At the beginning of December, Jan Resseger wrote about why President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda is so important. At the moment, it’s prospects are dim,due to theintransigenceofSenator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Senator Manchin drives a Maserati and owns a yacht, but his state is very poor and needs the help that Build Back Better offers.
Jan Resseger describes the hoary English tradition—which we inherited—of expecting the poor to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. This is apparently what Senator Manchin believes in, as he fears that the poor will become “spoiled” by too much government help.
She writes:
Right now, the U.S. House of Representatives has passed the Build Back Better Bill which represents a radically different philosophy: President Biden’s commitment to helping children whose families live in poverty instead of punishing their parents. The U.S. Senate is negotiating its version, which many hope to see passed by the end of 2021.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explains why a single reform in the Child Tax Credit—making it fully refundable for families with very low income—is for America’s children the most important element in Build Back Better: “Making the full Child Tax Credit available for families with low or no earnings in a year, often called making it ‘fully refundable,’ is expected to generate historic reductions in child poverty compared to what it would have been otherwise. Before the Rescue Plan made the full Child Tax credit fully available in 2021, 27 million children in families with low or no income in a year received less than the full credit or no credit at all.” In the American Rescue relief bill last spring, Congress made three significant changes in the Child Tax Credit: raising the maximum Child Tax Credit from $2,000 to $3,600 per child through age 5, and $3,000 for children age 6-17; allowing families to receive a Child Tax Credit for 17-year-olds; and making the Child Tax Credit fully refundable for the year 2021. The House version of the Build Back Better Bill extends the first two provisions only through 2022, but the House version permanently makes the Child Tax Credit fully refundable:
“In the absence of the full refundability provision, the first two of those changes would lift an estimated 543,000 children above the poverty line, reducing the child poverty rate by 5 percent… But the two changes plus full refundability stand to raise 4.1 million children above the poverty line and cut the child poverty rate by more than 40 percent. In other words, the full refundability feature makes the expansion nearly eight times as effective in reducing child poverty.” “Until last spring’s COVID relief bill, many children had been excluded because “their families’ incomes were too low. That included roughly half of all Black and Latino children and half of children who live in rural communities… This upside-down policy gave less help to the children who needed it most. The (COVID) Rescue Plan temporarily fixed this policy by making the tax credit fully refundable for 2021. Build Back Better, in one of its signature achievements, would make this policy advance permanent.” (emphasis in the original)
In a new report last Friday, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities warnsabout what we can expect if the U.S. Senate fails to pass the Build Back Better Bill by the end of December, 2021 and allows to expire the reforms instituted temporarily for this year alone in last spring’s American Rescue Plan: “If Build Back Better isn’t enacted, the Child Tax Credit would revert to providing the least help to the children who need it most — and some 27 million children would once again get a partial credit or none at all because their families’ incomes are too low.”
The First Focus for Children Campaign outlines other urgently needed reforms included in the House version of the Build Back Better Bill: “The Children’s Health Insurance Program, CHIP, which covers roughly 10 million children would be made permanent, sparing it from serial expiration every few years.” The bill would also require states to make children’s eligibility continuous over all 12 months for CHIP and Medicaid; would guarantee 12 months (instead of 60-days) of postpartum coverage for mothers on Medicaid; and would provide 4-weeks of paid leave for new parents and expand family leave. Build Back Better would significantly expand access to quality child care and phase in universal pre-K for 3- and 4-year-olds. For young adults aging out of foster care, the law would lower the age of eligibility for the Earned Income Tax Credit from 25 to 18. The bill would also address hunger among children by making meals available during the summer months when school is not in session.
None of these programs directly invests in public education, but together they will improve educational opportunity. Why? We know that a family’s economic circumstances affect children’s opportunity at school. Recently this blog covered a new report that 101,000 students in the New York City Public Schools—10 percent of the district’s students—were homeless in the past year. Decades of research show that such challenges directly affect such students’ experiences at school.
Maury Harris was a top economist in the U.S. When he retired, he went back to graduate school to study criminology. This is his first publication. (Full disclosure: He is the brother-in-law of my late younger sister).
An important excerpt:
The extremely low 2020 homicide levels in Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany relative to the US undoubtedly reflect exceptionally high gun ownership in the US with 1.20 guns for every resident in 2019. In contrast, guns per resident were 0.35 in Canada, 0.20 in Germany and 0.06 in the United Kingdom. It gets worse. For 2020, the FBI reports that US firearm background checks—a proxy for legal domestic gun sales–jumped by 40% to a record 39.7 million.
Who is responsible for the widespread teaching exodus? Who demoralized America’s teachers, the professionals who work tirelessly for low wages in oftentimes poor working conditions? Who smeared and discouraged an entire profession, one of the noblest of professions?
Let’s see:
Federal legislation, including No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.
George W. Bush; Margaret Spellings; Rod Paige (who likened the NEA to terrorists); the Congressional enablers of NCLB; Sandy Kress (the mastermind behind the harsh, punitive and ultimately failed NCLB).
Erik Hanushek, the economist who has long advocated for firing the teachers whose students get low test scores; the late William Sanders, the agricultural economist who created the methodology to rank teachers by their students’ scores; Raj Chetty, who produced a study with two other economists claiming that “one good teacher” would enhance the lifetime earnings of a class by more than $200,000; the reporters at the Los Angeles Times who dreamed up the scheme of rating teachers by student scores abd publishing their ratings, despite their lack of validity (one LA teacher committed suicide).
Davis Guggenheim, director of the deeply flawed “Waiting for Superman”; Bill Gates and his foundation, who funded the myth that the nation’s schools would dramatically improve by systematically firing low-ranking teachers (as judged by their students’ scores), funded “Waiting for Superman,” funded the Common Core, funded NBC’s “Education Nation,” which gave the public school bashers a national platform for a few days every year, until viewers got bored and the program died; and funded anything that was harmful to public schools and their teachers; President Obama and Arne Duncan, whose Race to the Top required states to evaluate teachers by their students’ scores and required states to adopt the Common Core and to increase the number of charter schools; Jeb Bush, for unleashing the Florida “model” of punitive accountability; and many more.
We now know that ranking teachers by their students’ test scores does not identify the best and the worst teachers. It is ineffective and profoundly demoralizing.
We now know that charter schools do not outperform public schools, as many studies and NAEP data show.
We now know that public schools are superior to voucher schools, and that the voucher schools have high attrition rates.
We now know that Teach for America is not a good substitute for well-prepared professional teachers.
Who did I leave out?
We have long known that students need experienced teachers and reasonable class sizes (ideally less than 25) to do their best.
Given the vitriolic attacks on teachers and public schools for more than 20 years, it almost seems as though there is a purposeful effort to demoralize teachers and replace them with technology.
Every once in a while, I read a story that is so moving that I have tears in my eyes as I read it. This is one of them. It appeared in The Boston Globe. I know I’m posting too many words (the legal limit is 300 words). I hope the editors at the Globe will forgive me. If they object, I will condense or delete the post.
Just in time for Christmas, a special homecoming
Yarielis Paulino-Pepin was born into the pandemic with a heart defect and a rare genetic disorder. Now, for the first time in her life, the 17-month-old girl is leaving the hospital to live at home
By Amanda Milkovits Globe Staff,Updated December 24, 2021, 6:37 p.m.
For all 17 months of her life, Yarielis Paulino-Pepin has only known the warm nest of a hospital room, where gentle lullabies tinkle amid the hum, swish, and beeping of machines keeping her alive.
She was born into the pandemic with a heart defect and a rare genetic disorder that left her so weak, sick, and limpthat she was unable to breathe or swallow. It was months before her parents heard her cry. She has never felt the wind ruffle her dark, curly hair. She has never felt a raindrop, heard birds in the trees, or gazed up at the moon. Her siblings have never been able to cuddle her.
But now, Yarielis is going home.
It is the day her parents have waited for, the day Yarielis would leave Franciscan Children’s Hospital in Brighton. When she hears her parents calling her name, Yarielis drums her chubby legs on the mattress of her crib. She wriggles in her onesie and rolls over, lifting her head, her face turning from her father, Danny Paulino, to her mother, Aris Pepin. She sticks her tongue out and grins.
“Hello, Daddy’s here!”
“Who’s here? Mama! Did you miss Mami?”
The couple swoop in and lower the sides of the crib, reaching past tubes and monitors to kiss her and tickle her cheeks.
Boston Children’s Hospital saved Yarielis’s life and diagnosed her condition, performing open heart surgery and installing tracheostomy and gastrostomy tubes. Then, for more than a year, the medical staff at Franciscan Children’s gave Yarielis every type of early intervention and therapy available.
Through it all, her parents spent every day on the road back and forth between their home in Providence and the hospitals in Boston, juggling care of four other children in their blended family. Both worked for the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority but were unable to continue; keeping their family strong through the distance and uncertainty became an all-consuming, full-time job. Their older children wondered if they’d ever meet their baby sister, as COVID restrictions prevented them from visiting her in the hospital.
Months ago, when it seemed impossible, her mother made a wish for Yarielis to be home for Christmas. Then, the little girl began to gain strength. The nurses at Franciscan saw her happy and loving personality begin to blossom.
On Wednesday, a few days before Christmas, her mother’s wish came true.
Her pregnancy had gone so well. And then, at 36 weeks, Aris said, her doctor diagnosed her with polyhydramnios, an excessive accumulation of amniotic fluid, and determined the baby had an abnormal heart.
A few days later, on July 20, 2020, Aris gave birth to Yarielis. She could barely breathe. Yarielis was immediately intubated and rushed to Boston Children’s.
When Aris and Danny finally saw Yarielis again, her tiny 6-pound, 2-ounce body was under a tangle of tubes and wires, her small face half-hidden by the intubation.
No one knew why Yarielis was sick. Her parents were distraught. Aris sought solace at the hospital chapel, praying for her daughter and begging forgiveness for whatever she might have done to cause her baby to be sick. “I said, ‘sorry’ to God a thousand times, maybe I did something bad in my life,” Aris said.
It was no one’s fault. After extensive genetic testing, Yarielis was diagnosed with Kabuki Syndrome, a rare congenital disorder that affects many different organ systems.
The name comes from the distinct appearance of people with the disorder, as if they are wearing makeup used by actors in Japanese kabuki theater, which emphasizes wide-set eyes, highly arched eyebrows, a small jaw, and a flattened nose. The disorder delays growth and causes a broad spectrum of intellectual disabilities or delays, heart problems, low muscle tone, difficulty swallowing, and immune deficiency.
Dr. Olaf Bodamer, director of the Roya Kabuki Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, reassured Aris and Danny. This is not typically an inherited disorder: it is caused by a spontaneous change during pregnancy that affects about 1 in 32,000 births worldwide.
The genetic condition is nearly nonexistent in people of Caribbean descent, such Yarielis’s parents, who are Dominican. While there are 500 to 600 people diagnosed with Kabuki Syndrome in the United States, Bodamer said there could be more who have not undergone genetic testing.RELATED: Facial recognition zeroes in on genetic disorders
While there is no cure for Kabuki Syndrome, children can show development over time, and there is hope for drug therapies on the horizon that could help improve learning and overall development of muscle tone, Bodamer said.
Yarielis happened to be in a place where her genetic disorder was recognized and where a team of specialists could help her family care for her.
The National Organization for Rare Disorders, or NORD, recently designated Boston Children’s Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital as one of its Rare Disease Centers of Excellence, making them part of a small network of cutting-edge facilities that offer specialized care and disease management for people living with rare diseases.
While patients with Kabuki typically do not require 24-hour care, Yarielis has a more extreme case, Bodamer said.
She was diagnosed with a critical congenital heart defect called tetralogy of Fallot, and needed open heart surgery when she was a month old. Constantly on a ventilator, she received a tracheotomy at two months old. She has eye abnormalities known as coloboma; they don’t know yet what she can see.
Over time, Yarielis has begun to gain strength. The doctors have told her parents that her heart is working well and that the tracheostomy will not be permanent. It is giving her time to get strong enough to breathe on her own.
Her parents call her their “Kabuki warrior.” And they turned to each other to help her fight.
“It was heartbreaking at the beginning,” Aris said, “but it’s a process.”
“We pray together every night. We both get on our knees right before bed and hold hands,” Danny said. “And we talk to God and say, ‘Give us strength.’ ”
Aris and Danny sought out other families, to learn what was ahead for them and their daughter. They found people on Facebook, where they could talk about medications and therapies, and how their children were progressing.
Aris also used her TikTok channel, @yourrealfantasy, to document Yarielis’s journey with photos and videos, hoping to inspire other families of children with special needs. She wanted people to see that children like Yarielis can be happy and loved; her followers grew to more than 250,000.
But some commenters have been cruel. “I’ve seen many people telling me on social media, ‘Why do you expose your daughter? You shouldn’t expose your daughter. How can you enjoy life exposing your daughter when she’s suffering?’ ” Aris said. “She’s not suffering. I just explain to people that I don’t need to hide my daughter just because she’s disabled. I’m very proud of my daughter.”
Later, alone with Yarielis during one of their last nights at Franciscan Children’s, Danny admitted his fears.
Here, all Yarielis has ever known is love and acceptance. But the world, as beautiful as it can be, is also a hard place, he said. Will other people see that she is lovable? Will she be bullied or rejected?
“We bring them into the world, you know, they don’t ask to be born. So it’s our responsibility to raise these children and care for them, no matter what age they are,” Danny said. “You know how cruel this world is, but it’s your job to protect them and take away all the negativity and always surround them with a positive attitude.”
Staff members at Franciscan Children’s Hospital lined the hallways and held a bubble parade for Yarielis as she was discharged from the hospital and headed home. JESSICA RINALDI/GLOBE STAFF
Before Yarielis could go home, the staff at Franciscan Children’s taught Danny and Aris every step of her care — how to use the ventilators, the oxygen tanks, the monitors; how to care for the tracheotomy and gastrostomy; how to administer her medication and milk around the clock and trouble-shoot alarms.
Finally, each parent had to stay at the hospital for 48 hours, solo, to show that they could handle everything Yarielis could need.
They barely slept, but they passed the test. “When you are keeping your baby alive, you will do anything,” Danny said.
As they packed up the room, Danny and Aris took final instructions from their case manager, social worker, and nurses. They signed discharge papers.
Aris was suddenly overcome. “I’ve been waiting for this day for so long,” she says. “This is tears of happiness.”
She dressed Yarielis in a pink-and-white sweater with a matching hat and boots. She cut the toe of the leggings to fit the monitor that tracks Yarielis’s heart and oxygen, and covered her in a pink-and-white quilt handmade by her grandmother.
Nurse practitioner Stephanie Hopkins cuddled Yarielis for the last time. “Her parents are as ready as they can be,” Hopkins said. “It’s exciting to think of her at home with her siblings and to see her home for the holidays with her family, something that people take for granted.”
The baby smacked her lips, her way of blowing kisses. “Are you going to miss everybody?” Aris asked her.
As the EMTs wheeled Yarielis out of her room, nurses and staff cheered, waving bubble wands in the hospital’s traditional “bubble parade” for children who are discharged. Yarielis passed by with her right hand raised like she was the queen of England.
“God bless everyone,” Danny said to every person he passed. “Thank you for everything you guys did.”
Jasleen Pepin, 5, jumped up and down as she spotted the ambulance carrying her baby sister coming down the street.JESSICA RINALDI/GLOBE STAFF
Yarielis’s uncle, Abel Pepin, and her brothers Dionyanny Paulino,17, and Jossem Peña-Pepin, 13, had just finished taping balloons and a welcome banner across their front porch when the ambulance from Boston pulled up to their house in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of Providence.
Yariel Paulino-Pepin, 3, barely waited for the EMTs to open the ambulance doors before he bounded inside. Jasleen Pepin, 5, danced, waiting to see her sister, and shouted: “She’s so cuuuute!”
Mother and child emerged carefully from the ambulance, accompanied by EMTs carrying medical equipment. Aris carried Yarielis up the steps and into the house, and placed her into the large gray crib that had been ready since before she was born.
Large plastic flowers and letters spelling “Princess Yarielis” decorated the wall over her crib in the living room. The ventilators, IV stands, oxygen tanks, shelves of medical supplies, a shopping bag filled with medication, and a new refrigerator to store them — everything was ready for the littlest child.
“Welcome home, princess,” Aris said.
Then, as Aris and Danny bustled about with the medical machines under the supervision of a respiratory therapist, the two younger siblings clung to the crib railings to get as close as possible to their baby sister.
They touched her nose and her chubby hands, showed her toys, and tried to make her smile. They squealed when she grabbed their hands and kicked the crib railing. But, when Yarielis suddenly turned red, opening her mouth in a silent, tearful yowl, the children screamed for their mother to help her.
Aris calmly dealt with the ventilator alarm and suctioned Yarielis, who quieted. The children crept back to the crib railings again. They plinked on a toy xylophone, mimicking the sound of her alarms. They took turns with their mother’s stethoscope and listened to each other’s hearts.
All they had known of Yarielis were photos and videos, and their parents’ explanations about the baby’s illness. Boston Children’s Hospital had produced a special book for them about Yarielis and her condition. Now, here she was, and no matter how many times their parents and older siblings pulled them away, the two children could not resist her. They were not afraid. They were enthralled.
At last, when the wires and tubes were untangled, the machines were humming, the first round of medication successfully administered, when they’d changed her diaper and removed her warm sweater, Aris and Danny paused at the crib and took in the sight of their youngest daughter. Yariel joined them.
Propped up against a curved pillow, Yarielis gazed up at them. She was in her own home, with her family, for the first time in her life.
They don’t know what’s ahead for Yarielis, but right now, for the first time in 17 months, they are all together.
“You know that you are home, baby,” Aris cooed to her baby daughter, who smiled back. “You know that you are home.”
Aris talked to Yarielis as Yariel squeezed in to get a better look at his baby sister. Danny spoke to the respiratory therapist who had come to oversee the setup.JESSICA RINALDI/GLOBE STAFF
Thanks to reader Kathyirwin1 for bringing this article to my attention. Egged on by Governor Gregg Abbott and legislator Matt Krause (who circulated a list of 850 books that should be removed from public school libraries, most because they deal with race, sexuality or inequality), critics are now targeting the books in the public libraries.
The public library in Llano County closed for three days while librarians reviewed their holdings. Libraries in other counties saw challenges to books that conservatives want removed from shelves.
Local public libraries in Texas, including those in Victoria, Irving and Tyler, are fielding a flurry of book challenges from local residents. While book challenges are nothing new, there has been a growing number of complaints about books for libraries in recent months. And the fact that the numbers are rising after questions are being raised about school library content seems more than coincidental, according to the Texas Library Association.
“I think it definitely ramped it up,” said Wendy Woodland, the TLA’s director of advocacy and communication, of the late October investigation into school library reading materials launched by state Rep. Matt Krause in his role as chair of the House Committee on General Investigating.
In response to Krause’s inquiry, Gov. Greg Abbott tapped the Texas Education Agency to investigate the availability of “pornographic books” in schools. In the weeks since, school districts across the state have launched reviews of their book collections, and state officials have begun investigating student access to inappropriate content…
In Victoria, about 100 miles southeast of San Antonio, Dayna Williams-Capone says the number of complaints about books is the most she’s seen in her nearly 13 years working at the Victoria Public Library.
In August, Williams-Capone, the director of library services in Victoria, said her office received about 40 formal requests for review of books, primarily books for children and young adults that touch on topics of same-sex relationships, sexuality and race.
After Williams-Capone and her staff reviewed the requests, they decided to keep the books in the library. Residents who filed the complaints pushed forward, appealing the decision to the library’s advisory board for about half of the books, Williams-Capone said.
Most of the complaints are directed at books that feature same-sex relationships.
Wendy Woodland of the Texas Library Association said that:
“These efforts to mute or censor diverse voices in books is part of the just overall extreme divisiveness in our country that was really just exacerbated by the pandemic, [and] the actions taken by Rep. Krause and others have added fuel to that,” Woodland said.
She understands there will be those who may not like all of the books in a library. That’s not the point of a public library, she said.
“No book is right for everyone, but one book can make a big difference in one person’s life,” she said. “That’s what libraries are about — providing those windows and doors and mirrors to the community.”
A reader whose nom de plume is quickwrit explained in a recent comment that there is no such thing as a “public charter school.” In addition to the evidence supplied, bear in mind that several federal courts and the National Labor Relations Board have ruled that charter schools are not “state actors,” meaning not public schools. Even charter schools have sought to avoid accountability for their actions by insisting in court that they are not “state actors,” but private organizations with a government contract. If receiving public funds made your public agency, then every college and university that accepts federal funds would be public, not private, as would Lockheed Martin, Merck, and other corporations.
Quickwrit writes:
The impartial, non-political watchdog Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education has issued a report warning that so much taxpayer money is being skimmed away from America’s genuine public schools and pocketed by private corporate charter school operators that the IG investigation declared that: “Charter schools and their management organizations pose a potential risk to federal funds even as they threaten to fall short of meeting goals” because of financial fraud and their hidden ways for skimming of tax money into private pockets.
The racial resegregation of America’s school systems by the private charter school industry is so blatant and illegal that both the NAACP and ACLU have called for a stop to the formation of any more charter schools. The Civil Rights Project at UCLA summed it up, stating that charter schools are “a civil rights failure.”
There is NO SUCH THING as a “public charter school”. Charter school operators spend a lot of taxpayer money telling taxpayers that charter schools are “public” schools — but they are not. As the Supreme Courts of Washington State and New York State have ruled, charter schools are actually private schools because they fail to pass the minimum test for being genuine public schools: They aren’t run by school boards who are elected by, and therefore under the control of and accountable to voting taxpayers. All — ALL — charter schools are corporations run by private parties. Taxpayers have no say in how their tax dollars are spent in charter schools.
The Stanford University Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) — which is funded by pro-charter organizations — has been conducting years-long research into the educational quality of charter schools. And yet even this charter-school-funded research center’s findings are that charter schools don’t do any better academically than genuine public schools. Moreover, CREDO reported that in the case of popular online charter schools, students actually lose ground in both reading and math — but online charter schools are the fastest-growing type of charter school because they make it easiest to skim away public tax dollars.https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2019/03/29/report-the-department-of-education-has-spent-1-billion-on-charter-school-waste-and-fraud/#ab1fbdb27b64
I just received my pre-ordered copy of a fine new collection ofessays from Teachers College Press. InPublic Education: Defending a Cornerstone of American Democracy, editors David Berliner and Carl Hermanns pull together reflections by 29 writers, who, as the editors declare: “create a vivid and complex portrait of public education in these United States.”
It seems especially appropriate at the end of 2021 to consider one of the essays included in this new book—probably Mike Rose’s final essay—“Reflections on the Public School and the Social Fabric.” Rose, the wonderful writer and UCLA professor of education, died unexpectedly in August.
Rose considers the many possible lenses through which a public can consider and evaluate its public schools: “Public schools are governmental and legal institutions and therefore originate in legislation and foundational documents… All institutions are created for a reason, have a purpose, are goal driven… Equally important as the content of curriculum are the underlying institutional assumptions about ability, knowledge, and the social order… Public schools are physical structures. Each has an address, sits on a parcel of land with geographical coordinates… By virtue of its location in a community, the school is embedded in the social and economic dynamics of that community… The school is a multidimensional social system rich in human interaction… With the increasing application of technocratic frameworks to social and institutional life, it becomes feasible to view schools as quantifiable systems, represented by numbers, tallies, metrics. Some school phenomena lend themselves to counting, though counting alone won’t capture their meaning… And schools can be thought of as part of the social fabric of a community, serving civic and social needs: providing venues for public meetings and political debate, polls, festivities, and during crises shelters, distribution hubs, sites of comfort.”
A reader called “Retired Teacher” read Peter Greene’s reflections on Amazon as a model of schooling and posted this comment:
Devious DeVos had the nerve to call public schools a factory model of education. It seems to me that rows of zombie students staring at screens and fed content from an algorithm on a screen much more easily qualifies as a “factory model.” Public education is a model whose goal is mostly about being “through and efficient.” It aspires to bring young people access, opportunity and civics preparation in order to become responsible citizens. It is a pubic institution with noble goals, not an Amazon Warehouse.
The so-called “free market” is a scammer’s delight where the strong feed on the weak and the predators hunt for prey. Believing that the free market will solve education’s problems is as naive as it is reckless. Our young people should be valued, protected and taught well to prepare them for the future as they are the future of this country. They must be ready to address our future needs, and they deserve so much more than being considered a monetized line item in some rich person’s portfolio.
On a frosty, starlit night, a miracle took place. In 1914, a melody drifted over the darkness of No Man’s Land. First “O, Holy Night,” then “God Save the King.”
Peeking over their trenches for what must have been the first time in weeks, British soldiers were surprised to see Christmas trees lit with candles on the parapets of the enemy’s trenches. Then a shout: “You no shoot, we no shoot!”
The Christmas Truce was a brief, spontaneous cease-fire that spread up and down the Western Front in the first year of World War I. It’s also a symbol of the peace on Earth and goodwill toward humans so often lacking not just on the battlefront but in our everyday lives.
In that spirit, the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City has published an online gallery of hundreds of accounts of such Christmas truces — letters home from soldiers that were published in British papers.
Here, a sampling of these letters shows the variety and wonder of the Christmas Truce:
“This has been the most wonderful Christmas I have ever struck. We were in the trenches on Christmas Eve, and about 8.30 the firing was almost at a stand still. Then the Germans started shouting across to us, ‘a happy Christmas’ and commenced putting up lots of Christmas trees with hundreds of candles on the parapets of their trenches.” — Cpl. Leon Harris, 13th Battalion, London Regiment (Kensington)
“At 2 am on Christmas morning a German band played a couple of German tunes and then ‘Home, Sweet Home’ very touchingly which made some fellows think a bit. After they played ‘God Save The King’ and we all cheered.” — Pvt. H. Dixon, Royal Warwickshire Regiment
“We would sing a song or a carol first and then they would sing one and I tell you they can harmonise all right.” — Pvt. G. Layton, A Company, 1st Royal Warwickshire Regiment “Half-way they were met by four Germans, who said they would not shoot on Christmas Day if we did not. They gave our fellows cigars and a bottle of wine and were given a cake and cigarettes. When they came back I went out with some more of our fellows and we were met by about 30 Germans, who seemed to be very nice fellows. I got one of them to write his name and address on a postcard as a souvenir. All through the night we sang carols to them and they sang to us and one played ‘God Save the King’ on a mouth organ.” — Rifleman C.H. Brazier, Queen’s Westminsters of Bishop’s Stortford
German and British soldiers stand together on the battlefield near Ploegsteert, Belgium, during the Christmas Truce. (Imperial War Museum/AP)
“We soon came up to them. About 30 could speak English. One fellow wanted a letter posted to his sweetheart in London.” — Gunner Masterton “Between the trenches there were a lot of dead Germans whom we helped to bury. In one place where the trenches are only 25 yards apart we could see dead Germans half-buried, their legs and gloved hands sticking out of the ground. The trenches in this position are so close that they are called ‘The Death Trap’, as hundreds have been killed there.” — A junior officer
“On Christmas Day we were out of the trenches along with the Germans, some of whom had a song and dance, while two of our platoons had a game of football. It was surprising to see the German soldiers — some appeared old, others were boys, and others wore glasses . . . A number of our fellows have got addresses from the Germans and are going to try and meet one another after the war.” — Pvt. Farnden, Rifle Brigade
“On our right was a regiment of Prussian Guards and on our left was a Saxon regiment. On Christmas morning some of our fellows shouted across to them saying that if they would not fire our chaps would meet them half-way between the trenches and spend Christmas as friends. They consented to do so. Our chaps at once went out and when in the open Prussians fired on our men killing two and wounding several more. The Saxons, who behaved like gentlemen, threatened the Prussians if they did the same trick again. Well, during Christmas Day our fellows and the Saxons fixed up a table between the two trenches and they spent a happy time together, and exchanged souvenirs and presented one another with little keepsakes.” — A British soldier
“One of our men was given a bottle of wine in which to drink the King’s health. The regiment actually had a football match with the Germans who beat them 3-2.” — A British officer
American filmmaker, Wilbur H. Durborough made a silent documentary film called “On the Firing Line With the Germans” about the German army during World War I. (Courtesy: Library of Congress)
“You said I should probably hardly know it was Christmas Day, but far from it; we had a most extraordinary day and quite different from others. . . . Lots of English and Germans met between the two lines and had talks . . . there were bicycle races on bikes without tyres found in the ruins of the house.” — A British officer
“A hundred yards or so in the rear of our trenches there were houses that had been shelled. These were explored with some of the regulars and we found old bicycles, top-hats, straw hats, umbrellas etc. We dressed ourselves up in these and went over to the Germans. It seemed so comical to see fellows walking about in top-hats and with umbrellas up. Some rode the bicycles backwards. We had some fine sport and made the Germans laugh.” — Brazier
“I daresay you will be surprised at me writing a letter on such paper as this, but you will be more surprised when I tell you that it contained cake given to one of our men by a German officer on Christmas Day, and that I was given some of it . . . We were able to bury our dead, some of whom had been lying there for six weeks or more. We are still on speaking terms with them, so that we have not fired a shot at them up to now (Dec. 29), neither have they, so that the snipers on each side have had a rest.” — Pvt. Alfred Smith, 1st Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment
“Really you would hardly have thought we were at war. Here we were, enemy talking to enemy. They like ourselves with mothers, with sweethearts, with wives waiting to welcome us home again. And to think within a few hours we shall be firing at each other again.” — Masterson
Gillian Brockell is a staff writer for The Washington Post’s history blog, Retropolis. She has been at The Post since 2013 and previously worked as a video editor.
Elementary schoolteacher Turquoise LeJeune Parker was a few days away from the start of her holiday vacation when she received a text message from the mother of one of her second-grade students.
The parent wondered if Parker knew where she could find food for her children during the school’s two-week winter break because her refrigerator and pantry were almost empty. Her kids relied on free school breakfasts and lunches to get them through the day.
Parker, now a library teacher for 387 students at Lakewood Elementary School in Durham, N.C., said she felt like crying on that phone call six years ago. “This mom told me she wasn’t worried about herself, but she couldn’t let her kids go without food for those two weeks,” she recalled. “I told my husband about it, and we knew we had to do something.”
Parker and her husband, Donald Parker, a carpenter, immediately went out to shop for groceries for the woman and her family, but then they thought about all the other families.
“If one parent was going into the holiday break with no food in the house, we knew there must be others,” said Turquoise Parker, 34.
Although the Durham Public Schools district regularly worked with a nonprofit to provide food-insecure families with weekend groceries, the program couldn’t serve every child, she said. On Dec. 14, 2015, Parker decided to text everyone she knew asking for donations to buy enough holiday groceries for all 22 students in her class at the time.
“I’m trying to send each of my 22 students home with a bag of non-perishables to help their families with them being out for Christmas break,” she wrote. “If you know anyone wanting to donate, let me know! I’ll go pick it up!”
Within a couple of days, she had $500. “It really took off and made such an impact for these families that I knew I had to keep going,” Parker said. “Food is something that no one can do without. It’s not only a basic human need, it’s a human right.”
The second year, she said she raised $1,000 and the program grew from there. Last year, more than $55,000 came in.
This year, from Dec. 8 to 11, Parker and a group of 70 volunteers once again bagged groceries to send home with students at the beginning of their winter break.
This time, $106,000 was raised through fundraisers, a charitable foundation and social media. It was enough to help every child at 12 elementary schools in her school district, said Parker, noting that about half of the district’s students qualify for free or low-cost school lunches. About 5,200 students took home bags filled with a two-week supply of cereal, bread, peanut butter, pasta, granola bars, oatmeal, beans, mac ‘n’ cheese, canned chicken, fruit and vegetables, she said. The groceries were ordered online this year at Costco and delivered to the gym at Lakewood Elementary.
Parker said she named the project “Mrs. Parker’s Professors’ Foodraiser,” because she considers all of her students to be “little professors.”
“I’m a part of their family now and they’re a part of mine,” she said. “We’re all learning together. They help me as much as I help them…”
Parker is relieved that the program now helps thousands more students, and it runs with the dedication of many volunteers.
During her first year of raising funds to feed about two dozen students, she heard from Durham attorney T. Greg Doucette, who asked how he could help. Doucette now pitches in to help coordinate the project every year, she said.
“This has become a community effort — not mine alone — and that’s how it should be,” Parker said. Doucette said that when he first signed on to help, he didn’t anticipate that bagging groceries would become a recurring project. But when he learned about food insecurity in his community, he wanted to do something to lessen the need, he said….
Her mother, Marian Thompson, was a single mom with three children who got a doctoral degree in education and worked for 43 years as a teacher and school counselor, she said.
“Oh, my gosh, did she ever inspire me,” said Parker, noting that she often accompanied her mother to work as a preschooler.
“I saw everything she did for kids at school, and from age 4, I also wanted to become a schoolteacher,” she said. “At home, I’d line up all of my teddy bears and baby dolls and teach them.” After she graduated from North Carolina Central University in 2010 with a degree in public administration, she took her first teaching job at Estes Hills Elementary School. Since 2019, she’s been the library teacher at Lakewood Elementary, although she prefers to call herself a social justice teacher, she said.
“Food inequality is systemic and that’s not okay,” Parker said. “Giving children food for their Christmas break is not a lavish thing — this is food we’re talking about. The well-being of our community is directly related to the well-being of our children. We have to fight for each other.” It’s a lesson she has thought about often since giving birth to her first child, Madame, four months ago, she said.
Diane Ravitch's blog 