Anthony Santagato's List: education

• the real impetus behind charter schools is not about innovation and improving  public schools but about privatizing public schools, replacing them with  elaborate associations of state subsidized charter school networks, contract  schools and public vouchers run by for-profit and non-profit providers.
• in order to qualify for federal monies the states that apply for the stimulus  money must remove any caps they have on the amount of charter schools that can  be created in their states and those states that do not have charter school  laws, of which there are currently ten, either will have to pass laws allowing  the growth of charters or miss out on any stimulus funding.
• When the Wall Street Journal heard the news of Obama’s educational  plans to leverage federal money for greater charter school penetration into the  market thr newspaper could hardly contain its excitement and enthusiasm. The  idea of using the federal government to force state governments to create  financial opportunities and markets for the burgeoning souk in education by  unleashing charter schools through state legislation was simply more than its  editorial writers expected; and all this from a newspaper usually critical of  any government intervention.

  • i guess where government fails due to incompetencies it best to bring in incompetent corporate mongrols
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• Arne Duncan is part and parcel of an educational movement that  we are increasingly witnessing in New York, Washington D.C., New Orleans and  Chicago, Texas and elsewhere: a movement towards centralizing decision-making  regarding public schools in the hands of an elite autocracy; this is often  referred to as ‘mayoral control’.  Under this governance structure, a small  group of policy makers are then tasked with the job of legitimizing corporate  and financial actors to make crucial decisions about public education without  the messy problem of public accountability, public transparency nor public  input.  This represents a neo-liberal turn that goes beyond issues  regarding the private operation of individual charter schools and instead twists  and turns its way right into the heart of privatizing the public urban sphere in  entirety, while making the government simply a boardroom or ‘secret parliament’  for powerful corporate interests.

  • This is troublesome to say the least...this new nobilty is so disconnected from urban youth and their cultures that they think a a trip or an opening of Taco Bell makes them global citizens...I have seen what is happening up close and can attest to the fact that so long as generic test scores are on the rise art, critical thinking, connections and community building are absolutely not a priority. What makes people human is not important just so long as these beings can produce numbers for these data hunger technocrats. We are looking at a form of facism and regimentation that needs to be critiqued, held accountable and eventually put back where they belong...away from developing youth
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• Duncan is also known to not only be a ardent defender of corporate involvement  in, and privatization of, public schools, but he personally oversaw the  attempted closing of 20 Chicago public schools in low-income neighborhoods of  color in 2004.  And he did so with little or no community input – managing,  at least for a time, to snub the meddlesome outsiders, like parents and their  children, who might have raised objections to the CEO’s plans for the schools,  or at the very least offer suggestions in the spirit of community decision  making. 
  

  • Well in 2010 here in NYC the same continues...underfunding high needs schools, oversize classrooms, incompetent leadership [permitted to stay on regardless of backlash from teahers, parents, and students]...its all a game to the corporate nobilty...it is a sense the conqueriong of one territory at a time....one public domain at a time...one school at a time...until they have El Dorodado in their grip
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• The biggest threat to finally achieving equitable and quality education in  Chicago's low-income African American and Latino/a schools is not the individual  who carries out the policy but a system of mayoral control and corporate power  that locks out democracy.
• In virtually every case, parents, students, teachers, and community pour out  their hearts. In many cases, they document how their school has been drastically  underserved by CPS or that their school has consistently improved. Tears are  shed out of fear for their children's safety or the destruction of a family  atmosphere in a school building; yet the CPS Board—on Duncan's  recommendation—consistently votes unanimously to close the school.
• Before Arne Duncan was CEO of CPS, there were procedures in place whereby  schools could be put on probation if they had performance problems and they  could even be forced to forge alliances with external partners, like mentors, in  order to improve their performance.  No more; under Arne Duncan’s rule, all  this was phased out and now schools that underperformed on standardized tests  were to be closed, or "turned around" by private ‘providers’ and ‘turn around  artists’
• while at the same time they suspended or in some cases completely did away with  extra-curricular activities like art, physical education and recess
• The Obama education policy differs little from the Bush administration’s policy  of hitching student and teacher performance to what many in the educational  community and beyond call inauthentic assessments that actually force teachers  to teach to the test and do little to encourage critical thinking or  collaborative problem solving. 
• I wanted to believe candidate Barack Obama when he said that he would introduce  real change and restore hope. Surely, I thought, he understood that the  deadening influence of No Child Left Behind has produced an era of  number-crunching that has very little to do with improving education or raising  academic standards.
  

  • This really succintly expresses the whole fraud in one paragraph. "The deadening influences fo NCLB has produced an era of number-crunching that has very little to do with improving education or raising academic standards"
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9 more annotations...

• I am sure chareters want to innovate and improve but the question is how and what types of innovations are they geared for?
  Creativity? Challenging status quo? Becoming good little children so scores and rep stay high? - Anthony Santagato on 2009-08-26
• apparently the charter movement is unstoppable - we should look closely at it because it is going to affect all of us...many teachers in charters are resisting the mandatory work load which can exceed 50 hrs a week on site...some don't see home till past 9:00PM at night - Anthony Santagato on 2009-08-26

• Mr. Klein, the former chief executive of Bertelsmann Inc., has suggested that he  wants the school system to operate more like a private business.
• New York City already has a systemwide bonus program for principals, which their  union agreed to in December 1999 as part of a landmark contract that gave  principals a 33 percent raise, ended tenure and eliminated their traditional  two-month summer vacation.

• so as long as standarized test scores are up, students are growing intellectually, emotionally, and psychologically??? - Anthony Santagato on 2009-09-05

• "I declare to you," continued the senator, "that the Marquis d'Argens,  Pyrrhon, Hobbes, and M. Naigeon are no rascals. I have all the  philosophers in my library gilded on the edges."
• "I declare to you," continued the senator, "that the Marquis d'Argens,  Pyrrhon, Hobbes, and M. Naigeon are no rascals. I have all the  philosophers in my library gilded on the edges."
• "I declare to you," continued the senator, "that the Marquis d'Argens,  Pyrrhon, Hobbes, and M. Naigeon are no rascals. I have all the  philosophers in my library gilded on the edges."
• "I declare to you," continued the senator, "that the Marquis d'Argens,  Pyrrhon, Hobbes, and M. Naigeon are no rascals. I have all the  philosophers in my library gilded on the edges."
• This  man was almost a monster. He had not voted for the death of the king,  but   almost
• in  St. Augustine,—'Place your   hopes in the man from whom you do not  inherit.'"
• we  demolished the ancient regime in deeds; we were not able to suppress    it  entirely in ideas. To destroy abuses is not sufficient; customs must be    modified. The mill is there no longer; the wind is  still there."
• we    demolished the ancient regime in deeds; we  were   not able to suppress        it     entirely  in ideas. To destroy abuses is not   sufficient; customs must  be       modified.   The mill  is there no longer; the wind is     still   there."

  • if you don't change the culture of the people which is psycho-social you will only temporarily rid society of the tendency to reach for and accept limited freedom and a docile population...if education and then custom is not altered then man will seek what is natural...to rule ...to take..to control
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• we   demolished the ancient regime in deeds; we were  not able to suppress     it    entirely in ideas. To destroy abuses is not  sufficient; customs must be     modified.  The mill is there no longer; the wind is   still  there."
• That  tyrant engendered royalty, which is authority falsely   understood,
• Charles-Francois-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop
• he belonged to the nobility of the bar

  • Nobility of the Bar probably means is was noble not by birth but by law - his family must have socially climbed
    
    Nobility of the Sword or Nobiltiy of the Blood? He was seen as a noble of the sword maybe?
• the parliamentary families, decimated, pursued, hunted down, were dispersed.

  • These are the Royalists - Either executed, exiled, or escaped [eee]...King Louis XVI was under attack and all of his court
• The Revolution came
• the fall of his own family, the tragic spectacles of '93, which were, perhaps,  even more alarming to the emigrants who viewed them from a distance, with the  magnifying powers of terror

  • The noblity was exiled after the exection of King Louis XVI in 1793. Those that living in Italy, Austria, or Britian for example were receiving word about there benefactor King and were terrified by the information coming out of France
• by striking to his heart
• all that was known was, that when he returned from Italy he was a priest.
• by striking at his existence and his fortune
• Napoleon,
• turned round and said abruptly
• Who is this good man who is staring at me
• Myriel was utterly astonished to learn that he had been appointed Bishop of D——

  • Napolean gave titles out because he could. I wonder why he made this person Bishop?
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• M. Myriel had to undergo the fate of every newcomer in a little town, where  there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think.

  • i like this quote, since I would not want to live in a town where many mouths talk and very few heads think
• rumors only
• Mademoiselle Baptistine, who was his sister, and ten years his junior.

  • In the movie I thought she was his wife...but of course Catholic Priests or Bishops are not allowed to marry
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• M. Myriel had no property, his family having been ruined by the Revolution.

  • Who are the innocent victims of change and crisis?

  • I guess this is something we don't think about. There were innocent victims of the Revolution, regardless of their affiliations to church or state...this is something that should be explored...the morality aspect of the Revolution
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• Myriel received from the State, in his quality of bishop, a salary of fifteen  thousand francs.
• arrangement was accepted with absolute submission by Mademoiselle Baptistine.
• This holy woman regarded Monseigneur of D—— as at one and the same time her  brother and her bishop, her friend according to the flesh and her superior  according to the Church. She simply loved and venerated him. When he spoke, she  bowed; when he acted, she yielded her adherence
• voted him an annual sum of three thousand francs, under this heading: Allowance  to M. the Bishop for expenses of carriage, expenses of posting, and expenses of  pastoral visits.
• This provoked a great outcry among the local burgesses; and a senator of the  Empire, a former member of the Council of the Five Hundred which favored the 18  Brumaire, and who was provided with a magnificent senatorial office in the  vicinity of the town of D

  • I guess since this Sentor favored the 18 Brumaire meant that he was a revloutionary and against the Church gaing funds for clergy
• "Expenses of carriage? What can be done with it in a town of less than four  thousand inhabitants? Expenses of journeys? What is the use of these trips, in  the first place?
• No one travels otherwise than on horseback
• This man played the good priest when he first came. Now he does like the rest;  he must have a carriage and a posting-chaise, he must have luxuries, like the  bishops of the olden days.

  • Sounds like there was plenty of anti-clerical sentiment left over from the Revolution
• These priests are all thus, greedy and avaricious
• Down with the Pope! [Matters were getting embroiled with Rome.] For my part, I  am for Caesar alone." Etc., etc.
• Things will not go well, M. le Comte, until the Emperor has freed us from these  black-capped rascals

  • Things have not really changed much..today their are resentments and calls to crack the power and abuses of the Church....amazing that after all of these historical events designed to bring down the corruption of Catholicism they remain standing. What is it that they have that allows them to sustain crushing blow after crushing blow to their authority? I think they captured the human psyche and need to believe in something more than this temporal and harsh world....fear

  • Before the people looked to Marat and Robespierre to eliminate the Church, and after 1800 the government officials looked to Napoleon [the emperor] to check the pwoer of these "black-capped rascals" priests [cardinals/bishops?]

• As for the chance episcopal perquisites, the fees for marriage bans,  dispensations, private baptisms, sermons, benedictions, of churches or chapels,  marriages, etc., the Bishop levied them on the wealthy with all the more  asperity, since he bestowed them on the needy.

  • I guess Victor Hugo is trying to show tha their were also memebers of the clergy who also saw corruption and greed just as the anti-clerics or revolutionaries did and wanted them to pay or lose power

• The Bishop did not omit his pastoral visits because he had converted his  carriage into alms. The diocese of D—— is a fatiguing one. There are very few  plains and a great many mountains; hardly any roads, as we have just seen;  thirty-two curacies, forty-one vicarships, and two hundred and eighty-five  auxiliary chapels. To visit all these is quite a task.

  • Curacies, vicarships, auxilary chapels...just under the Bishops charge in one bishopric...this really demonstrates the complexity, enormity, and sophistication of the Catholic network and reach throughout Europe...The Revolution attempted to elimate this system, which it viewed just as corrupt as the French Monarchy...they tried to take this apart and Versaille...Amazing!!
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• when the father of a family dies, the boys go off to seek their fortunes,  leaving the property to the girls, so that they may find husbands."

  • interesting also of how the father would leave inheritance to daughter when one would think all passes to the eldest son. Here we see the protection of the female in order that she may marry. I guess the family is ensuring their progeny not just through the male line but also the female.

  • This is interesting becasue it seemed to me that a dowry was a Middle Eastern or African concept...or maybe an ancient or medieval system...
• Since a little country of a dozen or fifteen hearths cannot always support a  teacher, they have school-masters who are paid by the whole valley, who make the  round of the villages, spending a week in this one, ten days in that, and  instruct them. These teachers go to the fairs.

  • this is interesting because in South America, I beleive Peru or Colombia there is man who travels on his bike to rural/poor areas with a library of books for children
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• What are you thinking about?" "I am thinking," replied the Bishop, "of a  singular remark, which is to be found, I believe, in St. Augustine,—'Place your  hopes in the man from whom you do not inherit.'"

  • this quote is so interesting, what if you put your hopes into the person you were supposed to inherit from? Maybe it means don't hold your breath or count on it. Better off counting on someone who your not expecting money or property from
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• St. Augustine,—'Place your     hopes in  the man from whom you do not   inherit.'"

  • because if you place your hopes and trust in someone you hope to inherit you will be disappointed or worse manipulated and coerced since one must capitulate to that person in fear they may offend or anger and thus lose inheritence...it a rope around the neck of one who expects to receive
• Never in his whole life had M. Geborand bestowed alms on any poor wretch. After  the delivery of that sermon, it was observed that he gave a sou every Sunday to  the poor old beggar-women at the door of the cathedral.

  • shows power of Biships verbal eloquence. Able to inspire
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• a wealthy and avaricious old man, who contrived to be, at one and the same time,  an ultra-royalist and an ultra-Voltairian.

  • wow this is a contradiction! A royalist and Voltairian. Shows that even the elite were suspect of the Church since Voltaire was the most effective literary critic of religion in general
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• which have but one opening, the door. And this arises from a thing which is  called the tax on doors and windows.

  • sounds like a property assessment...tax man has always found ingeneueous ways to assess and collect!!
• whole of the hilly country of Dauphine. They make bread for six months at one  time; they bake it with dried cow-dung. In the winter they break this bread up  with an axe, and they soak it for twenty-four hours,

  • talk about hard bread! Great way to make it through the winter and safe on precious resources...heating fuel
• he easily familiarized himself with the dialect of the south
• This pleased the people extremely, and contributed not a little to win him  access to all spirits
• As he spoke all tongues, he entered into all hearts.

  • so important to be able to speak the lingo of the locals. Whether that be slang, accentuation, or folk words, or ability to speak language totally different from your own if you are going to persuade people of have them trust you
• "Man has upon him his flesh, which is at once his burden and his temptation. He  drags it with him and yields to it. He must watch it, cheek it, repress it, and  obey it only at the last extremity.

  • this is such a power and interesting quote...it is at first glance a very Christian idea which demonstrates that Hugo believed in his Christian or Catholic teachings [have to check his background]...but I beleive there is some truth in this quote. Because it is our human-animal or flesh part of us that provokes us to things that may be violent to others or ourselves. In order to satisfy our most carnal or basic desires for attention, sexual pleasure, hunger, or revenge we can do vile things that are sometimes immoral or unethical [subjective, I know]. And so man and woman "watch it [the caranl instincts], check it, repress it. Then he goes on to say that we must "obey it only at the last extremity." This demonstrates that Hugo advocates survival at the expense of what might be considered immoral in Christian terms...if you must hurt, lie, steal, or kill to save yourself or others then obey your carnal instincts...This tells me he is not fully convinces of the teachings and commands of Jesus Christ who said turn the other cheek and never do as they do...
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• exhibited himself to the eyes of the crowd in his purple camail and with his  episcopal cross upon his neck, side by side with the criminal bound with cords.

  • Purple camail...right from the patrician class of the ancient Romans...thats what the Church did real well...they learned the symbolisms of power from the experts!! Color, Icons, ritual, myths, and pagentry

• He was indulgent towards women and poor people, on whom the burden of human  society rest. He said, "The faults of women, of children, of the feeble, the  indigent, and the ignorant, are the fault of the husbands, the fathers, the  masters, the strong, the rich, and the wise."

  • oppression comes from those who hold power...this is a very interesting and I think valid quote...Women are as they are because of man's timeless repression and abuse...some women may be manipulative, deceptive, cunning, or just subtle since they had to be...evolutionary tools to out smart and survive the alpha male system...the witch burnings...the inquistions...the domestic abuse...torment...and loss of sovereignty...but we all pay...the potential qualities of women is destroyed by oppression..not all, but a good amount...
    
    And the wise? This term is subjective...wise implys wisdom...those who have real wisdom do not act in this way....
• The Bishop embraced him, and at the moment when the knife was about to fall, he  said to him: "God raises from the dead him whom man slays
• society is culpable, in that it does not afford instruction gratis;
• it is responsible for the night which it produces. This soul is full of shadow;  sin is therein committed. The guilty one is not the person who has committed the  sin, but the person who has created the shadow."
• A wretched man, being at the end of his resources, had coined counterfeit money,  out of love for a woman, and for the child which he had had by her.
• As for the Bishop, it was a shock to him to have beheld the guillotine, and it  was a long time before he recovered from it.
• In fact, when the scaffold is there, all erected and prepared, it has something  about it which produces hallucination. One may feel a certain indifference to  the death penalty, one may refrain from pronouncing upon it, from saying yes or  no, so long as one has not seen a guillotine with one's own eyes: but if one  encounters one of them, the shock is violent; one is forced to decide, and to  take part for or against.
• The guillotine is the concretion of the law; it is called vindicte; it is not  neutral, and it does not permit you to remain neutral
• He who sees it shivers with the most mysterious of shivers. All social problems  erect their interrogation point around this chopping-knife. The scaffold is a  vision. The scaffold is not a piece of carpentry; the scaffold is not a machine;  the scaffold is not an inert bit of mechanism constructed of wood, iron and  cords.
• By bringing jealousy into play, he had caused the truth to burst forth in wrath,  he had educed the justice of revenge.
• The scaffold is the accomplice of the executioner; it devours, it eats flesh, it  drinks blood; the scaffold is a sort of monster fabricated by the judge and the  carpenter, a spectre which seems to live with a horrible vitality composed of  all the death which it has inflicted.
• A man was condemned to death for murder
• This is one which his sister overheard one evening and preserved: "I did not  think that it was so monstrous. It is wrong to become absorbed in the divine law  to such a degree as not to perceive human law. Death belongs to God alone. By  what right do men touch that unknown thing?"
• I have nothing to do with that unpleasant task, and with that mountebank: I,  too, am ill; and besides, it is not my place."
• This reply was reported to the Bishop, who said, "Monsieur le Curé is right: it  is not his place; it is mine."
• As he knew the moment for silence he knew also the moment for speech.
• His condemnation, which had been a profound shock, had, in a manner, broken  through, here and there, that wall which separates us from the mystery of  things, and which we call life. He gazed incessantly beyond this world through  these fatal breaches, and beheld only darkness. The Bishop made him see light.
• Like all old men, and like the majority of thinkers, he slept little.
• "The mind is a garden," said he.

• On his return, he dined. The dinner resembled his breakfast.
• With that exception, his ordinary diet consisted only of vegetables boiled in  water, and oil soup.
• In another dissertation, he examines the theological works of Hugo, Bishop of  Ptolemais, great-grand-uncle to the writer of this book
• he only emerged to write a few lines on the pages of the volume itself. These  lines have often no connection whatever with the book which contains them.

• Oh, you who are!

   

  "Ecclesiastes calls you the All-powerful; the Maccabees call you the Creator;  the Epistle to the Ephesians calls you liberty; Baruch calls you Immensity; the  Psalms call you Wisdom and Truth; John calls you Light; the Books of Kings call  you Lord; Exodus calls you Providence; Leviticus, Sanctity; Esdras, Justice; the  creation calls you God; man calls you Father; but Solomon calls you Compassion,  and that is the most beautiful of all your names."

•  "Ecclesiastes calls you the All-powerful; the  Maccabees call you the Creator;   the Epistle  to the Ephesians calls you liberty; Baruch calls you Immensity; the    Psalms call you Wisdom and Truth; John calls you  Light; the Books of Kings call   you Lord;  Exodus calls you Providence; Leviticus, Sanctity; Esdras, Justice; the    creation calls you God; man calls you Father; but  Solomon calls you Compassion,   and that is  the most beautiful of all your names." 
• "The most beautiful of altars," he said, "is the soul of an unhappy creature  consoled and thanking God."
• Before becoming a hospital, this house had been the ancient parliament house of  the Bourgeois. Hence this decoration

• In the Bishop's own chamber, at the head of his bed, there was a small  cupboard, in which Madame Magloire locked up the six silver knives and forks and  the big spoon every night. But it is necessary to add, that the key was never  removed.
• The garden, which had been rather spoiled by the ugly buildings which we have  mentioned, was composed of four alleys in cross-form, radiating from a tank.
• It would be better to grow salads there than bouquets." "Madame Magloire,"  retorted the Bishop, "you are mistaken. The beautiful is as useful as the  useful." He added after a pause, "More so, perhaps."
• He respected learned men greatly; he respected the ignorant still more;
• The house had not a single door which could be locked. The door of the  dining-room, which, as we have said, opened directly on the cathedral square,  had formerly been ornamented with locks and bolts like the door of a prison. The  Bishop had had all this ironwork removed, and this door was never fastened,  either by night or by day, with anything except the latch. All that the first  passerby had to do at any hour, was to give it a push.
• Am not I a physician like them? I also have my patients, and then, too, I have  some whom I call my unfortunates."

• He was fond of saying, "There is a bravery of the priest as well as the  bravery of a colonel of dragoons,—only," he added, "ours must be tranquil."
• After the destruction of the band of Gaspard Bes, who had infested the gorges of  Ollioules, one of his lieutenants, Cravatte, took refuge in the mountains.
• He even pushed as far as Embrun, entered the cathedral one night, and despoiled  the sacristy. His highway robberies laid waste the country-side. The gendarmes  were set on his track, but in vain.

• "Do not go, Monseigneur. In the name of Heaven! You are risking your life!"  
• He traversed the mountain on mule-back, encountered no one, and arrived safe and  sound at the residence of his "good friends," the shepherds.
• The chest was opened; it contained a cope of cloth of gold, a mitre ornamented  with diamonds, an archbishop's cross, a magnificent crosier,—all the pontifical  vestments which had been stolen a month previously from the treasury of Notre  Dame d'Embrun. In the chest was a paper, on which these words were written,  "From Cravatte to Monseigneur Bienvenu."

• That evening, before he went to bed, he said again: "Let us never fear  robbers nor murderers. Those are dangers from without, petty dangers. Let us  fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices are the real murderers.  The great dangers lie within ourselves. What matters it what threatens our head  or our purse! Let us think only of that which threatens our soul."

  • I have seen the enemy & it is us...Victor is concerned with the soul and it's destruction
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• The senator above mentioned was a clever man, who had made his own way, heedless  of those things which present obstacles, and which are called conscience, sworn  faith, justice, duty: he had marched straight to his goal, without once  flinching in the line of his advancement and his interest.
• "What an excellent and really marvellous thing is this materialism! Not every  one who wants it can have it. Ah! when one does have it, one is no longer a  dupe, one does not stupidly allow one's self to be exiled like Cato, nor stoned  like Stephen, nor burned alive like Jeanne d'Arc. Those who have succeeded in  procuring this admirable materialism have the joy of feeling themselves  irresponsible, and of thinking that they can devour everything without  uneasiness,—places, sinecures, dignities, power, whether well or ill acquired,  lucrative recantations, useful treacheries, savory capitulations of  conscience,—and that they shall enter the tomb with their digestion  accomplished.
• letter from Mademoiselle Baptistine to Madame the Vicomtess de Boischevron, the  friend of her childhood

• "And you are right," replied the Bishop. "As one makes one's philosophy, so  one lies on it. You are on the bed of purple, senator."
• "I hate Diderot; he is an ideologist, a declaimer, and a revolutionist, a  believer in God at bottom, and more bigoted than Voltaire.
• Man is the eel. Then what is the good of the Eternal Father? The Jehovah  hypothesis tires me, Bishop. It is good for nothing but to produce shallow  people, whose reasoning is hollow. Down with that great All, which torments me!  Hurrah for Zero which leaves me in peace!
• I am not enthusiastic over your Jesus, who preaches renunciation and sacrifice  to the last extremity. 'Tis the counsel of an avaricious man to beggars.  Renunciation; why? Sacrifice; to what end? I do not see one wolf immolating  himself for the happiness of another wolf. Let us stick to nature, then. We are  at the top; let us have a superior philosophy. What is the advantage of being at  the top, if one sees no further than the end of other people's noses? Let us  live merrily. Life is all. That man has another future elsewhere, on high,  below, anywhere, I don't believe; not one single word of it. Ah! sacrifice and  renunciation are recommended to me; I must take heed to everything I do; I must  cudgel my brains over good and evil, over the just and the unjust, over the fas  and the nefas. Why? Because I shall have to render an account of my actions.  When? After death. What a fine dream! After my death it will be a very clever  person who can catch me.

  • Altruism goes against nature Victor claims here...however it is of a higher human developement...he said no where i nature is sacrafice for the other found...but if one looks to certain primate groups care and concern for companions is practiced
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• Let us tell the truth, we who are initiated, and who have raised the veil of  Isis: there is no such thing as either good or evil; there is vegetation. Let us  seek the real. Let us get to the bottom of it. Let us go into it thoroughly.  What the deuce! let us go to the bottom of it! We must scent out the truth; dig  in the earth for it, and seize it. Then it gives you exquisite joys. Then you  grow strong, and you laugh.
• Do come to my assistance: is it not Tertullian who says that the blessed shall  travel from star to star? Very well. We shall be the grasshoppers of the stars.  And then, besides, we shall see God. Ta, ta, ta! What twaddle all these  paradises are! God is a nonsensical monster. I would not say that in the  Moniteur, egad! but I may whisper it among friends.
• have interrogated my brother with regard to the information which you desire on the subject of the Faux family. You are aware that he knows everything, and that he has memories, because he is still a very good royalist. They really are a very ancient Norman family of the generalship of Caen. Five hundred years ago there was a Raoul de Faux, a Jean de Faux, and a Thomas de Faux, who were gentlemen, and one of whom was a seigneur de Rochefort.
• To sacrifice the world to paradise is to let slip the prey for the shadow.
• Did I exist before my birth? No. Shall I exist after death? No. What am I? A  little dust collected in an organism. What am I to do on this earth? The choice  rests with me: suffer or enjoy. Whither will suffering lead me? To nothingness;  but I shall have suffered. Whither will enjoyment lead me? To nothingness; but I  shall have enjoyed myself. My choice is made. One must eat or be eaten. I shall  eat. It is better to be the tooth than the grass. Such is my wisdom.
• After which, go whither I push thee, the grave-digger is there; the Pantheon for  some of us: all falls into the great hole. End. Finis. Total liquidation. This  is the vanishing-point. Death is death, believe me. I laugh at the idea of there  being any one who has anything to tell me on that subject. Fables of nurses;  bugaboo for children; Jehovah for men. No; our to-morrow is the night. Beyond  the tomb there is nothing but equal nothingness.
• Legends, chimeras, the soul, immortality, paradise, the stars, are provided for  them to swallow. They gobble it down. They spread it on their dry bread. He who  has nothing else has the good. God. That is the least he can have. I oppose no  objection to that; but I reserve Monsieur Naigeon for myself. The good God is  good for the populace."
• Cravatte,
• In the country near D—— a man lived quite alone. This man, we will state at  once, was a former member of the Convention. His name was G——
• This man was almost a monster. He had not voted for the death of the king, but  almost. He was a quasi-regicide. He had been a terrible man. How did it happen  that such a man had not been brought before a provost's court, on the return of  the legitimate princes?
• They need not have cut off his head, if you please; clemency must be exercised,  agreed; but a good banishment for life. An example, in short, etc. Besides, he  was an atheist, like all the rest of those people. Gossip of the geese about the  vulture.
• Besides, he   was an  atheist, like all the rest of those people
• the old wretch was dying, that paralysis was gaining on him, and that he would  not live over night.—"Thank God!" some added.

• "I shall die three hours hence."
• You have done well to come and look at a man who is on the point of death.

• Meanwhile, the member of the Convention had been surveying him with a modest  cordiality, in which one could have distinguished, possibly, that humility which  is so fitting when one is on the verge of returning to dust.
• there was something calculated to disconcert death
• thought that he had mistaken the door. G—— seemed to be dying because he willed  it so.

• "I mean to say that man has a tyrant,—ignorance. I voted for the death of  that tyrant. That tyrant engendered royalty, which is authority falsely  understood, while science is authority rightly understood. Man should be  governed only by science."

  • Enlightenment influence clearly stated...trust in science and renounce superstition of religion...I am not certain of Victor Hugo's position at this point...not sure he beleives relgion should be renounced and all trust put into science
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• The member of the Convention resumed:—
• "So far as Louis XVI. was concerned, I said 'no.' I did not think that I had the  right to kill a man; but I felt it my duty to exterminate evil. I voted the end  of the tyrant, that is to say, the end of prostitution for woman, the end of  slavery for man, the end of night for the child.

• "You may say troubled joy, and to-day, after that fatal return of the past,  which is called 1814, joy which has disappeared! Alas! The work was incomplete,  I admit: we demolished the ancient regime in deeds; we were not able to suppress  it entirely in ideas. To destroy abuses is not sufficient; customs must be  modified. The mill is there no longer; the wind is still there."
• In any case, and in spite of whatever may be said, the French Revolution is the  most important step of the human race since the advent of Christ.
• set free all the unknown social quantities; it softened spirits, it calmed,  appeased, enlightened; it caused the waves of civilization to flow over the  earth. It was a good thing. The French Revolution is the consecration of  humanity."

  • incredible commentary on the French Revolution...what was it? What did it accomplish? A true turning point for humanity
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• As will be perceived from this letter, these two women understood how to mould  themselves to the Bishop's ways with that special feminine genius which  comprehends the man better than he comprehends himself.
• he did a thing
• more hazardous than his trip across the mountains infested with bandits.
• when they said "citizen
• As he had not voted for the death of the king, he had not been included in the  decrees of exile, and had been able to remain in France.
• the old member of the Convention inspired him, without his being clearly  conscious of the fact himself, with that sentiment which borders on hate
• Who are you, sir?"
• My name is Bienvenu Myriel
• Are you the man whom the people call Monseigneur Welcome?"
• This man, after all, this member of the Convention, this representative of the  people, had been one of the powerful ones of the earth; for the first time in  his life, probably, the Bishop felt in a mood to be severe.
• A member of the Convention produced on him somewhat the effect of being outside  the pale of the law
• The Revolution had many of these men, proportioned to the epoch. In this old man  one was conscious of a man put to the proof.
• You did not vote for the death of the king, after all."
• "I congratulate you
• Do not congratulate me too much, sir. I did vote for the death of the tyrant."
• We have caused the fall of the old world, and the old world, that vase of  miseries, has become, through its upsetting upon the human race, an urn of joy."

  • the old system of monarchy was looked upon by many as a sorely missed way of life. All was right onder the feudal system. Less chaos and all knew his/her place in the world. The "vase of miseries" became to some "an urn of joy". Royalists were weeping and desiring a return to the old. Interesting revelation here.
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• "I persist," continued the conventionary G—— "You have mentioned Louis XVII.  to me. Let us come to an understanding. Shall we weep for all the innocent, all  martyrs, all children, the lowly as well as the exalted? I agree to that. But in  that case, as I have told you, we must go back further than '93, and our tears  must begin before Louis XVII. I will weep with you over the children of kings,  provided that you will weep with me over the children of the people."

  • the children of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI were abused and some of them died from this neglect.
    So a good question is put forth not to justify but to understand that they were not the only children to die of injustice...innocent poor children died because of Louis XVI policies and greed of the nobles
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• let it be on the side of the people. They have been suffering longer."
• clever men have so many ways of imposing on that honest goodman, the people.
• Who are you? You are a bishop; that is to say, a prince of the church, one of  those gilded men with heraldic bearings and revenues, who have vast  prebends,—the bishopric of D—— fifteen thousand francs settled income, ten  thousand in perquisites; total, twenty-five thousand francs,—who have kitchens,  who have liveries, who make good cheer, who eat moor-hens on Friday, who strut  about, a lackey before, a lackey behind, in a gala coach, and who have palaces,  and who roll in their carriages in the name of Jesus Christ who went barefoot!  You are a prelate,—revenues, palace, horses, servants, good table, all the  sensualities of life; you have this like the rest, and like the rest, you enjoy  it; it is well; but this says either too much or too little; this does not  enlighten me upon the intrinsic and essential value of the man who comes with  the probable intention of bringing wisdom to me.

  • Victor pulls the sheet off of the pious representatives of the Catholic Church. It proves that over 50 yrs after the Revolution the Church was and it's reps were still suspect and also viewed as part of the tyranny suffered by society
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• Apart from the Revolution, which, taken as a whole, is an immense human  affirmation, '93 is, alas! a rejoinder

  • the year of 1793 witnessed the culmination of the Terror which included an attemt at dechristianization of France. Destruction of Church properties and executions of members of the Church brought horror to the institution and its adherents. A new "secular religion" was attempted with Robespierre as its chief proponet
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• Sir, sir, I am sorry for Marie Antoinette, archduchess and queen; but I am also  sorry for that poor Huguenot woman, who, in 1685, under Louis the Great, sir,  while with a nursing infant, was bound, naked to the waist, to a stake, and the  child kept at a distance; her breast swelled with milk and her heart with  anguish; the little one, hungry and pale, beheld that breast and cried and  agonized; the executioner said to the woman, a mother and a nurse, 'Abjure!'  giving her her choice between the death of her infant and the death of her  conscience.

  • Victor sounds like a learned lawyer for the Revoution. He justifies the acts committed for liberty, equality, and Fraternity
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• the French Revolution had its reasons for existence; its wrath will be absolved  by the future; its result is the world made better. From its most terrible blows  there comes forth a caress for the human race.

  • Justification and value of the Revolution
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• "Progress should believe in God. Good cannot have an impious servitor. He who is  an atheist is but a bad leader for the human race."

  • I wonder if Victor supports this idea? He may believe morality is necessary but does he believe in God?
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• 

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• there is very little consensus concerning what is necessary to
  challenge  these disparate experiences and develop policies and practices that amount to  true
  educational equality, or even what that would look like and what that  means.

  • this is a major obstacle since there is not clear coalition of ideas, vision, or action plan to pull concerned parties together around
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• Furthermore, enhancing the focus of career development in schools is frequently  carried out with
  little critique concerning reasons why disparities exist in  the first place. One reason educators
  support students’ engagement in  workforce preparation is the urgent recognition that without job
  related  skills and experiences it is likely that they will not lead self-sufficient or  economically
  viable lives within the capitalist system (New Ways to Work,  2007; Seltzer, 2007; Wald &
  Martinez, 2003). Therefore, educators focus  their efforts on doing whatever they can to support
  young people in  participating in the system as it is, with little or no energy directed towards  
  questioning the economic system itself. At the same time, the capitalistic  system that thrives on
  disparities in income and ability level ensures that  a system where a few corporate entrepreneurs
  reap the benefits on the backs  of millions of others remains intact (Hill, 2007 & 2008). This in
  turn  maintains an economic system in which some may gain access, but a majority of  people will
  always be left out because capitalism necessitates it (Marx  & Engles, 1848/2005).
  

  • I can attest to this line of thinking & acting. I prepared by economics students with a digital stock market game which they enjoyed and learned much. However, I failed to question the system itself and the problems Wall Street has for the commuities both locally and globally
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• that   cover  expectations in reading, writing, listening, speaking, and language in    English Language Arts and literacy in  history/social studies, science, and   technical  subjects.
• Suggestions for both Mathematics and ELA include the following recommendations:
• align well with our current New York State Learning Standards in English Language Arts and Mathematics;
• The CCSS for ELA and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical  Subjects (henceforth referred to as CCSS for ELA & Literacy) contain 32  College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards and grade-specific standards that  cover expectations in reading, writing, listening, speaking, and language in  English Language Arts and literacy in history/social studies, science, and  technical subjects.
• Career
• The standards establish a “staircase” of increasing complexity in what students  must be able to read so that all students are ready for the demands of  college-and career-level reading no later than the end of high school.
  
• The ability to write logical arguments based on substantive claims
• The standards expect that students will grow their vocabularies through a mix of  conversations, direct instruction, and reading.
• Overall, the CCSS for ELA & Literacy contain rigorous and developmentally  appropriate K-12 student achievement expectations, with some areas to which New  York State should consider adding to strengthen the State’s learning standards
• These areas will be recommended by the committee that will convene in July.
• it is clear that additional guidance materials will be needed, including those  for students with disabilities and English language learners
• it is essential that the appropriate resources are provided to ensure that  educators who teach students in special populations will have guidance on how to  assist students who will need extra support to achieve
• geometry

11 more annotations...