civic education in Russia

Posted on August 31, 2022 by Peter

The Russian Education Ministry recently unveiled new curricular units for grades 1-11 under the label of “Talking About What is Important: Our Country is Russia.” I learned about the curriculum from this article in Meduza, but the magic of Google Translate allowed me to read the whole thing in English. It’s fascinating as a window into Russian pedagogy and state values, as well as a dim reflection of practices that some Americans would advocate–or even use already–for our children.

Perhaps the creepiest part comes in the Materials for Grades 5-7. Students compete in teams to answer quiz questions, such as “What is the tallest building in Europe?” (answer: Lakhta Center, St. Petersburg) and “What order do the colors appear in the Russian flag?”

At this point, the lesson plan says:

Teacher: While the results of the game are being summed up, I want to note that regardless of points scored, you are all great, because you know a lot about geography, history and culture of our country. …
We see manifestations of genuine patriotism even today, above all during the special military operation. Its launch on February 24 of this year was announced by the President of Russia V.V. Putin. In his speech, the President noted: “Circumstances require us to take decisive and immediate actions. The People’s Republic of Donbas turned to Russia with a request for help.” Among the goals of a special military operation are to protect the population of Donbas, subjected to bullying and harassment by the Kyiv regime, to disarm Ukraine, and to prevent the deployment of NATO military bases. The Russian armed forces, together with the forces of the DPR and LPR, are actively working to achieve these goals. Huge military and other assistance of the collective West to the Ukrainian authorities is prolonging the fighting and increases the number of victims of the operation.
Over the past months, we have learned the names of our heroes, Russian patriots. Here are some more facts. Captain Alexander Romanov during the battle discovered a group of Ukrainian nationalists and decided to push them into the minefield. As a result of the operation, the nationalists surrendered, Captain Romanov personally neutralized 26 men. Thanks to the successful operation, Russian troops occupied the salient without losses.

(The list of heroic feats continues.)

Another snippet, this one from grades 3-5, provides a portrait of a Russian classroom as the Ministry imagines it:

Teacher: Today let’s think together again about what it means to love your Motherland, and how to learn it. For this it is important to answer the question “What do we call the Motherland?”. It is both simple and very complex issue. Of course, the Motherland for us is our country Russia. And what else? I would like to hear your answers.
Sample answers of children: “The motherland is also the people who live in our country, and our family, and the place where we were born, and the culture”.
Teacher: Let’s listen to the lyrics of the song “Where the Motherland Begins” by Veniamin Basner to the words of Mikhail Matusovsky. …

I had the opportunity to work with Ukrainian teachers in Kyiv in 2017, so I knew their national curriculum at the time. It had patriotic elements, but also democratic, classically liberal, and cosmopolitan aspects, and it seemed to align with guidance from the Council of Europe. I did not see anything about democracy or individual rights in the new Russian materials, even as lip-service.

We must teach students about politics, government, history, and social issues–to equip them to participate on an equal footing. However, civic education is always dangerous, because the government is able to compel children to learn about itself. I realize that conservative critics believe that American public schools teach youth to support expansive state policies and bureaucracies that they oppose. For me, a greater risk is a curriculum that idolizes the nation and its existing system and policies–much like the Kremlin’s. These disagreements are inevitable and even healthy. The best we can do is to have an ongoing, critical, diverse, deliberative, and influential public debate about what students should learn, so that this crucial question is not settled by politicians alone.

Four perspectives on student debt forgiveness

Posted on August 29, 2022 by Peter

Radical: Debt is the linchpin of a predatory global political-economic system (Graeber 2011). Canceling a portion of one form of debt strikes a blow at this whole structure. It demonstrates that victories can be won—particularly because the president was reluctant to take this step and did so under pressure. The victory will encourage people to think of themselves as debtors with political power, which is a potent identity. If canceling debt weakens the existing economic system (for instance, by encouraging individuals to borrow in the hope of having their loans canceled), that is a feature, not a bug. Another blow will be struck when other groups demand the cancellation of their debts as a matter of fairness. (“Biden helped the college kids—what about those of us with medical bills?”) This policy will look successful in retrospect if it turns out to be merely the first of many cancellations.
Social democratic: The measure of a policy is how much it helps the least advantaged. However, it is wise to design programs to benefit relatively large and empowered populations as well as the neediest, so that such policies are enacted and survive. For instance, European welfare states rely heavily on value-added taxes, which are regressive, and they provide cheap or free college for all (including those who could have afforded college by themselves). Such policies have proven durable. Similarly, in the USA, Medicare and Social Security have been sustained, while means-tested welfare programs have been cut because they have poor constituencies. Forgiving student debt has the same kind of structure. According to a Penn Wharton analysis, people between age 25 and 35 who are in the bottom income quintile will get 13.5% of the benefits of the forgiveness, while people in the top 40% of income will get about 24% of it. The Penn Wharton analysis does not consider race, but NCES reports that Black people with any college debt owe a median $1,810, which is almost three times as high as White people’s median debt ($630). Thus the Biden policy should have progressive effects with respect to race (while also benefiting many White people and omitting Black people who didn’t attend college). This doesn’t sound impressively equitable; boosting financial aid would be a better policy. However, the constituency for financial aid consists of current or prospective college students who demonstrate need, and that group is too politically weak. Besides, the White House decided that Biden could forgive debt by executive order, while Congress would have to pass other reforms; but Congress hardly ever passes a controversial bill.
Interest-group pluralist (Lowi 1979): Biden was elected with a coalition that included a disproportionate number of younger people with college degrees, and he performed best in the $50,000-$100,000 income range. Biden voters have diverse interests, but college graduates (and their parents) are more concentrated, better led, and more culturally and economically potent than other Democratic interest groups. As part of the governing coalition, they successfully demanded a benefit. Biden complied. Interest-group pluralism predicts that they will next seek other benefits for themselves, without supporting a radical economic restructuring or any serious attention to other groups, such as older people with medical debt or farmworkers. If colleges and universities capture some of the benefits of the debt-cancellation (by raising tuition in the expectation of another cancellation later), so be it: their faculty and staff are core to the Democratic coalition. This is what interest-group pluralism predicts. As Lowi notes, it does not judge, because it considers judgment unscientific. Politics is nothing but the clash of interests. Last week, people with college debt won a round.
Market-utilitarian: Markets produce wealth; governments may use taxes and regulations to encourage, discourage, or subsidize behaviors when necessary for the aggregate good. Forgiving debt after it has been incurred cannot incentivize education, but it can create moral hazard, which distorts markets. Colleges will grab most of the benefits. We know, for example, that when the stock market boosts college endowments, those institutions spend the money to increase their own selectivity and do not offer more financial aid (Bulman 2022). Debt-cancellation may be inflationary, yet the biggest problem facing the economy right now is inflation. For these reasons, the policy is foolish.

I must admit I don’t foresee radical results following from Biden’s debt cancellation (per #1). David Graeber endorsed forgiving student loans (p. 544), but he expected a global movement against debt to take centuries. On that time scale, I am confident that our current system will change. But between now and 2024 or 2050–I don’t think the conditions are in place.

I am not equipped to assess mainstream economists’ arguments against the new policy (#4), and I doubt that we will know—even in hindsight—whether debt forgiveness increased inflation or tuition prices or created moral hazard (for good or ill). For one thing, the policy is relatively modest compared to other recent interventions.

I think the difference between #2 or #3 is important. A lot depends on how people—a wide array of people—describe and interpret the new policy.

If many Americans decide that the Democrats now represent college kids (#3), that interpretation will reinforce a class inversion that is one of the most serious threats to democracy. When the center-left party that is willing to employ government as an instrument for social welfare looks elitist, the right wing will offer chauvinistic nationalism to pick up workers’ votes. Meanwhile, a center-left party that depends on the votes of more educated people will drift toward elitist policies.

I know that many people with college debt are not “elite” by any measure. Nevertheless, favoring college education looks elitist when about 55% of adults do not hold a BA, and 38% never enrolled in college, yet almost all of the nation’s leaders all hold college degrees.

On the other hand, if Americans conclude from this experiment that their government can help people, and therefore it should do something for those without any college experience (#2), that would be a positive step. Americans will be more likely to reach this conclusion if, indeed, the government next does something tangible for working-class people without college debt.

The Fall of Robespierre changed history because of how French people reinterpreted it about a year after he met the guillotine. So too, Biden’s debt cancellation will matter because of the story that American tell themselves about it in 2024 and later.

Sources: David Graeber, Debt: The first five thousand years (New York: Melville House, 2011); Theodore J. Lowi, The End of Liberalism: The Second Republic of the United States (Norton 1979); Bulman, George, The Effect of College and University Endowments on Financial Aid, Admissions, and Student Composition, NBER working paper 30404. See also: the social class inversion as a threat to democracy; a conversation with Farah Stockman about American Made: What Happens to People When Work Disappears; the weirdness of the higher ed marketplace; the new elite is like the old elite; etc..

Did you miss our recent Civics and Government Resource Webinar?

Posted on August 24, 2022 by stevemasy

If you missed the webinar we did on August 24 concerning the resources we here at the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship at the Lou Frey Institute have available to start the year strong, it’s now posted online so click her e !

This video and the resources mentioned in the webinar can found here.

If you have questions or would like to discuss professional development, reach out any time!

when states are blind

Posted on August 19, 2022 by Peter

Although an account by former Russian paratrooper Pavel Filatyev and a Washington Post article today by Greg Miller and Catherine Belton should be read with caution, these sources paint a consistent picture.

Before the February invasion, the Kremlin believed that the government of Ukraine was compromised and the Ukrainian public would support a Russian occupation. Russian agents had strong reasons to disbelieve both assumptions; they had even conducted reliable polls in Ukraine that showed a high willingness to fight. But they had no incentives to tell their superiors the truth.

Putin also believed he was ordering something like 200,000 soldiers to invade and occupy a compliant Ukraine, but the real number may have been closer to 100,000. Commanders all down the line had incentives to lie about how many men had actually been recruited, had reported for duty, had remained on base, and had received basic training and essential equipment.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian security services received US and British intelligence that Russia was preparing to invade and duly reported those assessments to President Zelensky. But they also knew about poor Russian preparation and thought that the invasion was probably a bluff. At the same time, many Ukrainian officials feared that Russia had fatally compromised own security services–mirroring the Kremlin’s assumptions. US intelligence also underestimated Ukraine’s potential in the case of war, which may have delayed US military aid.

Clearly, the errors were worse on the Russian side, and they may be continuing. A study by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and colleagues claims that “business retreats and sanctions are catastrophically crippling the Russian economy,” contrary to what Russian government statistics currently suggest and what Russian leaders may sincerely believe. Likewise, Russian apologists for their own system who cite conservative values, like traditional gender roles and faith, seem blind to facts. Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus have three of the four highest divorce rates in the world. Eight percent of Russians attend church regularly, as compared to 48% of supposedly decadent Americans and 19% of Ukrainians.

Time will tell who is right about the Russian economy and other issues. The general point is that no government can automatically or easily know what is going on. A government may not even know how many soldiers are enlisted in its own national army, let alone how the economy is really performing or how the public would respond to new events.

A government can allocate resources to collect information. When William the Conqueror suddenly obtained absolute power over England, one of his first acts was to order a census of its land and people, the Domesday Book. However, state capacity is always limited (there was no new English census for two hundred years after William’s), and money does not straightforwardly buy truth. It can even create incentives to mislead. Miller and Belton report that the Kremlin now regards Viktor Medvedchuk as a traitor because he delivered nothing in return for huge payments from Russian intelligence.

The more authoritarian a government is, the more it can give itself the right to collect information. It can employ surveillance, coercion, and even torture. On the other hand, authoritarian governments tend to monopolize information, depriving themselves of independent checks on what they believe. They invite people to lie to obtain preferment or avoid punishment. And they often focus on collecting information that most directly affects their own survival (such as the names of potential opponents) rather than information that would help them govern effectively.

I suppose that an authoritarian government that is broadly popular, such as the Soviet Union at the height of WWII, may perform decently well because individuals are motivated to try to do what they say they are doing. For instance, military officers don’t merely claim that they have followed orders; they do their best to follow them. But when authoritarian governments have lukewarm support, they are highly vulnerable to misinformation.

To various degrees, democratic governments restrict their own ability to collect information. At the limit, a highly democratic government could not employ spies, because it would be fully transparent to its own citizens. (That would deprive it of some ability to collect information–for better or worse.) There are many other reasons for democratic systems to misunderstand reality, including groupthink and confirmation bias, an urge for popularity, short time-horizons, failures to invest in research, and sheer human error.

We should never assume the reliability of information provided by any institution. For instance, today’s Washington Post article is not Gospel truth; it is a piece of reporting that depends on sources who have interests and journalists who have frameworks. But it is equally foolish to reject all official information as biased. Often the best we can do is to examine the processes and incentives that have generated data. For instance, if the people inside a system are reasonably protected against political interference and reasonably likely to be rewarded for accuracy, the system is more credible. And if information that comes from several autonomous organizations converges, the odds improve that the results are valid–although cultural and ideological biases could still operate at that level.

Overall, authoritarian governments tend to be unreliable sources. Often they pay the price for their own errors.

An agenda for R&D for democracy

Posted on August 16, 2022 by Peter

In The American Political Science Review, Henry Farrell, Hugo Mercier, and Melissa Schwartzberg (2022) challenge two influential views.

One view paints a “despairing picture” of democratic reasoning. It assembles evidence that individuals demonstrate “ignorance and incompetence” about political matters, while groups “invariably” suffer from “conformity,” “affective polarization,” “the rejection of countervailing arguments from nongroup members, and backfire effects.”

The other view holds that deliberating groups are wiser than individuals because they can pool intelligence and combine perspectives.

Farrell, Mercier & Schwartzberg argue that both theories generalize too much. Some democratic processes work out well; some do not. They cite recent “interactionist” research in psychology. “Instead of looking to the (supposedly invariant) cognitive limitations of ordinary citizens as skeptics do, an interactionist approach suggests that we should investigate the social context of decisions—how groups are structured—to understand when group identity and social pressure can distort or swamp problem solving [or not].”

Farrell and his colleagues use Elinor Ostrom as a model or inspiration for this agenda. Ostrom did not emphasize the main question of deliberative democratic theory, which is something like this: How should we debate and reach conclusions about contested matters, such as public policies? Instead, she asked how people should coordinate their individual behavior to achieve outcomes that they all endorse. Whereas democratic processes involve reasoning and discussion, many of the examples that interested Ostrom were about quiet work, e.g., digging irrigation canals or editing Wikipedia articles. Still, she confronted a similar situation to the one that Farrell et al. describe in democratic theory today.

When Ostrom got started, a dominant view held that individuals cannot coordinate effectively without external compulsion: the “tragedy of the commons” problem, articulated most famously by Garrett Hardin. Mancur Olson (1971) argued that sometimes voluntary coordination succeeds, and the key variable is the size of the group. Small voluntary groups can function; large ones cannot. Ostrom absorbed that claim as part of a much more ambitious research agenda. She strove to identify aspects of groups that vary and then explored which variables affect the quality of outcomes. The size of groups turned out to be relatively insignificant, not even appearing on her list of “design principles.”

If I may say so, I adopt a very similar position to Farrell and colleagues in my new book, What Should We Do? A Theory of Civic Life (2022). I summarize Ostrom’s agenda in chapter 3 and then turn to deliberative processes. Like Farrell and colleagues, I argue that we should approach deliberative democracy much as Ostrom addressed coordination. We should experiment and test which specific conditions make discussions go well. I argue that Ostrom’s school of political economy should pay more attention to deliberation about values, because that is a necessary activity of groups. (In many of Ostrom’s cases, there is no dispute about values.) I also discuss nonviolent social movements, but that is a different topic.

When the argument is stated as in Farrell, Mercier & Schwartzberg, I anticipate two difficult but fruitful questions.

First, how should we identify successes and failures so that we can decide which democratic processes work? After all, people often disagree about what constitutes a success. One option is to use obvious cases of failure, when everyone would regard the outcome as suboptimal. We can ask why that happened. But this approach shifts the research away from debates about principles and goals toward purely instrumental problems, like how to preserve common resources, which Ostrom and her many colleagues already studied. The more controversial the topic becomes, the less we already know about how to structure conversations about it–although I would cite literature that Farrell et al. don’t mention, such as work by John Gastil, Archon Fung, Tina Nabatchi and Matt Leighninger, Celina Su, and others. These authors have identified variables that affect conversational quality, such as the method of recruiting or admitting participants, the nature of the facilitation, and the stakes of the discussion. Still, the problem of identifying success remains. (They do mention essential work by Michael Neblo et al.)

Second, what should be done with the findings? This research has implications for the design of governments and other big institutions. The US Constitution already requires jury trials; the Constitution of India requires every village to have an empowered annual meeting. Knowing more about the conditions that make discussions go well can help us to understand whether such provisions are optimal and what other rights and institutions we should add.

But I think the main audience will be civil society. Voluntary groups–including those that seek to influence governments–are best positioned to experiment with formats for discussion. They have more flexibility than governments, they can change more easily, and their sheer number and variety creates more opportunities.

Sources: Farrell, H., Mercier, H., & Schwartzberg, M. (2022). Analytical Democratic Theory: A Microfoundational Approach. American Political Science Review, 1-6; Ostrom, Elinor (1990). Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge University Press, Olson, Mancur (1991), The Logic of Collective Action, Harvard University Press. See also: don’t let the behavioral revolution make you fatalistic; how political talk relates to its context; this is what deliberative democracy looks like; why study real-life deliberation?; the legacy of Elinor Ostrom and the Bloomington School; etc.

Guardians of Democracy Courses Now Enrolling!

Posted on August 15, 2022 by stevemasy

Good afternoon friends! Just a reminder that our Guardians of Democracy courses are now enrolling cohorts! We have space for participants in Bronze (beginner), Silver, and Gold courses. I would especially recommend the Current and Controversial Issue Discussion Strategies course for those folks wanting to know how they might abrouch classroom discussions in the current environment.

You can register for the Bronze level courses here.

Ready for Silver or Gold? Register here!

Questions? Feel free to contact Chris Spinale of the Lou Frey Institute or Mary Ellen Daneels of Illinois Civics Hub!

the major shift in climate strategy

Posted on August 15, 2022 by Peter

One way to look at the climate crisis: Billions of people are using machines that burn carbon to accomplish their goals, and the carbon is heating the atmosphere. Different technologies could accomplish the same or better goals with less carbon, but they are not widely available.

Let’s move a step upstream. Why are our technologies bad? Answer: the price of carbon is too low. Although we pay to extract and transport carbon, burning it is free. The price is too low to reflect the social cost and too low for acceptable outcomes.

When people consume too much of something, you can ban them from using it or tax it. Actually, “you” can’t do either, but governments can enact laws that ban or tax carbon. What we can do is to advocate for such laws. Given the global nature of the problem, many governments would have to enact and actually enforce these laws. However, the record so far is very poor.

To understand why the policy record is so weak, we need to move another step upstream. Policies result from the interplay of political interests. In a mixed economy (with both a market and a government), businesses are powerful interests. Much of their power comes not from explicit pressure and advocacy but from their pivotal role in the economy. They produce the goods and jobs that political leaders want. Many businesses are currently wedded to producing or consuming carbon. They do not even have to say–because most leaders already believe–that reducing carbon will cost jobs.

Although these sentences describe a capitalist mixed economy, other systems are not necessarily preferable in these respects. For instance, the USSR had a disastrous environmental record because its government, too, was influenced by interests that depended on carbon and pollution. They just tended to be (technically) within the public sector. And in countries like the USA, the carbon-dependent interests are not limited to for-profit companies. Unions, federal agencies, and elected representatives from carbon-intensive districts have often contributed to the problem.

Moving upstream to this political level helps to explain why we don’t already have carbon taxes even if they would be optimal. It also suggests a different policy response: subsidize interests that benefit from decarbonization until they grow more powerful than the interests that benefit from burning carbon. The favored interests will include companies but also unions, geographical communities, and looser groupings, such as users of public transportation.

This is what the new climate bills do–not only the Inflation Reduction Act, but also the CHIPS and Science Act, which, as Robinson Meyers notes, directs large sums to climate R&D. These investments could start a virtuous cycle by empowering interests that reduce carbon, which will then demand favorable policies, perhaps including a carbon tax. Michael Ross summarizes important research that supports this strategy in this thread.

By the way, the same logic should also influence how we assess the details of the legislation. For instance, if you want to spend money as efficiently as possible to decarbonize, you should not restrict the funds to US-based companies, as the new bills do. You should buy renewable energy, technologies, etc. from the lowest bidder. But if you are trying to strengthen interests that support decarbonization, then the protectionist aspects of these laws makes sense. You want to strengthen local special interests, which can then become domestic lobbies. If the Europeans and others are angry about our protectionism, let them invest in EU companies.

I endorse this strategy but would want to keep two critiques in mind–coming from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. Public choice economists in the Virginia School will be alarmed about enhancing the influence of any special interests over government. Such interests will favor themselves in the narrowest possible ways, leading to policies that are opaque and inefficient and that constantly change, preventing individuals and firms from making plans. Being generally libertarian, the Virginia School wants less government rather than more. However, given a government of any size, they would hate a strategy that empowers interests to lobby and allows bureaucrats to make discretionary choices. They would much prefer a carbon tax because it is transparent, universal, and predictable.

From the other end of the spectrum, Marxist political economists will think of the interests that receive subsidies not as individual investors and bureaucrats who want to feather their own private nests but rather as capitalist institutions that will seek to preserve a fundamentally unjust economic system. If the recent laws work, they will mitigate climate change while preserving capitalism, which is problematic from the left.

Both criticisms are worth serious and ongoing consideration. However, simplistic versions of both negate the role of democratic self-governance. We can discuss and act so that the money is spent well. Then the political economy will be substantially democratic rather than corruptly bureaucratic or narrowly capitalistic.

I always want to move one more stage upstream from policy, asking what you can I should do as well as what the government should do. (My new book is all about that.) One reason is existential: you and I are people, not “the government” (even if you happen to work for a government agency–or even if your name is Joseph R. Biden). Whoever we may be, our primary responsibility is to allocate our own ideas and energies well. But we are wiser and more effective when we do that in groups rather than as individuals.

The other reason is analytical. The government is not an unmoved mover. It is in midstream, as much an object of influence as an influencer. For that reason, it is rarely valuable to ask what it should do without having a strategy for what we should do to affect it. And while we are asking what we should do to affect any given government, we should also consider other means of change.

In concrete terms, the new laws create opportunities and obligations for civic action. Most importantly, we (you and I) must make sure the money is well spent. A new transit line will not automatically reduce carbon; it will only benefit the environment if people ride it a lot. And that requires a thoughtful and responsive design for the transit. New institutional arrangements like the National Climate Bank, which will receive $27 billion (including $8 billion earmarked for “disadvantaged communities”) under the Inflation Reduction Act will provide opportunities for public participation, whether that engagement is cooperative and welcome or adversarial.

Most of the money will ultimately flow to firms: that is the nature of a capitalist economy. Subsidies and contracts for businesses create opportunities for entrepreneurs to found better companies, for employees to make their existing firms work well, and for consumers to demand accountability.

A new agenda has also emerged for citizens who want to advocate for federal policy. The recent laws authorize spending but do not appropriate the necessary funds. I think the appropriation is safe for 2022-23 because the congressional leadership is onboard, but we will need to advocate appropriations every subsequent year. We must also keep an eye on implementation of these laws, and we should be especially attuned to opportunities to expand civic capacity, because civic engagement is far upstream. One approach is to invest in groups that organize and train people to work together for the environment. Mary Ellen Sprenkel, President and CEO of The Corps Network, says:

Though it is reassuring to witness our country’s largest investment to date to address the climate crisis, we are disappointed this package does not include support for a Civilian Climate Corps. The Inflation Reduction Act includes funding to restore coastlines, accelerate green manufacturing, make homes more efficient, and strengthen the resilience of our infrastructure. These are laudable investments, but who will do these projects? Who will rebuild and reinforce our coasts, install resource-saving implements in homes, build green infrastructure in our cities?

Let’s work on that next.

Arachne

Posted on August 11, 2022 by Peter

A fourth story (see the other three here):

I scuttle up the line on slender legs.
One limb pulls silk smoothly from my belly
While another glues it at the right point.
Repeat, no thoughts needed; the design is
Encoded in my nerves, automated.

But Athena has left me memories,
As punishment. While the other spiders
(Disgusting creatures, close up) just spin and weave,
I spin, weave, regret, repeat, and weave
Regret right into the pattern of my web.

She didn't win, you know. She saw she'd lost
When she caught the looks on people's faces.
Her tapestry was very well woven,
Bright colors, nice detail, professional work.
No one liked it, though, because it said: "I rule."
It was a propaganda poster in wool:
"Athena," by Athena, with peons.

Mine was the opposite. I showed poor girls
Seized by man-gods: how they fought in terror.
I left the gods out, so my art was pure
Sympathy. I was on the side of us.

People had always loved to watch me work.
People, and nymphs, too: they came down from Tmolus
With their perfect bodies and empty heads
To see someone actually making things.

Their praise pleased, but it wasn't quite enough.
They couldn't understand the objects they liked.
They guessed Athena must have instructed me,
Because they had never struggled to learn.

I wanted Athena's attention--and got it
With my boasts, which floated up to the sky.
When an old hag came to refresh my manners,
I half-knew who that woman was. (Not quite.)
My curses and slurs surprised even me.
I think I was asking Athena to fight.

I was half pleased, then, to see the rags drop
Off her and her virginal, marmoreal 
Perfection irradiate my poor room,
Making the mortals and nymphs turn away.
Time to get weaving, then; let's see who's better.

She didn't have to weave well. She is divine.
She could do whatever she wanted with me,
Just like Idmon, my father, once Mother died
(My mother, whose name no one's recorded).

My famous weaving is what saved me from him.
My famous art, not Athena's. When she saw
It was better than hers--more popular, too--
She reasserted her authority.
She ripped my fabric to bits, grabbed my distaff
And started to beat me with it. My ear,
My kidney got a blow, my knees, my crown.

I grabbed some yarn I'd spun, thinking first to throw
It round the goddess' long white neck and pull.
Since hers was shockproof chryselephantine,
My own neck offered a better way out.
I made a noose and dropped it from a rafter.

Athena must have granted me respite
From my beating to prepare my suicide.
As for me, I wished to steal her victory.
My death would be my own doing, not hers.
I would make my story end as I chose.

They say the sight of me choking on my yarn
Stirred some pity deep in Pallas' breast
And she chose to spare me a rightful death,
Graciously granting me more time to weave.
But I say she made my body her art.

Sprinkling belladonna and henbane
On me made my hair fall out; strange words
Elongated my fingers into legs.
My thumbs, arms, and real legs shrank away.
My teeth consolidated into fangs.

Athena was loving her work. She hummed,
Chuckled, paused to admire the results, 
Muttered encouraging words to herself,
Calling herself "Athena" and "Clever girl."

She shrank me by pure will and watched me hurry
Up my own noose to a crack in the roof
Where I again began to spin and weave.
Now my pattern is hers. I watch it emerge.
I see what it is once my limbs have made it
Exactly the same as they've made it before.

This responds pretty closely to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book VI, 1-145. See also: the laughter of the gods; The Wedding of Peleus and Thetis

LFI/FJCC Back to School Webinar August 24

Posted on August 10, 2022 by stevemasy

Hey friends! Are you new to teaching civics and government in Florida? On August 24th at 4:30 we will holding a webinar to discuss resources and things to remember when working to create that next generation of Florida citizens. It is, as always, free! You can register for the webinar here, and download and share the flyer posted below!

back-to-school-with-fjcc-webinar-flyer66084 Download

Resources for the Florida High School/Secondary Civic Literacy Examination

Posted on August 10, 2022 by stevemasy

Hey friends. As you are likely aware, Florida has established a Civic Literacy Examination for high school seniors and college students. High school kids only have to take it, while it is an actual graduation requirement for Florida college and university students. To support this, we have collaborated with FDOE to support the development of both a practice test

and a supplemental guide.

At the request of many teachers, we have also developed a supplemental resource PowerPoint (free registration required on our Florida Citizen website) that addresses many of the US Supreme Court cases that could appear on the FCLE. This is intended as a supplemental resource; you are encouraged to ensure that your instruction covers the required material, though this may make it easier.

We are always happy to provide professional development and resource support for civics and government as you need it. Feel free to contact us at anytime!

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Monthly Archives: August 2022