Gentle, Plain, Just and Resolute

We have finally reached the sixteenth president. When, at the beginning of the week, I take the Mike Venezia biography on Lincoln off the bookshelf, Simon says: “I read that already, Mom--don't you know?”

“On your own?”

“On my own.”

“Wonderful!” And then, because sometimes I have little control over my mouth, I say: “Why?” Simon reading a whole book on his own, cover to cover—that's new.

“Because it's Lincoln, Mom!” Simon says, impatiently.

“Can you read it to me again?”

“Sure.”

It's December in Miami. The windows are wide open. The air is crisp and cool. We lie on the day-bed in the Learning Room. Simon reads. I smell the grass, the trees; I hear birds. The mail-man comes up the walkway and we take a break to check if we got another holiday card. We make hot chocolate and take our mugs back to the Learning Room.

“I have to finish Lincoln all today, Mom. We cannot do Latin or German. After Lincoln, I have to read about Andrew Johnson right away. I have to find out what happened after Lincoln was shot.”

“OK. Why is Lincoln so super interesting to you, Simon?”

“Because he ended slavery. Even though he was very ugly, he was great. The presidents before him all sucked.”

“Sucked” is the new word d'jour. George and I choose our battles when it comes to colorful language. Simon can say “sucked,” but he cannot write it. We've defined formal and informal speech.

Simon finishes Lincoln, and then this child who does not read with pleasure immediately takes Johnson off the shelf and starts reading.

The Venezia biographies all begin with a general assessment. Venezia writes about Johnson that he “wasn't as skilled a leader as Lincoln had been...he was stubborn and racially prejudiced ...very little was accomplished.”

“I don't want to read anymore. Johnson sucked, too, Mom. I'll just look at the pictures. I'll read more tomorrow.”

It's a beautiful day in Miami, I think, looking out onto a Hong Kong Orchid and a Meyer's Lemon drooping with fruit. Simon lies next to me, flipping through the book.

“Look at this,” Simon says. He points to a picture of Richmond, Virginia, all rubble, all bombed out. “Why do people do that?” he asks.

Instead of saying “Why do you think?” and letting him figure it out, I proceed to do an information dump. I've been tired this week, somewhat self-absorbed. I talk of military strategy, of controlling territory, of destroying not only the enemy's cities and forts, but also his spirit.

“Did kids die in Richmond?” Simon asks.

“Some kids died, I'm sure.”

“Moms?”

“Moms, too.”

Simon is quiet. Then he says: “People are mean.” He continues looking through the Johnson biography.

I can hear the neighborhood kids congregating down the street. They are on vacation. They have a basketball. I hear it bouncing off the pavement. Soon they will come and ring the doorbell, asking for Simon.

“Mom, look at this picture,” Simon says. “Look how many people were in the room when Lincoln died.”

He's gazing at the Alonzo Chappel painting--see above. I tell Simon that I know from my readings on Lincoln that the scene is fictional. Lincoln died at a roadside inn with only a few people in attendance, not a mob of all the important political figures of the time.

“Maybe the painter wanted to show how many people would miss him,” Simon says.

“Maybe,” I say, nodding.

The doorbell rings and Simon bolts off the bed and runs out of the room. He ducks his head back in. “Can I go play?”

“Go play.”

Many people would miss him, Simon had said. I miss him.

It's been a week of too much feeling. Layered on top of the exhausting, excessive, and inescapable joyousness of the season, have been my readings about Lincoln. He never went to school; he taught himself everything, even the law. He lost two of his four sons during his life-time, all much loved. He had so many friends, they made up towns, cities, states. He cared little about all the stuff that doesn't matter: clothes, manners, appearances. Acutely aware of weight of his responsibilities, the full impact of his actions, and the full measure of his--and everyone else's losses--he struggled with melancholia.

I've poured over his key speeches. I'd never read them closely. There is something intimate, exposed, unabashedly personal about his voice, as if he's speaking to you with no reservations from the center of his heart's obsessions.

You probably remember Gettysburg and the 2nd Inaugural, but here is his Farewell Address, delivered as he was leaving Springfield, Illinois, to begin his first term. War was looming.

My friends, no one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything. Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to an old man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of the Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in Him who can go with me, and remain with you, and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.

Lincoln has been on my mind this week. I lack his faith that “all will yet be well.” This week the Copenhagen meeting came to an end, and the Health Reform Bill went up for a vote in the Senate. How will we bring about all the radical changes we have to make for the sake of our planet, our economy, our children and grandchildren? Following the wranglings about health reform these last months, I've felt stuck in a Dickens novel—with few exceptions, each character more vain, foppish, thoughtless, reckless, and undignified than the next. I realize that the gains made by the Health Reform Bill are huge, but they seem so much less than what is necessary, a bill brokered in an age of relentless compromise, indomitable special interests, and men, mostly men, who are not Lincoln. And there are so many bills to go.

Dark thoughts in sunny Miami this holiday season.

Some last words by Walt Whitman:

This Dust Was Once the Man

This dust was once the man,
Gentle, plain, just and resolute, under whose cautious hand,
Against the foulest crime in history known in any land or age,
Was saved the Union of these States.

On the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Instruments of Torture

(Below find Part II and Part III. For Part I go to the blog posted on Sunday 12/13/2009)

II

Simon

This year, in fifth grade, Simon is supposed to write an essay every week. First he reads a biography about an American president; then he writes an essay. I came up with this plan last spring, when full of hope and hubris I began shaping a curriculum for the coming academic year. I felt so proud of myself. Instead of doing what every other fifth grader does, namely writing a dozen book reports and a research paper or two in the course of the year, Simon would write 44 brief essays. And if he did a portrait of each president, he would have a book by year's end. Fabulous!

By July, as the beginning of the new school year loomed, I began to have doubts this grand plan was going to work. For starters, Simon has hated writing since I first handed him a pencil, and that hadn't changed. But I quickly came up with a fix: he would only have to write one paragraph a day. That seemed doable. Within five days, he would have an essay.

Then there was the problem of the topic sentence. Every one of the paragraphs Simon writes is supposed to have a topic sentence, preferably at the top, or so various writing manuals for this age group suggest.

Here, the problem was all mine. I can't stand paragraphs with a topic sentence at the top, paragraphs that begin with something like: “Abraham Lincoln was an excellent president during the years of the Civil War,” and then go on to elaborate.

This kind of writing is torturous to read, smacking of the worst of textbook prose. A topic sentence at the top of the paragraph robs the reader of the fun of making sense of what he's reading—why bother getting through the rest of the paragraph?

In lieu of the topic sentence at the top, I prefer, a snappy and opinionated sentence at the end of a paragraph, summing up and evaluating the information given in the sentences above. “Although burdened by family tragedies, doubt, and debilitating bouts of depression, Lincoln invariably rose to the demands of defending the Union.” Here is another example: “He was too skinny and quite ugly, but he was big-hearted and brilliant.”

The reader of the paragraph can then compare his conclusions, reached while reading the paragraph, to the views of the author. This makes for a dynamic and interactive reading experience. Maybe the reader agrees. Maybe not. Either way, he keeps reading.

The more I thought about teaching the essay, the more I remembered those topic sentence driven five-paragraph essays I'd had to read years ago, the ones I hadn't enjoyed—at all. The more I thought about teaching Simon, the clearer it became that I was dealing with a ten-year-old who loved narrating stories but hated writing. I wasn't going to be doing him a favor if I insisted that before he put any word on paper he first had to figure out the topic of each paragraph, and then shape a sentence about that topic. Only afterwards could he proceed with the rest of the paragraph. This was going to lead to tears and little else.

As a matter of fact, a few more sleepless nights and I decided: forget the essay. I was going to ask Simon to write reports. I would use language he comprehends. Each week he would have to report on, or tell the story of, one president. Forget five paragraphs--begin with three. Furthermore, drop the topic or thesis or analytical or opinionated sentence for now. I would get him to identify excellent topic sentences in the writing of others by asking: “What's the most important sentence in this paragraph?” But when it came to Simon's writing, I wouldn't mention it. For now.

Instead, we would focus heavily on getting the right information into each paragraph. In science Simon has spent much time learning to separate items by their characteristics, studying categories, taxonomies, animal kingdoms. For starters, Simon would focus on categorizing all the information, thinking of paragraphs merely as organizational categories.

So July ended and the school year began. The first presidential biography he read was George Washington by Mike Venezia.

“Simon, now that you have read about George Washington, you need to write a report about him. You're in fifth grade.”

“But, Mom, you're killing me--I hate writing!”

“Let's begin by writing down all the things you know about Washington. You talk. I'll write.”

He came up with eighteen bits of information.

“How could you organize all this information? How would you organize the story of this president? You can't begin your report with his death; then mention he had wooden teeth; then say he was the first president. That would be so confusing. How could you organize the information to tell Washington's story?”

“From the beginning, Mom. Don't you know? He was born in 1732.”

It took just minutes to get Simon to come up with categories. One category was going to be Washington's life before he became president. A second category was what happened once he was president. These two categories would make up his first and second paragraphs. I then urged Simon to think of a third category, something he'd learned in his reading about Washington that most people might not know. This third category would lead to a third and final paragraph.

“Think of your readers, Simon. Always think of your readers. You want to give them a reward, something extra and unexpected--a surprise--at the end of your report. It's like a treat, a yummy dessert you're offering them for patiently reading through all your words. Mom loves reading good essays because they always have something in them I did not know, or had not thought about. And that makes my mind go: Wow! What's your wow bit of information about Washington. ”

Simon was quiet for a minute.

“Well, Washington was huge, super tall, very funny. He was a good dancer, and people liked him a lot.”

I pulled out a $1.00 bill. “Does this guy look like he's funny?”

“He looks boring and mean,” and after another few seconds Simon added, “and P.S., maybe also short.”

“So, do you think your readers would be glad they read your report because they learned something new?”

“I think so.”

“I think so, too.”

That was five months ago. Last week Simon wrote an essay on Franklin Pierce, the fourteenth president. Simon wrote about how Franklin Pierce had many family tragedies: all his children died—in case you didn't know.

III

Suggestions

Ask your children to write every day. Do copy-work if writing does not come easy at first. But make sure they write. The only way to master writing is by writing.

Read. Read daily. Read good stuff. Every day, if possible, take a paragraph of something that has been read that day and take it apart. Ask questions. What is this paragraph about? How do you know? What is the most important sentence in this paragraph? Why? Is the author expressing an opinion in this paragraph, and if so, where?

Have your child tell you (narrate) what he has read. Have him tell you the story of his reading. This is an invaluable pre-writing skill. You cannot write a report on a book you read if you cannot report on it verbally.

Forget the five paragraph essay and all that comes with it—thesis statements and topic sentences. Don't introduce them until 9th grade. They will take all the pleasure out of writing.

Once your child can make it through a handful of paragraphs, have her write reports. To order the information, have her come up with categories and then write a paragraph for each category. For example, if your child is writing a book report, she would organize her report around categories such as theme, plot, character, etc. If she's writing about a historical figure or event, the categories would be dictated by chronology. If she's writing about manatees, she would categorize the information by topics: type of animal, habitat, food source, etc. If your child has thought through the categories and has a history of narrating information, she will have little trouble shaping paragraphs that will naturally have a topic sentence buried in them. Children want to tame and master the information they have learned. They demonstrate that mastery with a topic sentence. “Manatees are herbivores.” “Because of Winn-Dixie is a novel set in Florida.”

As for the essay: By 9th grade, once your child has written hundreds of reports, begin writing essays. The main difference between a report and an essay is that a report reports on a particular topic, while an essay asks a question about that topic—it is an instrument of inquiry.

Forget the thesis statement in the opening paragraph—if you give a thesis statement, there is not enough incentive to continue reading. Instead, formulate a question in your head that you want to answer. Once you have the question, begin your essay by explaining the background to your question. “Over half a million people died during the American Civil War, etc., etc.” Then ask your question: “In these pages, I would like to attempt to answer the question: Was the Civil War avoidable?” You can follow up with related questions: “Specifically, was there anything Lincoln could have done differently?” And then you proceed to answer the question. You give the historical context. You report on your research. You evaluate the information. You try to come up with an answer.

Remember that essays are attempts. You do not have to answer all the questions you raise. You can end by stating that many issues in your essay will remain unanswered. Trust me, most good essays do not completely answer the questions they raise. However, they do give their reader at least one interesting insight. This is the type of essay your child will have to write in college.

Read essays written by great essayists. There are various collections. Read essays in The New Yorker, Harpers, The Atlantic Monthly—that is where the great essayists of today publish their work.

Last words: Take it slow. If possible, write daily. Remind your kids to have fun and to create writing that is fun to read. Writing should not be torture.

On the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Instruments of Torture

I.

(This is the first part of what will be at least a two-part essay. Part II will be posted next week.)

I should put my academic background and prejudices on the table from the get-go. Although I now refer to myself in official documents as a “homemaker,” and otherwise I'm homeschooling my eleven-year old son at the end of a cul-de-sac in Miami, I have, in decades past, done my share of hard labor, teaching freshmen composition at colleges in the Boston area. I say “hard labor” for a reason: for the most part, I hated it.

I hated it because every two weeks I went home with a stack of essays I was supposed to read, correct, and grade, praising what had been done well, suggesting ways to make the writing better. Reading them, I would be overwhelmed by a flood of feelings: endless boredom, frustration, rage, utter indifference, utter helplessness. How was I going got get these students to write essays that I, or anyone else, might want to read?

The papers were plagued by grammar, spelling, punctuation, logic, and attribution problems, as well as a predilection for passive verbs (boring) and abstract nouns (even more boring), but those were minor issues compared to the fact that at least half of what came my way--no matter what the instructions were--were five paragraph essays.

Sometimes each paragraph had been bloated to the length of a page; sometimes the structure had been expanded to absorb ten paragraphs; but the rhetorical tool at the core of so many of these essays, whether discussing a story, a poem, or presenting a research topic was almost invariably the same—that dreadful thing taught in American schools: the five-paragraph essay.

This is what the five-paragraph essay written by too many hard-working, well indoctrinated, eager to please college freshmen reads like:

Paragraph I: Abraham Lincoln was a great president for three reasons.
Paragraph II: Reason 1 expanded
Paragraph III: Reason 2 expanded
Paragraph IV: Reason 3 expanded
Paragraph V: In conclusion, Abraham Lincoln was a great president.

The five-paragraph essay is first presented in the fourth grade. After eight years of steady practice and brainwashing, the above is what most freshmen produce: a padded, puffed-up, and self-satisfied tautology. In case you haven't reviewed your terms of logic this week, a tautology is the repetition of meaning, using dissimilar words to say the same thing twice. In brief: A equals A. Lincoln was a great president. Here are three reasons why. Therefore, Lincoln was a great president. The essay unsurprisingly ends exactly where it began.

The best of these essays would get a B-. Invariably, the recipient would make his way to my office and either livid or in tears let me know that he had been at the top of his high school class in Cleveland or Atlanta or Buffalo. He had never gotten a B-. Ever. And, Professor Franklin, Abraham Lincoln was a great president, wasn't he?

Where to begin?

When Galileo was about to be tried for heresy in Rome in 1633, he was first taken down to a dungeon and shown the instruments of torture that he would get to know better if he did not recant. So what did he do? Being a smart fellow, he gave the powers that be what they wanted.

I think of Galileo when I think of kids learning to write in an American school. By fourth grade, every one of them has been shown the instruments of torture; all of them know the price of not doing what they are told—they will be held back. Teachers “teach the test” and the five-paragraph essay, and kids learn the test and master the art of writing tautologies.

Galileo comes to mind not only because, like him, students clearly come to know the price of disobedience, but also because the five-paragraph essay has more in common with a confession induced by torture, than with the essay as it was envisioned by Cicero, Plutarch, Bacon, and Montaigne. In the five-paragraph essay, the student demonstrates (under duress) that she has been a good girl, that she has learned her lessons, that she has done her research and knows three reasons why Lincoln was a good president.

But the essay is not an instrument that is meant to perform and perpetuate indoctrination. It is, first and foremost, an instrument of inquiry. (The word “essay” actually means “attempt.”) Its present day format is very much the product of the Renaissance, a rhetorical tool that attempts to move knowledge forward in ways radical and disobedient, celebrating the individual and all that he or she is capable of. The essay might rely on what is known already, as the Renaissance painters and scholars relied enthusiastically on classical antiquity, but the thrust of the essay is into the unexplored, into new knowledge, into radical new ways of thinking and perceiving.

So what does that mean when it comes to writing and teaching the essay? For starters, forget a five-paragraph format. Forget the cookie-cutter formulations bequeathed by No Child Left Behind. If you're a homeschooling parent reading this, if you're homeschooling because you do not want your child to only “learn the test,” have the courage to also let go of the five-paragraph essay. It's not a writing instrument used by an educated and inquiring mind.

If you think that a liberal arts college might be in your child's future, realize that the first thing that will happen when he takes Comp. 101 is that some younger version of me will beat the five-paragraph essay out of him with a two-by-four, if he's lucky.

Not only will he be hurt and confused, but he will have wasted time. Instead of spending his school-years proving that he was a good boy who had done the reading, his mind could have been in training, questioning, inquiring, writing.

(To be continued.)

What We Talk About When We Walk Around In Venice

These are the things we talk about about while walking around Venice with Simon:

~Is Venice going to drown? How can we stop global warming? Are they going to rescue the treasures? Is Miami going to dissappear into the sea? Maybe we should buy a boat.

"Our" canal--Rio dei Carmini

~Is Italy a dictatorship? Why are things so expensive? Is Berlusconi a tyrant? Why do the dinosaurs that we can buy in America in a dollar shop for $1.oo cost Euro 8.00? Are we sure Berlusconi is not a tyrant? Italy might have a revolution if toys are so expensive--in America they had a revolutionary war because of taxes.

~Why do people not like Jews? Why did they have to live in a ghetto?

George and Simon talking in the ghetto.

~Why did people come to Venice long ago? Why do Mom and Dad like coming to Venice? Why do we have to look at so many crucifixions and churches? Aren't we Jewish? Why do we have to hunt down every painting by the Bellini brothers--Gentile and Giovanni? Why does Dad like all these Madonnas painted by Giovanni Bellini? Are they really that beautiful?

~How many days until we can go home? Is our dog OK?

~How was Guiseppe Garibaldi like George Washington? In what way were Garibaldi, Washington, and Simon Bolivar similar? If you can answer that question, you get an ice-cream.

~Can I have another ice-cream?

Simon checking a picture he took of Garibaldi's statue.

~Did they ever let people out of the dungeon in the Doge's Palace? What happened to them? Why did they write on the walls? Did anyone give them a blanket?

~Why did they resettle all the glass and metal workers to Murano? It was a smart way to avoid having a great fire, like the London and Chicago fires--don't you think? Look at those cityscapes of Venice done by Carpaccio--do you see all the chimneys? In everyone of those buidings, someone was making a fire--isn't it amazing that Venice didn't go up in flames?

~Venice didn't burn, but I think it's going to drown. Don't you, Mom? Really?

~Why do we have to go to Joseph Brodsky's grave, if he was just a poet? Why is he buried in Venice, if he was Russian and lived in New York after the Russians kicked him out? Why did he love Venice so much?

~Can we have pizza for dinner?

Something we don't talk about:

How hard it is to leave.

"Our" Campo Santa Margherita, a few steps from our rented apartment.

Thanksgiving in Venice

Thanksgiving is always hard for us. The holiday does not mean that much to me--I wasn't raised with Thanksgiving, and the menu is too full of things sweet and mashed for my taste. Moreover, we have no extended family to speak of that we could share it with. Most of my family is abroad, George's parents are dead, and his older kids have tended to spend it with their mom. Now that they are all grown-up, they often visit the families of their significant others, American families that have strong Thanksgiving traditions.

So years ago we figured out that the end of November was a perfect time to go abroad. The flights are at their rock-bottom cheapest, and you can bargain if you are renting an apartment. Again and again we plan to go to some new place in the world, and invariably we end up, again, in Venice, taking a place far away from the hoopla of tourists. For a week, or more, we come and on a very tight budget pretend we live here, belong here, are Venezians. We play the game so well that by now, although we speak almost no Italian, tourists stop to ask as for directions.

Above: This is building in which we rent a small two bedroom.

Left: This is the courtyard you enter once you have opened the main portico with a huge key. It's very quiet.

Below: After using another big key on a door off the courtyard, you get to "our" little house. We have a small wintry courtyard of our own. "Our" little place occupies a couple of rooms on the first two floors. Did I mention it's very quiet?

Why Venice? It's the most beautiful place on earth--for me. It's so very old. It has survived fires, plagues, endless wars, rising winter tides. There is so much to see, to think about, to feel. The city is--improbably--built on water. Improbably, it resists destruction. Wandering for days around its alleys and passages, through its churches and museums, I tend to perceive marble seeping into my spine. I feel stong, invincible. If Venice can hang in there, so can I. One's own silly troubles seem just that--silly. It helps that there is fresh and bountiful food of beckoning colors to be bought at open-air markets where the vendors are friendly, and that the wine is cheap, and that the air smells of salt and frozen seaweed and is full of the warm sound of churchbells. Here, I'm always, first and foremost, happy.

For Simon the trip is not all joy thus far. He says he is homesick for all things American: his friends, his home, his toys, the Florida sunshine, Burger King. He's a bit like the American tourist from hell. Back in Florida the supermarkets are bigger, he says, as are the refrigerators, washing-machines, bathrooms, restaurants, roads, etc. And, of course, the TV sucks. If he hears English spoken by anyone, he hits upon them all smiles: "Where do you come from? I'm from Miami. My name is Simon." At a restuarant in Murano, he said to the waiter, "You look just like Millard Fillmore, do you know that?" Simon was right--he did. I found myself struggling to explain in a mix of English and Spanish to the confused and apprehensive waiter, who didn't know if he had been praised or offended, who Fillmore was. "Un presidente Americano. Un buono uomo," I kept repeating, hoping he understood. But by nightfall, Simon will acknowledge he had a good day. It helps that you can get a small gelato for less than 2 Euro.

And it helps that in this town, where so little is recognizable to him, where there is so little he desires--there are no American bookstores, or a Gamestop, or a cinema, or a Video Arcade type place--he found sailboats. Simon has been learning to sail and was delighted to look down from the bellfry of San Giorgio Maggiore--and there they were.

I, in turn, who desire so little in Miami, am full of wishes and appetites: for Pistachio cake, and marzipan, and that apartment at the top of so many buildings. If you look closely, you can see they have a small roof-top garden.

I daydream how in that apartment I would be endlessly happy, eating little peaches shaped of marzipan. One feels so alive when one is full of wants. I, who hardly ever have my feet out of Birkenstocks, today saw a pair of boots, and a flashy purple handbag, and red mittens. I wanted them all. None of these items, except for the pistachio cake, will be bought. But it is lovely to covet them for a day.

Photographs

A Photograph of Zachary Taylor.

Steadily, Simon continues to read a presidential biography every week: Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce. Simon notices, about each one, that he, too, could not fix the problem of slavery.

“They're not as smart as Abraham Lincoln. They're not as courageous,” Simon declares. This week, reading about Franklin Pierce, he exclaims with genuine excitement: “Oh goody, Pierce is the fourteenth president. Only two to go until Lincoln. Lincoln will fix everything.”

Oh, goody. I'm delighted by Simon's excitement. I didn't know he had been keeping such careful count, or that he had fully comprehended how all pervasive the problem of slavery was, how it was the growling grizzly bear in the Oval Office and in Congress for every administration, somehow kept appeased by a diet of compromises.

But Simon does understand--the south insisted on slavery, the north wanted it abolished, yet year in, year out, decade in, decade out, the Union survived due to the imperfect but devoted work of this group of presidents.

Or, to be honest, that's what I understand. Simon gets that there was a BIG problem, that the BIG problem needed to be fixed, and that “forever” went by without it getting fixed.

Grown-ups value compromises. Eleven-year-old boys who have worked their way through stacks of superhero comics, as well as all things Greek, want someone to walk in with an army of 300 and fight to the death of all, if necessary, and change the course of history

* * *

The series of biographies Simon has been reading, Getting to Know the U.S. Presidents by Mike Venezia, is full of illustrations: painted portraits, etchings, maps, period prints and posters; however, beginning with these presidents, with only the exception of William Henry Harrison, the biographies invariably include a photographic portrait. How does my thoughtful, deep-feeling son respond to these black and white pictures, pictures that are not heroic portraits, pictures that show lined and wise faces in the flesh, in need of a haircut, and in rumpled clothes?

"Mom, he is so very ugly. He is so old. I don't like him. I don't like him at all. Actually, I think I hate him.”

Hate him? Really? When I pursue the question--“Why?”--I get an answer that reiterates what he has already said.

Somewhat irritated, and a little loud he says: “I told you already, Mom--are you deaf, or something?--because he's very old and ugly.”

I point out Zachary Taylor's military accomplishments, or Millard Fillmore's success in getting Japan to open up to trade.

"Yes, Mom, that's true. But they're old and ugly.”

So this is what I've been thinking about this week, working in my yard when I've had a minute--it's planting season in Miami. Why would Simon say that?

Yes, TV is to blame. From the cartoons he watches, he learns that surfaces seem to matter a lot.

And it is his age. Having recently become aware of just how young he is, he wants to have some power over the world, and naming its imperfections gives him a fleeting illusion of control. Again and again, he impulsively takes aggressive language out for a spin, sees what it feels like to flex your mots injuste muscles. So-and-so is old, or dumb, or mean, or fat, or ugly, or has bad judgment. Or worse. A moron. A turd.

And it is the kids his age he hangs with. They're all nice, yet every third word out of their mouths is an adjective describing something or someone with utter contempt: ugly, lame, boring, stupid.

It's a full-time job just to fight this verbal self-assertion, to talk about respect, generosity, kindness; to point out that no adult in our lives talks this way; to speak of the character of heroes—none of them called someone a moron; to remind him what it feels like to be on the receiving end of nastiness; to ask him what kind of world he wants to live in.

But I don't think that all the above adds up to an answer that explains why Simon responds so negatively to these presidents. I think the answer lies in the fact that of these presidents there are photographs.

Zachary Taylor, like William Henry Harrison, was a war hero with an astounding track record. He fought wars against the Indians, the British, and the Mexicans. Often Zachary Taylor was outnumbered. Usually, rifle in hand, he fought right alongside his men.

Of Harrison there are no photographs that Simon has seen. But he has seen one of Taylor--see above. In that picture, he looks like the guy at your local supermarket who sweeps up the broken jar of tomato sauce, should it slip out of your hand. Taylor doesn't resemble a hero. He looks like a man who has had a rough life, and he wears that life on his face.

I find myself pouring over the photographic portraits--can't keep my eyes off them. These men were human beings: tired, spent, dignified, disheveled, strong, full of feeling and breath.

It is their very humanity Simon finds troubling, I think. He hasn't figured out yet that there are no super-heroes with super-human powers, only human beings--like Simon, like the aging presidents in the photographs, like the guy at the supermarket.

Moral Passion

“I'm a bit sad that you dwell so much on the sad and depressing stuff of history,” my mother wrote me this week. Mother is smart as a whip, and she cares deeply about Simon.

She's right--the readings last week were high on the sadness and horror scale: all consuming fires on two continents, the Plague, doom and destruction. That combination of misery wasn't on purpose—that's where we were in the textbooks that week: the Great Chicago Fire for American history, and the Great London Fire followed by the Plague for world history.

“You probably just don't mention the positive, the creative, the artistic and technical breakthroughs,” Mother went on to write, adding, ”But they are so important. Don't forget them. How about journeys of discovery?"

Good questions--how about all the good stuff in history? The discoveries, the great feats of technology and construction, the grand achievements in the arts?

Many are covered, wonderfully so, in this year's primary textbook for American history, The American Story—100 True Tales from American History by Jennifer Armstrong. We've read stories about the building of canals and railroads; the discovery of a dinosaur in New Jersey; the finding of gold in California; the development of the clipper ship; the reconnaissance balloon corps used during the Civil War; the introduction of the steam-engine into mining; and Alexander Graham Bell and his telephone, among others.

But none of these stories interests Simon as much as the ones that involve a tragedy, a searing injustice, or a unforgivable lapse in judgment. The violent and the shameful moments in history lead to longer conversations, to conversations that get continued over lunch and dinner, to big questions that rise unbidden from the back of the car on the way to the supermarket to buy lettuce and detergent.

“Mom--I have a question."

“What's your question?”

“Why do some people kill good presidents?"

And as we wander through the aisles of our local Publix, he turns and says: “What do you think was worse? World War I or World War II?"

Sometimes his questions leave me breathless because I'm so unprepared. He will have worked his way through an audiobook on his own, and I'll have no idea what historical moment he's been cogitating about.

Why do the dark moments in history take such hold of Simon's imagination? He's only eleven. He still sleeps with a nightlight and his arm around two stuffed polar bears called Erik and Dora, much loved presents from my mother.

A couple of years ago, when we studied Christopher Columbus for the first time, Simon kept going to the globe and tracing the daunting westward route to India that led instead to America. This year, everything has changed—not only has Simon grown almost four inches in the last twelve months, he has grown in ways I'm slow to perceive. This year, when the Columbus story was covered again in world history, all Simon wanted to talk about is smallpox and other diseases the Europeans exported wholesale to the Americas.

The last few days we read about Alexander Graham Bell and about Custer at Little Big Horn, but the technological wonder of the telephone could not compete with Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer's failure to listen to his Indian scouts. They told him not to attack the Cheyenne and Lakota. They told him he was vastly outnumbered. But Custer attacked anyway. He was going to teach the Indians a lesson. Custer--and every single one of his soldiers--was killed.

“What a stupid moron!” says Simon with utter indignation--moron is a favorite word these days thanks to The Diary of a Wimpy Kid. “Why didn't he listen to his scouts? And couldn't Custer count? Didn't he go to school? I can count. I wouldn't have attacked.” Simon is outraged.

The truth is of late is he is outraged a lot. Three days ago, for world history, we read about Louis XIV. Louis XIV was decreed another moron. “Why did he buy so much golden stuff when the peasants were hungry?"

In Man and Superman, George Bernard Shaw suggests that the first great passion that we feel as children is not love--but the moral sense. Suddenly, out of seemingly nowhere, children are inflamed with moral passion, and from that passion the adult is born. As one of his characters says:

All the other passions were in me before; but they were idle and aimless...grotesque and ridiculous to the mature intelligence. When they suddenly began to shine like newly lit flames it was by no light of their own, but by the radiance of the dawning moral passion. That passion dignified them, gave them conscience and meaning, found them a mob of appetites and organized them into an army of purposes and principles. My soul was born of that passion.

Late last week, I came upon Simon in bed looking at a book, a hardcover, not a comic book—those were strewn on the floor. His head was lying on his stuffed polar bears. In his hand he was holding a book I had just bought about the Civil War and had left on the coffee table, unsure as to when to introduce it, Photo by Brady—A Picture of the Civil War, also by Jennifer Armstrong. The book, pitched to teenagers, tells the story of the civil war through the pictures taken by Matthew Brady and the photographers he hired to make a record of the Civil War.

“Come here, Mom. Look at this. Look--the rebels stole the soldiers' shoes."

I sit down on the side of his bed and together we look at a picture of the dead at Gettysburg.

“They stole their shoes, Mom. Do you see? That's not fair."