Civics

Some people say we learn to cheat by the example of others. Others think that it's a natural inclination and it is only by personal discipline that we resist doing rotten things. Another supposition is that bad habits are environmental. I don't know if it's one of the above, all of the above, or none of the above.

In eighth grade kids weren't immune to the art of cheating and by then if they were disposed to go in that direction they could make use of "ponies" or "cribs" to dishonestly improve their scores in exams.

Morality, a subjective course, wasn't taught at (public) school and that's just as well. There were hints, basic things. A teacher might print up a large card quoting The Golden Rule. It would be hung in a prominent place. Aside from that and morning bible readings and some literature, required reading, in English courses, we got our doses of immorality and our introduction into the benefits of cheating in Civics, one of the facets of History.

History isn't immoral; it's only a record of effectual events. Fundamentalists would call it the record of immorality. Logicians know better; it's a record of accidents. Dreamers hope that it's a record of lessons to be learned. The incredibly stupid have no interest in it. Idiots say they know it. Cretins seek it in novels and docu-dramas. It's not all of the above.

History courses at school were built around five great events in western civilization. These were the signing of the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, The French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution and the war between the States (The Civil War). These weren't passing incidents. They were epochs that made the greater world beneficiaries of change.

At Runnemede noblemen who were probably thugs and martinets and slugs told King John he could go to hell (without dispatching him) and he kept his head and let them keep theirs. He knew the value of what could be put on a piece of paper and how to wink at treaties.

We got rid of syphilitic George the Third and a system of repressive taxes and of government bullying its subjects. Some days ol' George looks good.

Those who stormed the Bastille left a legacy of paintings, etchings and lithographs of their effort that day and of course the invention of the guillotine as a merciful alternative to sloppy endings. That's proof that good things come out of the worst situations.

In the greatest leap forward since the bronze-age, the chimney age belched smoke into the sky and into lungs, A whole new school of fiction writers emerged: men like Adam Smith and Karl Marx who celebrated the division of profits.

Our war between North and South ruined the romantic view of negroes that Stephen Foster put on music sheets. Southerners were poor losers. But then the victors who shed their blood for slaves' freedom weren't too keen on having the emancipated ones live too close to their homes. The underground railway became less appealing when it became the Broad Street Subway or the Lexington Avenue Line.

The History department was an umbrella over a wide area of study. Under that name courses were presented in ancient history, medieval history, European history and of course American history where we were pleased to know that William Penn was kinder to the local savages than other colonists were in other places. The message was lost somewhere because all boys played cowboys and indians. Great paintings depicted Columbus being greeted at the beach, the Puritans sharing Thanksgiving with the tribe, John Smith wooing Pocahontas and getting a Church of England wedding, and Penn and the Quakers (like the others) partying with the locals. The white men posed for the propaganda portraits then kicked the old landowners out. In New York they were cunning and they paid the red-rubes twenty four bucks for Manhattan. Any resale of property after that didn't involve beads and trinkets and small change.

We had a lot of geography lessons before we opened history books, so when we read about England or France or Canada or the Philippine Islands or the Panama Canal we knew whereof the writers were leading us. Current history, not yet in books, was presented as Current Events. We had to cull newspapers and listen to radios to stay abreast of unsettled things. Social Studies in the development of our political condition was addressed as Civics.

The division of power between political parties and between branches of government was sanitized by authors to keep the teachers neutral. Scandal was not lionized but we got a good clue about what the bottom line was in the way our rulers dealt with reapportionment of voting districts. Doing this soon fell to clever people and it was called Gerrymandering — in or out of voting strengths to favor someone in favor. It made legal what in other circumstance might put a man in jail.

Most people never get much experience in direct attention by elected officials unless it's a favor. Favors don't exist when chits aren't owed or due. Gerrymandering was backroom cartography that was insurance for political survival, aligning favorable voting blocs into friendly districts. Enemies could be relocated to other soil without the trauma of expulsions or messy bloodshed. At best, it's a reasonable alternative to genocide.

Elbridge Gerry used this clever maneuver to redistrict voters in Massachesetts in 1812. It was a good move for smart politicians and the bastards have been doing it ever since.