The San Francisco 49ers recently signed center Eric Heitmann to a contract extension, keeping the longtime starter with the club through 2011.
The 49ers confirmed the extension Tuesday for Heitmann, a former seventh-round draft pick from Stanford. He has started 89 games at three line positions over seven seasons with San Francisco, winning the Bobb McKittrick award as the club's top lineman in each of the past two seasons.
Heitmann has played well this season …
ORLANDO, Fla. - Casey Anthony was acquitted Tuesday of murderingher 2-year-old daughter in a case that became a national sensationon cable TV, with its CSI-style testimony about duct-tape marks onthe child's face and the smell of death inside a car trunk.
After a trial of a month and a half, the jury took less than 11hours to find Anthony not guilty of first-degree murder, aggravatedmanslaughter and aggravated child abuse.
She was convicted only of four misdemeanor counts of lying toinvestigators who were looking into the June 2008 disappearance ofher daughter, Caylee.
Tears welled in Anthony's eyes, her face reddened, her lipstrembled, and she …
NEW ORLEANS - A New Orleans police officer accused of beating a community activist was fired Monday, while another officer accused in the same beating will be disciplined, the police superintendent said.
The two were among a group of seven plainclothes officers in the French Quarter last December who were accused of handcuffing and beating Ronald Coleman, 25. The other five were cleared.
Officer Reynolds Rigney Jr., who joined the police force in 2004, was fired, police Superintendent Warren Riley said. Sgt. Jake Schnapp Jr. was out of town, and no action will be taken until he returns, Riley said. He refused to say what penalty Schnapp faces.
In the Dec. 30 …
Alaska's Kodiak Island is being slammed by a swarm of earthquakes, one with a magnitude of 5.9.
Richard Buckmaster, a geophysicist at the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado, says the southeast region of the island was hit Saturday by 20 earthquakes with magnitudes of 2.6 or greater.
He says the 5.9 magnitude quake is expected to be upgraded to 6.1.
The quakes are centered southeast of Old Harbor, but …
Michael Bourn went from the bottom of the NL Central in Houston to the top of the wild-card standings with Atlanta — and he wasn't the only player who suddenly found himself in a pennant race.
Ubaldo Jimenez, Erik Bedard, Rafael Furcal and Mike Adams were also on the move at the end of a topsy-turvy weekend, when the surprising Indians, Pirates and Diamondbacks made some of the boldest moves at baseball's trade deadline, shedding those longtime seller tags and shopping for immediate help.
All in all, it was a relatively quiet deadline day as the non-waiver cutoff came and went Sunday. The biggest deals came days earlier when All-Star outfielders Carlos Beltran and Hunter Pence …
Hundreds of young Chicago professionals flock downtown to the Victor hotel. Their dress code is corporate casual, but the impeccably dressed, multi-cultural crowd isn't there for a seminar: they're attending one of Mark Fuller's parties.
Fuller, a disc jockey with a marketing degree from Jackson State University turned marketing CEO, has thrown some of Chicago's hottest networking events for young, urban professionals.
The weekly events are held at hot spots and swank venues and bring in, on average, 500 to 1,000 people. Legendary DJs like Tone B Nimble, DJ 33 1/3 and DJ TimBuck2 provide musical entertainment, and national recording artists like Kanye West, Mos Def, Common …
Government and opposition leaders in Kenya said they were once again closing in on a deal to share power, but continued to spar over details as they asked a violence-weary country to wait a few days more for the end of a bloody political crisis.
Talks were suspended over the weekend as negotiators met with their respective party leaders in consultations they said would push them closer to a deal when they resume Monday.
But as both sides try to share power without relinquishing authority, a deal has remained elusive despite repeated promises of an imminent agreement.
Though recent weeks have been largely calm, Kenya has been scarred by the deaths …
Drivers caught speeding are being charged a fee if they wantphotographic evidence of the alleged offence.
The Avon and Somerset Safety Camera Partnership says it has beenforced to make the GBP6.12 levy after being inundated with requestsfollowing a high-profile blitz on speeders.
It means anyone whose vehicle has been caught speeding but isunsure about who was driving at the time of the offence will now haveto pay the charge or challenge it in court - where they face a fineof up to GBP1,000.
This comes just a week after it was revealed that the Partnershiphad caught more than 70,000 offenders in seven and a half months -generating fines totalling …
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
A statewide analysis of solid waste data in Pennsylvania emphasized the importance of increasing recovery of organics. Prepared by R.W. Beck & Company, waste composition analyses indicated the following: Organics - 43.6 percent; paper - 28.6 percent; plastic - 11.6; metal 7.2; glass- 2.2; and other - 6.9.
Based on data assembled for diversion opportunities, food waste was …
Han Duan scored her 101st goal, enabling host China to celebrate the start of competition at the Beijing Olympics with a 2-1 victory over Sweden on Wednesday.
Han's goal in the 72nd minute sparked an eruption by the boisterous crowd of 37,902 at Tianjin Olympic Sports Center Stadium, and started a parade of about 30 flag-waving Chinese fans around the lower level.
"This was a tough opponent and there was big pressure for us in the first match," China coach Shang Ruihua said. "It was a classic start. After we scored, we were a little bit nervous."
After a furious first half, the game settled in the final 45 minutes and seemed …
DAILY MAIL SPORTSWRITER
When the high school girls basketball season tips off tonight,there will be a lot of new faces in different places. But one thingis clear: Whatever the uniform color, the talent is still there.
A pair of All-Kanawha County first-team players is back to leadthe way.
One of those, last season's Kanawha County freshman of the year,Keisha Tyler, has moved from Nitro's starting lineup to GeorgeWashington's.
The 5-foot-9 Tyler averaged 16.7 points, second in the county,and seven rebounds a game last season.
Don't expect a sophomore slump.
"She's doing fine," said Patriot Coach Bob Neely, whose teamopens tonight at home …
RENO, Nev. (AP) — A federal judge ordered prison time for two men who admitted to using wild horses as target practice but sought leniency Wednesday, telling them that "drunken and boneheaded is not an excuse" for the crime.
"I keep thinking about it, and I keep coming back to the senselessness of it," said U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert McQuaid Jr., who rejected defense lawyers' plea for probation and sentenced Joshua Keathley and Todd Davis to six months each in prison.
"I might feel differently if you were 18-year-old kids, but you are not 18," he said during the hearing in Reno. "You need to have some time to think about it, alone."
Keathley, 36, and Davis, 45, both of Lovelock, pleaded guilty in June to shooting the mustangs. Keathley said the two had been drinking and were looking for places to do some trapping when they came across the horses in the rangeland about 150 miles northwest of Reno.
In seeking the lighter sentences, Keathley's lawyer, John Springgate, told the judge that "there is no question it was senseless."
"This is boneheaded, drunken behavior," he said, but added "we should distinguish between boneheaded, drunken, stupid — which this was — versus a significant criminal act."
The judge replied: "Drunken and boneheaded is not an excuse."
Assistant U.S. Attorney Sue Fahami had sought a year in prison for each man. She said one of the most "disturbing and "cold-hearted" parts of the crime was the shooters' total disregard for the animals after they were shot and left to die.
"Any hunter knows that when you go hunting, you want a clean shot" that kills the animal quickest, said Fahami, a former prosecutor in northeast Nevada's rural White Pine County.
The case prompted outrage from horse protection advocates around the world.
"The federal prosecutor's fight for a stiffer sentence is a red flag to those who see Nevada as their own private shooting range," said activist Terri Farley, Reno-area author of the popular "Phantom Stallion" series of children's books. "Six months in prison is pale punishment for robbing wild horses of their freedom forever, but these two may think before pulling the trigger again."
Daniel Bogden, U.S. attorney for Nevada, said Wednesday it proves "we take the harassment and killing of wild horses on public lands in Nevada very seriously."
Results from the 26th round of the Bundesliga, the German first-division football league (home team listed first):
Friday's game
Schalke 2, Stuttgart 1
Saturday's games
Borussia Moenchengladbach vs. Wolfsburg
Bochum vs. Borussia Dortmund
Mainz vs. Cologne
Hannover vs. Eintracht Frankfurt
Hertha Berlin vs. Nuremberg
Bayern Munich vs. Freiburg
Sunday's games
Hoffenheim vs. Werder Bremen
Bayer Leverkusen vs. Hamburg
Friday March 19
Cologne vs. Borussia Moenchengladbach
Saturday, March 20
Eintracht Frankfurt vs. Bayern Munich
Nuremberg vs. Hoffenheim
Stuttgart vs. Hannover
Werder Bremen vs. Bochum
Freiburg vs. Mainz
Borussia Dortmund vs. Bayer Leverkusen
Sunday, March 21
Hamburg vs. Schalke
Wolfsburg vs. Hertha Berlin
President George W. Bush on Tuesday gave the United States' highest civilian award to three foreign leaders who have been among his most loyal partners on the world stage.
Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and to two former leaders: former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former Australian Prime Minister John Howard. The awards come just one week before Bush leaves office.
"They are the sort of guys who look you in the eye, and tell you the truth and keep their word," Bush said during his final scheduled event in the White House's East Room.
The president himself clasped the medals around each man's neck after a military aide read citations in the leaders' honor.
Bush described the three men as "good friends" of the United States who maintained personal and public friendships even as public sentiment shifted.
"You'll always be welcomed in our country. And we hope to have you come down and visit us in Texas," said Bush, who plans to retire to Texas when President-elect Barack Obama takes office on Jan. 20. "As you probably have heard, we're changing addresses here in a little less than seven days."
Blair and Howard stood with Bush during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan that toppled the al-Qaeda-backed Taliban government. They also supported Bush as he invaded Iraq in 2003, a decision that defined the remainder of his presidency and deeply divided his country.
Other members of Bush's former circle also joined the ceremony. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was the United States' top diplomat during Bush's first term, sat in the front row. Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who oversaw the military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and his Pentagon deputy Paul Wolfowitz also joined.
The Medal of Freedom was established by President Harry S. Truman in 1945 to recognize civilians for their efforts during World War II. The award was reinstated by President John F. Kennedy in 1963 to honor distinguished service. It is given to those deemed to have made remarkable contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, culture or other private or public endeavors.
Prior to the three leaders, Bush has awarded 78 medals during his tenure in office. Bush gave the awards to other international figures, including South African leader Nelson Mandela, Pope John Paul II and former Czech President Vaclav Havel.
Among the most controversial came in December 2004, when Bush gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to former CIA Director George Tenet, former Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer and retired Gen. Tommy Franks, three people central to his early policy in Iraq. Bush was especially criticized for including Tenet, who came under fire for intelligence failures leading to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the Iraq war.
Wake up, everybody.
There is a widespread malignancy that is enthralling entirely too much of some areas in the Black community -- guns, drugs and gangs. It's fight-back time against Black-on-Black crime. The obliteration of this social ill in the Black community has been in existence for a long time. Not just in Chicago, but nationwide, and it should continue, here and elsewhere.
In Chicago, according to police department statistics, since the first of the year, there have been 450 homicides in the city -- many of them gang-related -- which are down appreciably from the record set a couple of years ago and the 488 reached at this time last year. Yet, the numbers still are breathtakingly shocking and obscene and it is about time that the citizenry take note, wake up and seize the time to employ more action. The Chicago numbers are similar but just as obscene in other urban environs.
We, individually and as a people, must employ more leadership and dignity to counter the negative forces of society, as many have done or sought to do.
Talk to your sons and daughters and others who may be involved in the genocidal activities of drugs, gangbanging and other ventures that malign our dignity, not to mention our lives and our good ways of life.
We must do more than just mourn the senseless deaths and insane shootings of innocents over drugs, gangs and what organization does or does not "run" this or that part of town.
We MUST bear down and bring our communities back to their proper places and self-esteem, self-regard and pride of times past.
It is time for adults of all persuasions, political, community and church leaders -- as the Chicago Defender has advocated in the past and will continue to do so in the future -- to use influence, common sense and profundity to bear down and take back our streets from the thuggish minions who would choke the creativity and progress of our people.
The community is and should remain fed up with drugs, crime and the perpetrators of such activities. It's fight-back time and we applaud the efforts of such leaders as our aldermen and community leaders who have mounted street patrols near schools to deter crime against our youth and give the safe passage to and from school.
Another good example is St. Sabina activist, Father Michael L. Pfleger, who recently unveiled another tactic against guns and crime -- eye-catching billboards at key South Side intersections that also urge Congress and the White House to pass tougher and stiffer gun laws.
But this is not just a St. Sabina issue. It is an issue that affects us all. People must employ peer and personal pressure to cleanse our streets of drugs, guns and the negativity of gangbangers. As another well-known man of the cloth is often fond of saying: "Nobody can save us from us but us."
We must do more than gather at the site of shootings in their aftermath and lay flowers and memorials.
West Side, South Side all around town, it's time to take back the streets! Let us make our neighborhoods safer, more amenable and more attractive to all.
Stop the killing and shooting.
Wake up everybody -- it's time to start a new way.
Article copyright Sengstacke Enterprises, Inc.
GREENBURGH, N.Y. (AP) — Amare Stoudemire hadn't even signed yet when he declared the start of a new era for one of the NBA's worst teams.
"The Knicks are back," Stoudemire said in July, a clip that's been replayed to loud cheers before the start of exhibition games at Madison Square Garden.
What he meant is still to be determined.
Back to focusing on basketball, not the budget?
Definitely.
Back to the playoffs?
That probably depends on Stoudemire.
The All-Star power forward was the only big piece the Knicks landed in free agency, and now will try to lead them to their first postseason appearance since 2004.
"The fans are ready just as well as we are," Stoudemire said. "Again, we're working hard on the basketball court to really give them what they're looking for."
The Knicks share the NBA's longest current playoff drought with the Minnesota Timberwolves, but their ineptitude goes back even further. New York hasn't won a postseason game since 2001 and is in the midst of a franchise-worst stretch of nine consecutive losing seasons.
The last two, coming under Mike D'Antoni, were part of New York's plan to focus on building through free agency. Nearly every move was made with the salary cap in mind, as the Knicks arrived in July with enough cash to afford two maximum-salary free agents.
LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh all said no, choosing to play with each other in Miami, so the free agency route wasn't all that was hoped. But Stoudemire agreed to leave Phoenix for a $100 million deal in New York, instantly becoming the best player to wear a Knicks uniform in years.
"You never know if you went another way what would have happened or will we ever know," D'Antoni said. "But we had to set ourselves up to try to get one or two or three of the big free agents last summer and we came away with a good one, so it wasn't 100 percent but it worked out pretty good."
Stoudemire flourished in D'Antoni's offense in Phoenix and seems poised to put up big numbers in New York. He entered the final week of preseason play averaging a league-leading 22.8 points, and he didn't even play in the fourth quarter of his first two home games.
"I do like that we have someone we can throw the ball to and get on his back," D'Antoni said.
Stoudemire said all the Knicks have to step up, but the roster is young and unproven. Danilo Gallinari and Wilson Chandler are returning starters who are capable of big nights but haven't proven they can put together a long string of them.
Raymond Felton was signed away from Charlotte to be the starting point guard after helping the Bobcats make their first playoff appearance last season. He wouldn't compare this Knicks team to the Charlotte one that earned the No. 7 seed in the Eastern Conference.
"We fought for many years in Charlotte. We finally made the playoffs, brought that atmosphere back to the city, that's the same thing we're trying to do here in New York," Felton said. "It's been a while since they made the playoffs, since they've had a winning season, but we're just trying to come out, trying to play hard and trying to do big things for ourselves and for the fans of the city."
Rookie Timofey Mozgov of Russia could start at center, and the Knicks will count on Anthony Randolph, Ronny Turiaf and eventually the injured Kelenna Azubuike, all of whom were acquired from Golden State in a sign-and-trade deal for All-Star David Lee.
D'Antoni called himself "cautiously optimistic with a lot of concerns" about the Knicks, who haven't been anywhere near the playoff race in the two years since he arrived from Phoenix, where his Suns were a perennial contender.
Now he finally has the type of player the Knicks spent two years preparing to chase. Better yet for the Knicks, they could be in position to add another one next summer, when Carmelo Anthony could become a free agent and Eddy Curry's contract will finally come off the books.
Maybe they'll even see a postseason game before then.
"It was a tough two years, that's behind us now," D'Antoni said. "And everything now will be to develop guys, keep good pieces and try to add to the team."
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Taliban announced Tuesday that they will open an office in the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar to hold talks with the United States, an unprecedented step toward a peace process that might lead to a winding down of the 10-year war in Afghanistan.
Although U.S. and Taliban representatives have met secretly several times over the past year in Europe and the Persian Gulf, this is the first time the Islamist insurgent group has publicly expressed willingness for substantive negotiations.
In recent months, the idea of a Taliban political office in the Qatari capital of Doha has become a central element in U.S. efforts to draw the insurgents into such talks. The idea is to give the Taliban more legitimacy to negotiate in a location that presumably would at least partly shield them from Pakistani pressure.
Asked about the Taliban announcement, White House spokesman Jay Carney welcomed "any step ... of the Afghan-led process toward reconciliation." He noted that "peace cannot come to Afghanistan without a political settlement."
But negotiations could falter if they do not sufficiently involve President Hamid Karzai's government, which the Taliban have dismissed as a puppet regime. Karzai's inner circle derailed last year's behind-the-scenes talks, and the Afghan leader only grudgingly agreed to the idea of the Taliban's setting up a liaison office in Qatar.
Another potential spoiler is Pakistan, which houses most of the Taliban leadership as well as the Haqqani network, which carries out major attacks in the Afghan capital of Kabul. Pakistan believes it should have a say in any talks involving neighboring Afghanistan, which it fears will develop an alliance with its archrival, India.
Pakistan has rejected U.S. requests to mount an offensive against the Haqqani network, and relations between the two countries are at an all-time low following a cross-border incident that resulted in NATO airstrikes killing 24 Pakistani soldiers.
As the United States begins to draw down the nearly 100,000 forces it has in Afghanistan, President Barack Obama's administration wants to use its current extensive military campaign and an acknowledged but incomplete plan for a long-term American presence in the country as leverage to draw the Taliban into talks with Karzai representatives.
The likelihood that the Taliban will remain a potent fighting force after most foreign forces leave by the end of 2014 is driving the U.S. and NATO to seek even an incomplete bargain with the insurgents that would keep them talking with the Kabul government.
For the U.S., one goal of such talks would be to identify cease-fire zones that could be used as a steppingstone toward a full peace agreement that stops most fighting.
The gradual process of handing over areas of the country to Afghan security control would ideally be marshaled toward encouraging peace talks, by identifying areas where a cease-fire could be tested, a senior administration official told The Associated Press last week.
Obama is hosting a NATO summit in his hometown of Chicago in May that will focus on Afghanistan, and his administration would like some good news to announce in an election year. U.S. officials are always careful to say that talks with the Taliban are not a reward for good behavior, but rather that they serve American interests.
"You don't negotiate with your friends," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Tuesday.
"But this process will only be successful if those Taliban are prepared to renounce violence, break ties with al-Qaida, support the Afghan constitution in all of its elements, including human rights for all citizens, and particularly for women," Nuland said.
It was unclear why the Taliban agreed publicly to hold talks. Previously, the official Taliban position was no talks until the U.S.-led coalition leaves Afghanistan.
By their own admission, the Taliban hope to win the release of about five prisoners from the U.S. lockup at Guantanamo Bay.
The militants have taken a pounding in their southern heartland, and foreign troops have escalated a campaign against them in eastern Afghanistan. Hundreds of their low- and middle-level commanders have been picked up in night raids carried out by Afghan and coalition forces.
Talks have been held in the past about a location for a Taliban office, and other locations included Saudi Arabia and Turkey. But Qatar apparently emerged as a preferred neutral Islamic country where the U.S. also has a large military presence.
"The Taliban have chosen Qatar because it supported their government, and the Americans chose it because they have their big military and intelligence base in Qatar," said Abdul Hadi Khaled, an ethnic Tajik who served as a deputy interior minister in Karzai's Cabinet.
"Overall I hope that this is a start, but the rest of the work should be in this country and the Afghan government should be fully involved in the peace process," Khaled said.
The Taliban announcement came in the form of a statement e-mailed to the Kabul press corps and posted on the militants' website.
"Right now, having a strong presence in Afghanistan, we still want to have a political office for negotiations," said the statement, attributed to Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid. "In this regard, we have started preliminary talks and we have reached a preliminary understanding with relevant sides, including the government of Qatar, to have a political office for negotiations with the international community."
The statement did not say when the office would open.
One member of the Taliban negotiating team has been publicly identified as Tayyab Aga, an emissary of Pakistan-based Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. Other participants include a former Taliban ambassador to Saudi Arabia and a former Taliban deputy health minister, a senior Afghan official in the region said recently on condition that he not be identified.
The Taliban statement indicated that the liaison office will conduct negotiations with the international community but not with the Afghan government — a condition that Karzai has indicated he would reject.
"There are two essential sides in the current situation in the country that has been ongoing for the past 10 years. One is the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and the other side is the United States of America and their foreign allies," Mujahid said, referring to the name of Afghanistan under Taliban rule more than a decade ago.
Karzai's office had no immediate comment.
The prospect of formal peace talks suffered a serious setback in September when Burhanuddin Rabbani, a former Afghan president and the head of the High Peace Council, was assassinated by an attacker posing as a Taliban peace emissary.
After Rabbani's death, Karzai said peace efforts could take place only if the Taliban established a political office that would be authorized to conduct talks.
Last month, Karzai initially balked when the plan for Qatar appeared to have been settled without him, officials said, and recalled his ambassador to Doha for consultations. Karzai backed down in late December.
The U.S. goal is to midwife talks between the insurgents and the American-backed Afghan government led by Karzai, who frequently has felt sidelined by the U.S. as it pursues talks with the Taliban. He bills peace talks as an Afghan-led process, which the U.S. insists is also its goal.
The U.S. outreach is meant to jump-start negotiations, U.S. officials have said, but they acknowledge that their efforts can feed the perception that Karzai is not fully in charge.
Wahid Muzhda, a former Taliban foreign ministry official and an analyst on issues related to the group, said any talks would probably be "between the Americans and Taliban, but the Afghan government or High Peace Council representatives will be in the talks."
For its part, the Taliban statement said the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has "requested for the exchange of prisoners from Guantanamo."
The AP has learned the identity of some of these prisoners, including Khairullah Khairkhwa, former Taliban governor of Herat, and Mullah Mohammed Fazl, a former top Taliban military commander believed responsible for sectarian killings before the U.S. invasion that toppled the Taliban government in Afghanistan in 2001.
At the White House, Carney said "we're not in a position to discuss ongoing deliberations or individual detainees, but our goal of closing Guantanamo is well-established and widely understood."
The Taliban are holding Bowe Bergdahl, a 25-year-old U.S. Army sergeant from Hailey, Idaho. Bergdahl, the only U.S. soldier held by the insurgents, was captured on June 30, 2009, in Afghanistan.
___
Associated Press writers Ben Feller and Matthew Lee in Washington and Slobodan Lekic in Kabul contributed to this report.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Relatives say Beatrice Gersh, who helped establish the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, has died. She was 87.
Relatives told the Los Angeles Times (http://lat.ms/oYJ25J ) she died Sunday of natural causes at her Los Angeles home.
Gersh is the widow of Hollywood talent agent Phil Gersh, who died in 2004. The couple started collecting art in the 1950s and joined supporters to found the MOCA in 1979.
Beatrice Gersh and her husband donated 13 significant pieces from their collection to the museum.
MOCA Director Jeffrey Deitch says Beatrice Gersh was one of the museum's most important and beloved patrons. He says the museum will mount a memorial exhibition to showcase the couple's gifts.
Beatrice Gersh is survived by sons David and Bob; brothers Charles and Leon Aberle; and five grandchildren.
___
Information from: Los Angeles Times, http://www.latimes.com
It's all happening next summer on July 9 and 10, but today, welaunch the web site where you can pre-book your tickets to thefestival on-line and get discounted prices.
We are set to stage a deliciously glamorous event for all foodieswhere you can spend a complete weekend in gourmet heaven.
Our key aim is to showcase the outstanding quality of food anddrink the region produces as well as giving you a fantastic day out.
Come along and meet the producers, listen to them explain whatthey do, hear about their passion for excellence and above all tasteand buy their products.
More and more of us now appreciate the attractions of a diet freefrom pesticides; of farms that are farms, not factories and ofproducts created with care and traded fairly.
And that's not all, we have culinary royalty in attendance with5AA Rosette and Michelin award winning chef Jean Christophe Novellidemonstrating his kitchen prowess at the Rangemaster Chefs on-stageCookery Theatre on Sunday, July 10.
Sharing the bill with Jean Christophe is his friend, Essexrestaurateur and British master chef, Mark Baumann of BaumannsBrasserie, Coggeshall.
Delicious cookery demonstrations from top local chefs will be onoffer throughout the festival including: the current Essex Chef ofthe Year, Jonathan Brown, The DuCane, Great Braxted; Daniel Watkins,2009 Essex Chef of the Year, The Anchor, Hullbridge; 2008 Essex Chefof the Year, Paul Boorman, Lifehouse, Thorpe le Soken; and SherriSingleton, restaurateur, chef and author from the Mistley Thorn,Mistley.
More chefs will be announced over the coming months - keepchecking the web site.
Heart Breakfast at the Festival Catch Martin and Su from HeartBreakfast as they take part in a celebrity cook-off on Sunday, July10 where they will show off their cooking skills.
You will be able to tune into Heart breakfast to hear theirpreparations nearer the festival weekend.
We will keep you updated in go! and on the website of theirprogress as they learn how to cook at Mark Baumann's Cookery Academyin Earls Colne in the new year.
Discount tickets Buy your discounted tickets online today atwww.thisistotal essex.co.uk/foodfestival Click onto 'pre-ordertickets' or call the tickets booking office on 0845 6037624. Linesare open 8am to 8pm, Monday to Friday and 9am to noon on Saturdays.
Entry tickets to the Festival cost Pounds 5.00 per adult inadvance and Pounds 6.00 on the gate. Children under 12 free.
This does NOT Include entry to Jean Christophe Novelli cookingdemonstrations Buy a special Christmas present for a friend or lovedone to see Jean Christophe Novelli demonstrating cookery on stage onSunday, July 10.
Tickets cost Pounds 8.00 each and must be purchased in advance.There will be two demonstrations, one at 12noon and one at 3pm. EachDEMO lasts for approx 40 minutes.
A festival entrance ticket must be purchased in conjunction withthis ticket Book soon as there are a very limited number of ticketsavailable to see Jean Christophe Novelli.
Hilda Neatby, the author of So Little for the Mind, which stirred up a national debate about education in the 1950s, finds an unlikely ally in Michel Foucault. Both believe that progressive education, grounded in scientific pedagogy, is a means of domination rather than liberation. Both trace its roots to the 18th-century Age of Reason, which, according to Foucault, gave birth to the "disciplinary society" and, in Neatby's view, destabilized the balance between faith and reason. Although they are philosophically far apart (Foucault, a Nietzschean; Neatby, a Christian), they have a startlingly similar appraisal of the progressive school.
At first glance, the intellectual partnering of Hilda Neatby with Michel Foucault seems improbable, if not perverse. At the time of his death in 1984, Foucault was one of the most famous intellectuals in the world. His books, notably Madness and Civilization (1965), The Order of Things (1973), Discipline and Punish (1979), and The History of Sexuality (1980), translated into 16 languages, made an enormous impact on the work of scholars. His influence continues to be felt in a wide range of disciplines -- sociology, history, psychology, philosophy, politics, linguistics, cultural studies, literary theory, and education, to name a few. Hilda Neatby, on the other hand, has a reputation confined mainly to Canada. Her chief claims to fame were membership on the Massey Commission on the Arts, Letters and Sciences (The Report of the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences, 1951) and authorship of So Little for the Mind (Neatby, 1953), a polemic against progressive trends in education that stirred up a controversy when it was published; it sold about 15,000 copies by 1975, the year Neatby died (Hayden, 1983, p. 34). While Foucault's fame continued to grow after his death, Neatby's reputation faded. Even in their professional and personal lives, the two individuals could scarcely have been more different from one another. Foucault was a distinguished member of the College de France, Neatby a professor in the History Department at the University of Saskatchewan; Foucault, a sexual adventurer who died of AIDS, Neatby a devout Presbyterian spinster who expressed amazement at the sexual practices mentioned in Mary McCarthy's novel The Group (Hayden, 1983, p. 5).
Despite these disparities, there are startling convergences in their thought. Both are skeptical about the claims of modernity and call into question the allegedly "liberating," "humanitarian," and "democratizing" benefits of the 18th-century Age of Reason. Both view progressive education, based on the principles of psychology and scientific pedagogy, as essentially an instrument of power and domination, rather than emancipation and enlightenment. Foucault is content to trace the effects of power and describe its operations; he makes no moral judgments because he believes such statements are meaningless. He sees power and knowledge as two sides of the same coin, inseparable from one another. There is no such thing as disinterested knowledge that can be used to call power to account. His critique of Western civilization is relentless and complete. Neatby, by contrast, wants to save Western civilization from itself by restoring a proper balance between reason and faith. She believes that we have strayed from the true path and need to find our way back. For Foucault, there never was a path; the categories of reason and faith are artificial constructs that bear no relationship to truth.
Comparing Neatby and Foucault deepens our understanding of the meaning of progressive education and throws new light on the place of So Little for the Mind in the history of Canadian educational thought. Pigeon-holed as a conservative, "back-to-the-basics" critic of new trends in education, Neatby emerges as a thinker who anticipated certain postmodernist themes and applied them to an analysis of the philosophy and practice of education. Seen in this perspective, her thought acquires a depth and sophistication that it has not always been accorded. So Little for the Mind can be read as an extended commentary on the idea, later developed in Foucault's work, that what looks like progress in the social sciences and pedagogy is really "an insidious new form of social control" (Miller, 1993, p. 113).
Foucault (1979) presents a revisionist interpretation of the penal reforms of the 18th and 19th centuries in Discipline and Punish, the book closest to Neatby's concerns. The banning of torture and public executions in favour of gentler punishments is usually interpreted as evidence of the advancement of civilization, signifying a more humanitarian approach to the treatment of criminals. Foucault calls attention to the displacement that occurred in the object of the punitive operation -- no longer the body, but the soul. Punishment now acted "in depth on the heart, the thoughts, the will, the inclinations" (Foucault, 1979, p. 16). It was "intended not to punish the offence, but to supervise the individual, to neutralize his dangerous state of mind, to alter his criminal tendencies..." (p. 18). The punishment bore with it "an assessment of normality and a technical prescription for a possible normalization" (p. 21). Moreover, "humane" penal procedures became entangled with a new corpus of knowledge, a science of penology, whose purpose was the "management of the depths of the human soul" (Rose, 1990, p. 7).
Foucault extends the argument from the prison to other prison-like institutions where discipline is administered: the insane asylum, barracks, factory, and school. "The workshop, the school, the army were subject to a whole micro-penality of time (lateness, absences, interruption of tasks), of activity (inattention, negligence, lack of zeal), of behavior (impoliteness, disobedience), of speech (idle chatter, insolence), of the body ('incorrect' attitudes, irregular gestures, lack of cleanliness), of sexuality (impurity, indecency)" (Foucault, 1979, p. 178). Of central importance to the disciplinary regime was the examination, a technique that combines surveillance with normalizing judgment. The procedure became standard practice in everything from psychiatry and the diagnosis of disease to the hiring of labour. It made possible the science of pedagogy by placing school-children in a "field of surveillance" and "engag[ing] them in a whole mass of documents that capture and fix them" (p. 189). The individual is transformed into a "case," who may be "described, judged, measured, compared with others" and who has to be "trained or corrected, classified, normalized, excluded, etc." (p. 191). Foucault asserts that these disciplinary techniques created something new in human history. Previously, ordinary individuality, "the everyday individuality of everybody... [had] remained below the threshold of description." Now "the threshold of describable individuality" had been lowered, and this description was used as "a means of control and a method of domination" (p. 191).
Foucault finds in the Panopticon, Jeremy Bentham's 19th-century architectural design for the ideal prison, an apt metaphor for the disciplinary society.
... at the periphery, an annular building; at the center, a tower; this tower is pierced with wide windows that open into the inner side of the ring; the peripheric building is divided into cells, each of which extends the whole width of the building; they have two windows, one on the inside, corresponding to the windows of the tower; the other, on the outside, allows the light to cross the cell from one end to the other. All that is needed, then, is to place a supervisor in a central tower and to shut up in each cell a madman, a patient, a condemned man, a worker or a schoolboy. By the effect of backlighting, one can observe from the tower, standing out precisely against the light, the small captive shadows in the cells of the periphery. They are like so many cages, so many small theatres, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible. (Foucault, 1979, p. 200)
The inhabitant of the cell can be seen by the supervisor, but the side walls prevent communication with other prisoners. The inmate does not know whether he is being observed at any given moment, but he is always sure that he may be so. The person who is constantly fixed in the gaze of the supervisor begins to internalize the mechanism of power to which he is subjected. He becomes his own jailer.
The Panopticon is also a laboratory. It can be used to carry out experiments, modify behaviour, and correct undesirable attributes. Those in the tower (metaphorically speaking) can experiment with medicines, try out different punishments, employ various techniques, and conduct research. "The Panopticon is a privileged place for experiments on men, and for analyzing with complete certainty the transformations that may be obtained from them" (Foucault, 1979, p. 204), the very model of the human sciences. The Panopticon must be understood, not as a "dream building," but as "the diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form" (p. 205). It has diverse applications: reform of prisoners, treatment of patients, instruction of schoolchildren, confinement of the insane, supervision of workers, and rehabilitation of the unemployed. The aim is not to repress, censor, or put down; it is to "strengthen the social forces -- to increase production, to develop the economy, spread education, raise the level of public morality..." (p. 208).
Foucault (1979) suggests that the mechanisms of discipline extended more widely in the modern period to the point that Western society was penetrated through and through with disciplinary methods. The growth in the number of institutions, such as prisons, asylums, and schools, testified to this, as did the increase in the level of surveillance and supervision beyond the walls of institutions. Schools were not content to train docile children, but had also "to supervise the parents, to gain information as to their way of life, their resources, their piety, their morals" (Foucault, 1979, p. 211). The Panoptic gaze fixed on adults in their own homes, detecting "whether they know their catechism and the prayers, whether they are determined to root out the vices of their children, how many beds there are in the house and what the sleeping arrangements are" (p. 211).
Foucault (1979) speaks of the emergence of a "disciplinary society" (p. 209), an "indefinitely generalizable mechanism of 'panopticism' " (p. 216). "Much more than architectural ingenuity, it was an event in the 'history of the human mind' " (p. 216). This conclusion leads him to a reinterpretation of the Enlightenment. The 18th century saw the establishment of formally egalitarian legal and political frameworks, embodying the concept of the "rights of man," expressed, for example, in the French Revolution and the American Revolution. But, for Foucault, the development and extension of disciplinary mechanisms constituted the dark side of the process, establishing a regime that took away freedom, rather than extending it. "The general juridical form that guaranteed a system of rights that were egalitarian in principle was supported by these tiny, everyday, physical mechanisms, by all those systems of micro-power that are essentially non-egalitarian and asymmetrical that we call the disciplines.... The 'Enlightenment,' which discovered the liberties, also invented the disciplines" (p. 222).
The word "discipline" is used here in two senses, referring both to punishment and to an organized body of knowledge. Foucault contends that that the two meanings cannot be separated from one another, that they are two aspects of the same thing. Thus, the human sciences are heavily implicated in the disciplinary society. "The formation of knowledge and the increase of power regularly reinforce one another in a circular process" (Foucault, 1979, p. 224). The power exercised over inmates in prisons, patients in hospitals, pupils in schools, or workers in factories makes possible the disciplines of clinical medicine, psychiatry, child psychology, educational psychology, and personnel management. The knowledge gained thereby is then applied to prisoners, patients, schoolchildren, and workers to refine and multiply the effects of power, a process that in turn leads to further advancements in the various fields of knowledge. The end result is not more freedom, but an ever-more penetrating and pervasive control over the human mind, body, and soul.
And, although the universal juridicism of modern society seems to fix limits on the exercise of power, its universally widespread panopticism enables it to operate, on the underside of the law, a machinery that is both immense and minute, which supports, reinforces, multiplies the asymmetry of power and undermines the limits that are traced around the law. (Foucault, 1979, p. 223)
From this perspective, the pre-Enlightenment, inhumane punishments -- beatings, torture, dismemberment of bodies, hangings -- were less invasive. They inflicted horrible pain on the body, but left the mind and soul alone. Modernity, the human sciences, and progress brought with them the indefinite discipline of "interrogation without end," "a file that was never closed, the calculated leniency of a penalty that would be interlaced with the ruthless curiosity of an examination, a procedure that would be at the same time the permanent measure of a gap in relation to an inaccessible norm..." (Foucault, 1979, p. 227). With respect to education, the methods of the old-fashioned school -- strapping, detention, forced memorization, and relentless drill -- at least were not presented as being something they were not. Power relations were naked and obvious. As Foucault points out, the educational psychology that was supposed to correct the rigors of the traditional school does no such thing. "We must not be misled," he writes, "these techniques merely refer individuals from one disciplinary authority to another, and they reproduce, in a concentrated or formalized form, the scheme of power-knowledge proper to each discipline..." (pp. 226-227).
Although Foucault gives little attention to the specifics of pedagogy and schooling, other scholars have taken up the task of applying his ideas to the education system. Indeed, the project has given rise to a minor academic industry. A leading practitioner, Thomas Popkewitz, has written and edited a small library of books devoted to elaborating the Foucaultian idea that "particular systems of pedagogical ideas and rules of reasoning" are "the effects of power in schools" (Popkewitz, 1998, p. 32; see also Ball, 1990; Popkewitz, 1991; Popkewitz, 1993; Popkewitz & Brennan, 1998; Popkewitz & Fendler, 1999; Popkewitz, Franklin, & Pereyra, 2001). Much of this material, not only that of Popkewitz but of others working in the same vineyard, is so clogged with jargon that it is almost impossible to read. With due diligence, however, the patient reader can extract bits of information and detect the flow of the argument.
Of particular value for the purpose of this discussion is the application of Foucault's theories to early-20th-century discourse about childhood, the state, and schooling. The pedagogical science of the day, influenced greatly by the ideas of American philosopher/psychologist John Dewey, aimed to create self-disciplined, self-motivated individuals capable of participating effectively and co-operatively in democratic society. Popkewitz (2001) maintains that these pedagogical discourses "connected the scope and aspirations of public powers with the personal and subjective capabilities of individuals" (p. 314). Social progress required the development of a "New Man," a new secular citizen who "would shed the dispositions of religious and inherited social order and replace them with a subjectivity [how one thinks, feels, and acts] that embodied the obligations, responsibilities, and personal discipline embodied in liberal democratic ideals. The school was a central institution in this form of governance" (p. 318). The state targeted the "self" as a "site of administration" (p. 318), and the social sciences, especially psychology, were enlisted to carry out the project by "giving focus to the microprocesses by which individuals become self-motivated, self-responsible, and 'reasonable'" (p. 321). "Developmental and learning theories opened the child's behavior, attitudes, and beliefs to scrutiny, such that they could be acted upon to effect cognition and affect" (p. 323). The key point is that progressive schooling constituted a power relation -- the social administration of the soul.
Popkewitz draws a parallel between Dewey, who wanted to mould children so that they were fit to live in a democracy, and Lev Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist and contemporary of Dewey, who tried to devise a pedagogy to instill in Soviet children the attitudes proper to a Communist society. Dewey visited Russia in the 1920s at a time when many Soviet intellectuals considered his philosophy of pragmatism (the notion that assertions are to be evaluated by their practical consequences and bearing on human interests) of some value in advancing the revolution (Popkewitz, 2001, pp. 315-316). The argument here is not that the Soviet Union is the same as the United States, but rather that disciplinary mechanisms were implicit in the pedagogies of both Dewey and Vygotsky. Both employed psychological techniques to measure, classify, guide, direct, and control the individual. Whether the exercise of power was good or bad is open for debate, but in both cases power was deployed. The individual was viewed as an object of "moral orthopaedics" (Foucault, 1979, p. 10) in need of being normalized and made into a well-adjusted, productive unit of society. Moreover, the power of progressive educators, whether of the American or Soviet variety, was rooted in "objective" science and was, therefore, of a totalizing nature that had a tendency to drive out alternative claims to authority based on religion, tradition or parental wisdom. The child was at the mercy of the educational experts; they knew best.
Hilda Neatby attacks this state of affairs with deft sarcasm and sharp logic. "Progressive education in Canada," she writes, "is not liberation; it is indoctrination both intellectual and moral" (Neatby, 1953, p. 42). "Experts talk constantly of training for leadership, but their whole system is one of conditioning for servitude" (p. 236). In support of her bold assertion, she cites chapter and verse from curriculum guides, programs of study, and pronouncements of professional educators. She does a better job of applying Foucault to progressive education than does Popkewitz, even though there is no evidence that she read Foucault or had heard of him (Discipline and Punish was first published in French the year she died.)
A good deal of the commentary on So Little for the Mind focuses on particular aspects of her critique: the failure to teach the three Rs; automatic promotion of pupils from one grade to the next; inordinate attention given to extra-curricular activities; lack of liberal learning among professional educators; the breakdown of discipline in the classroom; time-wasting activities in teacher-training colleges. Commentators tend to shy away from her main and seemingly most outrageous charge: progressive schools are totalitarian in nature; they condition students for servitude. She means what she says, and Foucault helps her make her case.
Neatby objects strongly to the unconcealed ambition of the progressive school to intervene in all aspects of the life of the child. This tendency was an outgrowth of Dewey's pronouncement: "education as life and as growth" (Neatby, 1953, p. 55), and the "whole child goes to school" (p. 8). Neatby agrees that, of course, "education is life," but that doesn't mean the school should do everything. She worries that parents are shoved aside or treated in a patronizing manner. School officials in pursuit of information intrude upon the privacy of the family. The role of parents, it would seem, is "to produce the child, provide him with food, clothing and shelter, and then furnish the guidance officer, voluntarily or involuntarily, with such information as he needs for making his decision" (p. 211).
Neatby quotes with dismay from the British Columbia Programme of Studies for Junior High Schools, 1948.
When difficulties arise it is the underlying cause that should be discovered and treated rather than the outward symptoms. In other words, the treatment should fit the pupil and not his act alone. The same misdemeanour may have an entirely different significance when committed by two different persons. This is why it is so futile to adopt fixed rules for dealing with specific faults. Successful treatment depends upon thorough knowledge of the case. Teachers should derive a lesson from established clinical practice and make a thorough study of the pupil, his background and history, before deciding upon any course of treatment. In the more difficult cases this will mean studying the home conditions and consulting the parents and others in the school and outside it who have knowledge of the pupil which might prove important. Ordinarily it is the part of wisdom to postpone conference with the pupil until... there has been time for careful consideration of the available facts and a reasoned decision as to the most promising kind of treatment. Careful notes should be kept of all the data secured and also of the course of treatment and its results. (Neatby, 1953, pp. 211-212)
This is what Foucault labels the "penitentiary" approach, a method that substitutes for the convicted offender, the "delinquent" (Miller, 1993, p. 230). It is not so much the delinquent's act as his or her life that is subject to discipline and correction. The point of concern is not the offence as such, but rather the deviation of a personality from the norm. Foucault contends that over the course of the 19th century prisons transformed punitive procedures into a "penitentiary technique," which then "haunted the school, the court, the asylum" as well as the prison (Foucault, 1979, p. 299). Neatby has an intuitive understanding of the process, for immediately following the long passage quoted above, she writes,
The procedure is undoubtedly appropriate for the inmate of a lunatic asylum or a specially organized penal institution. In a school, however, where the children are given the freedom properly accorded to rational individuals, justice demands that each one be equally responsible for his overt acts and that from each be exacted approximately equal penalties, if penalties are needed. (Neatby, 1953, p. 212)
The importation of the penitentiary technique into the school offends her sense of respect for children as moral beings with minds of their own.
Another aspect of the totalizing agenda of the progressive school that Neatby abhors is the effort to teach children correct "attitudes." They are subjected to relentless pressure to accept the approved values of "democracy," "social living," or "effective living." The "social attitudes" to be "constantly nurtured," states the Saskatchewan Programme of Studies for the High School, 1950, are "cooperation and social concern; spirituality; honesty and integrity; appreciation of... the finer aspects of life" (cited in Neatby, 1953, p. 49, truncation in original). Teachers are not so much teaching English literature, natural science, or history as they are "condition[ing] little boys and girls so that they will grow up to be orderly, well-adjusted, but progressive and forward-looking citizens..." (p. 119).
The teacher arranges the facts so that they lead to the politically correct result. Neatby cites the Ontario high school curriculum guide for world geography, which requires pupils to gain "a sympathetic understanding of other peoples," and then she asks, "Are the teachers to tell them nothing that might detract from this sympathy?" (Neatby, 1953, p. 167) The Ontario social studies course (grades 7 to 10), a mishmash of anthropology, sociology, economics, and history, has as one of its chief aims to show that democracy is the crowning achievement of civilization. Neatby remarks that such a mangled approach to history does no real good to the cause of democracy. "If all that is desired is to say that democracy is good and absolute rule is bad, why not just say so in winning tones, and leave the history out? After all, in spite of generous assumptions, history offers no logical proof of anything..." (p. 168). She defends the right of the teacher to teach without being told what the students are expected to believe at the end of the course (p. 171).
Dewey recommends that students participate in group projects, the better to absorb the spirit of democracy and co-operative endeavour. He puts forward the principle that children learn best when they solve a problem of their own devising and when the project involves manual activity (Neatby, 1953, p. 172). While the teacher may inspire the project, the children must accept it as "theirs." The Quebec Handbook for Teachers, 1951, advises, "The skillful teacher will set the stage as it were, in such a way that the pupils will accept the purposes and aims as their own" (cited in Neatby, 1953). "In short," Neatby observes, "their aims better look a lot like the teacher's" (p. 182), or in the words of "a perceptive child who had been exposed to the 'newer school practices': 'Cooperation means you gotta' " (p. 183). Neatby considers the manipulation and trickery practised in the progressive classroom an insult to the intelligence of the students. Dictatorship masquerades under the cloak of democracy, giving the latter a bad name.
She makes the same point about the progressive injunction that the teacher must constantly attend to the pupils' motivation, and at all costs refrain from forcing them to learn material they are not interested in. Dewey assumes that children are naturally curious about subject matter that is directly relevant to their day-to-day lives, but that abstract knowledge or information remote from their immediate environment is of much less interest or value to them. Thus, teachers are expected to employ various stratagems to awaken curiosity by showing pupils how school lessons relate to life outside the classroom. The Saskatchewan Elementary School Curriculum, 1945, suggests that the study of electricity should arise out of a "situation," such as the burning out of a fuse plug. Neatby (1953) writes:
It would not do merely to ask, "What is known about the nature of electricity? How it is produced and transmitted?" That would not "interest" Grade VII and VIII pupils. Instead the teacher must begin by surreptitiously shorting a circuit so as to blow out a fuse, and then exclaim: "Well, well, isn't that interesting? A fuse has blown! Doesn't it make you want to study electricity? Wouldn't you like to learn all about it, so that we can produce a play about the life of Edison?" What would happen if the pupils were honest and courageous enough to say, "No, not particularly," we are not told. (p. 193)
Neatby is repelled by the phoniness, the insincerity, and the attempt to conceal the exercise of power. Moreover, she is sure that students are canny enough to see through the elaborate ruses. The traditionalist teacher who required pupils to learn something and rebuked or punished them when they failed to do so, "showed a truer respect for them than those who regard them only as inert wax to be moulded with patience and skill" (Neatby, 1953, p. 201). The whole point of the modern school, as far as Neatby can see, is to assure that children do what they want to do or want to do what they are doing -- the perfect image of a suffocating totalitarian regime (p. 203). Neatby distrusts the progressives' repudiation of externally imposed discipline because she regards the alternative -- contrived spontaneity and socially engineered conformity -- as fraudulent and dangerous. Slick human relations management practised on the young is, in her opinion, a far more serious threat to democracy than the old-fashioned system of rules and punishments.
The progressive school insists that pupils feel good about themselves and that they never fail or fall short of meeting an absolute standard. The goal is to make school life as pleasant as possible, which, according to Neatby, leads to a uniformly low standard, easily obtainable by almost all. Progressive educators promote the lie that all children are equal, or almost equal, in ability. Democracy demands that this be true. Neatby states that children know full well that their capacities are not the same "and, if they were not so indifferent, would doubtless be highly diverted at this elaborate adult conspiracy to conceal the facts of life" (Neatby, 1953, p. 332).
And what of the children who fail to absorb the correct democratic and co-operative attitudes, the ones who are incompletely socialized? The Saskatchewan Elementary School Curriculum Guide, 1952, recommends that the teacher keep a record of the pupil's progress.
Anecdotal notes are possibly the most reliable. The teacher observes the behavior of the students in the classroom, on the playground, and in places away from the school. She records behavior incidents which she believes are indicative of the pupils' attitudes, interests, and appreciations. These anecdotes are collected from time to time, and are usually written into the cumulative record of the students. From these notes the teacher makes estimates of progress. (cited in Neatby, 1953, p. 221)
Here we have, Neatby says, "the vision of the coming police state." The Panopticon comes to the playground. She avows that no self-respecting teacher would consent to this type of surveillance of his or her pupils. Those who do might as well "hire out their work to an eager little band of spies and agents provocateurs" (p. 221).
Neatby's accuses educational experts of having "magnified... [their] office" (Neatby, 1953, p. 55) to the point where they become totalitarian in their approach to schooling. The remedy is for schools and teachers to "back off," to give up their mission of socializing the whole child, and to try to do one thing really well: feed the child's mind. This would open up some space, give the pupil relief from the unrelenting gaze of the school, and make room for the home, church, and other organizations to exercise influence over the child's development. Neatby does not consider the possibility that these agencies, too, can be taken over by social-science-driven disciplinary mechanisms. This is Foucault's nightmare -- there is no escaping Panopticisim. Neatby's vision is not as dark.
She holds that intellectual training is liberating in a way that "socializing" is not. The child who learns the basic skills of reading and writing is empowered; he has more freedom than the one trapped in illiteracy or semi-literacy. Progressive educators continually make excuses as to why, after 12 years, a high school graduate cannot write a sentence, much less a paragraph. It is impossible to teach such skills, they say, because now everybody goes to school, not just the elite as in the old days. Or it is not important because grammar and spelling are overrated as "life skills." Or it is actually being done; the evidence to the contrary is anecdotal or based on shoddy research. Neatby's point is that schools might do a better job of the three Rs if they stopped trying to do everything and focused on giving pupils the basic tools required for self-education.
Secondly, she asks that children be expected to master a well-defined and systematically organized body of knowledge -- the despised "facts." She rejects what she calls the false antithesis between learning facts and thinking about them, between content and process. How can a child think without facts to think about? One might as well say, she writes, "The important thing is not to consume food, but to digest it" (Neatby, 1953, pp. 44-45). Facts, even those learned by memory work or the rote method, provide material for thought and a starting point for critical thinking. Moreover, the mastery of a field of knowledge is intrinsically empowering. It gives students the confidence that they know something and that they have the ability to refute statements, if only inwardly, they know to be false. They have a foundation for standing up to the teacher, who must bow to the facts, if only in the child's mind. When the facts are disdained and replaced with vague understandings, cloudy generalities, and correct "attitudes," the teacher must always be right.
Neatby states repeatedly that the progressive educator's fascination with process at the expense of content does children a terrible disservice by depriving them of a rich, full, and intellectually rewarding curriculum. They are cut off from "any real enjoyment or understanding of the inheritance of western civilization" (Neatby, 1953, p. 16). "The material which would enable the individual to work out his salvation [what Foucault would call alternative discourses, 'the best of our civilization in literature, science, history, art'] is practically withheld in order that he may be made more receptive to the ready-made solutions that are handed out" (p. 59). Neatby demands that the teacher not have exclusive control over the flow of information and not pre-select the facts so that they lead to the right conclusion, however laudable it might be ("democracy," "tolerance," "the importance of sharing"). The central purpose of formal education is "to dispel the ignorance that leaves one helpless" and "to train the mind for control and power" (Neatby, 1954b, p. 12). By giving students access to the intellectual and cultural heritage of Western civilization, obliging them to master a coherent body of knowledge, and making sure that they can obtain meaning from the printed page and express themselves clearly and effectively, the teacher confers power on the student. Education is liberation, not therapy. Education interpreted as conditioning leaves the young "weak from lack of nourishment and blind from want of vision" (Neatby, 1953, p. 125).
Neatby offers one other suggestion to promote the power and freedom of the individual -- the curtailment of Dewey's cherished group work and shared activities. Some group activity is fine, but it should be kept within strict bounds. "In the enthusiasm for joint activity, how easy it is to forget that thinking, if it is done at all, must be done alone! All real mental training is an individual process. There is common ground on which rational minds can meet, but each must find its own path there" (Neatby, 1983, p. 234). She admires those individuals, who without denying their membership in society, stand alone -- "the genius, the martyr, or perhaps just the eccentric or the crank" -- all those who endure solitude "in order to witness to what they thought they saw" (Neatby, 1954b, p. 47).
In the last chapter of So Little for the Mind, Neatby asks the question: Why and how did the sorry state of affairs embodied in the progressive school come to pass? She knows it is not all John Dewey's fault. He is but a symptom of a deeper ailment. Like Foucault, she locates the root of the problem in the 18th-century Enlightenment. Foucault argues that the supposedly humane and progressive character of the Age of Reason masked a dark side that gave rise to the "disciplinary society." Neatby posits that the Enlightenment's too-exclusive "worship of reason" produced disastrous consequences. "As a result," she writes, "in the twentieth century some two hundred years after the 'enlightenment' we encounter the new barbarism" (Neatby, 1953, p. 316). "What is needed is a renewal of faith and a renunciation of the false rationalism which implicitly denies the power of faith for good or evil in human society" (p. 324). This statement correlates with her repeated insistence that one of the main purposes of education is to bring students into contact with the heritage of Western civilization, which she describes as a product of Judaic morality, Christian love, Greek philosophy, Roman law, and modern humanism. The problem is that undue emphasis has been placed on the last term in the list. Modern humanism, taken by itself, is not liberating; the unfettered human sciences lead not to freedom, but to enslavement.
On this point, she is in agreement with Foucault, but then they part company. Foucault merely describes and dissects power relations; he makes no comment as to whether the exercise of power in any particular case is good, bad, or indifferent. His presentation of the Panopticon as a metaphor for the disciplinary society is brilliant, but his philosophy, which is essentially Nietzchean, does not permit him to criticize it on rational grounds. He does not think there is any such thing as reason and truth in any fixed, absolute sense. Nor does he think, for that matter, that there is any such things as "humanity" in any fixed, absolute sense. In his conclusion to The Order of Things he predicts that the normative ideal of "man" will soon be "effaced," "like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea" (Foucault, 1973, p. 387). His rejection of the foundations of Western civilization is complete and profound. It is almost comical to see educational experts attempting to extract some kind of progressive lesson from Foucault. Apparently they do not understand how subversive he is. As far as Foucault is concerned, those who are subordinated or oppressed may deploy power against the power being exercised upon them, but they have no good or rational basis either to do so or not to do so.
This is very far from the intellectual world of Hilda Neatby. She affirms the worth of Western civilization taken as a whole and seeks to rescue it from the distortion that has occurred because of the importance given to one aspect of it. It seems doubtful that she can make her case on rational grounds alone. In a letter to Frank Underhill written shortly after the publication of So Little For the Mind, she said that she thought she could, but that "it seemed to me insincere to write seriously about the most serious of subjects without making clear my own convictions. At the same time I was most anxious to make a purely rational case" (Hayden, 1983, p. 34). She may have been anxious to, but she did not. In her other essays, it is evident that as soon as the argument "hits the wall," that is, each time she comes to define the irreducible essence of education, she invokes the transcendental. In "The Group and the Herd," she borrows Matthew Arnold's formulation that the social motive for education is "to make reason and the will of God prevail" (Neatby, 1954b, p. 41). In The Debt of Our Reason, she quotes Sir Thomas Browne to the effect that man in exploring the wonders of the world is "paying the 'Debt of our Reason we owe unto God, the homage we pay for not being Beasts'" (Neatby, 1954a, p. 3). The God she is talking about is not necessarily the Christian God. She allows some latitude on this point, averring that it is difficult to conceive of humanity in other than a degraded state "apart from reason...; or even apart from the will of God if only in the sense of the power of the mystery of human destiny" (Neatby, 1954b, p. 46). It is her conviction that if God is dead, so is man.
She defines education in one passage as "the discovery that the world is more interesting than oneself," (Neatby, 1953, p. 232) and elsewhere as "the gaining of a humble conception of the greatness of human nature and human society, and of the vastness and complexity of the universe in which its place is set.... It is learning the love of, and the pursuit of, perfection" (Neatby, 1954b, p. 37-38). Neatby displays an unmistakable reverence for knowledge that cannot be dissociated from reverence for God and His creation. She says that a teacher needs only two things: to love his subject and to love his students. All the rest will follow. This explains her criticism of Dewey's narrow understanding of self-realization. The beginning of wisdom and freedom is to realize that the world is more interesting than you are, and to submit humbly to the greatness of God. The teacher is privileged to lead students "into the company of the great in history, in literature, and the arts; and into the mystery and the beauty of the world in which they live. Self-realization comes most surely by losing oneself for a time in the contemplation of something greater than and beyond oneself" (p. 25).
Neatby makes it clear that humility must not be confused with servility, docility, or passivity. Life is arduous, a struggle, nothing comes easily, and intellectual attainment is hard won. It demands "the intellectual equivalents of worship and dedication, the complete and disinterested devotion to an exacting discipline" (Neatby, 1954a, p. 21). This is one of her main objections to progressive education, which is too easy, too soft, too accommodating, allowing neither confrontation with failure nor challenge to greatness. "Happiness," she writes in one of her most revealing passages, "is a by-product of effort and achievement. The purest happiness may be quite inseparable from pain" (Neatby, 1954b, p. 24). But at least pain is real. She writes to her sister that "Christianity is not very comfortable. It creates as many problems as it solves, but it has that quality of being alive which it is impossible to help associating with the truth" (Hayden, 1983, p. 20).
Hayden (1983) observes that it is too early to make a judgment about the originality of Neatby's ideas because the intellectual history of her generation has not been written (p. 320). Dewar (1990) argues that her views were "not unusual in university circles of the post-war era" (p. 37). Ross's (1989) doctoral dissertation places her writings in the context of educational debates occurring in the United States in the 1950s, as well as in the context of the conservative philosophical tradition in Canada. He suggests that her contribution was a "major re-statement" of the conservative position (p. 251), a statement executed with enough panache to spark a vigorous, though short-lived, national debate. This assessment understates Neatby's achievement. Although it would be going too far to say that she anticipates post-modernism in its entirety and delivers a preemptive strike, her work displays an acute understanding of what Foucault (1979) calls "the disciplinary society" (Foucault, p. 209). She criticizes the social sciences, especially psychology, at a time when most of her contemporaries in academia were uncritical enthusiasts (see Owram, 1986). Her openly expressed religious faith, far from being a quirky "add-on" detracting from her reputation as a rigorous intellectual, is revealed as integral to her argument. She understood better that did most Canadian academics the gravity of the attack on Western civilization, and she mounted a vigorous, thorough defence.
Neatby's depiction of the product of the progressive school -- "morally flabby, intellectually cloudy, and creatively sterile" (Neatby, 1953, p. 131) -- bears a passing resemblance to Nietzsche's "last man." In Thus Spoke Zarathustra the philosopher wrote: "'What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?' thus asks the last man, and he blinks" (Nietzsche, 1966, p. 17). Nietzsche turns his back on Western philosophy and Christianity, which he blames for enshrining a moral code fit only for slaves. To "become what one is" under such circumstances was no easy task. It necessitates a "will to power," a rediscovery of the chaos, violence, and cruelty buried within oneself. Nietzsche's "new man" or "super-man" is a creature of destructive creativity, a figure beyond good and evil, "uninhibited by the yearning of ordinary mortals for happiness, justice or pity" (Miller, 1993, p. 174).
Biographer James Miller (1993) portrays Michel Foucault as a man deeply under the influence of Nietzsche. The philosopher both provided intellectual inspiration and gave direction to Foucault's personal life, one that was consumed by the search for the Nietzschean "limit-experience" (p. 117). Miller gives an account of Foucault's fascination with the ecstatic mingling of pain and pleasure, his obsession with the sado-masochistic eroticism of the San Francisco leather scene of the 1970s and early 1980s, his deliberate flouting of AIDS warnings, and, finally, his death from the disease in 1984. Miller discovers something strangely heroic in what he calls Foucault's Nietzschean quest. He summarizes the "ethical point of view" of Foucault's (1965) first major book, Madness and Civilization, as holding that "it is not immoral to be convulsed by singular fantasies and wild impulses: such limit-experiences are to be valued as a way of winning back access to the occluded, Dionysian dimension of being human" (p. 117). According to Miller, Foucault lived out what he wrote, heeding Nietzsche's invocation of primal energies as the only means by which man can transcend himself and "give birth to a dancing star" (p. 70).
Hilda Neatby, by comparison, seems to belong to a totally different world: prim and proper, naive, living a sheltered, provincial life, restricted in her intellectual range, author of a minor book criticizing progressive trends in education. And yet the history professor at the University of Saskatchewan wrote a book about education that is grounded in contemplation of the fate of Western civilization, the relationship between faith and reason, the nature of humans, and the meaning of life. Her insights into the defects of progressive education run parallel to those of Foucault and are equally profound. A passage from So Little for the Mind brings one up short. Progressive educators, she writes, "have got out of the traditionalist rut, perhaps, but only to jog around a mysterious pragmatic circle, their eyes fixed on the mud beneath their feet because it is a real situation. The stars still shine over their heads but stars are under suspicion; there is about them more than a touch of the transcendental" (Neatby, 1953, p. 131).
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