The War Against Grammar, part 2

The Teaching of the Liberal Arts, and Grammar in Particular, through History

As a practical discipline, grammar has two closely related goals:  it preserves and perfects the understanding of the great literature of the past, and it contributes to eloquent self expression.  It looks to the past, to preserve great literature, and to the future, to produce it.  This is one of the lessons of the European Renaissance which we will look at more closely.

The basic taxonomic groups of language are referred to as parts of speech, whose purpose is practical guidance, not theoretical exactitude.  Critics of grammar instruction posit the argument that the parts of speech do no offer exactitude, but this is like saying the taxonomy of science should not be taught because it stops at the genus level and doesn't classify every living thing down to its specific identity. Mastery of the taxonomy of language was the first step in a liberal arts education.  As Mulroy states, questioning the value of this is like asking whether a farmer should know the names of his crops and animals.  Its value should be accepted with certitude, and historically it was except for a brief period in the late Middle Ages.

Through the ages grammars were written and used with students.  We remember these are based on the work of Dionysius.  In the mid 4th century, Donatus wrote one in the form of a catechism.

How many parts of speech are there?
Eight
What are they?
Noun, pronoun, verb, etc.

In the 5th century Priscian produced a more comprehensible grammar that included extensive use of quotes from Greek and Latin authors to illustrate his points.  (Today, Michael Clay Thompson's English and vocabulary studies follows this tradition.)

These two grammars became the foundations of the entire liberal arts curriculum in the Middle Ages.  Throughout the development of Western Civilization beginning in the Hellenistic period, grammar was viewed as the essential academic discipline upon which all others are based.

The accepted date for the Fall of Rome is A.D. 476.  Rome fell to Germanic tribes who did not appreciate the literary achievements of the Romans, and therefore, did not emulate them.  There were two leading scholars of that age; one, Boethius, was executed and the other, Cassiodorus, left government service and founded a monastery where he devoted himself to the study and preservation of ancient learning.  Cassiodorus set the pattern for those wishing to preserve the classical culture.

The Rise of the Monastery and the Carolingian Renaissance

Throughout the next three centuries, monasteries were the leading centers of learning and education.  In general, monks were the only individuals to receive higher education.  Their goal was to preserve knowledge, especially the Bible and the writings of the church fathers.

It wasn't until the late 8th century that the top person in governance became a patron of learning, and that was Charlemagne.  His initiatives led to the Carolingian Renaissance (ca. 780), so named because many of the family members in this dynasty had the name Charles, which in Latin, is Carolus.  The liberal arts remained the basis of education during this period.  It is through this renaissance that a more attractive system of writing emerged, which eventually led to our modern typefaces.  Also, a Carolingian music teacher named Guido d'Arezzo, himself a champion of grammar, invented the mnemonic music scale of "do, re, mi."

Several centuries of economic growth followed, and by the 12th century, Paris emerged as the leading center of education.  It was in this period that universities got their start.  When a group of masters or students obtained legal status as a guild or corporation in the city they resided, a university was formed.  In that day the term university had a meaning closer to "union."  Between 1150 and 1500, a minimum of 79 universities were founded, of which 49 survived into the 20th century.

Factors Contributing to Grammar's Demise

It is right here, the early half the 12th century, that something very interesting happened.  First, a man named Peter Abelard emerged as a brilliant but rebellious logician.  He was constantly at conflict with the masters (scholars/teachers) and the Church.  He stated that it was impossible to simply defer to authority on all issues and made popular disputation.  He emphasized that even the ancient authorities disagreed on some issues making them internally inconsistent.  His greatest work titled, Sic et Non (So and Not So),  was a collection of contradictory opinions on 156 different propositions and became very popular.

Second, universities were competing for students.  As a way of increasing their numbers, many, if not most, changed their educational direction in favor of disputation.  This has been called scholasticism. Traditional questions that were addressed in the classical style of instruction, such as, how to lead a good life, were thought intellectually immature.  Students were jumping straight to dialectics (critical thinking) without having mastered the other subjects of the discipline. By the year 1215, the standard curriculum had no poetry, history, rhetoric, or ethics.  Just logic.  

A couple of other growing practices helped speed up grammar's demise.  One was the emphasis on spoken Latin.  Communication was deemed more important than grammar and eloquence.  We see this today in foreign language classrooms across the country.  Another was an attempt to apply scientific principles to every subject, including grammar. This attempt and ultimate failure to formulate grammatical definitions that could never meet science's rigorous standards caused scholars to doubt its importance.

There were two schools that resisted the push to scholasticism (disputation) and continued to emphasize traditional, practical grammar and the close study of classical literature.  These were Orleans and Chartes. We have an interesting account of a man who studied under both systems.

John of Salisbury

John of Salisbury was a British scholar who first studied under Abelard in Paris for two years.  And, although he admired Abelard's brilliance, he was less impressed with his two successors who were the kind of men that could argue something completely ridiculous and make it sound plausible.  They found contradictions in any and every opinion.

From there, John enrolled at Chartes and studied under its traditional curriculum for three years.  Afterwards, describing the state of education and how his two professors/teachers responded to it, he wrote this:

"Later, when popular opinion veered away from the truth, when men preferred to seem, rather than to be, philosophers, and when professors of the arts were promising to impart the whole of philosophy in less than three or even two years, William and Richard were overwhelmed by the onslaught of the ignorant mob, and retired.  Since then, less time and attention have been given to the study of grammar.  As a result, we find men who profess all the arts, liberal and mechanical, but who are ignorant of this very first one, without which it is futile to go on to attempt others."

 This was the period of Scholasticism and it would be a hundred years, the mid-14th century, before a reaction to it would take shape. 

Enter Humanism

It used to be thought that Humanism represented a shift in focus from theological concerns to that of human nature, but that just isn't the case.  Through careful analysis of primary documents (done largely by Paul Oskar Kristeller), the true motivation of Humanism was to revive the studies of grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and moral philosophy.

The movement first took shape in Italy through the poet and scholar Petrarch. Humanists borrowed from Cicero the phrase studia humanitatis to describe their interests, and at the heart of their movement "was the belief that education had no higher goal than to foster ... edifying pleasure."  The ability to share subjective experience.  Petrarch's writings about grief are potent as he lived through the Black Death (1348-50) which took his beloved's life and nearly every other friend of his.  Author Mulroy writes,

"To enjoy great literature, one must understand it.  To apply the balm of self-expression to internal wounds, one must first know the proper use of words. Hence, for both reasons, the humanists' most urgent task was to reform the teaching of Latin grammar."

 In time, new humanist Latin grammars were written, based on the works of Donatus and Priscian.  As these spread across Europe, additional works were inspired that provided glosses and translations of grammatical terms and paradigms. The revival of reading classical texts had begun and the dual role of grammar (preserving and reviving classical literature and creating new works) was underway.

Erasmus and England's Literary Renaissance

Erasmus was responsible for introducing Humanism to England.  He was primarily concerned with reforming grammar instruction, and his Praise of Folly contributed to that end.  In 1509, St. Paul's cathedral school became the first Renaissance grammar school in England.  Not long after, King Henry VIII decreed that the newly written grammar by William Lily was to be used exclusively in all English schools.  This grammar taught students to think about English, as well as Latin, grammatically. 

"The promulgation of "one brief, plain, uniform grammar" in British schools occurred on the eve of the English literary Renaissance.  From Chaucer's death in 1400 to the mid-sixteenth century, England did not produce any literary artists of lasting fame.  Then the students who had been raised on Lily's grammar started coming of age:  Edmund Spenser (1552-99), Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Christopher Marlowe (1564-93), John Ford (1568-1639), Ben Johnson (1572-1637), and, of course, William Shakespeare (1564-1616)."

Samuel Johnson said that Shakespeare had enough Latin to grammaticize his English. Although Latin isn't a necessity to write well in English, it's grammatical foundation is.  By studying Latin's grammatical concepts, it lifts them and makes them transportable into English.

The War Against Grammar

I've taken a bit of a detour from Russell Kirk's Roots of American Order.  I am zipping through a fantastic little book that I can't help but do a little writing about.

This book by Stanford Ph.D. Professor David Mulroy, (available here: Grammar) speaks to the importance of traditional grammar instruction in our education system.  He believes and offers convincing proofs that English teachers must revitalize grammar instruction if we are to produce a generation that can read and write complex texts.

Surprisingly, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) has made it their policy through official resolutions to not teach traditional grammar.  Though officially adopted in 1985, the issue of whether or not to teach grammar dates back to 1925 and a doctoral dissertation by Charles Fries.  His name is used frequently by the NCTE, which was founded in 1911, claims 80,000 members, and publishes thirteen separate journals. Fries layed the foundation of modern linguistics and through his book titled, The Structure of English (1952) clearly implied that traditional grammar instruction ought be discouraged.

A study conducted by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) found that adults who were educated prior to 1960 ranked very high in their ability to comprehend connected prose, but those younger adults educated after 1960 ranked much lower.  Perhaps the best evidence lies in the declining SAT scores.  According to Mulroy,

"Both verbal and quantitative scores began to sink in 1963.  The average verbal score dropped over 50 points; the quantitative scored fell from 502 to 466 in 1980.  In 1996, The College Board "recentered" the SAT scores.  The average verbal score for that year, 428, was reported as 505; the quantitative average was changed from 488 to 512.  In 2002, the recentered averages were 504 (verbal) and 516 (mathematics)."

Another indicator of a problem in language arts instruction is the percentage of students studying foreign language at the college level.  In 1965, that number was 16.5% (of college credits earned in foreign language).  In 1977 the average was 7.75% and in 1998 (the last year for which information is available) the percentage was 7.9.  Today, an awful lot of time in foreign language classes is spent on cultural activities at the expense of grammar instruction in the target language.

Grammar's Origins

Who first thought about the grammar of language, the parts of speech?  Not surprisingly, it was the Greeks.  Plato began the analysis of language with his tripartite system: nouns, verbs, and everything else.  Aristotle continued the analysis with a more complete system adding conjunctions, adverbs, and prepositions. He did not distinguish between adjectives and nouns because adjectives are often used as nouns (Home of the Free and the Brave) and nouns can be used as possessive adjectives (The rich man's wealth is his fortress, Prov. 10:15).  The definitive Grammar that was completed, published, and reached the farthest both in geography and time was a treatise by Dionysius in 100 B.C.  The Techne Grammatike is perhaps one of the most influential books ever written. Its influence reaches the grammars of modern European languages.  Hence, it was the Greeks who thought about language and defined the natural order of thinking by naming the parts of speech.

The Romans, being an inclusive culture and recognizing the wisdom of the Greeks, imitated the Greek curriculum of grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, harmony, and astronomy, naming them the artes liberales.  In the early 4th century A.D., a nine-volume work on education was written by Martianus Capella, a Roman living in Carthage.  The title of this allegorical work is De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii ("The Marriage of Philology and Mercury").  It achieved great vogue and endured as an educational classic for centuries.  It conferred a long-lasting prestige to the liberal arts, and even though today there are over a hundred graduate programs available under the title "liberal studies," most have no historical claim to it.

The Liberal Arts

The liberal arts are a direct descendant of alphabetic literacy.  By studying the ancient philosophers' writings, their statements of truths, one could discover the basic patterns of thought which are themselves what bind the seven liberal arts together.  The ancients believed these truths were hard-wired in the individual.  This was exemplified in Plato's The Meno, in which Socrates is depicted leading an uneducated slave boy to the Pythagorean Theorem through a series of questions.  This demonstrated that the rules of the subjects of the seven liberal arts are innate.  They can be drawn out of the student because they follow universal laws.

For this reason, the value of the liberal arts was never challenged (except for rhetoric because it was often misused) and they were considered the ground rules of thought.  But, they were not an end; their value was instrumental.  They made students better learners.  Seneca said  that the student should not be learning the liberal arts, but should have learned them and then moved on to more serious endeavors.

Next up, a little history of the teaching of English grammar through the ages.

Order, the First Need of All, cont.

There are more nuggets of good information in chapter one that I don't want to skip over.  Again, it is Kirk's ability to put into words concepts and truths which immediately ring true, that I admire so.

There are two kinds of order in society, civil social order and moral order.  The inner moral order of the soul is intimately linked with the outer order of society.  The civil social order includes the performance of certain duties and the enjoyment of certain rights.  Kirk will trace our legacy of order (institutions, customs, ideas, and beliefs which nurture order in the individual and the republic) back to its roots which will begin with Jerusalem in the next chapter.

Stating that a good society is marked by a high degree of order, justice, and freedom, he stresses the primacy of order.  It necessarily precedes justice and freedom, for justice is unenforceable without a tolerable civil social order at minimum, and freedom is no more than violence without order.  He shares the story of a man who lived in Russia during its revolution of the early 20th century.  This man fled to a city on the Black Sea, Odessa was its name, and discovered it was in complete anarchy.  Apartments were invaded for a loaf of bread, murdering the occupants in the quest.  Pedestrians were shot for sport by youth roaming the streets.  This man experienced first hand the necessity of order before justice and freedom could be known.

Once a revolution is successful at demolishing an established order, the revolutionaries are quick to decree a new order (often more harsh than the previous one).  They understand they cannot govern long by sheer force.

No order on earth is perfect, and for some, it is tempting to think they can create a more perfect order.  The problem with that is, a newly created order does not have the inner moral order of the individual, or the long roots of experience to under-gird their idea.  People are only willing to accept that which has been tried before, a previous experience of mankind, as proof of an idea's soundness.

I was validated, but also saddened, to read that Kirk believes like I do, that our days are similar to that of Cicero in the closing days of the Roman Republic.  Disorder is increasing all about us.  About this phenomenon, Cicero wrote:

"Long before our time, the customs of our ancestors molded admirable men, and in turn those eminent men upheld the ways and institutions of their forebears.  Our age, however, inherited the Republic as if it were some beautiful painting of bygone ages, its colors already fading through great antiquity; and not only has our time neglected to freshen the colors of the picture, but we have failed to preserve its form and outlines."

Is that not true of the U.S. today?!  Our universities are partly responsible for this. One example:  Imagine the people, affectionately dubbed "the Greatest Generation," being described as self-serving wealth-seekers.  Criticized for a work ethic that sought material gains following their endurance of the Great Depression and then, their fighting in (men) and contributions to (women), World War II.  This generation is being impugned.  "They shouldn't have been so concerned with trying to make as much money as they could."  "They should've focused more on the needs of society."  If those spouting such nonsense were to experience the same hardships that generation successfully stared down and gave their lives for, I don't imagine many of them would be so quick to criticize and judge.

And they're missing an important truth — by working hard and seeking a better life they were seeing to the needs of society.  What better way to help the lower social classes but by increasing the wealth of everyone in society. That is the beauty of capitalism in its purest and most honorable sense.

Instead of admiring the Greatest Generation, gaining wisdom from them, and emulating them, we are turning out classes of young adults who believe themselves wiser and who stand in judgment of them.  In Cicero's words, "our time has neglected to freshen the colors."

When a leader seeks to "fundamentally change" the country, including its "... history, and its traditions ..."  we begin to sense a disorder when those long-held traditions are nullified.  But, the higher kind of order declares the dignity of man; it affirms G. K. Chesterton's 'democracy of the dead,' which recognizes the traditions of men and women who have come before us and are unwilling to toss those aside for the ideas of someone walking around today.  Chesterton's full quote is this:

“Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father.”

I think part of the problem with professors' and leaders' ideas about the proper ordering of society is that they are promoting ideas that have been tried many times in the past and even up through the present.  Yet they have never successfully produced a better, freer society for the largest number of people.  Unfortunately, a large number of young people don't know this history and are willing to support those ideas, while the other, smaller group of folks who do know this history, fear the loss of their Republic in the tradition that it has been. 

Nearing the End of Another School Year

I have about four books going right now and feel a failure for not posting regularly as I read through Russell Kirk's The Roots of American Order.  There is wonderful information in that book and I hope to get back to writing about it soon.  Summarizing information is a challenge for me; so much of the chapter is good that I have difficulty sorting through it and getting to the essential.  This slows me down.

I am about three weeks out from finishing up another year of Latin classes.  I say it every year, but truly, this year has flown by.  The students are saying the same thing, which is cause for worry!  This has been one of the smoothest years I've had.  I think this is my eighth year teaching at PREP, so maybe I'm finally settling into a workable system.  It takes time to work out the kinks and feel like you are doing something well when it comes to teaching.  But, not a year passes that I don't think of ways to improve my teaching and students' participation and understanding.  Next year I plan to incorporate composition into our weekly work and make Latin writers out of these scholars!  And I discovered a terrific project for the Middle School classes that I can't wait to see completed. 

Next week will be distribution of awards — both National Latin Exam and Classical Literacy Exam.  I'm very proud of these hard workers.  I'll post a picture of our winners.

Order, the First Need of All

Russell Kirk opens chapter one with his purpose in writing, "to renew our understanding of the beliefs and laws that gave form to American society."

Order is defined as, the pattern by which we live with purpose and meaning. He states that the human condition requires a harmony in existence. "It is our first need," says Simone Weil, an author Kirk quotes. This Simone Weil sounds very interesting. She is described as "a woman who suffered much." Apparently, in a quest to find spiritual order she studied Greek and Indian philosophy, Sanskrit, the Christian mystics, and quantum theory. In order to understand first hand the life of hard toil, she worked in fields and factories. While exiled from France during World War II (she was of Jewish descent), she was commissioned by the French to write a study of how the French might find the roots of their order and live together in peace and justice, should they survive after Nazi domination. This work was titled, The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties toward Mankind. She went on to do other perilous things which required her life at the young age of 33. But before her death, she wrote this about the twentieth century, comparing it to the disorder of Greece in the fifth century B.C.:

 "It is as though we had returned to the age of Protagoras and the Sophists, the age when the art of persuasion - whose modern equivalent is advertising slogans, publicity, propaganda meetings, the press, the cinema, and the radio - took the place of thought and controlled the fate of cities and accomplished coups d'etat. So the ninth book of Plato's Republic reads like a description of contemporary events."

In an age of 5-second sound bites and a negligent press, these words couldn't be truer. But there is something about man's absolute necessity of order that reminds me of something in my own life. Kirk writes that the human condition is insufferable unless we perceive a harmony, an order, in existence. That without it, we dwell in darkness, where light is as darkness, as Job puts it.

When my children were young, our family decided to join a mission in East Africa to go about doing the work of the Lord. We moved to a city that had a population of nearly one million people, of which 90% were unemployed. The need and desperation were everywhere; it was difficult to find a place to rest your eyes where it wasn't. The mix of cultures was potent with a truly palpable tension. The heat and humidity were more suffocating than I dreamed possible. Food fit to eat was difficult to acquire and keep. There was a sense of danger everywhere, including our small apartment. The instance for malaria and other disease was genuine. And just as striking as all that, every building and street corner looked identical. Every single structure had been painted white at some time, but was then a dingy off-white. It was impossible for me to get my bearings when there were literally no landmarks.

I had never experienced an all-enveloping darkness like I did there, nor have I again. I agree wholeheartedly with Russell Kirk and Simone Weil's declaration of our first need, and I think I would've agreed with them had I not experienced a lack of it, but I wouldn't have understood it so well.

The Roots of American Order

I've started reading a book by Russell Kirk, following an ISI conference, called The Roots of American Order. I'm excited to read and ingest the material. I think it will be one of those books that gives words to thoughts, feelings, ideas I have in my head but have trouble getting out coherently and meaningfully.

The Forward is written by Forrest McDonald, Distinguished University Professor Emeritus, University of Alabama. He begins by saying that Russell Kirk wrote about "the permanent things" ~ the perduring conditions and needs that must be met for a human society to function well.

Some of these conditions are:

a transcendent moral order based on religious faith: this is what brings order to the soul, which is vital to a society.

social continuity: I'm thinking this is important because, as humans, we need to feel secure and at harmony in our environment. When there is social continuity, we can count on certain things happening regularly, aiding that process.

the principal of prescription or things established by immemorial usage: traditions, those things worth preserving from one generation to the next.

prudential and natural change as opposed to change based on abstract theories: I take this to mean things that rise up organically through the populace, and things that disappear on their own.

variety and therefore inequality except in the Last Judgment and before a court of law: here we see a truth that flies in the face of many politicians who would seek to create equality for every member of society. Even Christ said, "The poor will always be with you." The innate feature of inequality in human society cannot be removed by man, nor should it.

the acceptance of the imperfectability of man: here, too, is a big divider among those in positions of power. Those of us who are of the Judeo-Christian heritage understand the sinful condition of man, but others who dismiss those heritages believe they can perfect man if only by removing those things that make him stumble.

McDonald goes on to write that even though Kirk was self-confident in his intellect, he was too modest to believe his own work would one day become a "permanent thing." Yet, here it is.

He further states that Kirk's work is peculiarly simultaneous in its timeless and timely qualities; both transcendent and relevant at the same time.

A bit about the publishing history of this book; first published in 1974, a year when President Nixon resigned in disgrace, the disastrous Vietnam War was ending, and U.S. colleges and universities were a hotbed of degeneration. In Kirk's words this book was written "to assist in renewing an appreciation of America's moral and social order among the general public and among university and college students."

The first paperback edition was published in 1978 during President Carter's directionless presidency. I remember those days well as a high school student. People always bring up the long gas lines; I remember that and the discussion about whether it was more judicious to leave your car running while in line, or turn the engine off and restart it to move forward.  But mostly I remember the day in and day out gloom of those years. Watching my mother try to make the weekly budget stretch far enough to put food on the table each day, interest rates in the high teens for home loans, an overall sense of 'just getting by' and wondering when it would end. When would we return to the normalcy that was America at its essence; a few extra dollars in your pocket for the movies, a dinner out at a restaurant, a vacation.

There was another printing in the early 1980's before it was known what kind of president Ronald Reagan would be. And we would come to learn that he himself had read Kirk's, The Roots of American Order, and many other works of his.

The edition I am reading was printed in September 2012, just one year following 9/11, after which a renewed sense of patriotism swept across the country and a small band of critics, mainly college and university professors, insisted we received our due.

President G. W. Bush's response was to declare war on terrorism, terrorists, and regimes that shelter them. With that a new question arose, once a dictator was deposed, was it possible to establish a peaceable order among a people who do not have the cultural fixtures that are required to do so? After all, the American order arose after a 2,500 year evolution. Our experience in Japan after World War II seems to suggest it is possible.

However, Kirk informs us this cannot be done on the basis of ideology. It is accomplished incrementally with organic mores rising to the surface and threading themselves throughout the order.

McDonald assures the attentive reader that not only will he be impressed and edified by Kirk's gifted erudition, but also rewarded and entertained by his thinly-veiled subtleties.

Book Club: Final Chapter

Dorothy Sayers' final chapter is perhaps the most thought provoking for me. It begins with a quote from L. P. Jacks:

"Like 'happiness,' our two terms 'problem' and 'solution' are not to be found in the Bible - a point which gives to that wonderful literature a singular charm and cogency ... On the whole, the influence of these words is malign, and becomes increasingly so. They have deluded poor men with Messianic expectations ... which are fatal to steadfast persistence in good workmanship and to well-doing in general ..."

We do live in that society where it is the aim of many to solve, or find solutions to, our problems, from the smallest to the largest. "Don't like that mineral build-up in your shower from all that hard water? Buy Brand X and it will instantly solve that problem with no effort on your part!" "Are telemarketers a problem for you? Our app is the solution you need." "Tragically, children are reaching 5th, 6th, even 7th grade and higher unable to read. Our solution is to get them into school as toddlers." "Gun violence is an increasing problem for society; we've come up with the solution to severely limit firearm permits." And on and on it goes.

Are we being made to feel less than compassionate if we disagree with some of society's proposed solutions? Are we being made to feel less than intelligent if we haven't thought of, or at the very least, settled on a solution to the myriad of societal problems?

What if, for a great number of these issues, there is no solution apart from each person serving society within the realm of their God-given gifts? I am wondering, what if our whole viewpoint is off-center and needs recalibrating.

Sayers says, " ... the only way of 'mastering' one's material is to abandon the whole conception of mastery and to co-operate with it in love." We cannot "wrest life out of its true nature," and when we try, we kill it.

I'm going to try to talk through an example of what I'm driving at, and what I think Dorothy Sayers is implying.

Let's take the subject of the poor, whom we remember Jesus said will always be with us. So, right from the start, if we are listening and believe, we must accept the fact that there is no 'final' solution to eliminating poverty. We could talk about why this is, and we might end up with a discussion centered around human nature, individual abilities, and more, but we will leave the question of Why for another time and center on how a society might concern themselves with the poor.

In the early days of this country, the poor were seen to by those individuals/families who had the means and the will to help them. Food baskets would be carried to a family in need; churches, through parish donations, would assist the poor; relationships were built through this enterprise; the giver was blest through his actions (for Christ said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive.") and the recipient was blest with the solace of a few days nourishment for her family. On top of that, the recipient learned humility in accepting essentials from another, likely with the thought of being that person to someone else in the future. A strong bond of love, compassion, thankfulness, and friendship might develop. These are things of eternal significance.

A time came when it seemed right and necessary for the government to step in and provide for the poor. Whether this was right or wrong is not part of this discussion, but it has been suggested that this policy, lacking an end date, has contributed to the number of families in poverty. In essence, what has transpired is the mandatory taxation of society's producers, which are funneled through a bureaucracy and disbursed to the poor in society in the form of cash, with few restrictions.

As the number of families in poverty increased, likewise did the taxes on society's workers. As a result of this policy, at least two observations can be made. One is, the more money taken from families in the form of tax, the less discretionary funds these families have to personally give to others. The message and understanding becomes, 'the government is seeing to the poor; therefore, it isn't necessary that I do so, too.' Secondly, the personal dynamic is removed entirely between the bless-er and blessing-receiver. It is impossible to calculate the damage done by the elimination of the relational element. The receiver now does not know who it is that provides for him and has no way to thank the giver if so inclined. The giver is so far removed from the equation that many receivers believe they are receiving money from the government without a true understanding of where government gets its money. The receiver collects their gift on a regular basis in the mailbox and quite easily begins to plan their life around this 'income.'

Whereas, in the earlier practice, social norms would've prohibited this kind of presumption. Now, the giver is left feeling resentful about government's intrusion into this part of his life, and the receiver, entitled.  A part of what it means to be a human being is in reality stolen from both. And in the end, the problem isn't at all solved; in fact, it has multiplied into larger, more complex problems.

I will end where Sayers ends, in trying to describe the creator's nature. She says,

" ... so far as I conform to the pattern of human society, I feel myself also to be powerless and at odds with the universe; while so far as I conform to the pattern of my true nature, I am at odds with human society, and it with me. If I am right in thinking that human society is out of harmony with the law of its proper nature, then my experience again corroborates that of the theologians, who have also perceived this fundamental dislocation in man."

Powerful stuff!