If You Saw “Oppenheimer”

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , , , ,

That’s a really dumb headline.  Why ‘IF’?  Just about everybody went to see the blockbuster that won the “Best Picture Oscar.  After all, “Oppenheimer” tells the story of the development of the Atomic Bomb. 

Well, lots of the story, but not all of it.  

For instance, remember Matt Damon’s character, General Leslie Groves? General Groves was in charge of setting up, staffing, running, and keeping secure Los Alamos, the 54,000-acre facility in New Mexico where Robert Oppenheimer and other scientists built the first A-Bomb. Los Alamos was more than enough for any one man, but General Groves actually had several other awesome responsibilities, including establishing Oak Ridge, the facility in Tennessee where much of the work was done, building the Pentagon, and working with the OSS, the RAF, British Special Operations, and others to prevent Adolf Hitler from developing an Atomic Bomb. 

Lucky us, because a lot of what is not in “Oppenheimer” is in a new book, “The Greatest Scientific Gamble,” which is being published later this month by Michigan State University Press.  The author is Michael Joseloff, a veteran television producer with multiple Emmy Awards to his name. (Full disclosure: Mike was my first producer at The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour back in 1984, and we’ve been friends ever since.)

Friendship aside, Mike is a great story teller, as those multiple Emmy Awards attest.  The story you are about to read (which is not about General Groves) is one of dozens of interesting stories in The Greatest Scientific Gamble. To me, stories like this demonstrate clearly that history is not simply ‘big strokes’ but details. History is stories of human strivings–their successes and their errors; it’s brave men and women acting based on what they think they know but, at the same time, fully aware that in ‘the fog of war’ they cannot know everything.  Mike brings that all to life in this tale, which I have pulled out of his book, while removing the footnotes and adding a couple of transition sentences).

In 1940 and 1941 most advanced nations were either at war, preparing for war, or desperately seeking to avoid it. At the same time, about a dozen of the world’s most brilliant physicists were racing to unlock the power of the uranium atom, seeking to build a bomb of unrivaled power capable of destroying entire cities.    Nearly all of them, including Robert Oppenheimer and Enrico Fermi, were working with the Allies, many of them already in the United States.

However, one man–perhaps the most brilliant of them all–was somewhere in Nazi Germany. Was Werner Heisenberg, the Nobel Prize winner already renowned for formulating quantum mechanics and for postulating ‘The Uncertainty Principle,” trying to build an atomic bomb for Adolf Hitler? If so, how could he be stopped?

The challenge was to split the atom, the basic building block for all matter. Atoms–there are 118 different kinds–are made up of electrons, protons, and neutrons, which are in the nucleus. Splitting the nucleus of Uranium 235 by bombarding it with its own protons and electrons might release an unimaginable amount of energy. Enough energy to win a war!

The physicists working on this side of the Atlantic had some advantages. They had enough uranium ore and were making progress in separating enough U235 from the ore to make the critical mass necessary to build a bomb.. They also had sufficient quantities of a special kind of paraffin wax and graphite that isolated the uranium as they bombarded it. The Germans apparently did not know that graphite was effective, and so Heisenberg was  relying instead on “Heavy Water.”   It’s a misleading term, because, first of all, it is not Water. Rather, it’s a chemical byproduct of fertilizer production.

Because the British knew Heisenberg needed Heavy Water, they were determined to do whatever was necessary to keep it out of his hands. Their efforts would result in the torture and execution of dozens of military personnel and the deaths of an unknown number of innocent civilians.

They did, however, deny Werner Heisenberg large quantities of Heavy Water and may have prevented him from unlocking the destructive power of the U235  atom.

The story of how an obscure industrial plant in the Norwegian wilds came to play a critical role in atom bomb history begins in late 1939, two years before Heisenberg received his first Heavy Water shipment.

Manufacturing Heavy Water requires enormous amounts of electricity, and Norsk Hydro, built on a granite cliff below a mountain lake, had more than enough. Water from the lake spilled through large steel pipes turning electricity producing turbines twenty-four hours a day as it flowed past the plant into a gorge below. Norsk Hydro put that electricity to work making hydrogen for use in fertilizer. Heavy Water was a byproduct, which the company sold as a sideline business. Its sales rarely turned a profit, so Norsk Hydro management was surprised when the German chemical company I.G. Farben began placing orders for large quantities. Asked why the sudden interest, the Germans didn’t respond.

Then, early in 1940, six months after German troops stormed into Poland, an official at the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas–who was also an agent of the French intelligence service– showed up at Norsk Hydro with an offer to buy the plant’s entire Heavy Water inventory. Norsk Hydro managers did not know why Heavy Water was suddenly in demand, but their sympathies lay with the French, so they agreed to sell to them, instead of Germany. France’s secret agent planned to ship the Heavy Water out of Norway as cargo on a regularly scheduled passenger flight. He hadn’t expected any problems, but then French intelligence intercepted a message from Germany’s spy agency. The Nazis were aware of the French spy’s mission and had ordered their agents to stop him “at any price.”

On March 9, a month before the Germans invaded Norway, two trucks departed the Norsk Hydro plant loaded with 26 steel flasks full of Heavy Water. The flasks, specially designed so that they would fit into a suitcase, were delivered to a house in Oslo where the Frenchman and a fellow agent were waiting. Using fake names, he reserved seats on two flights scheduled to depart Oslo’s Fornebu airport at around the same time. One was bound for Amsterdam; the other, for Perth, Scotland.

On the morning of March 12, the French spies arrived at the airport, where they hired baggage handlers to carry their heavy suitcases to the ticket counter. The two men then passed through the boarding gate, crossed the tarmac, and watched as their bags were loaded onto the Amsterdam bound flight.

The plane took off without incident, but a short while later two Luftwaffe fighters flew alongside and forced the pilot to land. On the ground, German troops broke into the plane’s baggage compartment and seized the suspect luggage. But instead of Heavy Water, they found chunks of granite. And when they went looking for the French agents, they discovered they weren’t on the flight.

In an impressive act of counter-intelligence legerdemain, the French agents had arranged for their Amsterdam-bound plane to park on the tarmac alongside the plane bound for Perth. Just before the doors shut, a taxi raced up between the two airplanes. The French agents jumped out and loaded suitcases filled with Heavy Water onto the Perth-bound plane.

The ruse worked, but after German troops occupied Norway in April, 1940, the plant–now under Nazi control–ramped up production to 300 pounds a month, destined for Germany–and in all probability for Heisenberg.

Word of the stepped-up production convinced British intelligence that it had to prevent Heavy Water from reaching the German physicist. Rejecting an RAF air raid because it would have caused numerous civilian casualties, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) opted instead for a daring attack by an airborne team of saboteurs. The plan, codenamed Operation Freshman, would use two aircraft, each towing a glider to fly a team of saboteurs under cover of darkness to a remote landing strip prepared by Norwegian Resistance fighters. From there, they would ski about fifteen miles, sneak into the plant, set their explosive charges, and then hike two hundred miles to the Swedish border.

Unfortunately and tragically, Operation Freshman was an utter failure.

On November 19, 1942, two four-engine Halifax bombers towing the fragile wooden gliders took off from Wick airfield in Scotland bound for Norway. Each glider carried 15 commandos, two crew members, and several hundred pounds of explosives and equipment. To familiarize themselves with the terrain, the bomber and glider crews had conducted a test run the night before, flying four hundred miles across the North Sea and searching for a 700-foot landing zone marked by the Resistance fighters. It didn’t go well. Even though the weather was clear, they couldn’t find the site.

On the day of the mission, problems began almost immediately. Just after takeoff, both bombers lost communication with their gliders. The first bomber wasted valuable fuel searching for the landing zone in the snow-covered landscape and was forced to abort the mission. After turning around, it ran into icing conditions near the Norwegian coast, causing the glider’s tow rope to snap. The bomber pilot radioed base that the glider had crashed into the sea.

The second bomber, meanwhile, came in low over the North Sea to avoid the clouds, planning to climb once it reached clear skies over Norway. But 10 miles inland, the bomber crashed into a mountain. The four-man bomber crew and 3 of the commandos in the glider were killed. Several other commandos were severely injured. When German troops located the wreckage early in the morning, they found fourteen survivors and, in the wreckage of the glider, ski equipment and tents, machine and tommy guns, radios, food and explosives.

After taking the survivors to headquarters, the Germans interrogated them just long enough to get their names, ranks, and service numbers. Then they executed all fourteen. It was obvious from the explosives on board that they were on a sabotage mission, but the exact target wasn’t known until the next day, when the Germans found the second glider. It hadn’t crashed in the sea as first thought. It had crashed on land.

The officers who interrogated the first survivors had been reprimanded for their hasty execution of the saboteurs. This time they grilled them and tortured several at length, forcing them to divulge their target. Then they killed them.

Operation Freshman had been a costly failure: thirty-eight lives were lost, and the plant was still up and running. And, if they hadn’t known it before, the Nazis were certainly aware now that the Allies had made disabling the Norsk Hydro facility a top priority.

The Allies had not given up. Four months after the failure of Operation Freshman, a team of British and Norwegian commandos began training for another secret mission to sabotage the Norwegian Heavy Water plant. In the interim, however, the Germans had beefed up security, adding more troops, machine guns, searchlights and even a perimeter minefield.

The Norwegian engineers who had designed the Norsk Hydro plant, Jomar Brun and Einar Skinnerland, were now working with the Allies in England. Armed with the plant blueprints, they had constructed a mockup of the electrolysis area where the Heavy Water was distilled, so that six Norwegian saboteurs could practice laying dummy explosive charges in the dark. This time there would be no gliders. An advance team that had been living off the land would mark the drop zone, and the sappers would parachute in.

On the first attempt, the plane carrying the sappers could not find the advance team’s beacon and had to return to Scotland. On a moonless night weeks later, their luck changed. They parachuted onto a snow-packed mountain plateau, a barren landscape inhabited only by reindeer. Fighting gale-force winds, they managed to find the supplies they had also parachuted in and meet up with the advance team. After days of skiing, the group finally sighted their target.

The imposing seven-story Norsk Hydro plant sat on a ledge at the bottom of a steep bluff. Alongside, several large pipes carried water from the lake above to the gorge below. The saboteurs’ intelligence briefs had been spot on. The guards and the machine guns were exactly where they expected.

Just after the 10 PM shift change, the eight men began their assault. In a heroic feat of mountaineering, they eluded the German guards by descending into the gorge, crossing a frozen river, and climbing the 500-foot rock face on the other side. From there, they cut through a wire fence and crawled through a cable-intake opening into the plant. There the demolition team went to work, laying explosive charges, setting the fuses, and retracing their steps. They had less than a minute to get away before the explosives detonated. Miraculously, all escaped uninjured.

British intelligence had estimated it would take 12 months for the Germans to get the plant up and running again, but their estimate was wrong. The Germans had the plant up and running again after just six months — and producing more Heavy Water than before the raid: nearly 450 pounds a month. And so the Allies planned a third attack, this time under the control of the Americans..

Like Operation Freshman, it did not go well.

Shortly before dawn on November 16, 200 B-17’s of the Eighth United States Army Air Force took off from a base in Great Britain. Almost two dozen were forced to turn back within the first hour due to mechanical problems. The attack was planned to coincide with a lunch break when workers would be in a basement cafeteria and thus be safe from the bombs. Unfortunately, the bombers arrived 22 minutes early. To kill time, the squadron commander headed back towards the North Sea executing a wide 360-degree turn.

By the time they returned, the Germans were ready. One bomber was shot down by ground fire; another was hit, and the crew forced to parachute into the sea. One hundred seventy-six planes made it to the plant, followed by a squadron of 29 B-24 bombers. Together they dropped more than 700 bombs. The raid was supposed to be a “surgical” strike with precision bombing. In fact, none of the bombs scored a direct hit. While the company’s power plant was damaged, the facility where Heavy Water was produced was untouched. It was the locals who paid the steepest price: Twenty-one Norwegian civilians were killed.

The attacks on the Norwegian Heavy Water plant had already cost more than fifty British, American, and Norwegian lives when, in February 1944, a shortwave operator with the Norwegian Resistance fired off an urgent message that would almost certainly involve more fatalities.

The plant was preparing to ship 15 tons of Heavy Water to a lab in Germany. Thirty-nine barrels of the precious liquid would be loaded into two freight cars and transported by rail to a nearby port, where the cars would be transferred to a rail-ferry for the next leg of the journey across Lake Tinnsjo and then on to Germany. With such a large shipment at risk, the Germans took extraordinary precautions. The plant already had armed guards, anti-aircraft guns, land mines and machine guns. They sealed off every possible entry except the main gate and brought in a special army detachment backed by a regiment of SS police to guard the railroad tracks and ride the freight cars transporting the Heavy Water to the port. A squadron of spotter aircraft was positioned at a nearby airfield to assist with aerial reconnaissance, and troops were sent to the port to guard the ferryboat.

The Norwegian Resistance fighters had no good options. The plant itself and the train were too well guarded. Their best hope was to sink the ferry. To minimize the number of fatalities, a plant manager working with the Resistance scheduled the crossing for a Sunday morning, when there would be fewer passengers.

The Allies and the Resistance knew there would be reprisals–possibly mass executions–if the ferryboat was sabotaged. One Resistance shortwave operator even wired London questioning whether the operation was worth the reprisals. Within hours London responded: “Case considered. Very urgent that Heavy Water be destroyed. Hope this can be done without too serious consequences.”

Norsk Hydro’s transport engineer, who was not a member of the Resistance but was aware of the plot, would almost certainly be a primary target for Gestapo retribution, so the Resistance arranged an airtight alibi. On the Saturday before the attack, he was taken to the hospital, where he underwent an emergency appendectomy.

On a frigid Sunday morning, the Hydro, a rail ferry with 53 passengers and crew, started its voyage across Lake Tinnsjå. Below deck, hidden in the bilge near the bow, were 19 pounds of plastic explosives attached to an alarm clock. The Resistance saboteurs had set the timer to go off 45 minutes after the scheduled departure when the ferry would be over the deepest part of the lake.

The alarm clock went off as planned. The explosives ripped through the hull and 26 passengers and crew members died in the freezing waters, but once again, Werner Heisenberg did not receive his shipment of Heavy Water.

In the end, as we know, the Nazis and Heisenberg did not build an Atomic Bomb. We did.

The Heavy Water saga you just read is one of dozens of interesting stories in The Greatest Scientific Gamble. 

The Greatest Scientific Gamble will be published by Michigan State University Press later this month, but you can order it now (paperback, hardback and e-book) from MSU Press, Barnes & Noble, or Amazon. Because it’s not a mass market paperback, it’s pricey, so an alternative is to ask your local public library to purchase copies.

“Mr. President, I have a Question…” (and a book you should read)

John Merrow Uncategorized , , ,

In his State of the Union address, President Donald Trump boasted about his actions to lower prescription drug prices. “I’m also ending the wildly inflated cost of prescription drugs.  Other presidents tried to do it, but they never could…. I got it done. Under my just-enacted ‘Most Favored Nation‘ agreements, Americans, who have for decades paid by far the highest prices of any nation anywhere in the world for prescription drugs, will now pay the lowest price anywhere in the world.”

The result of this program, Mr. Trump said, “is price differences of 300%, 400%, 500%, 600% and more, all available right now at a new website called TrumpRx.gov.” 

He’s made this absurd (and mathematically impossible) claim before. In May he said that  the “most favored nation” policy is going to reduce the price of prescription drugs by 1,000% or more. Here’s what he said in late August: “We have something coming up, favored nations, where I’m going to be reducing drug prices by 1,400 to 1,500%.” More recently:  “We’re gonna be reducing drug prices down to a level that nobody – not by 20%, 30% – by like 1,000%. Because, you know, we’re paying sometimes 10 times more than other nations, and we’re not doing it anymore.”  And a few days later: “We have something else called ‘favored nations,’ where I’m going to be reducing drug prices by 1,000% – by 900, 600, 500, 1,200%.”

Two days after the State of the Union speech, I had the opportunity to ask him about these remarkable (and mathematically impossible) price reductions. The occasion was a ‘gaggle,’ kind of an unofficial, impromptu press conference that occurs when Mr. Trump stops to chat with the press while he’s walking to his helicopter or to a meeting.  We all raise our hands and wave them, trying to catch his attention.  He likes gaggles because he can walk away at any time.

Here’s what happened:

“Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President,” I called out, waving my hand wildly. 

“Ok, you,” he said, pointing at me.  “You, the tall guy with the white hair. Aren’t you kind of old to be racing around with all these young reporters?”

ME: Trying to keep up, sir.  I want to ask you about your program to reduce prescription drugs.

TRUMP: It’s great.  And you’re gonna benefit.  You and other seniors.  600%, 700%.   What drugs do  you need?  Viagra, I’ll bet.

ME:  Sir, here’s my question: Suppose someone weighed 200 pounds and lost 10% of his weight.”

TRUMP: 200 pounds?  I’d take that in a heartbeat.  If he lost 10%, that’s 20 pounds, so he’d weigh 180.

ME: What if he lost 50% of his weight?

TRUMP: Then he’d weigh only 100 pounds.  What’s the point here? What’s that have to do with drug prices?

ME: And if he lost 100% of his weight?  What would he weigh?  

TRUMP: (stares angrily and shakes his head)

ME: And could he lose 200% or 300% of his weight?

TRUMP: You know what, you’re a pain in the ass. A troublemaker.  Who do you report for?  That’s it. I’m outa here.

That exchange did not happen.  I made all that up, of course, but isn’t it curious that not one reporter seems to have questioned Trump about his shoddy math, his mathematical illiteracy? This is a man who drove a half dozen casinos into bankruptcy, after all.

Unfortunately, mathematical illiteracy is not restricted to the current president of the United States.  Most schools do a lousy job of teaching most of our kids math.  Basically our children are taught and tested on math they will never use, which means we do not teach them what they need to know to survive and prosper and enjoy.  Instead of learning how to estimate and to judge probabilities, the difference between correlation and causation, and the paradox of the everpresent ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma,” children learn that they “can’t do math” and-worse yet–to hate math.  

Obviously, it’s tragic and dangerous when the President of the United States is mathematically illiterate, but in fact millions of adults get scammed out of billions of dollars because they don’t understand how numbers work.  They get misled by politicians and hucksters, with disastrous consequences all around.

(Here’s a personal example.  Someone in my own family, in his declining years, was persuaded to sign an expensive and unbreakable 25-year contract to rent solar panels on his home in Florida.  I’ll bet you have your own stories to tell.)

There is a way forward.  We can demand that our schools rethink how they teach mathematics.  And now there’s a terrific road map,  a wonderful new book, “Aftermath.”  In addition to the clever title, it has a subtitle that tells what awaits you:  “The Life-Changing Math That Schools Won’t Teach You.”  (Its official publication date is March 24, but you can pre-order at your local bookstore, B&N and Amazon.)

“Aftermath” is highly readable, clever and entertaining, but also immensely informative.  The author, Ted Dintersmith, is someone my wife and I have known for a dozen or so years.  Joan met Ted through his support of the African Leadership Academy, whose Board she served on; I met him through his support of High Tech High, the wonderful school in San Diego started by an American hero, Larry Rosenstock.  

I’m by no means the only fan of “Aftermath.”. Steve Levitt, the co-author of ‘Freakonomics,’ has this to say: “In the age of AI and data, we badly need to rethink the way we teach math in U.S. schools. Ted Dintersmith has joyfully illustrated how we can pull the subject out of irrelevance in the eyes of our students–a must read for teachers and parents alike.” 

Scratch that: I hope you will buy five or six copies of  “Aftermath” and put them in the hands of your local school board members.

Surviving “The Great Aggression”

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , ,

Your parents and/or your grandparents lived through The Great Depression.

We are now living in “The Great Aggression,” an unprecedented assault on our democratic republic by Donald Trump and his army of thugs, enablers, sycophants, Christian Nationalists, and neo-Nazis.

It seems obvious that these people do not believe in democracy. Full stop.

Unfortunately, at this point, it’s an open question as to whether “The Great Aggression” will do more lasting damage than The Great Depression did.

The Great Depression began on October 28th and 29th, 1929 (“Black Monday” and “Black Tuesday,”) when the New York Stock Exchange fell by 13% and then another 12%, eventually losing the 2026 equivalent of $350 billion, destroying the lives of millions of Americans, and triggering a world-wide depression that lasted for years. In time, the Dow Jones average fell an astonishing 90%.

But problems had been festering for years, with rampant speculation, wildly overvalued stocks, and a growing income gap between the super rich and the rest of America.

“The Great Aggression” began in earnest after Donald J. Trump was inaugurated for the second time on January 20, 2025. However, one could argue that it actually began on January 6, 2021, when Trump urged his followers to overthrow an election he had lost and prevent the peaceful transfer of power.

At this moment, the most visible evidence of “The Great Aggression” is the physically aggressive behavior of thousands of ICE agents, masked, armed, and seemingly eager to engage anyone within reach. ICE and the Border Patrol have more than 3,000 agents in Minneapolis alone, a city whose police force numbers only 600. American citizens have died, including two who, the videos indicate, were murdered. What’s more, thousands of American citizens.have been attacked, arrested, detained, and deported.

But any list of aggressive attacks on accepted standards of decent behavior by Trump and his followers and enablers must also include:

Gutting FEMA, the Consumer Protection Bureau, and the Forest Service;

Breaking up families of those seeking asylum;

Ordering National Guard troops into Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, DC, and elsewhere;

Shutting down USAID, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Radio Free Europe;

“Clawing back” or refusing to distribute money authorized by Congress to support state and local organizations, including public schools;

Renaming the Kennedy Center after himself;

Summarily dismissing most Inspectors General, whose responsibility it is/was to maintain the integrity of federal agencies;

Firing hundreds in the FBI and IRS;

Flouting judicial orders;

Attempting to fire Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve, and bringing charges against Fed Chief Jerome Powell;

Weaponizing the US Justice Department and the FBI with transparently specious judicial actions against New York State’s Attorney General, Letisha James, and former FBI Director James Comey;

Slow-walking of the Congressionally-mandated release of the Epstein Files.

You undoubtedly have your own list.

(And here is more: Brooks/Friedman,

We survived the Great Depression largely because of federal jobs programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Works Progress Administration, and other national efforts that created work opportunities for millions. In other words, the federal government saved us. (World War II also played a part in the economic recovery.)

This time, however, the federal government IS the aggressor. Because it is the source of the problem, help must come from elsewhere.

Help will not be coming from the United States Congress, because it has neutered itself.

Nor is it likely that help will be coming from federal Courts. Even though a huge majority of US District Court judges have ruled against Trump, “his” Supreme Court justices almost always do what he expects them to do.

No, help must come from within, from our own resolve to save our democratic republic from the fascists, the Christian nationalists, the white supremacists, and the just plain greedy bastards who are driving “The Great Aggression.”

Those who lived through the Depression had no way of knowing when or how it would end, but most kept the faith.

Like them, we have no way of knowing where we are in the timeline, or how this will end.

However, we do know several things for certain:

1) If we despair, we lose.

2) If we succumb to “Outrage Fatigue,” we lose.

3) If we dismiss this as a kerfuffle because, after all, our investments are doing well, we lose.

4) If we think that winning the November elections will solve the problem, we are deluding ourselves, because many of Trump’s people are determined to prevent us from voting. As Robert Kagan, a historian and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said on a New Yorker podcast recently, “There is no chance in the world that Donald Trump is gonna allow himself to lose in the 2026 elections, because that will be the end of his ability to wield total power in the United States.”

So HOW do we end “The Great Aggression” and save our country?

  1. Support each other;
  2. Give generously to the ACLU;
  3. Donate to organizations that are working to protect voter rights, such as The League of Women Voters, the Legal Defense Fund, the Brennan Center for Justice, and organizations in your own state (do a Google search) ;
  4. Let leaders like Senator Chris Murphy and Representative Jamie Raskin know that you have their backs;
  5. Write letters, make phone calls, march, and speak out.

Despair, complacency, and silence cannot be options, not if we want to live in a free society.

“As Through a Glass, Darkly”

John Merrow Uncategorized , , ,

“As through a glass, darkly” is a powerful poetic image that has always resonated with me. It conveys the truth that, although we humans convince ourselves that we can see clearly enough to know what’s going on, in fact we are not seeing clearly. Our vision is constrained, limited by our own limitations–not poor vision per se but our own human frailties.

The biblical passage that contains those four words is found in St. Pauls’s First Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 13. His letter includes other memorable phrases that may be familiar, including this:

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

However, the full chapter is not about limited vision. Actually, its subject is charity (and its absence), which seems particularly relevant at this moment in time. It concludes with this memorable line:

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

Note that the phrase is NOT “as through a dark glass.” That’s an important distinction, because it makes it clear that our limited vision is not entirely because of the glass; our own shortcomings, limited wisdom, preconceptions, and biases are also factors in our lack of clarity.

“As through a glass, darkly,” is poetry, as contrasted with the shallow prose of “seeing the world through rose-colored glasses.” That’s naiveté, and nothing more.

I admit that I spent a lot of years seeing “through a glass, darkly,” convinced that I knew what was what, and lacking the humility to consider that my foresight and sight might be limited. Because of my misplaced confidence in my 20/20 vision, I know I fell short in what is the true message of the entire passage, the admonition to act with charity toward all.

Abraham Lincoln knew his bible, of course. His famously brief second inaugural address (delivered just 41 days before his assassination, concludes with this plea:

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Charity seems sorely lacking in our society, particularly in the political world. President Trump seems to have reversed Lincoln’s plea: “With malice toward all (my opponents), with charity for none (except my strongest supporters).” You might want to read President Trump’s first inaugural address and his second, in only for the contrast with President Lincoln.

It seems to me that Trump and his enablers–entirely lacking in humility–have convinced themselves that they can see clearly. Their mantra would be Johnny Nash’s 1971 hit song, “I Can See Clearly Now,” with its shallow confidence.

“I can see clearly now the rain is gone

I can see all obstacles in my way

Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind

It’s gonna be a bright, bright sun shiny day

It’s gonna be a bright, bright sun shiny day.”

Trump and his enablers apparently believe that they can see all the obstacles in their way–and that nothing can stop them.

While the rest of us still see ‘as through a glass, darkly,’ what is clear is that our country has fallen far, and much faster than anyone expected. This experiment in democracy, not even 250 years old, is now in real danger.

And at this point, neither faith, nor hope, nor charity–together or separately–-will rescue us from the encroaching fascism of the second Trump administration.

What’s also required is a commitment to support, financially and otherwise, those leaders and organizations that are actively fighting against Trump and Trumpism.

My own list includes the American Civil Liberties Union, politicians like Jamie Raskin and Chris Murphy, and voter registration organizations across the country.

I’m sure you have your own list. Please keep contributing, fighting, and encouraging others.

Thank you….

Here in its entirety is Chapter 13 of Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians:

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

“PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE”

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , ,

Let’s suppose you decided to run a marathon. How would you prepare for a 26.2 mile running race? You’d probably create a schedule that called for runs of different distances, some of just two or three miles, quite a few 5-10 miles runs, and at least one of about 20 miles. Maybe you’d join a running club or seek out others who were preparing for that particular marathon. You’d think about your diet and your sleep patterns. You might even visit the actual course, just to get a feel for what was to come.

In short, to get ready to run a marathon, you would do whatever seemed necessary to simulate the actual race.

Now imagine that you’ve been cast in a play. How would you prepare? You would set aside time to memorize your lines, and perhaps you would ask a friend or a family member to give you your cues. At some point, you’d join the cast for a reading, then a walk-through, and finally lots of rehearsals. You would need to be aware of your inflection, your facial expressions, and your body language…but also of the team-building process.

In short, to prepare to act on stage, you would do whatever seemed necessary to simulate the actual on-stage performance.

Now let’s think about preparing to live in a free society, a democracy. What would be a sensible approach to preparing young people for a world in which they are generally free to decide what to wear, when to speak up and when to remain silent, what to say, when to eat, how to work with others, and so on? What’s the best way to prepare young people to carefully examine propositions, instead of automatically saying ‘Yes’ or robotically doing what someone tells them to do?

Should they, to get ready to be successful in a democratic society, actually practice democracy while they are growing up?

Right now, we don’t allow children to practice democracy, not in schools anyway. In fact, with the exception of our prison system, public schools are the most undemocratic institutions in our society. Even the branches of the military offer choices to those who enlist, but American public schools tell students (and teachers too, for that matter) where to be and when to be there, when to eat, and what to wear. Most public schools teach students to regurgitate information, not to think critically or to question. Schools are set up to sort, not to individualize. Their basic question about each child is “How Smart Are You?” which they seek to answer by subjecting children to a constant battery of standardized (and most often multiple-choice) tests.

Perhaps our schools are anti-democratic to make it easier for the adults. Perhaps because long ago we adopted the Prussian education model: lectures to children grouped by age. Or perhaps because we adults haven’t had much experience with democracy in our own lives.

Could public schools actually be ‘democratic’ in nature? Could a system of mass education ask a fundamentally different question about each child, “How Are You Smart?” and then adapt the pedagogy to fit a child’s needs, aptitudes, and inclinations?

Not only is it possible; it’s essential going forward, if we are going to rebuild America after Trump.

This is not an argument for letting children do whatever they want, whenever they want. That’s chaos, and no one–not even the kids–wants that. Instead, it calls for thoughtful practice, cooperation, an end to age-segregation, lots of project-based learning, and a focus on social and emotional learning.

Here’s an example that may shock you: Letting students make the rules for classroom behavior. That’s democracy in its purest form, and it can work, although it’s rarely tried. I’d wager to say every elementary school classroom I visited in my 41 years of reporting had a poster listing the rules for classroom behavior. Almost always laminated, these posters generally included obvious rules like “Listen Carefully,” “Follow Directions,” and “Raise Your Hand When You Want to Say Something.”

best 'class rules'

These posters were mass-produced, store-bought, glossy, and laminated. No editing possible, and no thought required. I imagine that on the first day of school, the teacher would read the rules aloud and then point to the poster whenever things got loud or rowdy.

“Now, children, remember Rule 4. No calling out unless I call on you.”

But occasionally the ubiquitous poster would be hand-made, clearly the work of students. If I asked the teacher for an explanation, the answer went something like this:

“On the first day of school I always ask my students what sort of classroom they wanted to spend the year in? What should be the rules? It takes a few days to develop the rules. Sometimes I present alternatives, such as “What if someone knows the answer to a question? Should they just yell it out, or should they raise their hand and wait to be called on?”

Or I might ask them “If one of you has to use the bathroom, should you just get up and walk out of class? Or should we have a signal? And what sort of signal should we use?”

It should not surprise you to learn that the students invariably came up with reasonable rules much like those on the laminated posters: Listen, Be Respectful, Raise Your Hand, Be Kind, and so forth. But there was a difference, teachers and principals told me: When students create the rules, they owned them and were more likely to adhere to them.

Schools can practice democracy in other ways. The adults in charge can give students more say in what they study. Again, not carte blanche but thoughtfully personalized. That means taking the time, early on, to figure out what students are interested in and then using those interests to see that they learn to read with comprehension, work with numbers, speak in public, and work well with others.

Of course, students should not get to make all the decisions about what they’re studying. After all, a central purpose of school is the transmission of knowledge, and so the basics are also part of the deal. Young children need to learn spelling rules (“I before E, except after C”), the multiplication tables, how to divide and carry, and other basics. They need to know that letters have sounds associated with them (i.e., Phonics and Phonemic Awareness). Someone has to teach them that, if you put an E at the end of words like ‘ton,’ the O sound changes from ‘short’ to ‘long.’

That democratic step–giving students power over their learning– will make teaching easier and more enjoyable. When I was a high school English teacher many years ago, my students were supposed to write ‘themes’ based on ‘Macbeth,’ ‘All Quiet on the Western Front,’ and whatever other plays or novels they were told to read. No choices–just rules from on high. However, if I were teaching high school English today, I would try to ask each student to identify three or four things they were curious about. Then I would spend a few minutes with each student, getting that list down to one topic for them to write about. I’d ask for a 1-page ‘memo’ of their thoughts about how they would approach the topic, followed a week or so later by an outline.

When I discovered that some students shared an interest in the same general topic, I would connect them and urge them to share their pursuit of knowledge.

Because I would be looking at drafts of their work, the chances of them using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to write their papers or downloading someone else’s work from the internet would be minimized.

Why not ask students to create a webpage where essays could be shared with students and the community at large? After all, pride of publication is a great motivator!

Math teachers could invite students to create word problems that reflect their own interests. A youngster interested in farming oysters might create problems that provide data about the cost of ‘seed,’ the rate of loss, the time involved in transferring the ‘seed’ as it begins to mature, the labor costs involved in harvesting. What’s the rate of return on investment if…..?

I also believe young people should be deeply involved in figuring out how their efforts will be measured. It makes no sense to wait for end-of-the-year bubble test results or for teachers to arbitrarily say ‘This passes” or “This doesn’t.” Teachers and students should assess progress frequently, take a clear-headed look at the results, and adapt accordingly.

As in a democratic society, choices in schools have consequences, and students could play a role in developing that system as well.

Rebuilding public education after the ravages of the Trump presidency should be recognized as a great opportunity. I am convinced that our rigidly undemocratic school system, with its tracking, constant testing, and bias in favor of the elite, undoubtedly contributed to Trump’s victories in 2016 and 2024. After all, living in an autocracy for 180 days a year, for twelve or thirteen years, seems to have produced millions of adults who are susceptible to, and comfortable with, autocrats and autocracy.

Creating schools that actually practice democracy will produce a more informed and more thoughtful electorate. That’s essential, today more than ever.

Donald Trump, The Epstein Files, and “60 Minutes”

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , , ,

Fans of ‘Sesame Street” will remember this song:

“One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn’t belong. Can you say which thing is not like the others before I finish my song?”

On “Sesame Street,” three vegetables and a fruit might appear on the screen, or perhaps three birds and a fish. The challenge for pre-schoolers is to identify the outlier, the object that clearly did not belong in the group.

However, in the case of Donald Trump, convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and “60 Minutes,” the three do belong together because the curious, controversial, and largely unexamined relationship betweenTrump and Epstein stretches back more than 35 years. Recently “60 Minutes” had a 90-minute interview with Mr. Trump, the perfect opportunity to ask him why the Epstein Files haven’t been released.

So, of course, any journalist worth his/her salt would have to ask Trump about the Epstein Files. Except the “60 Minutes” Correspondent Nora O’Donnell did not.

O’Donnell asked Mr. Trump more than 70 questions, several of them more than once, but she never asked Trump about the Epstein Files.

How newsworthy are the Epstein Files? Well, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson shut down the House on September 19th and sent members home for more than six weeks, rather than risk a floor vote on releasing the Epstein Files. He has refused to swear in a duly-elected Representative from Arizona because he knows she will vote to release the files, and that might be enough to pass the resolution.

Johnson is, of course, protecting President Trump. But was O’Donnell protecting him? And, if so, why?

It’s possible that she and her bosses at “60 Minutes” agreed in advance not to bring up the Epstein Files. We may never know, but one passage in the extended interview indicates the existence of some sort of agreement. What do you make of this interchange, toward the end of the session?

NORAH O’DONNELL: Do I have the opportunity to ask you two more questions?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: If you want, if it helps–

NORAH O’DONNELL: Okay. Okay. Two more questions–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: That means they’ll treat me more fairly if I do– I want to get– It’s very nice, yeah. Now is good. Okay. Uh, oh. These might be the ones I didn’t want. I don’t know. Okay, go ahead.

“These might be the ones I didn’t want,” Mr. Trump blurted out. Is it reasonable to infer that CBS and Trump’s people had an agreement?

A few minutes later, this interchange took place:

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I can’t say, because– I can’t say– I’m not concerned. I don’t– I’d rather not have you ask the question. But I let you ask it. You just came to me and you said, “Can I ask another question?” And I said, yeah. This is the question–

NORAH O’DONNELL: And you answered–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I don’t mind. Did I let you do it? I coulda walked away. I didn’t have to answer this question. I’m proud to answer the question.

It’s important to note that “Off limits” is not inherently wrong. An interviewer might agree in advance to not ask questions about the subject’s personal life, marriage, children, and so forth. But under no circumstances should a journalist ever agree to avoid controversial (and potentially embarrassing) subjects.

If that means not getting the interview, so be it. And maybe that becomes a story in itself!

The full transcript of the Trump-O’Donnell interview consists of 18,567 words, of which I’d estimate that at least 15,000 were uttered by the President. He blusters, he talks over O’Donnell, and he lies about the rate of inflation, the 2020 Presidential election, and the wars he has stopped, among other things. She doesn’t fight him on these, but that’s more understandable and even forgivable than not asking about the Epstein Files, because Trump is a steamroller who ignores whatever he chooses to.

In the interview Trump mentions former President Joe Biden 42 times, often modifying his name with the adjective ‘worst.’ That obsession probably deserved a question from O’Donnell, but that didn’t happen either.

(Incidentally, Laura Ingraham, not a journalist but a Fox commentator with her own nightly program, recently interviewed Mr. Trump. Again, no mention of Jeffrey Epstein or the Epstein Files, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she agreed to whatever conditions Trump’s people demanded.)

I learned the hard way about interviewing politicians. It was late in 1974, and I had just been given my own program on National Public Radio. Because I was focusing on education, my producer suggested an hour about Pell Grants, the federal government’s program of financial assistance for low income college students. “Interview Senator Claiborne Pell, the force behind the Pell Grants,” he suggested, and so I called up the Senator’s office to request an interview. “Sure,” an aide told me. “Just send over the questions.” Because I hadn’t studied journalism and was new to Washington, I didn’t know enough to refuse that request. I wrote up some questions and faxed them over. When I showed up to interview the distinguished Democrat, he simply read off the answers to my questions. I’m not sure he ever even made eye contact!

Here’s the lesson: whenever the person you want to interview wants to keep some subjects off limits, or wants your questions in advance, the only response is some polite form of NFW.

“60 Minutes” was once the flagship of CBS News and (with the PBS NewsHour and “Frontline”) a gold standard of American journalism, but it seems to have sold its soul.

The so-called ‘Main Stream Media’ has lots to answer for in its failure to hold (first Candidate and then President) Trump to account for his lies, and in its failure to question the mental acuity of President Biden. This is, I think, the final straw. “60 Minutes,” RIP…..

It’s Never Too Late to Say “Thank You”

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , ,

When you finish reading this paragraph, I hope you will close your eyes and think about the teachers who made you a better person or helped shape the future direction of your life.  Picture in your mind’s eye your old classrooms and what happened there.  What did those teachers do to make you feel smart, special, safe, or valued? Did they believe in you when you were doubting yourself?  Or refuse to let you do substandard work? 

I did this exercise when writing an earlier draft of this essay, and I promise you it’s a rewarding experience.  

Please do it now.

OK, now I have a question: Have you thanked those teachers, either in person, in a letter, or on the telephone?  I ask because thanking your special teachers personally will mean more to them than you can begin to imagine. It will lift their spirits, rejuvenate them, and give them a renewed sense that what they spent their lives doing did matter.  

If it’s too late to make a personal connection because they have shuffled off this mortal coil, then you might consider writing an appreciation and sharing it with friends and family members.  Submit it to your local newspaper, or post it on Facebook or a blog.  Just get the word out there, because that will inspire others to express their own gratitude.

I want to share a story about a former student who called me, out of the blue, a few months ago.  His call could not have come at a better time, because 2025 has not been a particularly good year for me: Brain cancer killed my youngest brother this Spring, a handful of family members whom I dearly love are struggling with significant health issues, Joan and I have lost some good friends to death and dementia, and our country seems to be sinking deeper and deeper in crude bigotry and crypto-fascism.

One day this June I was riding my bike in a hilly part of western Massachusetts when my phone rang.  I normally don’t answer the phone when I’m biking, and I’m pretty sure that I would have ignored the call if I had been coasting down a hill. However, I was approaching a very steep hill that I dreaded climbing, and so I jumped at the chance to take a break.

Hello, I said, tentatively.  “Is this John Merrow,” a man asked?  Who’s calling, I asked suspiciously.  “My name is Paul (redacted). Mr. Merrow was my high school English teacher 60 years ago, and I’m trying to reach him, so I can say ‘Thank you.’”

After I admitted to being John Merrow, we talked for about 15 minutes.  He told me that I had set him on a track to become an avid reader. How, I asked?

“One time your assignment was to analyze some poetry,” Paul told me, “And, because I was kind of a wise-ass, I wrote a careful analysis of the lyrics of a popular folk song, Pete Seeger’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone.”  I expected you to get angry because I hadn’t done the assignment, but you went out of your way to praise me.  I think you even read it aloud to the class.”

And Paul, until then a self-described indifferent student, became a voracious reader. He told me that during his four years of college he read the complete works of Dosevesky, Hesse,  Steinbeck, Salinger, Orwell, Tolstoy and Nietzsche.

“Want to know how I ended up in your class,” he asked?  

Before I share that story, you need to know about the high school where I taught for two years, 1964-65 and 1965-66.  Like most large high schools back then, Schreiber High in Port Washington, NY, was rigidly tracked, levels One through Five.  As an untrained rookie teacher, I wasn’t allowed anywhere near the One and Two level students, who were, in truth, the students the people in power cared most about.  Their parents were probably professionals with multiple degrees, and so these privileged kids were on track to attend prestigious colleges. 

Most of the Threes had a shot at college, while the Fours were headed straight to work or the military, and the small number of Fives, many with severe handicapping conditions, were basically being warehoused.

At Schreiber, I taught five classes–125 students –of 10th, 11th, or 12th grade English, mostly Threes and maybe one or two classes of Fours.  

By the way, I cannot imagine a better gig than teaching Threes and Fours. Those young people, who felt the opposite of entitled, responded eagerly to any and all positive attention, including challenges.  

Teaching Threes and Fours had other benefits: As long as my kids read a couple of Shakespeare’s plays and weren’t disruptive,  administrators paid no attention to what we did in my classroom. It wasn’t that they trusted me; they really didn’t care.

**That meant we could put MacBeth and Lady MacBeth on trial for first degree murder, with students (in every role) ‘testifying under oath.’  And so we did that. 

**That meant I could invite the kids to set the poems we were reading to music, which they did.  I still remember a trio/quartet performing Edna St Vincent Millay’s “Renascence.” 

**That meant I could encourage my students to “elevate the quality of the bathroom graffiti” by erasing the scatological slurs and replacing them with lines from TS Eliot, John Donne, Robert Frost, and others–and we did that too.

**That meant I could create a stand-alone unit of anti-war poetry–during the growing  VietNam war protest movement–to introduce my students to Wilfred Owen, Stephen Spender, Rupert Brooke, and Siegfried Sassoon. 

**That meant I could challenge my kids to write and stage their own play, which they did. You can read about it here.

Back to Paul’s story: Apparently he was a Four when he got called into the Guidance Councillor’s office. “My father came with me, and when the Councillor said that I should either drop down to level Five or transfer to trade school and become an electrician or a plumber, my Dad erupted.  ‘Bullshit!,’ he shouted, as he slammed his fist on her desk.  ‘My son is going to college! I want him in college level classes!’ 

“And that’s how I ended up in your class,” he concluded.

He told me that he graduated from college with 3 majors: History, Political Science, and Sociology.  “I’m pretty sure I was the only student carrying three majors.”  After college Paul worked for Xerox for a few years before starting his own financial advising company.

Paul’s story about his Dad proves another point: Thanking our teachers is necessary but not sufficient.  For more on parents, please read Billy Collins’ superb poem, “The Lanyard.”  

Have you thanked other teachers, I wanted to know?  “Yes, my sixth grade teacher,” he replied. “I called him years ago and thanked him. This was about a year before he passed away.”

The list of teachers who changed my life for the better includes Catherine Peterson, the First Grade teacher who taught me and most of my siblings to read–and to love reading; two high school English teachers, William Sullivan and Roland McKinley; a writing teacher at Dartmouth, Alexander Laing; an English professor at Indiana University, Donald Gray; and David K. Cohen, my doctoral thesis advisor at Harvard.  I thanked the first and last in person and another, Professor Gray, by letter, but I never had the opportunity to tell the others how much they meant to me. 

By the way, Saying “Thank You” feels really good.  It’s satisfying to close a door left open from your past.  Try it!

I don’t think I will ever forget how being thanked by a former student made me feel. My spirits were lifted, and my troubles disappeared. Of course, Paul’s phone call couldn’t bring back my brother Jim or help my ailing family members recover, but hearing from Paul—60+ years after I taught him—made me feel that I had made a difference. There’s no better feeling.

Teaching has always been–often literally–a thankless job, but it doesn’t have to, and shouldn’t, be that way. So, please, express your gratitude.

Celebrating Susan Stamberg

John Merrow Uncategorized ,

Susan Stamberg, who died on October 16th at the age of 87, was rightly known as National Public Radio’s “Founding Mother.”  She was for many years the heart and soul of NPR, as the Host of the network’s flagship program, “All Things Considered,” from 19732-1986. She was also a warm, funny, and generous soul with lots of fans who had no idea how to spell her name, as the following story illustrates.

Some background: I joined NPR sometime in 1974, hosting a weekly program about education. Back then, NPR didn’t have much in the way of programming, basically just ATC, “Voices in the Wind,” and a daily catch-all series called “Options.”  I was new to Washington, hired by a think tank to do something about education. My boss told me I could spend up to $10,000 promoting dialogue about education, and so I knocked on the door at NPR, which was largely unknown.  Ten grand was real money in those days, and NPR let me bring a couple of experts into the studio to explain school finance.  Frankly, the ensuing two-part program was duller than dishwater, but NPR–desperate to fill the airtime–said they loved it and asked me to host more programs. 

Before long, I had a weekly gig and an office, which—lucky me–was across the hall from Susan.  Her office looked out on M Street, big windows and lots of light, and my windowless room was across the hall.  Needing light and air, I kept my door open, while Susan, being Susan, kept hers open so she could shmooze. Before long I sort of got to know her, her great laugh and her warmth, just by inadvertent but unavoidable eavesdropping…

You need to know that radio listeners are a special breed, as I quickly learned.  For one thing, they write letters.  After 8 years at NPR, I worked in television, and I know that I received at least 20 or 30 times more mail in those 8 years than in my 31-year TV career.   I believe that’s because radio listeners cannot see whoever’s speaking and so must use their imagination to fill in the blanks.  In any case, they write letters….

Often, they don’t get the name right, and so every week I would get letters addressed to “John Murrow,” “John Merrill,” “John Morton,” and so on.

I was working late one night, and, when I left, I noticed lots of little pieces of paper scotch-taped to Susan’s door.  Curious, I took a close look at what turned out to be mail addressed to her: “Susan Steinberg,” “Susan Stoneberg,” “Susan Stoneman,” “Susan Stanberg,” and so on.

The next morning, on a whim, I knocked on her door and proposed a contest: “Let’s see who gets more incorrect versions of our name over the next six months or so,” I suggested.

“And the winner gets lunch…and chooses the restaurant,” she responded.

Game on.

(At some point Ira Flatow, NPR’s Science Correspondent, became aware of our contest and asked to be included. We didn’t even consider letting him in because we knew he’d win in a walk.)

Don’t hold me to the exact numbers, but I won.  Susan had around 20 incorrect versions of Susan Stamberg, but I had more than 30.  I won because a few listeners got my last name right but thought my first name was Jim, or Bob, or Joe….some common name.

My favorite, however, was a letter addressed to “John Moron.”  It probably shouldn’t have counted because it was clearly not an accident.  I know that because the letter began, “Dear John Moron, You are an asshole,” and went downhill from there. 

Did Susan take me out to lunch? I don’t remember, unfortunately.

Since you’ve read this far, would you like to know how “Morning Edition” got its name?  That was another contest, this one involving the 40 or 50 people who worked at NPR. “Drive time” was when lots of people listened to the radio, and NPR realized that it needed a program for the morning commuters, to complement ATC. One morning in 1979 President Frank Mankiewicz called all of us together.  “We’re going to start a morning edition of All Things Considered,” he said, “And whoever comes up with the best name for this morning edition will get a prize.”  He went on, talking about how a morning edition of ATC would attract a big audience, etc etc, and challenging us to come up with a clever, catchy name for this new morning edition of All Things Considered.

I have no idea how many people suggested other names, but somewhere along the way someone realized that the best name for a morning edition of All Things Considered was “Morning Edition.”  To the best of my knowledge, no one won Frank’s contest.

Final anecdote: One morning Susan popped her head into my office, smiled, and said, “I think we’re gonna make it.”  Why, I wanted to know.  “Well,” she said, “I was at my son’s Little League baseball game yesterday, cheering my head off, and someone near me asked, ‘Are you Susan Stamberg?’ That means real people are listening.”

They were, for sure, because Susan Stamberg was worth paying attention to.  She was one of a kind, a national treasure and a good person.  In her honor, please keep on supporting NPR and public broadcasting generally.

Don’t Blame Trump. It’s on Reagan (and us)

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , ,

I will start with the fun stuff, some grist for dinner and cocktail party conversations about the cost of going to college these days.  Then I will try to connect these dots with six interconnected points: 1) The dramatic increase in the number of colleges shutting down; 2) The approaching ‘Enrollment Cliff;’ 3) The growing number of colleges offering three year Bachelor’s Degrees;  4) Increased questioning whether college is worthwhile;  5) President Trump’s attacks on colleges and universities; and, finally, 6) How much if not all of this can be traced back to the policies of Ronald Reagan. 

THE FUN STUFF: Two hundred years ago, 1825, it cost less than $200 to attend Yale; this fall it will cost more than $90,500. This includes tuition of $69,900 and a combined cost of housing and meal plans at $20,650.  (Simply adjusting for inflation, that bill for $200 would be less than $7,000 today, in case you’re wondering whether the cost of college has gone up a wee bit more than other parts of the economy!)

My brother sent me this from the 1825 Yale student handbook;  he also shared it with a grandnephew who is a Sophomore at Yale:

A clever friend of mine reacted with this additional information about life in America 200 years ago: “Those ‘good ole days’ meant a life expectancy of 40 years, an 25-30% infant mortality rate, an annual income of $500-600, and a good bath twice a year, once in the spring and another in the fall.”

A FEW FACTS AND FIGURES: We have nearly 6,000 colleges and universities, both 4-year and 2-year. About 1,900 of these are public institutions, another 1,750 are private and nonprofit, and an estimated 2,275 are for-profit. 

More than 60% of today’s high school graduates enroll in college.  In the fall of 2024, approximately 19.28 million undergraduate students were enrolled across the United States. Unfortunately, most of them will probably not graduate; in fact, nearly 20% will drop out during their freshman year. 

Dropping out is a significant, if largely ignored, issue: Nationally, more than 44 million American adults have some college credits, no degree, and, perhaps, student loan debt weighing them down. 

It’s also worth noting that American  higher education generally opposed the GI Bill, which allowed millions to attend college, which jump-started the American middle class, and which created a post-war economic boom that lasted for generations.  

Another important piece of background information: While most European countries created independent scientific research institutions after World War II, the United States government forged partnerships with colleges and universities.  Eventually, the Feds subsidized research at hundreds of American universities to the tune of billions and billions of dollars every year. For years the partnership worked, and the scientific breakthroughs are legendary. 

However, there is a down side, because, as the perverse Golden Rule cliché has it, “Whoever Has the Gold Rules.”   Every research university has become dependent on those dollars, giving the federal government a powerful hold over higher education.  This is, of course, playing out in front of us right now.

Now to the business at hand, my 6 interconnected ideas:

1) COLLEGE CLOSINGS: As noted, nearly 6,000 colleges and universities today, but in 2011, we had more than 7,000.  Between 2008 and 2024, two or three colleges closed or merged every month. Today, however, colleges are now closing at an increasing rate–some say it’s one every week!  The causes are myriad:  Enrollment continues to decline due to natural population trends, operating costs continue to rise, colleges don’t seem to be willing or able to lower their tuition, and young people–concerned about debt–are increasingly skeptical about the value of higher education.  

Late in 2024 the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia estimated that up to 80 colleges could close this academic year because of financial distress caused by a worst-case-scenario drop in enrollment.  While for-profit colleges once drove closure rates, since 2020 traditional private colleges have been closing at a higher rate. The closures have affected the lives of more than 50,000 students, thousands of faculty and staff, and the economies of the communities where these institutions are located.

2) THE ENROLLMENT CLIFF: This term refers to changes in the size of the traditional college-going population, 18-24.  The so-called ‘Cliff’ that’s fast approaching is generally attributed to a drop in fertility during the Great Recession. “Between 2008 and 2011, the U.S. birth rate plummeted, and despite an economic recovery facilitated within the next decade, did not bounce back. As a result, the college-age population was reduced, and enrollment figures fell from 19.9 million in 2017 to 19.1 million in 2024. Within this time period, public 4-year colleges maintained the most enrollment, totaling 7.8 million students in 2020. Demonstrating the tip of the enrollment cliff, this number dropped to 7.6 million by 2023. Along with declines in demographics, the number of prospective college students may have been impacted by the recent COVID-19 pandemic, in which the switch to online learning led to an additional 1.1 million high school dropouts. Additionally, Americans may be further inclined to defer pursuing higher education on account of the exceedingly high costs – and subsequent debts – incurred from attending college in the United States.”

The Enrollment Cliff gets steeper when one considers the dramatic drop in foreign students. Two years ago, about 6% of all US college students came from foreign countries, more than 1.1 million (tuition-paying) students.  This year those numbers are dropping.  About half of American colleges anticipate big drops, because the Trump Administration proposes to limit foreign enrollment to 10-15% of a college’s student body.  

Meanwhile, a record number of American students have decided to study elsewhere; granted, it’s a small number, but it’s a trend.  

While it’s true that college enrollment is up slightly this fall, this is apparently the last gasp, and tough times will soon be upon most institutions.

3) THREE-YEAR BACHELOR’S DEGREES:  If you attended college, you spent at least four years earning your degree, but that’s changing.  “The first three-year degree programs in the country—online programs at Brigham Young University–Idaho and Ensign College in Utah—gained approval just two years ago. Since then, the number of shortened degree programs has expanded exponentially, with nearly 60 colleges nationwide now offering or working toward developing such programs.” 

That’s the lead paragraph of a fascinating article in Inside Higher Education, and I hope you will click on this link to read the entire piece.

When you do, you will discover that almost all of the accrediting agencies (major power-brokers in higher education) are now willing to recognize the 3-year Bachelor’s Degree, something they have resisted for years.  Four years and 120 credits have been part of the landscape forever, but just because something is normal does not make it right or inevitable.  The 3-year program will require 90 credits, so you can say goodbye to electives, of course. However, if a student is focused on a career, why not push through as fast as possible?  Recently a friend told us about his grand-niece, who is majoring in ‘Golf Tournament Management’ at a university in Kentucky.  She has to complete internships at three golf clubs during the summers, but why should she have to spend four years on campus?  

The same logic applies to graphic design, physical therapy, hospitality management, and cyber-security, and a host of other fields. 

It’s also worth noting that higher education systems in some other countries have embraced the 3-year Bachelor’s Degree.  

This trend is evidence that higher education is in survival mode, on high alert, perhaps because of #4, below.

4) QUESTIONING COLLEGE:  It’s apparent that many young people–and their parents–are questioning the value of higher education in the United States; although 79 percent of Americans believed it was more or equally as important for people today to have a college degree in order to have a successful career, only six percent said that everyone in the U.S. could access a quality, affordable education after high school if they wanted it. In addition, current students have been vocal about the negative impacts of attending higher education, with over half considering dropping out of school due to emotional stress. College dropouts tend to be worse off than when they started due to high levels of debt, and student debt is also a major factor on the financial decisions that Americans can make after college.

5) DONALD TRUMP: He is very much part of higher education’s problem, because he’s not a fan of higher education, and, if you have read this far, I am certain you are familiar with Trump’s attacks on Harvard and other leading private institutions, or his forcing the resignations of the president of the University of Virginia, George Mason University, and others.  Under the banners of ‘fighting DEI’ and ‘ending anti-semitism,’ Trump and his allies have seemingly brought most of higher education to heel.  

To some extent, higher education has brought some of this on itself, with its embrace of ‘safe spaces’ and ‘micro-aggression’ and ‘identity politics,’ all of which seem to have made many campuses places where it’s dangerous to talk about controversial ideas and even riskier to actually hold divergent views.  

Trump’s so-called ‘cure’ may be worse than the disease, unfortunately, but the roots of higher education’s problems can be traced back to another politician who was famously hostile toward higher education, the Great Communicator himself.

6) THE LEGACY OF RONALD REAGAN

If you needed financial help to go to college before Ronald Reagan became president, the chances are you received most of what you needed as a grant, not a loan.  From the right-leaning publication, The Intercept: “For decades, there had been enthusiastic bipartisan agreement that states should fund high-quality public colleges so that their youth could receive higher education for free or nearly so. That has now vanished. In 1968, California residents paid a $300 yearly fee to attend Berkeley, the equivalent of about $2,000 now. Now tuition at Berkeley is $15,000, with total yearly student costs reaching almost $40,000. Student debt, which had played a minor role in American life through the 1960s, increased during the Reagan administration and then shot up after the 2007-2009 Great Recession as states made huge cuts to funding for their college systems.”

Here’s more on that point.

And from The New York Times in late 1981: Since taking office last January, the Reagan Administration has set out to curtail the cost of Federal student assistance and to alter the philosophy as well. ”I do not accept the notion that the Federal Government has an obligation to fund generous grants to anybody that wants to go to college,” said Budget Director David A. Stockman in Congressional testimony in September. ”It seems to me that if people want to go to college bad enough, then there is opportunity and responsibility on their part to finance their way through the best they can.”

Most of us have lived through a sea change, going from a time when we collectively believed that investing in higher education paid social dividends that far outweighed the costs, to a time when the federal government and all state governments have reduced their support.  Now, the operating philosophy seems to be, “Hey, you want an education? Pay for it yourself!”

I don’t know if anyone has a solution for higher education’s problems, but I am certain that “education reform” is NOT the answer.   I see higher education’s challenges as part of a larger picture: our declining commitment to almost anything ‘public,’ such as public transportation, public libraries, public spaces, public schools, public health, public safety, and on and on.  

Absent a strong commitment to the common good, coupled with disgraceful–and growing–income inequality, our national experiment in “a more perfect union” seems doomed.

“A Third of Teachers Are Terrorists”

John Merrow Uncategorized , , , ,

The US has nearly 3.6 million K-12 teachers, and another 1.5 million college teachers. One-third of 5.1 million is 1.7 million. Who knew that we have 1,700,000 terrorists in our classrooms!

I certainly had no idea things were that bad, and I’m kicking myself for not knowing. After all, I spent more than 67 years in American classrooms, as a student, a teacher, a parent, and a reporter. I must have interviewed and maybe even socialized with thousands of these terrorists, and I didn’t have a clue.

My 4th grade teacher yelled a lot and banged desks (and some ears too), so I supposed she “terrorized” us, but I don’t think that’s what the accuser had in mind.

I can think of one other possible example of ‘terrorism’ in the classroom: My 10th grade English teacher, Mr. McKinley, would deliberately make mistakes when he wrote stuff on the blackboard and then erupt in (faux) fury if we failed to catch his flubs. Somehow, I don’t think that’s what the accuser had in mind.

Are you questioning the accuracy of the accusation? OK, it came from President Donald Trump’s buddy Steve Bannon, who opened his mouth while in Arizona to pay tribute to Charlie Kirk, the assassinated leader of Turning Point. The podcast host was saying to Bannon that Kirk’s ideas about marrying early and having lots of children were actually not popular with young people, which prompted Bannon to blame teachers for brain-washing their students. Here’s what he said:

“…..those kids — look, from kindergarten all the way up, they are essentially, you know, a third of the teachers are terrorists that are trying to form them.”

Predictably, the right-wing podcaster didn’t challenge Bannon’s wild accusation or even ask him what he meant by ‘terrorist,’ so I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that Bannon meant that teachers were teaching values that Bannon disapproves of, like tolerance and cooperation. I have seen lots of teachers work hard to inculcate such values, and, if that’s ‘terrorism,’ I approve.

Mocking Bannon is a woefully insufficient response, however, because his blatant teacher-bashing is part of the right wing’s persistent, harsh, and (unfortunately) often successful campaign to bring down public education.

And Bannon’s not even a field general in this war. He’s clearly outranked by Oklahoma’s State Superintendent of Education Ryan Walters, who in January reacted to violence at the Mardi Gras in New Orleans. You may recall that, early on New Year’s Day an army veteran carrying an ISIS flag drove his pickup truck down Bourbon Street and killed 14 people and injured dozens more before the police killed him. It was labeled a possible terrorist incident, prompting Mr. Walters to go off: “We also have to take a look at how are these terrorists coming from people that live in America. …. You have schools that are teaching kids to hate their country, that this country is evil. You have the teachers’ unions pushing this on our kid (sic).”

Mocking the hyperbole of school critics like Walters and Bannon is ineffective, because culture warriors are immune to humor. Instead, they are seriously opposed to just about everything that some of us believe is in the public interest, such as public education, public transportation, public libraries, public parks, public health, and so on. They recognize that public education is a cornerstone of our democracy, and they are going after it, with sledgehammers and other implements of destruction, including lies and absurd accusations from the likes of Bannon and Walters.

(They are anti-public-everything, acronym APE. Don’t be an APE!)

Early in September, the New York Times reporter Dana Goldstein did a deep dive into the impact of vouchers, education savings accounts, tax credit scholarships, and other programs that divert funds from public schools to non-public schools. The entire article is well worth your time.

The number of students whose parents are using these programs has doubled since 2019, nearly all in Republican-led states. Five years ago, only about 20,000 students had education savings accounts (ESA), which allow deducting any ‘educational’ expense from one’s taxes; today, more than 500,000 families have ESA’s.

In the past, eligibility for most of these programs was means-tested because the stated goal was to help low income families. That’s changed, and in the new programs, any family can take advantage, regardless of income.

This ain’t cheap. Indiana’s program, for example, is costing more than $600 million a year, dollars that might have gone to public education.

Joining the 14 states with voucher-type programs is your federal government, because the “Big Beautiful Bill” passed by Congress earlier this year includes a $5,000 voucher.

Do these voucher programs work? The evidence is mixed, at best.

Are they popular with voters? Here the answer is crystal clear: NO! In the 17 opportunities that voters have had to weigh in on vouchers since 1970, they’ve said NO, including three votes in Republican-led states in 2024.

For a critical view of what’s going on, read David Osborne’s analysis here.

If you support public education, begin by thanking teachers. Take a minute to picture the teachers who changed your lives for the better…and then to ask yourselves if you ever said ‘Thank you’ to those women and men. If it’s too late to connect directly with them, you might write something about them and share it with others.

That’s only the first step. Consider attending school board meetings, perhaps even running for election to your local school board. You might join the parent-teacher organization, or volunteer as a tutor. You might contribute supplies, or help with school fund-raising efforts. Let your elected officials at all levels know that you support public education. If you’re a public school parent, move beyond ‘involvement’ to ‘engagement,’ by getting to know your children’s teachers.

(I’ve written about this in more detail in “Addicted to Reform: A 12-Step Program to Rescue Public Education,” which is available at most public libraries, some bookstores, and Amazon. It’s reviewed positively here and negatively here.)

It’s not pie-in-the-sky idealism to believe that a strong public education system is the road to equality and citizenship, or that the real safeguard of democracy is education. Those insights came from FDR and Martin Luther King, Jr., among others.

Please make certain that you are registered to vote, and that your friends and neighbors are as well. This attack on public education is serious, folks. Don’t take our democracy for granted.