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At a local school board meeting years ago, I suggested
that the following sign be placed over the main door of
Salida High School: Falling in love in high school means
spending the rest of your life in a trailer park.
The board ignored my proposal, but the Colorado State
Board of Education apparently lacks that talent for
avoiding extraneous signage. On July 7, that board voted
5-1 to encourage the appropriate display in schools and
other public buildings of the national motto 'In God we
trust.'
In God we trust
as a national motto was
apparently inspired in 1814 when Francis Scott Key, a
Maryland attorney, had occasion to watch the British fleet
bombard Fort McHenry in Baltimore harbor during the War of
1812.
His patriotism surged when the sun rose and the U.S.
flag was still flying over the fort, despite the best
efforts of the royal navy. He composed a four-stanza poem
whose antepenultimate line was And this be our motto:
'In God is our trust.'
(Key's brother-in-law, Judge J.H. Nicholson, suggested
singing the poem to the tune an old English drinking song,
To Anacreon in Heaven,
and in 1931, the combination
officially became our national anthem.)
One pleasure in reading history is noticing how often the same issues appear, such as the fear that America is suffering because it has departed from the devout ways of the past.
Such was the case as the Civil War raged in November of
1861. The Rev. M.R. Watkinson of Ridleyville, Pa., wrote
to Salmon P. Chase, secretary of the treasury. I have
felt our national shame in disowning God as not the least
of our present disasters,
he wrote, urging the
recognition of the Almighty God in some form on our
coins.
Chase instructed James Pollock, director of the
Philadelphia mint, that The trust of our people in God
should be declared on our national coins,
and to devise
a motto expressing in the fewest and tersest words
possible this national recognition.
Pollock proposed Our Country; Our God
or God,
Our Trust.
Chase revised that to In God we
trust.
It first appeared on the 2-cent coin of 1864,
and on various coins thereafter. According to the U.S.
Department of the Treasury, it has appeared on all U.S.
coins since 1937, and after 1957, on all folding money,
too.
Putting the motto on our currency apparently failed to
do the job, and so now Claire Orr, chairman of our state
board of education, wants it posted in schools. How
long can we remain a free nation if our youth don't have
civic virtue?
he asked.
If stamping the national motto on what Americans admire most -- money -- hasn't produced civic virtue yet, I don't see how posting the motto in schools will improve matters.
Our school board here has a different notion about instilling civic virtue. In June, the school district and the city jointly applied for a federal grant to cover the wages and benefits, for a couple of years, of two new police officers -- one posted at the high school, the other at the middle school.
Why? The grant application says We are very much
aware of the proliferation of known gang members in our
Community who desire to recruit members. Buena Vista
Correctional Facility is 20 miles north of Salida. There
are 13 prisons located 50 miles east of Salida. Inmates in
these facilities are regularly visited by friends and
family. Some of these visitors are active gang
members.
By this logic, Buena Vista should be a hotbed of gang
recruitment, since it's much closer to a prison. But Clint
Driscoll, who served as mayor until this April, told me
that there might be a few gang wannabes in town, but as
for real gang recruitment, that's hogwash.
The
superintendent says they've never felt any need to station
cops in their schools.
With its abundance of prisons, Cañon City (which is 57 miles, not 50, from Salida) should want a cop in every classroom on account of potential gang-recruitment by inmate visitors -- but its school district functions without stationing police officers to buildings.
And it might be relevant that there was an armed deputy sheriff on duty at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, but 15 people still died.
Putting cops in schools doesn't guarantee safety, and the gangster reasons provided on the Salida grant application are specious at best. The Department of Justice is doling out pork, and Salida's city government and school district have contrived reasons to get some.
Claude Orr is certainly right that we could use some more civic virtue, but certain segments of society certainly seem to need it more than our students do.
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