Correspondence
FLETCHER, CLAUDIA & BELTH, MARC & SEXTON, (REV.) JOSEPH G. & AUSTIN, D. ANDREW & Novak, Michael
Correspondence Humanity, si; work, no New York, N.Y. To the Editors: What a deal of nonsense has been written in praise of work since Adam delved and Eve span, most of it by professional...
...It strikes me that this would be an excellent topic for our American bishops to address in a pastoral letter...
...MARC BELTH Professor Emeritus, Philosophy of Education, Queens College, C.U.N.Y...
...Bishop Hurley is talking through his miter when he proclaims that "work is of supreme importance, precisely because it is through labor that human beings realize their humanity...
...By avoiding the fashion and fan magazine prose found in even the better periodicals, Ms...
...John Dewey (does anyone ever read him any more...
...We have long been derided for construing education as the primary means of creating social order, but the fact is that in its intrinsic concern to nurture intelligence in the young, it can do nothing better than to fill this intrinsic task...
...devoted much thoughtful analysis to the concept of the public- those taxpayers and others who impose upon the schools all the things they intuitively know their children need, but are unable to find this assistance from other sources to supply...
...Now we have in your lead editorial of September 9 yet one more unthinking contribution to the paean...
...Indeed, the great contemporary weakness of democratic capitalism lies in its moral.cultural sys...
...To the Editors: What a deal of nonsense has been written in praise of work since Adam delved and Eve span, most of it by professional gentlemen...
...Again, my congratulations...
...Yet it is in the very nature of a pluralist society that there are many concepts of the public good, in competition with one another...
...Bowie's fixation with agape and eros in our age...
...D. E. Finn's review of David Bowie's "Let's Dance" [Sept...
...The limitations of their humanity, yes...
...Bring on the robots...
...But, he argued, a public does not exist in the nature of things...
...It is hopeless to demand of a disorganized, badly fragmented public that it acknowledge what it has never learned to acknowledge...
...It was very thought.provoking and brought home, to me at least, the need for a thorough exposition and study of what Christian citizenship means today...
...should add, perhaps, one observa...
...To the Editors: Superintendent Ar.ricale's brief essay ("Let's Admit What We Want from the Schools," Sept...
...9] for its clear articulation of the crucial importance of the moral.cultural system of democratic capitalism, especially of the churches and other mediating institutions...
...War and peace, the question of nuclear weapons, deterrence, the economy, and the other topics that the bishops have addressed or that they plan to write about are certainly all worthy topics...
...Its genius, not only in the hands of Tocqueville but also in those of Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, and others, is to pivot itself ultimately upon the institutions and habits of sound morals, true religion, and vigorous intellectual life...
...Within this development education is one, though a leading element of preoccupation...
...In a pluralist society, who defines "the public good...
...Topic for bishops Scarsdale, N.Y...
...If children's health must be cared for, what about teaching parents what is really required for such care...
...Such a public might then petition government to supply those requirements, and leave the school to perform its primary function-the nurture of intelligence...
...9) is a thoughtful and useful comment...
...And recent trends in education are mindlessly going in that same bleak direction, with its concerns for stars and extra pay and rigid infrastructures...
...On this point, Madison adds a practical depth to the wisdom of Tocqueville...
...To the Editors: I would like to commend John A. Coleman's essay "The Christian as Citizen" [Sept...
...Bowie has to say, whether or not he is successful in making his point...
...This we should have in or out of work...
...To the Editors: Thank you for publishing John Coleman's article "The Christian as Citizen" [Sept...
...D. ANDREW AUSTIN...
...But, like all such efforts, all but hopeless...
...However, Ms...
...I have written extensively on the impossible tasks imposed upon our modern schools, and it probably has been as fruitless as Mr...
...If such an endeavor were only to . produce the amount of discussion as has their "Peace Pastoral," it would be a project well worth the effort...
...CLAUDIA FLETCHER Forming a public Hempstead, N.Y...
...Finn herself has successfully pinpointed Mr...
...Finn managed to spotlight what Mr...
...The gaunt, unsmiling, fig.leafed figure of Work should be removed from its pedestal and replaced by something lovelier-or not replaced at all, left vacant, a resting place for the happy idle...
...But as always here we lag-bemused by Wild West dreams of frontier self.reliance...
...MICHAEL NOVAK Agape, eros, & Bowie Cambridge, Mass...
...Perhaps one or more of your most reverend readers will bring just such an (Continued on page 638) (Continued from page 610) idea before the NCCB in the very near future...
...As Madison wisely foresaw in Federalist Ten, moreover, this circumstance is the very condition for the maintenance of the public good, protecting it from any self.proclaimed moral majority...
...If every child must now learn to use computers, what of the parents who don't know the first thing about their functions and their uses...
...It must be formed, brought into existence through the development of common concerns, common values, common goals, and a common knowledge...
...It is true that each of us does, and each seeks it, according to his or her own lights...
...nomic system, democratic capitalism is doomed to self.destruction...
...This they already have in West Germany and Scandinavia...
...To the Editors: Congratulations on Ms...
...What we want from the schools, it seems to me, is a revival of that spirit that made it a unique American contribution in the world of learning, by allowing, encouraging, every child to strive for new developments, free from the anterior limitations of a rigid social structure-an educational system which instructs parents in their roles as it instructs children to reach greater levels of personal development...
...This is a hopeful sign...
...Little of the world's work, not freely chosen, is worth doing, less than that is necessary...
...REV) JOSEPH G. SEXTON Defining public good Washington, D.C...
...The unemployed in great numbers must and indeed should always be with us now...
...Left only to its political system and its eco...
...While the stodgy warn against taking popular culture too seriously, there certainly is the danger of ignoring its more articulate voices...
...Arricale's essay will be...
...tion...
...For that system lies most within our power to change...
...They need not be a problem except for the greedy who would not share with them...
...It is this amorphous aggregate, not the "educational octopuses" that have overburdened the schools with tasks for which it has never been able to prepare itself...
...but I do not think Bishop Hurley was essaying irony...
...and, through it, to change the economic and the political system as the public good demands...
...What most of us want is not work per se, but the lolly it brings and enough of that to secure us not a bare existence on the fringes of society, but a full participation in it...
...But I believe that they would be doing American Catholics a tremendous service by delineating clearly and concisely the ideal of citizenship in the modern world...
...tern...
...Cutting through the gob, is the underpaid teenager bagging burgers realizing his humanity, the bored bank teller, the black.lunged coal miner hacking at the coal face, the red.eyed nit.picker on the assembly line, the licensed usurer, the prison executioner...
...Contra the Barzuns in the universities and on the school boards, Dewey's struggles against the elitist tendencies in every level of education were directed toward making the schools themselves take on the responsibilities for developing a public which our political structures have only dispersed into special interest groupings...
Vol. 110 • November 1983 • No. 20
