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The (Not So) Good Old Days in Education

A classroom before the "good old days."

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Jay Schalin, director of policy analysis at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal in Raleigh, North Carolina.

As somebody who is right in the middle of the “boomer” generation, I often hear or read my peers lamenting the good old days in education, before the radicalization of the late 1960s and 1970s ushered in disastrous changes.

What they fail to realize is that the K-12 education we received in the post-World War II era was not only already severely degraded, but it paved the way for the radicalization they decry. Here’s how it happened. Continue reading “The (Not So) Good Old Days in Education”

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Workers Unite: ‘The Transforming Power of the Cross’

"Clowne Methodist Chapel" by Respect AKP is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
“Clowne Methodist Chapel” by Respect AKP is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

In recent weeks, I have described how workers in the British Industrial Revolution (1750-1850) were wrenched out of their slow, agriculturally paced existence into an unpleasant, time-dominated factory life. Eventually, they accepted that pressured life.

I offered two forces that encouraged them to accept it. Now I have a third. Continue reading “Workers Unite: ‘The Transforming Power of the Cross’”

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What a Newly Discovered Letter Means to Historians

Frederick_ Douglass_ letter_discovery

The Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D.C., which depicts Abraham Lincoln standing over a kneeling freed slave, is being scrutinized and reconsidered these days. But the dispute over the statue (also called the Freedmen’s statue) has had a remarkable result for historians:  An 1876 letter by Frederick Douglass has been found in which he expressed disappointment in the statue.

For me, what is so intriguing is how it was discovered and how that illustrates the wonderful world that digital technology has brought to historians—a world in which artifacts of the past are readily available.

Here’s the story: Continue reading “What a Newly Discovered Letter Means to Historians”

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Child Labor—in the Congo and in the Industrial Revolution

According to the United Nations, 40,000 children work in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, mining for the mineral cobalt. They work for up to 12 hours a day under dangerous conditions that can be deadly when they have to go underground.

Americans may be partly responsible for their work.

Cobalt is an essential ingredient of most electric vehicle batteries, and demand for electric vehicles is growing. The U. S government is promoting and subsidizing EVs. Recently, in a House-passed infrastructure bill, a Republican congressman tried to ban the purchase of battery ingredients that depend on child labor. His amendment was struck down.

Around 1780, thousands of children as young as 5 or 6 years old began to work 12 hours or more daily in British textile mills.[1] Can we learn something from that experience?

Children had always been expected to work in England, often for long hours, but the mechanized factories brought them out of homes and workshops. The textile mills didn’t need brawn; owners wanted women and children to monitor the moving machines and piece together broken threads. Their work cost less than men’s and they were more docile. Continue reading “Child Labor—in the Congo and in the Industrial Revolution”

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News about History in July

Bastille Day

It’s Bastille Day. Read about the French Revolution, in context, by a British professor of history writing for the BBC’s History Extra. 

Hamilton the movie doesn’t represent Hamilton the man, says Phil Magness  in Independent Review. 

Why did the French army fold in 1940? Or did it? Robert J. Young calls the story of French military weakness “misremembering” and writes about it in two essays (here and here) on the History News Network.

An amazing historical find: The dispute over the Freedmen’s statue leads to discovery of a letter about the statue by Frederick Douglass (he disliked it). In the Wall Street Journal.

“We shall overcome.” Black Americans overcame, and  Walter Williams explains why “as a group, black Americans have made the greatest gains, over some of the highest hurdles, and in a shorter span of time than any other racial group in history.”

Continue reading “News about History in July”