided, no, I’m not going to get up. And in that speech, he talked about the constitutes. And the Bible and our founders and how important that speech was to shaping the foundation, not only of his nonviolence and movement, but also the whole idea that civil rights and human rights and the push for black liberation of the United States was in fact, linked to our founding ideals.

[00:35:56] Even if we found sometimes those ideals were used for [00:36:00] different reasons. Well, speaking of ideals, , I’d like to turn it over to you right now to. She was a passage of your choice, to read to us.

[00:36:08] David: Sure. okay. This is sort of the conclusion of my book. Langston Hughes memorably capture the spirit of the statue.

[00:36:16] I’m talking about the Lincoln Memorial and the statue of Lincoln in his 1926. Poem Lincoln monument washing. Let’s go see old day sitting in the marble and the Moonlight sitting lonely in the marble and the Moonlight quiet for 10,000 centuries old day quiet, 4 million, million years quiet, and yet a voice forever against the timeless walls of time.

[00:36:48] All day. And then I go on Martin Luther King’s. I have a dream speech delivered before a quarter of a million people from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28th, [00:37:00] 1963, guided all Deb’s voice toward the future. Five score years ago, king said a great American in whose symbolic shadow we stand today.

[00:37:10] Signed the emancipation proclamation. Lincoln’s decree came as a joyous daybreak for millions of enslaved. But, king argued America had since then betrayed Lincoln’s ideals, injustice, justice, still prevailed king envisioned a time when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews, Gentiles, Protestants, and Catholics will be able to join hands and see.

[00:37:35] In the words of the old Negro spiritual free at last free at last, thank God almighty. We are free at last affirming national unity king declared. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. These inspiring words, bring us back to the.

[00:37:58] At America’s most divided [00:38:00] time, Lincoln pushed hard toward justice while keeping the whole nation foremost in his mind, he progressed cautiously shrewdly inexorably with honesty, with humility, with winning humor. And in the end with his thoughts on all Americans, regardless of party, religion, or race, his principal division, and his disarming modestly.

[00:38:24] Remain an inspiration to every day, Americans and political leaders, alike, freedom, equality, justice for everyone, even for the most marginalized or oppressed contained within one nation. This was a, in his democratic fullness. Thank you.

[00:38:43] GR: Well, Professor Reynolds, Cara, and I thank you for joining. I personally want to thank you for using scholarship as a platform for a generational conversation about culture and what it means to us today, what it meant then, but more importantly to encourage [00:39:00] adults and children alike, those who were in the classroom and those who are outside to really look at a, as you call him, as a figure in world history who wrote.

[00:39:10] I changed American society, but also the way we think, and at a point in American history, when people are questioning the meaning of school, what does learning really look like to take someone from his humble background who was not afforded even a third of the amenities that we have today to pursue our quest, for knowledge, you show that he was able to do.

[00:39:32] as someone saying from a biblical perspective, folding in, on both broken pieces, but thank you for your work and look forward to future conversations.

[00:39:39] David: Thank you very, very much for having me. And, , I encourage all of you to read my book as I know some of you have, but thank you for having me. It’s always wonderful to talk about.

[00:39:51] GR: [00:40:00] [00:41:00] We comes from Denisha Merriweather, who is the founder of black minds matter. And she also worked in the U S department of education and has a great personal story herself of Nella becoming the first in her family to graduate college. But she now earned a master’s in social work. She’s doing really good work.

[00:41:53] Her tweet is from October 17th, black families now homeschool at a higher rate than any other [00:42:00] demographic in America. Black minds matter shows a black homeschool rate growing from 3.3% in March of 2020 to 16.1 by October of 2020. So we’ve talked about this in passing before, but it says something families interested in, in different ways of learning.

[00:42:25] So I want to give a shout out to.

[00:42:27] Cara: I’m a huge fan of Denisha. I consider a friend she’s a brilliant young person and man, those numbers Gerard really astonishing. it’s interesting to see homeschool numbers go up overall. We made a lot of assumptions about whether they would go back down when things were back to normal.

[00:42:43] Things are really back to normal and have been, , at least a new normal in a lot of places. And I don’t think those homeschooling numbers are going to budge too much. I think a lot of parents, especially those who weren’t satisfied have really found their group, so to speak with homeschooling and kids too.

[00:42:57] So, great tweet of the week [00:43:00] to regard our time has come to an end, but we will be together again. So don’t you fret because next week. Actually, this is pretty cool. I’m excited about this. We are going to be talking to Dr. Bror Saxberg MD and he is the vice president of learning science at the Chan Zuckerberg initiative.

[00:43:17] Looking forward to that Gerard until next week, take care. Do watch the baseball games. They’re fascinating. We’ll see if this Red Sox streak continues and I hear you’re supposed to eat. They call them rally cups. I didn’t know. People probably think like what a dork. She knows nothing about baseball, rally cops, um, I guess those are Reese’s peanut butter cups.

[00:43:35] And I will say I’ve been letting my kids have a Reese’s peanut butter cup at night. And so that makes my son happy that the socks will win. So I hope you’re watching Gerard until next week. Take care of yourself.

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In Commentary Magazine, Bari Weiss Takes on Wokeness and Cancel Culture

October 19, 2021/in Blog, Featured /by Editorial Staff

Author and journalist Bari Weiss is out with a new article in Commentary magazine on why and how we should fight the “woke revolution.” One word: courage.

She writes:

A lot of people want to convince you that you need a Ph.D. or a law degree or dozens of hours of free time to read dense texts about critical theory to understand the woke movement and its worldview. You do not. You simply need to believe your own eyes and ears.

The op-ed is getting national attention and we think you should read it. It is an adaptation of remarks she delivered in recent weeks at Pioneer Institute’s Peters Lecture. Watch highlights below. The topic was “Rebuilding Our Institutions: Resisting Illiberalism & Unifying Americans,” and Weiss was honored for her courageous stand against the growing, dangerous trend of silencing debate. Weiss resigned her role as an opinion editor at The New York Times last year, citing an “illiberal environment” in which “self-censorship has become the norm.”

Bari’s focus on restoring the free and civil exchange of ideas is a goal we can all get behind. In promoting voices such as Bari’s here in Massachusetts and nationally, Pioneer helps support this ideal and resist the illiberal trend toward silencing and shaming people with differing points of view. We’re pleased to help influence the national conversation (even after a live event is over)!

Support Pioneer Institute’s research, events, podcasts, media, and other activities in Massachusetts and beyond.

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Read Our Commentary

John Dearie: Halt Immigration? Fall Behind

October 21, 2021/in Economic Opportunity, Featured, JobMakers /by Editorial Staff

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Guest:

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Read a Transcript of This Episode:

Please excuse typos.

Denzil Mohammed:

I’m Denzil Mohammed, and this is JobMakers. [inaudible]

Denzil Mohammed:

John Dearie:

I’m great. I’m great. Thanks so much for reaching out and invited me to participate.

Denzil Mohammed:

So tell me a little bit about the center and the kind of work that you’ve been doing. One. Why, why did you found this in the,

John Dearie:

Denzil Mohammed:

John Dearie:

Denzil Mohammed:

John Dearie:

Denzil Mohammed:

John Dearie:

Denzil Mohammed:

John Dearie:

Denzil Mohammed:

John Dearie:

Thank you very much. I really appreciate the opportunity. It’s great to see you. I’m sorry. It’s been so long.

Denzil Mohammed:

Browse recent episodes:

Award-Winner Prof. David Reynolds on Abraham Lincoln & American Civil War Culture

October 20, 2021/in Academic Standards, Blog: Education, Blog: US History, Featured, News, Podcast, Related Education Blogs, US History /by Editorial Staff

Guest:

The next episode will air on Wednesday, October 27th with guest, Dr. Bror Saxberg, MD, Vice President of Learning Science at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Tweet of the Week:

50% of Black Americans say they want to homeschool after COVID-19 lockdown.

And, I can't say I blame them. Our Children Our Choice! #FundMyChildNow #BlackHomeschoolers #BlackTeachers #SchoolChoice pic.twitter.com/q9HTpf08GF

— Denisha Allen (Merriweather) (@DenishaMweather) May 15, 2020

News Links:

Wash. Post/ Jay Mathews (Will Fitzhugh &TCR): “Stuff your 5,000-word limit! Students dare to write longer history papers”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/concord-review-will-fitzhugh-student-essays/2021/10/14/8590a776-2c4d-11ec-baf4-d7a4e075eb90_story.html

Reviving the Humanities Through General Education

https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2021/10/18/revitalizing-humanities-general-education-opinion

Get new episodes of The Learning Curve in your inbox!

Read a Transcript of This Episode:

[00:00:21] Cara Candal: some version of blonde at this point.

[00:01:33] Well, they’ve been happening in Houston, I guess we’re coming back to Fenway parks, you know? So anyway, , that’s my sports story of the week.

[00:06:13] Cara: I love this storage of art. And I love this story. First of all, I have to share with you that my absolute favorite phase, of course, in high school was my humanities course.

[00:16:31] He’s also written other books, but he’s a really good writer. But I also get a great writing tips and ideas from poetry. So I think it’s a good article and glad we talked about it.

[00:16:42] Cara: Yeah. Just say that , you make me feel really old talking about how kids write on their phones, because anybody who knows me and you know this quite well.

[00:19:03] David: Thanks. Great to be here. Yeah, we’re

[00:19:07] Cara: really, really happy to have you. So, , , Abraham Lincoln, , is a much written about figure.

[00:19:41] David: America.

[00:22:57] And get rid of a social [00:23:00] injustice. So that, was the whole thrust of his, , interaction with.

[00:26:18] And in each of those cases, I just mentioned it was. there deep curiosity just for feeding their minds. and that really provided a wonderful lesson, think for all.

[00:27:05] Can you help us understand that one?

[00:31:46] That’s going to cause further division.

[00:32:15] Because as I hear you talk, it could have gone either way, given the political tight rope he was walking on.

[00:35:13] GR: And I think about his speeches, Dan, and what it meant to preserving the union and avoiding, slavery for another generation.

[00:36:08] David: Sure. okay. This is sort of the conclusion of my book. Langston Hughes memorably capture the spirit of the statue.

[00:39:32] as someone saying from a biblical perspective, folding in, on both broken pieces, but thank you for your work and look forward to future conversations.

[00:42:25] So I want to give a shout out to.

Browse Recent Episodes:

In Commentary Magazine, Bari Weiss Takes on Wokeness and Cancel Culture

October 19, 2021/in Blog, Featured /by Editorial Staff

Author and journalist Bari Weiss is out with a new article in Commentary magazine on why and how we should fight the “woke revolution.” One word: courage.

She writes:

A lot of people want to convince you that you need a Ph.D. or a law degree or dozens of hours of free time to read dense texts about critical theory to understand the woke movement and its worldview. You do not. You simply need to believe your own eyes and ears.

Support Pioneer Institute’s research, events, podcasts, media, and other activities in Massachusetts and beyond.

Stay in the loop – join our email list:

Watch: Catholic education forum highlights

Help preserve Catholic education!

Big Sacrifices, Big Dreams:
Ending America’s Bigoted Education Laws

In Massachusetts, the Know-Nothing amendments prevent more than 100,000 urban families with children in chronically underperforming school districts from receiving scholarship vouchers that would allow them access to additional educational alternatives. These legal barriers, also known as Blaine amendments, restrict government funding from flowing to religiously affiliated organizations in nearly 40 states and are a violation of the first and fourteenth amendments.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case this year, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, that could end these amendments. In 2018, Pioneer produced a 30-minute documentary on the impact of the Blaine amendments on families in Massachusetts, Georgia, and Michigan.

“She’s a good girl. She helps me a lot. She has big, big dreams. I don’t have the money, but she has big dreams. I hope she’s going to get everything, but she works so hard. She works so hard in school.”

Arlete do CarmoFramingham, MA

“Our family is needing to make some really big sacrifices because we believe this is important, and so, we’re basically going to do whatever it takes… Sometimes we look at each other and go ‘I don’t know if I can do it again another month…’”

Nate and Tennille CostonMidland, MI

“A lot of the families have to sacrifice and work multiple jobs… And just scraping together enough money to just make tuition, just the basics.”

Sarah MorinFall River, MA

“It is discriminatory, that parents who want to choose an alternative to public school for their children, would not in any way receive any compensation for that, whether it be tax credit, whether it be a voucher…”

Father Jay MelloPastor, St. Michael and St. Joseph Parishes

Watch the Film

History of Blaine Amendments

Nativist sentiments were, like slavery, a part of the original fabric of the United States.

In the 1840s, nativist movement leaders formed official political parties and local chapters of the national Native American Party (later the American Party), although they continued to be commonly known as the Know-Nothing Party. Politicians sought to insert provisions into state constitutions against Catholics who refused to renounce the pope. The Know-Nothing movement brought bigotry and hatred to a new level of violence and organization.

The party’s legacy endured in the post-Civil War era, with laws and constitutional amendments it supported, still today severely limiting parents’ educational choices. A federal constitutional amendment was proposed by Speaker of the House James Blaine prohibiting money raised by taxation in any State to be under the control of any religious sect; nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations. These were then named the Blaine Amendments of 1875.

in recent decades, often in response to challenges to school choice programs, the U.S. Supreme Court has demonstrated great interest in examining the issues of educational alternatives and attempts limit parental options. Massachusetts plays a key role in this debate. The Bay State was a key center of the Know-Nothing movement and has the oldest version of Anti-Aid Amendments in the nation, as well as a second such amendment approved in 1917. Two-fifths of Massachusetts residents are Catholic, and its Catholic schools outperform the state’s public schools, which are the best in the nation.

Make Your Voice Heard Now!

Help families like the Costons in Michigan to end the bigoted Blaine amendments in their state that are blocking tuition scholarships and other types of financial support that would make it possible for families to send their children to high-quality schools that are best suited for their children.

Sign the Petition!

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John Dearie: Halt Immigration? Fall Behind

October 21, 2021/in Economic Opportunity, Featured, JobMakers /by Editorial Staff

Follow on Apple Follow on Spotify Follow on Stitcher

Guest:

Get new episodes of JobMakers in your inbox!

Read a Transcript of This Episode:

Please excuse typos.

Denzil Mohammed:

I’m Denzil Mohammed, and this is JobMakers. [inaudible]

Denzil Mohammed:

John Dearie:

I’m great. I’m great. Thanks so much for reaching out and invited me to participate.

Denzil Mohammed:

So tell me a little bit about the center and the kind of work that you’ve been doing. One. Why, why did you found this in the,

John Dearie:

Denzil Mohammed:

John Dearie:

Denzil Mohammed:

John Dearie:

Denzil Mohammed:

John Dearie:

Denzil Mohammed:

John Dearie:

Denzil Mohammed:

John Dearie:

Thank you very much. I really appreciate the opportunity. It’s great to see you. I’m sorry. It’s been so long.

Denzil Mohammed:

Browse recent episodes:

Award-Winner Prof. David Reynolds on Abraham Lincoln & American Civil War Culture

October 20, 2021/in Academic Standards, Blog: Education, Blog: US History, Featured, News, Podcast, Related Education Blogs, US History /by Editorial Staff

Guest:

The next episode will air on Wednesday, October 27th with guest, Dr. Bror Saxberg, MD, Vice President of Learning Science at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Tweet of the Week:

50% of Black Americans say they want to homeschool after COVID-19 lockdown.

And, I can't say I blame them. Our Children Our Choice! #FundMyChildNow #BlackHomeschoolers #BlackTeachers #SchoolChoice pic.twitter.com/q9HTpf08GF

— Denisha Allen (Merriweather) (@DenishaMweather) May 15, 2020

News Links:

Wash. Post/ Jay Mathews (Will Fitzhugh &TCR): “Stuff your 5,000-word limit! Students dare to write longer history papers”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/concord-review-will-fitzhugh-student-essays/2021/10/14/8590a776-2c4d-11ec-baf4-d7a4e075eb90_story.html

Reviving the Humanities Through General Education

https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2021/10/18/revitalizing-humanities-general-education-opinion

Get new episodes of The Learning Curve in your inbox!

Read a Transcript of This Episode:

[00:00:21] Cara Candal: some version of blonde at this point.

[00:01:33] Well, they’ve been happening in Houston, I guess we’re coming back to Fenway parks, you know? So anyway, , that’s my sports story of the week.

[00:06:13] Cara: I love this storage of art. And I love this story. First of all, I have to share with you that my absolute favorite phase, of course, in high school was my humanities course.

[00:16:31] He’s also written other books, but he’s a really good writer. But I also get a great writing tips and ideas from poetry. So I think it’s a good article and glad we talked about it.

[00:16:42] Cara: Yeah. Just say that , you make me feel really old talking about how kids write on their phones, because anybody who knows me and you know this quite well.

[00:19:03] David: Thanks. Great to be here. Yeah, we’re

[00:19:07] Cara: really, really happy to have you. So, , , Abraham Lincoln, , is a much written about figure.

[00:19:41] David: America.

[00:22:57] And get rid of a social [00:23:00] injustice. So that, was the whole thrust of his, , interaction with.

[00:26:18] And in each of those cases, I just mentioned it was. there deep curiosity just for feeding their minds. and that really provided a wonderful lesson, think for all.

[00:27:05] Can you help us understand that one?

[00:31:46] That’s going to cause further division.

[00:32:15] Because as I hear you talk, it could have gone either way, given the political tight rope he was walking on.

[00:35:13] GR: And I think about his speeches, Dan, and what it meant to preserving the union and avoiding, slavery for another generation.

[00:36:08] David: Sure. okay. This is sort of the conclusion of my book. Langston Hughes memorably capture the spirit of the statue.

[00:39:32] as someone saying from a biblical perspective, folding in, on both broken pieces, but thank you for your work and look forward to future conversations.

[00:42:25] So I want to give a shout out to.

Browse Recent Episodes:

In Commentary Magazine, Bari Weiss Takes on Wokeness and Cancel Culture

October 19, 2021/in Blog, Featured /by Editorial Staff

Author and journalist Bari Weiss is out with a new article in Commentary magazine on why and how we should fight the “woke revolution.” One word: courage.

She writes:

A lot of people want to convince you that you need a Ph.D. or a law degree or dozens of hours of free time to read dense texts about critical theory to understand the woke movement and its worldview. You do not. You simply need to believe your own eyes and ears.

Support Pioneer Institute’s research, events, podcasts, media, and other activities in Massachusetts and beyond.

Stay in the loop – join our email list:

Have Faith in Catholic Education

Read Our Research

Get new episodes of JobMakers in your inbox!

Get new episodes of The Learning Curve in your inbox!

Read Our Commentary

Get new episodes of JobMakers in your inbox!

Get new episodes of The Learning Curve in your inbox!

Watch: Catholic education forum highlights

Help preserve Catholic education!

Big Sacrifices, Big Dreams:Ending America’s Bigoted Education Laws

History of Blaine Amendments

Nativist sentiments were, like slavery, a part of the original fabric of the United States.

Make Your Voice Heard Now!

Learn more about how you can help end bigoted education laws in your state!

support our work to end bigoted barriers to school choice

Yes! I want to help restore Catholic education

Get new episodes of JobMakers in your inbox!

Get new episodes of The Learning Curve in your inbox!

Big Sacrifices, Big Dreams:
Ending America’s Bigoted Education Laws