How Middlebury College Landed in Court Over the Cancellation of a Former Governor of Vermont and His Gift of a Chapel

Last year I related in the Sun how I was skipping my 50th reunion at Middlebury College because of an indignity visited upon one of my predecessors as governor of Vermont. Now I’ve taken the College to court, in an effort to right the wrong done to Governor John Mead.

In late 2021, Middlebury abruptly removed the name “Mead Memorial Chapel” from the house of worship generously furnished by Mead, an alumnus and trustee as well as Vermont’s 53rd governor. It’s wrong on many fronts.

The Governor conditioned his gift on using the name Mead Memorial Chapel, the College has reaped enormous benefits from the Chapel for more than a century, and the cancel culture that led to this act needs to be challenged.

Erasure of Mead’s legacy, based on some remarks in a 1912 speech, is contrary to the College’s policy on free expression and its professed tolerance for unpopular views. It conflicts with the very purpose of an institution of higher learning: to seek knowledge and pursue the truth.

Hence, the filing by the Governor’s estate of a legal challenge. The family has asked me to serve as administrator, and I am honored to accept. I’m confident that a jury, upon examining all the evidence, will recognize the unfairness of this act.

I’ve been gratified by the tremendous support this cause has received from faculty, staff, retirees, and alumni. Many are offended by the unfairness of this act; they recognize the illogic of applying a modern standard to another era.

Mead Memorial Chapel has been the College’s most prominent edifice since 1916. There was no warning that the name would be removed, no public discussion, no hint that such a cancellation was to occur.

Instead, the College issued a statement shortly after the deed was done. It falsely asserted that the Chapel was named for the Governor and his wife; in fact, Governor Mead selected the name to honor his ancestors, among the first settlers of the area.

The basis for the removal of Mead’s name was the Governor’s support for restricting the issuance of marriage licenses to those of limited intellectual capacity and to appoint a commission to study the use of vasectomy as a more humane process of sterilization.

The former practice was passed by the legislature after he left office, but vetoed by his successor. Nonetheless, Mead was proclaimed a eugenicist, and the College implied, without evidence, that he was motivated by racism.

Middlebury’s cancellation of Mead sullies the reputation of a loyal graduate, as well as a generous benefactor. The College exaggerates his role in this matter; he didn’t actually do anything, but merely expressed an opinion.

So the late governor is being punished for his ideas. Middlebury is regulating thought, precisely the opposite of what a liberal arts college should do. Yet Middlebury has benefited from the Chapel extensively since its dedication.

Many campus gatherings have been held there; persons I know have been married in Mead Chapel, and others have been laid to rest following a funeral there. As a student, I attended worship services regularly; sadly, weekly worship no longer occurs.

Middlebury has consistently featured the image of the Chapel in its publications. For it’s the tallest structure on campus and the most distinctive. In 2016, the College website presented a centennial video extolling its value to the College in the previous century.

The College bases its decision to remove the Mead family’s name on inconsistency with its values. Perhaps that’s true: John Mead stood for patriotism, service, family, fairness, education, reverence, and charity. Maybe these are no longer among the values of the institution.

It appears that “presentism” now tops its list: purging someone due to a suggestion that we a century later deem unacceptable. I recently visited Mead’s grave in Rutland, Vermont. On his tombstone is the inscription “A Christian and Philanthropist.” That’s how he wanted to be remembered.

The governor’s gift of Mead Memorial Chapel embodies both attributes. An institution of higher learning is the last place an idea should be canceled. The pursuit of truth and knowledge requires a generous exposure to varied ideas and ideologies. That’s how we prepare students for the future. We must learn from history, not erase it.

https://www.nysun.com/article/how-middlebury-college-landed-in-court-over-the-cancellation-of-a-former-governor-of-vermont-and-his-gift-of-a-chapel

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Georgia, Arkansas Revive Old-School Teaching Method: Poetry Recitation. Here’s Why That’s a Good Thing

In his rousing keynote address at The Heritage Foundation’s 50th anniversary gala last month, then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson offered an unexpected piece of advice: “Don’t throw away your hard-copy books.”

Unlike digitized books, films, and albums that can be canceled, rewritten, or vanished altogether, physical copies are “the enduring repository that cannot be disappeared.”

With their resurrection of poetry recitation requirements, educators in Georgia and Arkansas are protecting that repository in more ways than one, steeping students in a reality they can affirm, trust, and love.

Both states’ departments of education recently proposed revised K-12 English language arts standards that would require that students recite “all or part of significant poems and speeches as appropriate by grade level,” as the Georgia standards put it.

In stark contrast to ideological curriculums that reduce great words and deeds of the past to matters of identity, power, and will, the recitation of great works of poetry will reacquaint students with the existence of truth, goodness, and beauty, teaching them what no ideology can—namely, how to be at leisure.

If leisure seems a ridiculous object of education to us, that’s in part because it entails a disposition radically different from the habits encouraged by most mainstream institutions today.

Against the incessant barrage of screens, images, and headlines that seems inescapable, leisure requires the silence, space, and attention to apprehend reality. Against the outrage fomented by corporations that profit from division and unrest, leisure celebrates the great gift of human life. And against the urge to self-promote built into every social media platform, leisure demands love.

Hence, while no child needs to be taught how to be outraged or entertained, children must be taught how to occupy their leisure. That has always been the case, as the etymology of the word “school” suggests (schol is the Greek word for leisure), but is especially vital in a day and age in which children—indeed, all Americans—are constantly bombarded by different forms of entertainment totally at odds with genuine leisure.

Carlson captured the challenge well: “As the world becomes more digitized, and people live in [a] realm that’s disconnected from physical reality,” he explained, “the only way to stay sane is to cling more tightly to the things you can smell.”

Poetry recitation primes children for this firm grasp of reality.

To recite a poem, a student must first learn it by heart, which means he or she must not only read it slowly and carefully, but read it aloud, listening closely to its cadence and tone, again and again.

This practice allows one to notice the subtle details we all too often miss when we approach life like an RSS feed, jumping from one meme or short-form video clip to the next, constantly refreshing for new updates and distractions.

To instead sit down with a single poem demands a wakefulness of the soul, a disposition also required for leisure.

As 20th-century German philosopher Josef Pieper explained, leisure is first and foremost a form of silence that prepares and permits the soul to apprehend or “hear” reality. Reciting a poem entails something similar, drawing the listener into what the acclaimed poet Dana Gioia at the recent National Symposium for Classical Education called a “zone of consciousness” different from one’s normal “zone.”

It also “add[s] an element of pleasure … to learning in any subject,” Gioia explained and vividly conveyed with his own marvelous recitations.

Poetry’s rhyme, meter, and narrative delight students, as does the thrill of performing and even competing with classmates. Students who initially balk at the challenge of committing unfamiliar language to memory and then reciting it before peers soon find the feat exhilarating and even fun, experiencing the festivity inherent in leisure, which traditionally took the form of a religious feast.

Just as in Genesis God contemplates and affirms the goodness of His work after completing it, Pieper noted, “man celebrates and gratefully accepts the reality of creation in leisure.” The reader of poetry models this celebration in an act that simultaneously expresses love and wonder at the world around and beyond us, and relishes the human capacity to do so.

“The very first thing you should do every single day is tell all the people you love that you love them,” Carlson reminded listeners, “because you do, and affirming things out loud makes them real.” Poetry recitation allows students to experience this unity of love and knowledge, and in doing so, it inculcates a love of learning and genuine leisure.

Indeed, poetry recitation introduces students to learning as something one can (and should) pursue for its own sake, rather than as a means to some other end, pushing back against a utilitarianism common in approaches to education.

Insofar as students see value in education, they often understand that value to be instrumental. Why go to school? So that you can learn the skills you need to get a good job, make good money, and make a name for yourself.

While education is of course useful, that mindset can rob students of the joy of doing something neither because it will get one ahead, nor as an escape from the rat race, but because it’s intrinsically worthwhile.

Reading and reciting poetry cultivates this joy. Though far from useless—great poems enrich vocabulary, and performance sharpens public speaking skills—poetry nevertheless presents itself primarily as something lovely, and only incidentally as something useful. In this, it imitates leisure, which restores us for work only when we seek it for its own sake.

In a 1780 letter to his 12-year-old son, John Adams counseled John Quincy Adams to prioritize his study of Latin oratory and Greek poetry above more “useful sciences,” which he could attain thereafter. The elder Adams no doubt knew from experience the importance of learning how to be at leisure early, before high office demands the bulk of one’s time.

Georgia and Arkansas seem to have taken a page out of the second president’s book in carving out for students space for the contemplation, festivity, and beauty of poetry among the more useful sciences.

Let’s hope other states follow suit.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/05/05/georgia-arkansas-revive-old-school-teaching-method-poetry-recitation/

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Australia: Victorian schools add another activist event to the calendar

Victorian schools celebrating the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT) set for May 18 prove, yet again, how successful the cultural-Left has been in taking a long march through the institutions.

These schools join a host of others drinking the Kool-Aid including libraries, local councils, universities, government departments, and banks like the NAB who are all willing to push neo-Marxist-inspired radical gender theory.

Schools are no longer places where students are taught to master the basics and where teachers introduce them to what the Victorian Blackburn Report describes as our ‘best validated knowledge and artistic achievements’.

Instead, when it comes to gender and sexuality, children as young as 5 are told that ‘love is love’, ‘everyone is special, just the way they are’, and that students should dress ‘up in rainbow colours in respect to the LGBTQ+ community’.

Even more concerning is one school’s invitation to a drag queen ‘to spend time in the library reading stories to children’. Drag queens perform regularly at LGBTQ+ functions, and this person advertises that they are willing to ‘bring colour and campness to any event’.

Celebrating IDAHOBIT day each year is just another example of the way students are taught gender and sexuality, instead of being biologically determined and God given, are social constructs where each child has the right to decide where they sit on the LGBTQ+ spectrum.

Since the inception of the Safe Schools in 2013, described by one of its designers as heralding a neo-Marxist revolution in gender and sexuality, students have been told Western societies like Australia are hetero-normative and guilty of promoting cis-genderism.

In school libraries children’s books like She’s My Dad and The Gender Fairy are increasingly common, gaining prominence based on the belief traditional stories like Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella are no longer acceptable as they promote a romanticised, binary view of sexuality.

In primary schools, children are warned against using gender specific pronouns like ‘he’ and ‘she’ and kindergarten teachers are told children ‘have multiple and changing identities’ and must be taught about ‘identity formation that encompass gender identity and gender expression (with a non-binary dichotomy) and family diversity’.

In this brave new world, victimhood and identity politics prevail, and the fact the overwhelming majority of babies are born with either XX or XY chromosomes, is denied… Also denied is the majority of Australians who are happy to be men or women and that there is nothing inherently bad about heterosexuality.

While unfair discrimination is wrong as everyone, regardless of gender and sexuality, deserves respect and equal treatment, the reality is indoctrinating primary and secondary students with radical gender theory is an egregious example of schools failing in their duty of care.

Parents are their children’s primary educators and moral guardians and schools are wrong to indoctrinate students with radical gender ideology. Subverting the role of parents is especially unacceptable for those parents of religious faith who believe gender and sexuality are God given.

As written in the Bible, God created Adam and Eve and the sanctity of marriage is based on the belief men and women join for the purpose of procreation. In response to the argument gender and sexuality are two different things it is also the case the Catholic Church believes they are inseparable.

Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia argues ‘biological sex and the socio-cultural role of sex (gender) can be distinguished but not separated’ and to ‘attempt to sunder what are inseparable aspects of reality’ is to be guilty of ‘trying to replace the Creator’.

One of the reasons Republican governors including Florida’s Ron DeSantis and Virginia’s Glen Youngkin are so electorally popular is because both support parents in their fight against radical gender theory. A lesson yet to be learned by the Opposition Leader John Pesutto and his leadership team in their cancelling of Moira Deeming.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/idahobit-victorian-schools-add-another-activist-event-to-the-calendar/ ?

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