Judge orders parents not to expose children to"non-mainstream religious beliefs"

Re: Re: Re: Judge orders parents not to expose children to"non-mainstream religious beliefs&quo

It has been observed that the public primary and secondary school system in the United States is a very Pavlovian dog type stimulus-response type proposition much better suited to the nineteenth century than the twentieth or twenty-first century.

Simply put, in the typical school system, the bell rings at 8:00, signaling one to get to first period class. The bells ring again at 8:50 and 9:00, signaling 10 minutes passing time to get to second period class. The bells ring again at 9:50 and 10:00, signaling 10 minutes passing time to get to third period class. The bells ring again at 10:50 and 11:00, signaling 10 minutes passing time to get to fourth period class (A) or lunch (A). The bells ring again at 11:50 and 12:00, signaling 10 minutes passing time to get to lunch (B) or fourth period class (B). The bells ring again at 12:50 and 1:00, signaling 10 minutes passing time to get to fifth period class. The bells ring again at 1:50 and 2:00, signaling 10 minutes passing time to get to sixth period class. The bells ring again at 2:50 and 3:00, signaling 10 minutes passing time to get to seventh period class. The bells ring again at 4:00, signaling time to go home.

In the typical factory job the riinging bells tend to be fewer and further apart, but you have a bell ring at 8:00, signaling time to get to your work station. The bell rings at 10:00, signaling a 10-15 minute break. The bell rings at 12:00, signaling lunch break. The bell rings at 2:00, signaling another 10-15 minute break. The bell rings at 4:00, signaling time to go home.

In short, the powers that be who control our system of education and the system of work that the education system allegedly prepared us for believe that the purpose of education is to grind people into submission who act like good Pavlovian dogs who respond appropriately to given stimuli on cue.

 

Actually, Ted, there are a few additional observations to be made here.

Mandatory schooling and child labor laws created the problem of unsupervised children in the first half of the 19th century. That's ALSO when juvenile delinquency first appeared as a serious social problem. Arguably, it was cause and effect.

The institution of longer working hours for both parents (the 19th century working class family did NOT look like the Cleevers; both parents worked to stave off starvation) separated children from their parents and placed them in the hands of an increasingly invasive state.

None of this has changed even though it COULD change at this point.

But could we really return to a pre-industrial society and still feed, clothe, house, and entertain our enormous population?

 

Yeah, I certainly agree with that.

How is the Jewish bible relevant to the justification of laws against polygamy here in the US?

I suppose that some aspects of English common law may have medieval roots in Christian social practice or even in Catholic canon law. (The church once regulated family law in much of Europe.)

But if a contemporary American court cited scripture (whether Christian or Jewish) as a legal precedent for a decision on marriage law, I think that the decision would have obvious constitutional defects.

That's why I'm curious about what the legal decisions look like. How were they argued?

That's assuing that there were legal decisions and that the US military activities in Utah weren't the result of personal decisions made by government officials and military commanders. I guess that at the time Utah was an unincorporated territory and perhaps to some extent ruled by decree.

 

Please don't get the idea that I am defending polygamy.

There's no reference to marriage anywhere in the U.S. constitution nor any definition of marriage that I know of in most (any?) state constitutions (beyond those pesky anti-interracial marriage laws we find in the good old traditional-family-values South)

The reason for this, I think, is that until Joseph Smith showed up and started preaching polygamy, no one gave it a thought. The Christian Church had defined marriage as a practical matter for a thousand years or so and that definition was accepted pretty much by all concerned as a matter of course. That's why I referenced the bible earlier.

Sepharadim are Ladino-speaking Jews found around the Mediterranian Sea in Italy, Spain (before the 1492 explusion by Their Most Catholic Majesties Ferdinand and Isabella) and North Africa. Thoughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, this community provided the greatest scholars and artists in the Jewish world including Maimonidies for example. Their society was urban and sophisticated and, at times, influencial and wealthy. Shylock would have been sephardi.

Ashkenazim are Yiddish speakers. They are, or were, the Jews of the Pale of Settlement in Russian Poland and Germany. The vast majority of Jews murdered by Hitler were ashkenazim; these communities were largely wiped out. Literally. Tevya the Dairyman is ashkenazi. Until about the 17th or 18th centuries CE, the askenazim were looked upon as rural, backward, ignorant, superstitious and desperately poor. The image was largely correct. The ashkenazim produced most of the great Jewsish secular scholars and thinkers such as Freud, Einstein, and (like it or not) Marx.

Most Jewish immigrants into the U.S. were ashkenazim. The political class in Israel is largely ashkenazi which leads to significant internal divisions and serious friction inside Israel today.

 

The constitution an the law

Just because polygamy is not banned by the constitution does not preclude it from being banned by the states. In fact, the constitution leaves anything not covered by it to the states. This was one reason abortion was regulated by state law prior to Roe -v- Wade.

Yes, there have been decisons allowing the Indians to use peyote but as I recall it was a special case based on their being Indians and having treaties with the United States. As a practical, legal matter it does not apply to any religion that would develop today. For example, Rastafarians in the USA cannot use marijuana in their religion....

 

Re: The constitution an the law

Sure they can, they just can't get caught.

 

Well, there's that..

But as I recall there was an actual case involving the Rasta's and marijuana and they lost. There have been other minor rulings here and there but in general there is no legal right to use the drug based on a religion. Otherwise a religion could exempt most anything......

 

Just responding to hit the 100 post mark.

Gotcha

 

DTechBA,

I am pleased to note that I agree with your polygamy post.

I wonder, however, if a state could CHOOSE torecognize polygamY...

 

Probably not....

Since if a state had extra women to marry off, they would prevent their moving to another state to marry someone there. Therefore, to allow polygamy could be said to interfere with interstate commerce.

Laugh, but there have been more convulated decisions....

 

Hmm.

1. How would mandatory schooling laws create a problem of unsupervised children? (I would think mandatory schooling laws would alleviate the problem of unsupervised children.) When did mandatory schooling laws come in? I'd think it was a state-by-state thing. I have some notion from my POLS 350: American Political Thought class under Professor Louis G. Morton, Jr. (MA, Western State College) at Mesa State College in Grand Junction, Colorado, in Spring 1982 that there was something called the School Law of Massachusetts of 1642, and from my HIST 420: Civil War and Reconstruction under Christopher M. Holloway (MA, University of Colorado) at Mesa State College in Grand Junction, Colorado, in Fall 1982 that public schools in the South were not generally available until Reconstruction. I think that mandatory schooling laws were probably not a general thing until the Great Depression.

2. Indeed, the 19th century working class family looked nothing like the 20th century middle class family. One of the big surprises one finds in women's history classes is that for much of human history, women were actually "allowed" to work. (Hear the snickers?) And, of course, with the working class, the woman's income was a necessity, not a luxury. And, of course, the status of women at any given time in history often depends on whether women are (at least in certain socio-economic classes) economically productive individuals within the family unit or whether they are essentially trophies.

3. Could things change? In pre-industrial society, children were part of a unit of production and consumption called the family. Little hands did what little hands could do just like big hands did what big hands could do. Then, the institution of factory labor took the factory worker away from his home (and potentially from his family as well, unless the wife and children are hired as well). Thus, the factory and the office became the new unit of production and the family became only a unit of consumption. But, couldn't there be a new rise of cottage industry (home-based businesses) that would be a renewal of the idea of the family as a unit of production as well as consumption?

By the way, when did child labor laws as we know them today come into existence? For centuries, the poor laws required that the children of those poor who applied for poor relief would work just as the adults would work, if I'm remembering my HS 091: English History class under William Dean Edmondson (PhD, Claremont Graduate School) at Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado in Fall 1983 correctly.

 

Mandatory schooling separated the children from their parents. But school didn't last the twelve hours a day that the parents' employers demanded. The result was unsupervised children.

You know, T.H., the SCARY thing is, these observations imply the increased regimentation of the working classes for the profit of the powerful. That's a pretty fundamental Marxist observation!

People should read Marx but they should read him in his historical context. The man may have been wrong in his predictions but that doesn't mean he was wrong about everything else.

 

Non working mothers

The problem with people assuming working mothers caused unsupervised children is the assumption that mothers used to sit home and watch kids. This is simply not the case. Prior to the invention of modern home appliances, mothers had to work their rears off running the household. With no refrigeration they had to shop every day. Kids were even more unsupervised than now if you consider before mandatory school they were either free all day or working....

 

DTech BA,

Oh, no, of course not! But in the preindustrial world, families tended to scrabble for a living together instead of being pulled apart by the State.

We are much richer as a society and as individuals that ever before, no doubt, and I wouldn't want you to think that I look upon those earlier days as any sort of ideal!

 

Re: Non working mothers

Kids free all day in the pre-industrial world? Come now! In the pre-industrial world, little hands that were old enough were doing some kind of work under the supervision of the bigger hands. Little hands that were too little to work as yet were under the supervision of an older relative (normally female, I presume) who took direct responsibility for childcare for an entire extended family (no doubt that responsibility rotated among the females of the family), be that grammy, mommy, auntie, or big sissie.

 

Re: Non working mothers

SHOP every day? Come now! How about going to their family farm's store-room every day? Besides, many families in the nineteenth century were so far from any store that they shopped in large such large quantities to cover such long periods of time (sometimes months or even an entire year) that we mere moderns who are never more than a few minutes from the nearest supermarkets, shopping centers, and malls simply cannot imagine the planning involved.

Also, with no refrigeration, they would have used other methods of food preservation. Have you ever wondered why meats were smoked in the bad old days? Preservation! Have you ever wondered why meats were salted in the bad old days? Preservation! Have you ever wondered why people used pepper in the bad old days? To cover up the bad taste after the meat had spoiled!

 

Look up history

I don't know what history you took but if you think the poor that lived in urban tenements had such a thing as a store room you are sadly mistaken. Not everyone lived on a farm my friend. Many, if not most, lived in one or, if lucky, two room apartments in a city and barely had room for themsleves. The food preservation you are talking about simply got the food from the farms to the stores. And yes, the mother would have to shop for the meal almost every day, for bread and milk if nothing else. They still do that in many countries in Europe. This on top of doing laundry, cleaning, taking care of the kids, getting water, earning money on the side to support the family and whatever else she had to do. This often left their children not all of which worked (jobs were scarce) unsupervised.

There are tons of stories from the 18th and 19th century about unsupervised children running the neighborhoods. Worse, since the life expectancy in those days was about half what it is today you had a much greater orphan problem. PBS, just had a show on the orphan trains that used to take orphans from the cities to the countryside where family's would adopt them not always with happy results.

Life wasn't pleasant at all in those days.....

 

Iceboxes. How was the ice for the iceboxes made before refrigeration?

 

Re: Look up history

Urban tenements in PRE-industrial times, my friend? I think if you review my original argument, I said that: (a) it was the industrial regime that took fathers (and oftentimes mothers, too) away from their families during the workday; (b) prior to the industrial age, i.e., during the more agrarian era, families worked together; and (c) the notion of families working together could be revived if the rise of cottage industries caused the majority of people to own some kind of business rather than working for large corporations.

BTW - I never said that life was beautiful all the time (except maybe on the funny farm, with trees and flowers and chirping birds and basket weavers that smile at you as the twiddle their thumbs and toes).

 

Ice wasn't made in those days; it was collected in winter by being cut from frozen ponds. It was then stored in icehouses, insulated with sawdust or similar, and sold from ice wagons.

Mark Twain in is very best book "Life on the Mississippi" describes a visit to one of the then brand new ice factories in Louisiana. He says that ice from the factory sold much cheaper than the natural ice he'd been buying in New England!