A gem from Garrison Keillor’s daily website “A Writer’s Almanac”:
Today is the birthday of women’s rights reformer Lucretia (Coffin) Mott, born in Nantucket, Massachusetts, in 1793. She went to public school in Boston for two years, and then, when she was 13, she enrolled in a Quaker boarding school near Poughkeepsie, New York. After two years there, she was hired on as an assistant, and then a teacher. She quit when she found out that she was being paid less than half of what the male teachers all made, simply because she was a woman; the experience sparked her first interest in women’s rights. In 1811, she married fellow teacher James Mott, and the newlyweds moved to Philadelphia. Ten years later, she became a minister in the Society of Friends, as the Quaker church was called, and she was a popular public speaker on matters of religion and social reform.
She was active in the abolitionist movement when she met Elizabeth Cady Stanton on a ship to London; both were on their way to the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840. They were attending as delegates, but found that the convention would not let them speak because they were women; they were even seated in a separate area, behind a curtain. The two women resolved then and there to organize a convention for women’s rights as soon as they returned home. It took eight years, but eventually they did: the Seneca Falls (New York) Convention of 1848.
Mott wrote, “The world has never yet seen a truly great and virtuous nation, because in the degradation of women, the very fountains of life are poisoned at their source.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It took 71 years from the Seneca Falls Convention (1848) to the ratification of the 19th Amendment (1920), giving women the right to vote. Let’s not take that long to put a stake in the heart of Education Disruption and Deform!
Oops. I meant to write “72 years.”
What can we expect from an English teacher? 🙂
I really did mean to write 72. I was debating between giving the number of years between the convention and the passage of the amendment (71) or the ratification (72). In my haste, I ended up with a little of each. LOL.
As I approach 70 years of age, I find I am lucky to say or do what I intend on the first try. I like the explanation that there is just so much information floating around in our heads that retrieving the most accurate piece is not as easy as when there was much less in there.
Yes! This too, sadly! I like to think that it’s because there’s too much in there, but I suspect that it has to do with some creeping wear on the equipment between the ears!
I read an article in the Chicago Tribune this morning about a young man/teenager who is autistic and nonverbal. It turns out that there is a lot more upstairs than anyone suspected. He taught himself to read and picked up algebra from listening to his father tutor his sister. He now communicates by I pad and spelling board. Several years ago while I was substituting in this same district where this young man lives, I remember working with a boy in an elementary program who was autistic and nonverbal. I forget what the exercise was, but he seemed to be bored with it and was making choices/pointing in a way that said to me, “Give me a break!” I called him out on it when he randomly chose an answer that I knew he knew. He looked directly at me as if to say, “You noticed!” We have so much to learn!
But one has reason to expect that the English teacher will freaking proof his posts before hitting the Send button! Sorry about that!
Nah. As I said, too much competing information. 🙂
Diane, thanks to your recent references to A Writer’s Almanac, I have subscribed to the daily email. It is a wonderful balance to the news of the day. Happy new year!
Thank you. Enjoy!