Today the 3rd and 4th grade students at Clear Spring will be assembling a mobile that they started two weeks ago using symbols of our nation cut from wood. They have been studying elections in the class rooom and conducting polls to determine the fate of the election and our nation. The 1st and 2nd grade students will carve writing pens to begin their writing of cursive. Yesterday in the classroom, the teacher, Jenny, had laid a rope in an easy cursive scroll so they could follow the pattern with their feet. The whole body is important in learning.

On the same subject, I was challenged by a reader for interjecting my political commentary into the blog, and I would like to remind my readers that the hands are crucial, not only to learning but to how we understand each other. Years ago, Socrates had informed his followers that those who worked with their hands should be the slave class, and that it would even be denigrating for women of the citizen or free class to do such things as sewing, cooking, gardening or knitting. The hands and their use were proposed as the dividing line between social classes. So today, we have white collar and blue collar. And both are hurting.

When the US was founded we had two forms of slavery, indentured servitude affecting the Scotch-Irish, and pure purchased and sold, hijacked from Africa, body and soul slavery of blacks. Racism was promoted in the early colonies as a strategy to divide and conquer. By interjecting the concept of white supremacy, and fostering a disdain for blacks among indentured servants, natural alliances were prevented that would have disrupted control by the ruling elite. Those alliances that would have arisen from social class and shared poverty have been effectively eliminated by the promotion of racism and fear by those who would do anything possible to keep power and control out of the hands of the people.

Do I sound like a radical, revolutionary? I have always been one. If that offends you, come back in about 30 days. Maybe then the dust will have settled and we will still be challenged to put our hands to work for our nation and our children's future.