This post doesn’t live here anymore. It migrated to my other blog:
The Big No-No: An Outsider on American Fascism,
where it resides under the title:
“Battling Nationalism for Maria Montessori: I Pledge Allegiance to the Earth”.
What Folks Have Been Reading
WHAT I HAVE BEEN READING
In the late 60s Richard Proenneke built his own cabin in the Alaskan wilderness with only a few simple tools. He spent most of the rest of his life there. Sam Keith fleshed out Proenneke's diary of his first 16 months, when he was making his home by a lake. I love these kinds of books!
An old Oji-Cree healer and her nephew canoe down a river in Canada, away from the world of white people. They both have to come to terms with their past. The woman has lost most of her tribe and the young man is traumatized from his recent experience in the Belgian trenches of World War One. My second book by Boyden. Can't say enough about him.
An incredibly comprehensive history of everything related to slavery in the Southern United States, from the beginning of the colonies to the end of the Civil War. Over 700 pages and I took over 30 pages of notes. I will be sharing over many posts to come!
Hamid's debut novel. I love this author. A young man in Lahore, Pakistan, is the victim of love, drugs, obsession, the class system and his complete lack of self-awareness.
A golem, created in Poland and brought to life on a ship to America, and a jinni who was trapped in a flask a thousand years ago and released in New York -- the most unusual immigrants you'll ever meet.
The only part of her life a Korean woman can control is her body, so she withdraws into it. Harrowing.
Autobiography lightly disguised as a novel about the son of Southern migrants growing up on the streets of Harlem, New York City, in the 1940s and 50s. Written like you're hearing the whole story in a bar. Quite a feat.
The story of a man struggling to make a living in Morocco. No plot, no clearly defined characters, but fascinating in its authenticity.
Pakistani man tells an American about his experience as a college student and employee of an assessment firm in America years ago. Smart, nuanced and pretty darn honest considering the unreliable narrator.
Wow! The answer to the inane platitudes about how all parents love their children and how children should always respect their parents. The protagonist must come to terms with his deeply flawed immigrant parents in order to change himself.
Seven short stories about life during the Kim Il-sung regime, by a writer who still lives and works in North Korea, were smuggled out of the country and translated. Mind-boggling stuff.
A 15-year-old autistic narrator wants to know who killed a neighbor's dog, and ends up much further out of his comfort zone than he planned. Wonderful read!
In politics, education, religion, agriculture, business--it turns out that dumbing down has been here from the start.
Fifty years of Istanbul seen through the eyes of a street vendor who migrates to the city as a young boy. It's also a window into the complicated dance between men and women in Turkey.
Hey, don't laugh, at least I'm trying.
A Norwegian immigrant is cooped up with six other people on a tiny island off the coast of Maine all winter in 1873. A woman in the present researching the Norwegian immigrant is cooped up with three other people on a tiny sailboat. What could possibly go wrong?
A man stuck between two worlds in more ways than one. Fascinating!
Historical novel about early contacts between first nations and the French in Canada. Beautifully written story that doesn't pull any punches. I bought his other two novels right away.
Beautifully written. By my children's favorite English and Creative Writing teacher! It's got rave reviews and we're all very proud of her.
Suki Kim is a Korean-American journalist. She poses as an evangelical Christian posing as an English teacher at a school for the sons of North Korea's elite. Her experience and the information she manages to get via writing assignments are incredible. Definitely a lot more eye-opening that any CNN special.
This. Explains. Everything!!!
Why has Islam not undergone a reformation like Christianity? Why is it so easy for Islamic extremist groups like IS to recruit young muslims? What would it take for Islam in fundamentalist Islamic countries to enter modernity? Does the West have a role to play?
Amazing! A man wanders endlessly through a dreamscape, becoming other people, himself in the past, everything is fluid. Kafkaesque disconnect between people and their different needs.
A multi-layered novel about the history of Libya. A fast read, but one you can repeat and find something new each time.
Twelve Americans go missing in Burma/Myanmar during a tour. Touching and hilarious, but mostly hilarious.
The most unusual murder mystery I've ever read. Incredible writing. It haunted me for days.
The quote on the front mentions that these stories are exhilerating. I couldn't disagree more. They are almost unbearably painful to read, and yet I couldn't put them down. Very well done, apart from the third story, which is written in the second tense. Please let me know if you know of ONE story that works in second tense.
Resident Alien -- Being Dutch in America 
I like your pledge much better.
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I like your version! Here’s a similar pledge we have on a poster in our kitchen. Martha used to have her Girl Scout troop recite it at the beginning of their meetings:
I pledge allegiance to the Earth
and all the life which it supports
One planet, in our care,
irreplaceable, with sustenance and respect for all.
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Yes, I’ve seen that one. It’s a lot better than mine was.
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Great intention, but one cannot simply pledge itself to the world. This way of thinking is condemned in some places, so not having pride in the people of the nation that allows your child to go to such an open minded school is disrespectful. The one concept that has kept historic cultures thriving for so long is PRIDE. You pride in your liberal “forward moving” ideology. Children need to feel this pride in things they can justify in their minds. Respecting the hand that feeds and protects you is very important. There are many evils in this world, therefore the young ones need a sense of protection and the U.S. has an outstanding record of providing just that. Is it more harmful to have the children wanting to stand up for the US and its people or to simply lay down their shields and fold when an enemy nation decides to tread on your child’s free society? Bless you for your optimism and openness – may your ideology protect you against the brutal and evil people of this world. In the meantime, my Montessori children will strive for peace but will always stand their ground as patriots of their fellow Americans. You see, it’s more than just an outdated line in the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance.
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Thanks for your elaborate comment, and apologies for my extremely late reaction. I haven’t been that active on my blog for the past… eh, year.
First of all, why can’t I pledge allegiance to the world? How is that stranger than pledging allegiance to a symbol?
Second: “This way of thinking is condemned in some places, so not having pride in the people of the nation that allows your child to go to such an open minded school is disrespectful.”
This argument is circular. My not pledging allegiance is frowned upon in some places, and therefore it’s disrespectful of me? Again, you’re just stating how you yourself feel about it, which is fine.
Third: Montessori was Italian. She left Italy when Mussolini’s totalitarian regime–which included nationalistic indoctrination–made it unbearable for her. She ended up spending the last years of her life in the Netherlands, where Montessori schools are as common as pigeons. My point is that there are plenty more countries that allow minded education. That’s not unique to America, regardless of what you’ve been told all your life.
Fourth: So you are saying that we shouldn’t be critical of “the hand that feeds” us? Are we no more than dogs, then? Who try to please their master because they are dependent on him for food? That analogy doesn’t work for lots of people. America is the only country in the western world with serious hunger issues. And the whole reason America was set up as the experiment it was back then was to enable people to stand up to their government when they felt it was wrong. Indoctrinating young children into believing that this is the best country in the world, that therefore can’t be improved upon, let alone criticized, is exactly the opposite of what the founding fathers had in mind. And it’s also the exact opposite of what Montessori had in mind.
By the way, a lot of the brutal and evil people you refer to are that way because they, too, have been indoctrinated from an early age to believe that their ways are best and to see anyone who criticizes them as enemies whose heads must come off.
So, apart from armies putting out fires as they arise, I believe that in the long run the only way there could ever be a reasonable amount of peace in the world is to teach our children to think for themselves. So I want my children to gradually come to their own conclusions about what they want to be proud of and what they can justify. ” Children need to feel this pride” is you imposing your ideals onto them. And in the case of a Montessori school, you are imposing those ideals onto others’ children as well.
So my not wanting my three-year-old to say the pledge of allegiance is not an ideology, it’s me trying to protect my child from what I feel are misguided ideologies of others.
And by the way, you can condemn all you want, nobody HAS to say the pledge. That’s a constitutional right, however much you and others like you try and make people feel it’s a rule that must be obeyed.
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