text:
« Prev I. The Origin of Man Next »
I. The Origin of Man
A. THE DOCTRINE OF MAN IN DOGMATICS
The transition from Theology to Anthropology, that is, from the study of God to the study of man, is a natural one. Man is not only the crown of creation, but also the object of God's special care. And God's revelation in Scripture is a revelation that is not only given to man, but also a revelation in which man is vitally concerned. It is not a revelation of God in the abstract, but a revelation of God in relation to His creatures, and particularly in relation to man. It is a record of God's dealings with the human race, and especially a revelation of the redemption which God has prepared for, and for which He seeks to prepare, man. This accounts for the fact that man occupies a place of central importance in Scripture, and that the knowledge of man in relation to God is essential to its proper understanding. The doctrine of man must follow immediately after the doctrine of God, since the knowledge of it is presupposed in all the following loci of Dogmatics. We should not confuse the present subject of study with general Anthropology or the science of mankind, which includes all those sciences which have men as the object of study. These sciences concern themselves with the origin and history of mankind, with the physiological structure and the psychical characteristics of man in general and of the various races of mankind in particular, with their ethnological, linguistic, cultural and religious development, and so on. Theological Anthropology is concerned only with what the Bible says respecting man and the relation in which he stands and should stand to God. It recognizes Scripture only as its source, and reads the teachings of human experience in the light of God's Word.
B. SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT OF ORIGIN OF MAN.
Scripture offers us a twofold account of the creation of man, the one in Gen. 1:26,27, and the other in Gen. 2:7,21-23. Higher criticism is of the opinion that the writer of Genesis pieced together two creation narratives, the first found in Gen. 1:1—2:3, and the second in Gen. 2:4-25; and that these two are independent and contradictory. Laidlaw in his work on The Bible Doctrine of Man11pp. 25f. is willing to admit that the author of Genesis made use of two sources, but refuses to find here two different accounts of creation. He very properly denies that in the second chapter we have "a different account of creation, for the plain reason that it takes no account of the creation at large." In fact, the introductory words of the narrative beginning with Gen. 2:4, "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth, when they were created," seen in the light of the repeated use of the words "these are the generations" in the book of Genesis, point to the fact that we have something quite different here. The expression invariably points, not to the origin or beginning of those named, but to their family history. The first narrative contains the account of the creation of all things in the order in which it occurred, while the second groups things in their relation to man, without implying anything respecting the chronological order of man's appearance in the creative work of God, and clearly indicates that everything preceding it served to prepare a fit habitation for man as the king of creation. It shows us how man was situated in God's creation, surrounded by the vegetable and animal world, and how he began his history. There are certain particulars in which the creation of man stands out in distinction from that of other living beings:
1. MAN'S CREATION WAS PRECEDED BY A SOLEMN DIVINE COUNSEL. Before the inspired writer records the creation of man, he leads us back, as it were, into the council of God, acquainting us with the divine decree in the words, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness," Gen. 1:26. The Church has generally interpreted the plural "us" on the basis of the trinitarian existence of God. Some scholars, however, regard it as a plural of majesty; others, as a plural of communication, in which God includes the angels with Himself; and still others, as a plural of self-exhortation. Of these three suggestions the first is very unlikely, since the plural of majesty originated at a much later date; the second is impossible, because it would imply that the angels were cocreators with God, and that man is also created in the image of the angels, which is an un-Scriptural idea; and the third is an entirely gratuitous assumption, for which no reason can be assigned. Why should such a self-exhortation be in the plural, except for the reason that there is a plurality in God.
2. THE CREATION OF MAN WAS IN THE STRICTEST SENSE OF THE WORD AN IMMEDIATE ACT OF GOD. Some of the expressions used in the narrative preceding that of the creation of man indicate mediate creation in some sense of the word. Notice the following expressions: "And God said, Let the earth put forth grass, herbs, yielding seed, and fruit-trees bearing fruit after their kind" — "Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures" ...and, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind"; and compare these with the simple statement, "And God created man." Whatever indication of mediacy in the work of creation is contained in the former expressions, is entirely wanting in the latter. Evidently the work of God in the creation of man was not mediated in any sense of the word. He did make use of pre-existent material in forming the body of man, but even this was excluded in the creation of the soul.
3. IN DISTINCTION FROM THE LOWER CREATURES MAN WAS CREATED AFTER A DIVINE TYPE. With respect to fishes, birds, and beasts we read that God created them after their kind, that is, on a typical form of their own. Man, however, was not so created and much less after the type of an inferior creature. With respect to him God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. " We shall see what this implies, when we discuss the original condition of man, and merely call attention to it here, in order to bring out the fact that in the narrative of creation the creation of man stands out as something distinctive.
4. THE TWO DIFFERENT ELEMENTS OF HUMAN NATURE ARE CLEARLY DISTINGUISHED. In Gen. 2:7 a clear distinction is made between the origin of the body and that of the soul. The body was formed out of the dust of the ground; in the production of it God made use of pre-existing material. In the creation of the soul, however, there was no fashioning of pre-existing materials, but the production of a new substance. The soul of man was a new production of God in the strict sense of the word. Jehovah "breathed into his (man's) nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." In these simple words the twofold nature of man is clearly asserted, and their teaching is corroborated by other passages of Scripture, such as, Eccl. 12:7; Matt. 10:28; Luke 8:55; II Cor. 5:1-8; Phil. 1:22-24; Heb. 12:9. The two elements are the body and the breath or spirit of life breathed into it by God, and by the combination of the two man became "a living soul," which means in this connection simply "a living being."
5. MAN IS AT ONCE PLACED IN AN EXALTED POSITION. Man is represented as standing at the apex of all the created orders. He is crowned as king of the lower creation, and is given dominion over all the inferior creatures. As such it was his duty and privilege to make all nature and all the created beings that were placed under his rule, subservient to his will and purpose, in order that he and his whole glorious dominion might magnify the almighty Creator and Lord of the universe, Gen. 1:28; Ps. 8:4-9.
C. THE EVOLUTIONARY THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF MAN.
Among the various theories that have been broached to explain the origin of man, the theory of evolution at present holds the field, and therefore deserves brief consideration.
1. STATEMENT OF THE THEORY. The theory of evolution is not always stated in the same form. It is sometimes represented as if man is a direct descendant of one of the species of anthropoid apes now in existence, and then again, as if man and the higher apes have a common ancestry. But whatever difference of opinion there may be on this point, it is certain that, according to thorough-going naturalistic evolution, man descended from the lower animals, body and soul, by a perfectly natural process, controlled entirely by inherent forces. One of the leading principles of the theory is that of strict continuity between the animal world and man. It cannot allow for discontinuity anywhere along the line, for every break is fatal to the theory. Nothing that is absolutely new and unpredictable can appear in the process. What is now found in man must have been potentially present in the original germ out of which all things developed. And the whole process must be controlled from start to finish by inherent forces. Theistic evolution, which seems more acceptable to many theologians, simply regards evolution as God's method of working. It is sometimes represented in a form in which God is merely called in to bridge the gaps between the inorganic and the organic, and between the irrational and the rational, creation. But to the extent to which a special operation of God is assumed, gaps are admitted which evolution cannot bridge, and something new is called into being, the theory naturally ceases to be a pure theory of evolution. It is sometimes held that only the body of man is derived by a process of evolution from the lower animals, and that God endowed this body with a rational soul. This view meets with considerable favor in Roman Catholic circles.
2. OBJECTIONS TO THE THEORY. Several objections can be raised against the theory of the evolutionary descent of man from the lower animals.
a. From the point of view of the theologian the greatest objection to this theory is, of course, that it is contrary to the explicit teachings of the Word of God. The Bible could hardly teach more clearly than it does that man is the product of a direct and special creative act of God, rather than of a process of development out of the simian stock of animals. It asserts that God formed man out of the dust of the ground, Gen. 2:7. Some theologians, in their eagerness to harmonize the teachings of Scripture with the theory of evolution, suggest that this may be interpreted to mean that God formed the body of man out of the body of the animals, which is after all but dust. But this is entirely unwarranted, since no reason can be assigned why the general expression "of the dust of the ground" should be used after the writer had already described the creation of the animals and might therefore have made the statement far more specific. Moreover, this interpretation is also excluded by the statement in Gen. 3:19, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground: for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." This certainly does not mean that man shall return to his former animal state. Beast and man alike return again to the dust. Eccl. 3:19,20. Finally, we are told explicitly in I Cor. 15:39 that "All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one flesh of men, and another flesh of beasts." As to the spirit of man the Bible teaches explicitly that it came directly from God, Gen. 2:7, and therefore cannot be regarded as a natural development of some previously existing substance. In perfect harmony with this Elihu says, "The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty giveth me life," Job 33:4. Furthermore, Scripture also teaches that man was at once separated from the lower creation by an enormous chasm. He at once stood on a high intellectual, moral, and religious level, as created in the image of God and was given dominion over the lower creation, Gen. 1:26,27,31; 2:19,20; Ps. 8:5-8. By his fall in sin, however, he fell from his high estate and became subject to a process of degeneration which sometimes results in bestiality. This is quite the opposite of what the evolutionary hypothesis teaches us. According to it man stood on the lowest level at the beginning of his career, but slightly removed from the brute, and has been rising to higher levels ever since.
b. The second great objection is that the theory has no adequate basis in well established facts. It should be borne in mind that, as was pointed out before, the evolutionary theory in general, though often represented as an established doctrine, is up to the present time nothing but an unproved working hypothesis, and a hypothesis that has not yet given any great promise of success in demonstrating what it set out to prove. Many of the most prominent evolutionists frankly admit the hypothetical character of their theory. They still avow themselves to be firm believers in the doctrine of descent, but do not hesitate to say that they cannot speak with any assurance of its method of operation. When Darwin published his works, it was thought that the key to the process was found at last, but in course of time it was found that the key did not fit the lock. Darwin truly said that his theory depended entirely on the possibility of transmitting acquired characteristics, and it soon became one of the corner-stones of Weismann's biological theory that acquired characteristics are not inherited. His opinion received abundant confirmation by the later study of genetics. On the basis of the assumed transmission of acquired characteristics, Darwin spoke with great assurance of the transmutation of species and envisaged a continuous line of development from the primordial cell to man; but the experiments of De Vries, Mendel, and others tended to discredit his view. The gradual and imperceptible changes of Darwin made place for the sudden and unexpected mutations of De Vries. While Darwin assumed endless variation in several directions, Mendel pointed out that the variations or mutations never take the organism outside of the species and are subject to a definite law. And modern cytology in its study of the cell, with its genes and chromosones as the carriers of the inherited characters, confirmed this idea. The so-called new species of the evolutionists were proved to be no true species at all, but only varietal species, that is varieties of the same species. Nordenskioeld in his History of Biology quotes the following sentence from a popular account of the results of heredity research, as reflecting the true state of affairs: "For the very reason of the great number of facts that modern heredity-research has brought to light, chaos prevails at present in regard to the views on the formation of species," p. 613. Prominent evolutionists now frankly admit that the origin of species is a complete mystery to them. And as long as that is so, there is not much chance of their explaining the origin of man.
Darwin in his attempt to prove the descent of man from a species of anthropoid apes relied on (1) the argument from the structural similarity between man and the higher animals; (2) the embryological argument; and (3) the argument from rudimentary organs. To these three were added later on, (4) the argument derived from blood tests; and (5) the palaeontological argument. But none of these arguments furnish the desired proof. The argument from structural likeness unwarrantably assumes that the similarity can be explained in only one way. Yet it can very well be accounted for by the assumption that God in creating the animal world made certain typical forms basic throughout, so as to have unity in variety, just as a great musician builds up his mighty composition on a single theme, which is repeated time and again, and at each repetition introduces new variations. The principle of preformation gives an adequate explanation of the similarities under consideration. The embryological similarity, such as it is, can be explained on the same principle. Moreover recent biological studies would seem to indicate that no structural similarity but only a genetic relationship can prove affinity or descent. As far as the rudimentary organs are concerned, more than one scientist has expressed doubt as to their vestigial character. Instead of being the useless remains of animal organs, it may very well be that they serve a definite purpose in the human organism. The blood tests in their original form, while pointing to a certain likeness between the blood of animals and man, do not prove genetic relationship, since in these tests only part of the blood, the sterile serum which contains no living matter, was used, while it is an established fact that the solid portion of the blood, containing the red and white cells, is the carrier of hereditary factors. Later tests, in which the spectroscope was called into use and the entire blood was examined, proved conclusively that there is an essential difference between the blood of animals and that of man. The palaeontological argument is equally inconclusive. If man really descended from the anthropoid apes, it might be expected that the intermediate forms would be in existence somewhere. But Darwin was not able to find this missing link any more than the thousands of missing links between the various species of animals. We are told that the early progenitors of man have long since died out. This being so, it was still possible that they might be found among the fossil remains. And to-day scientists actually claim that they have found some bones of very ancient men. They have reconstructed these men for us, and we can now enjoy looking at the imaginary photos of the reconstructed Java man (Pithecanthropus erectus), the Heidelberg man (Homo Heidelbergensis), the Neanderthal man (Homo Neanderthalensis), the Cro-Magnon, the Piltdown man, and others. These reconstructions seem to be taken seriously by some, but really have very little value. Since only a few bones were found of each, and even these were scattered in some cases, so that it is not certain that they belong to the same body, they merely testify to the ingenuity of the scientists who reconstructed them. In some cases the specialists are by no means agreed as to whether the bones in question belonged to a man or to an animal. Dr. Wood, professor of anatomy in the University of London, says in a booklet on the Ancestry of Man: "I find no occupation less worthy of the science of Anthropology than the not unfashionable business of modelling, painting, or drawing these nightmare pictures of the imagination, and lending them in the process, an utterly false value of apparent reality."22Quoted by Allen, Evolution in the Balances, p. 110 Fleming, one of the most prominent present day scientists, says: "The upshot of it all is that we cannot arrange all the known fossil remains of supposed 'man' in a lineal series gradually advancing in type or form from that of any anthropoid ape, or other mammal, up to the modern and now existing types of true man. Any supposition or statement that it can be done, and is true, is certainly incorrect. It is certainly misleading and unspeakably pernicious to put forward in popular magazines or other publications read by children pictures of gorillas or chimpanzees labelled 'Man's cousin' or 'Man's nearest relative,' or to publish perfectly imaginary and grotesque pictures of a supposed 'Java man' with brutish face as an ancestor of modern man, as is occasionally done. Those who do such things are guilty of ignorance or deliberate mis-representation. Neither is it justifiable for preachers in the pulpit to tell their congregations that there is general agreement among scientific men as to the evolutionary origin of Man from an animal ancestor."33The Origin of Mankind, p. 75. But the body of man does not even present the greatest difficulties to the evolutionist. These arise from the consideration of the spiritual element in man, or what is usually called "the origin of mind." It is at this point that his helplessness becomes most painfully apparent. In spite of all his attempts, he has signally failed to give a plausible explanation of the origin of the human mind, or intelligence (progressiveness), language, conscience, and religion. This might be pointed out in detail, but we do not deem it necessary. There are many who, like Dennert and Batison, still profess to believe in the doctrine of descent, but disown the Darwinian method of evolution and regard it as a well-nigh complete failure. Yet they know of no other method which might take its place. This means that for them evolution has ceased to be a science, and has become once more a mere philosophical theory. Batison said: "We read his (Darwin's) scheme of evolution as we would those of Lucretius or of Lamarck. . . . We are just about where Boyle was in the seventeenth century." The testimony of Dr. D. H. Scott is very similar. In a presidential address before the British Association for the Advancement of Science he made the following statements: "All is again in the melting-pot. . . . Is evolution, then, not a scientifically established fact? No, it is not . . . It is an act of faith — because there is no alternative." Creation, of course, is not to be thought of. He further said that there is in natural science "a return to pre-Darwinian chaos." Dr. Fleischmann of Erlangen writes: "The Darwinian theory has not a single fact to support it . . . is purely the product of the imagination." Even stronger is the assertion of Dr. B. Kidd: "Darwinism is a compound of astonishing presumption and incomparable ignorance."44Quotations taken from Zerbe, Christianity and False Evolution, pp. 271f. Such scientists as Fleming, Dawson, Kelly, and Price do not hesitate to reject the theory of evolution and to accept the doctrine of creation. Respecting the origin of man, Sir William Dawson says: "I know nothing about the origin of man, except what I am told in the Scripture — that God created him. I do not know anything more than that, and I do not know of anyone who does."55Quoted by W. Bell Dawson, The Bible Confirmed by Science, p. 146. Cf. also what the later Dawson says in Chap. VIII. Fleming says: "All that science can say at present in the light of definitely ascertained and limited human knowledge is that it does not know, and has no certain proof how, where, and when man was originated. If any true knowledge of it is to come to us, it must come from some source other than present modern anthropology."66The Origin of Mankind, p. 76
D. THE ORIGIN OF MAN AND THE UNITY OF THE ROCE.
1. SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY TO THE UNITY OF THE RACE. Scripture teaches that the whole human race descended from a single pair. This is the obvious sense of the opening chapters of Genesis. God created Adam and Eve as the beginning of the human species, and commanded them to be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth. Moreover, the subsequent narrative in Genesis clearly shows that the following generations down to the time of the flood stood in unbroken genetic relation with the first pair, so that the human race constitutes not only a specific unity, a unity in the sense that all men share the same human nature, but also a genetic or genealogical unity. This is also taught by Paul in Acts 17:26, "And God made of one every nation of man to dwell on all the face of the earth." The same truth is basic to the organic unity of the human race in the first transgression, and of the provision for the salvation of the race in Christ, Rom. 5:12,19; I Cor. 15:21,22. This unity of the race is not to be understood realistically, as it is represented by Shedd, who says: "Human nature is a specific or general substance created in and with the first individuals of a human species, which is not yet individualized, but which by ordinary generation is subdivided into parts, and those parts are formed into distinct and separate individuals of the species. The one specific substance, by propagation, is metamorphosed into millions of individual substances, or persons. An individual is a fractional part of human nature separated from the common mass, and constituted a particular person, having all the essential properties of human nature."77Dogm. Theol. II, p. 72The objections to this view will be stated in another connection.
2. THE TESTIMONY OF SCIENCE TO THE UNITY OF THE RACE. Science in various ways confirms the testimony of Scripture as to the unity of the human race. Scientific men have not always believed in this. The ancient Greeks had their theory of autochtonism, to the effect that men sprang from the earth by a sort of spontaneous generation, a theory that has no solid foundation whatever, since spontaneous generation has never been proved but rather discredited. Agassiz propounded the theory of the Coadamites, which assumes that there were different centers of creation. As early as 1655 Peyrerius developed the theory of the Preadamites, which proceeds on the assumption that there were men before Adam was created. This theory was revived by Winchell, who did not deny the unity of the race, but regarded Adam as the first ancestor of the Jews rather than as the head of the human race. And in recent years Fleming, without being dogmatic in the matter, says that there are reasons to assume that there were inferior races of man preceding the appearance of Adam on the scene about 5500 B.C. While inferior to the Adamites, they already had powers distinct from those of the animals. The later Adamic man was endowed with greater and nobler powers and probably destined to bring the whole of the other existing humanity into allegiance to the Creator. He failed to preserve his own allegiance to God, and therefore God provided for the coming of a descendant who was human and yet far more than man, in order that He might accomplish what the Adamic man failed to do. The view which Fleming has been led to hold is "that the unquestionably Caucasian branch is alone the derivation by normal generation from the Adamic race, namely, from the God-worshipping members of the Adamic race which survived the flood — Noah and his sons and daughters."888Cf. The Origin of Mankind, Chaps. VI and VII But these theories, one and all, find no support in Scripture, and are contrary to Acts 17:26 and to all that the Bible teaches concerning the apostasy and deliverance of man. Moreover, science presents several arguments in favor of the unity of the human race, such as:
a. The argument from history. The traditions of the race of men point decisively to a common origin and ancestry in Central Asia. The history of the migrations of man tends to show that there has been a distribution from a single center.
b. The argument from philology. The study of the languages of mankind indicates a common origin. The Indo-Germanic languages are traced to a common primitive tongue, an old remnant of which still exists in the Sanskrit language. Moreover, there is evidence which goes to show that the old Egyptian is the connecting link between the Indo-European and the Semitic tongue.
c. The argument from psychology. The soul is the most important part of the constitutional nature of man, and psychology clearly reveals the fact that the souls of all men, to whatever tribes or nations they may belong, are essentially the same. They have in common the same animal appetites, instincts, and passions, the same tendencies and capacities, and above all the same higher qualities, the mental and moral characteristics that belong exclusively to man.
d. The argument from natural science or physiology. It is now the common judgment of comparative physiologists that the human race constitutes but a single species. The differences that exist between the various families of mankind are regarded simply as varieties of this one species. Science does not positively assert that the human race descended from a single pair, but nevertheless demonstrates that this may have been the case and probably is.
QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY: What can be said against the view that we have in Gen. 1 and 2 two different and more or less contradictory accounts of creation? Does it seem reasonable to think that the world existed millions of years before man appeared on the scene? Is the hypothesis of theistic evolution in harmony with the Scriptural account of the origin of man? Is the notion that the body of man at least is derived from the animals tenable in the light of Scripture? Has evolution established its case on this point? What has it proved in connection with the far more difficult question of the derivation of the human soul? What becomes of the doctrine of the fall in the theory of evolution? What is the theological significance of the doctrine of the unity of the human race?
LITERATURE: Bavinck, Geref. Dogm. II pp. 543-565,; Hodge, Syst. Theol. II, pp. 3-41; Litton, Introd. to Dogm. Theol., pp. 107-113; Miley, Syst. Theol. I, pp. 355-392; Alexander, Syst. of Bibl. Theol. I, pp. 156-167; Laidlaw, The Bible Doct. of Man, pp. 24-46; Darwin, Descent of Man; Drummond, The Ascent of Man; Fleming, The Origin of Mankind; O'Toole, The Case Against Evolution, Part II, Chaps. II and III. Cf. further the works on Evolution referred to at the end of the previous chapter.
1pp. 25f.
2Quoted by Allen, Evolution in the Balances, p. 110
3The Origin of Mankind, p. 75.
4Quotations taken from Zerbe, Christianity and False Evolution, pp. 271f.
5Quoted by W. Bell Dawson, The Bible Confirmed by Science, p. 146. Cf. also what the later Dawson says in Chap. VIII.
6The Origin of Mankind, p. 76
7Dogm. Theol. II, p. 72
8Cf. The Origin of Mankind, Chaps. VI and VII


text:
AMOUNT DONATED
Charity+Talk
Charity+Heat
CUSTOMER ENROLLMENT
DONATION REPORT CENTER
NONPROFIT ENROLLMENT
Charity+Power Privacy Policy
Effective October 1, 2016
Charity+Power, Inc. ("C+P", "we", "us", or "our") Privacy Policy is intended to inform you of our practices regarding our collection, use, and sharing of information. This Privacy Policy also describes your choices with respect to the information we collect, use, and share.
1. Our Commitment to Privacy
C+P is committed to respecting and protecting your privacy. C+P has developed this Privacy Policy ("Privacy Policy") to help make sure you understand what information we collect and what C+P does with the information we collect. The Privacy Policy discloses the information we gather on www.charitypluspower.com (the "Site"), as well as ways in which we process and, share such information and how you can correct or change such information. This Privacy Policy addresses our privacy practices relating to the general use of our Site by anyone who visits, browses or otherwise uses the Site, or who otherwise contacts us by mail, email, social media or telephone in connection with the services we offer (collectively, "you").
By visiting the Site, submitting information, making a donation or using any of our products or services, you acknowledge that you accept the practices and policies outlined in this Privacy Policy and consent to having your data transferred to and/or processed in the United States. If you do not agree to this Privacy Policy, please do not use the Site.
2. The Information We Collect
C+P is a platform for people and organizations to subscribe for utility services and raise support for charitable causes. C+P's mission is to support donations to worthy 501(c) non-profit organizations and that raising money for charity and giving back should be rewarding. The Site is intended to provide this great experience without requiring you to submit any more personal information than is reasonably necessary to use the Site effectively.
a. Information collected from individuals
We collect the following categories of information from you:
If you set up a membership account, we collect your name, email address and your current utility account information and your mailing address and phone number;
Your email address and any personal information you provide to us when you email us or Contact Us;
If you contact us by phone, a record of the phone call is maintained, which includes the date, time of day, and caller ID information. The purpose of such monitoring and recording is for training, quality assurance purposes, and to review specific transaction requests.
After you have switched to C+P, we collect your meter usage and billing information provided to us by your utility provider.
If you do not want us to collect information about you, you can simply decide not to submit it to us, but then you may not be able to take advantage of all of the services and products offered on the Site.
b. Information Collected From Charities
If you are a charity or nonprofit (each a "Charity") and you establish an account with C+P, we will collect the name, tax ID, physical address, email address, and phone number of the person who establishes a C+P account (the "Charity Contact") and any other information that is provided to us by GuideStar about your Charity. We also may collect, if the Charity Contact chooses to provide it, the person responsible for paying the Charity's utility bill and certain information about the Charity's fundraising activities.
3. Passive Gathering of Information Electronically
Browser cookies are small pieces data placed on your computer as you navigate websites with your browser. Browser cookies allow websites and various third-parties to distinguish your device from others by having the cookie consist of a unique identifier or other data. Cookies can have many uses, such as to target advertising as well as to enable website functionality and for security. If you choose to disable cookies, some areas of our website may not work properly.
b. Web Beacons
A web beacon is a transparent image file. Web beacons enable C+P to track website usage information, such as the number of times a given web page has been viewed. Web beacons are invisible to you and (unlike cookies) are not placed on your computer. We may use them in association with cookies to understand how visitors interact with the pages and content on the pages of the Site.
We may also use Web beacons to track whether you have opened an HTML email. When the email is opened, a part of the code that makes up the HTML page calls a web server to load the web beacon that then generates a record showing that the email has been viewed. Web Beacons may also recognize when the email was opened, how many times it was forwarded and which URL's (links within the email) were clicked.
c. Pixel Tags
In addition, we use "Pixel Tags" (also referred to as clear Gifs, Web beacons, or Web bugs). Pixel Tags are tiny graphic images with a unique identifier, similar in function to Cookies, that are used to track online movements of Web users. In contrast to Cookies, which are stored on a user's computer hard drive, Pixel Tags are embedded invisibly in Web pages. Pixel Tags also allow us to send e-mail messages in a format users can read, and they tell us whether e-mails have been opened to ensure that we are sending only messages that are of interest to our users. We may use this information to reduce or eliminate messages sent to a user. We do not tie the information gathered by Pixel Tags to our users' personally identifiable information.
d. How We Respond to Do Not Track Signals
We do not currently respond to "do not track" signals or other mechanisms that might enable consumers to opt out of tracking on our Site.
e. Google Analytics
We use Google Analytics to help analyze how users use the Site. Google Analytics uses Cookies to collect information such as how often users visit the Site, what pages they visit, and what other sites they used prior to coming to the Site. We use the information we get from Google Analytics only to improve our Site and Services. Google Analytics collects only the IP address assigned to you on the date you visit the Site, rather than your name or other personally identifying information. We do not combine the information generated through the use of Google Analytics with your personal information. Although Google Analytics plants a persistent Cookie on your web browser to identify you as a unique user the next time you visit the Site, the Cookie cannot be used by anyone but Google. Google's ability to use and share information collected by Google Analytics about your visits to the Site is restricted by the Google Analytics Terms of Use and the Google Privacy Policy.
f. Aggregated Information
From time to time, we may also ask you to provide us information that is not intended to allow us to identify you personally. This information may be aggregated and used for our internal purposes or for creating reports for utility regulators, third-party advertisers and partners, or otherwise shared with third parties for any lawful purpose, without your permission.
We also may automatically collect Site usage information, such as the numbers and frequency of users to the Site, pages visited and similar data. This data is used in the aggregate, that is, as a statistical measure, and not in a manner that is intended to identify you personally. Aggregate information generally is collected through the use of cookies and web beacons as discussed above. This aggregate information helps C+P determine general usage patterns and modify the Site in order to improve your experience. This type of aggregate information may be shared with third parties at any time.
g. Information from Third Parties
It may be necessary for us to obtain meter data, address or other information about you from third-party sources for fraud prevention or for legal compliance, to enforce our legal rights or to protect the rights of other users of the Site and our services.
4. How We Use Information
When you provide us with your personal information, we may use such information for a number of purposes, including:
To facilitate communication between C+P and you including, without limitation, responding to your questions or comments, sending emails concerning our products and services including upcoming events, and announcements, or to contact you for feedback regarding us, advertisers, or charity partners;
To administer your account, process donations, provide products or services to you and for C+P marketing and promotional activities;
To provide a report to a Charity or an event supporting a Charity to whom you have made a donation or to a fundraiser to whom you have made a donation, supported a project or joined a team (even if you have marked the donation as non-public);
To provide a report to a partner who is helping promote a Charity or an event supporting a Charity to whom you have made a donation;
To provide our gift registry partners with all the necessary data to accurately update their gift registries, including data related to the establishment of a donation registry and the applicable Charities, the applicable Event, the donors to such donations registry and the details of each donation;
To provide you with important functionality changes to the Site, new C+P services and, to the extent permitted by law, special offers from C+P and reputable third parties that we think you will find valuable;
To customize, analyze, adjust and improve the Site to meet our, advertisers' or charity partners' needs and expectations;
To enforce our agreements with you, prevent fraud and other prohibited or illegal activities, for other legally permissible purposes and generally to ensure that we comply with applicable laws;
To send emails to friends based on your instructions.
5. Accessing or Changing Your Information
CrowdRise allows you to change or correct inaccuracies in your personal information by logging into your account and making changes at any time. If you have questions about, or wish to review or correct the personal information we maintain about you, you may send an email to privacy@charitypluspower.com or through the Contact Us feature.
6. Disclosure of Information to Third Parties
C+P may give, share, sell or trade your personal information to or with any third parties under the following circumstances:
a. Charities and Event Organizers
Also, C+P shares with its Charity partners all of the details related to the donation registry sufficient to allow Charities to search for the donation registry, which will include your full name and email address, donation, and date of donation. C+P will continuously provide this information to its Charity partners to allow the Charity partners to accurately update their donation registries. If you wish to stop receiving communications from a Charity, please contact the Charity partner directly.
b. Fulfillment of Services
We may retain other companies and individuals to perform certain functions on our behalf. Examples include, but are not limited to, companies and individuals who: (i) administer the C+P accounts; (ii) process donations; (iii) conduct surveys or promotional activities; (iv) deliver products; or (v) provide customer support, web hosting, internet service, and data analysis. Such third parties may be provided with access to personal needed to perform their functions but may not use such information for any other purpose.
c. Compliance with Law and Fraud Protection
We may disclose any information we deem necessary, in our sole discretion and without your prior permission, to comply with any applicable law, regulation, legal process or governmental request. We may also exchange information with other companies and organizations for credit fraud protection, risk reduction and related activities or to protect the rights, property of safety of C+P, its agents, employees or affiliates or others. C+P reserves the right to use and to disclose to third parties the personal information of a user who we believe is in violation of our Privacy Policy or other terms as posted on the Site, even without a subpoena, warrant, court order or other governmental request, to the extent we deem necessary to protect the safety, security and rights of C+P and of third parties.
d. Credit Card Information
CrowdRise does not collect, store or otherwise maintain any credit card information from individuals who register or make a donation through the Site.
7. Information you Provide to Facebook and Other Social Networking Sites
The Site allow users to access Facebook to interact with friends and to share on Facebook through Wall and friends' News Feeds. We do this currently through a third-party service. That third-party service may store some of the information as part of their provision of services to us. If you do not use Facebook or another social networking site (SNS) to log in then that third-party does not receive any data. If you are already logged into the Site and Facebook or another SNS, when you click on "Connect with Facebook," or a similar connection on another SNS, you will be prompted to merge your profiles. If you are already logged into the Services but not logged into Facebook or another SNS that we support, when you click on "Connect with Facebook," or a similar connection on another SNS, you will be prompted to enter your SNS credentials or to "Sign Up" for the SNS. By proceeding, you are allowing the Site to access your information and you are agreeing to the Facebook or other SNS's Terms of Use in your use of the Services. Conversely, if you are not currently registered as a user of the Site, and you click on "Sign in" using Facebook or another SNS that we support, you will first be asked to enter your Facebook or SNS credentials and then be given the option to register for the Site. In this case, we may receive information from Facebook or another SNS to make it easier for you to create an Account on the Site and show our relevant content from your Facebook or SNS friends. Once you register on the Site and connect with Facebook or another SNS you will be able to automatically post recent activity back to Facebook or the other SNS. Any information that we collect from your Facebook or other SNS account may depend on the privacy settings you have with that SNS, so please consult the SNS's privacy and data practices. Further, you can edit privacy settings for the reviews that appear on Facebook, or disconnect your Services activity stream by visiting the Facebook Applications Settings page.
8. Important Disclosures, Practices and Contact Information
a. Third-party Links
The Site may contain links to third-party websites. Please be aware that C+P cannot control and is not responsible for the information collection practices of such websites, which may differ from those of C+P. We encourage you to review and understand the privacy policies of these web sites before providing any information to them.
b. Data Security
We maintain a variety of safeguards designed to protect your personal information from unauthorized access, loss, misuse, alteration and disclosure. For example, we use industry accepted tools and techniques to protect against unauthorized access to our systems. We implement both physical and technological protocols to limit access to your personal information. Those employees or third parties who have access to your personal information are permitted to access and use it only to the extent necessary to fulfill their responsibilities to us, to keep the information confidential, and are not permitted to use such information for any other purpose. We keep your personal information only as long as it is required and we destroy, delete or convert such information into an anonymous form when it is no longer required.
You should be aware, however, that C+P has no control over the security of other websites on the Internet that you might visit even when a link may appear to those websites from our Site. If you share your computer or use a computer that is accessed by the general public, remember to sign off and close your browser window when you have finished your session. This will help to ensure that others cannot access your personal information.
We want you to feel confident using the Site. However, no system can be completely secure. Therefore, although we take commercially reasonable steps to secure your information, we do not promise, and you should not expect, that your personal information, searches or other communications always will remain secure. In the event of a breach of the confidentiality or security of your personal information, we will notify you if reasonably possible and as reasonably necessary so that you can take appropriate protective steps. We may notify you under such circumstances using the email address(es) we have on record for you. You should also take care with how you handle and disclose your personal information.
c. Children
The Site is not intended for persons under the age of 13. C+P does not knowingly market to, or solicit information, accept service or collect information from any person under the age of 13. If C+P becomes aware that any person submitting information to the Site is under the age of 13, we will attempt to delete the account and any related information as soon as possible. We require that only persons 13 years of age or older use the Site. By using the Site, you hereby represent that you are at least 13 years old.
d. Changes to this Privacy Policy
We may change this Privacy Policy, and any of our policies and procedures concerning our practices for managing personal information, at any time and without prior notice subject to applicable law. When we post changes to this Privacy Policy, we will revise the updated date at the top of this Privacy Policy. If we make any material changes to our Privacy Policy, we only will notify you by sending an email to the email address(s) you provided to us, and by prominently posting notice of the changes on the Site. We will give you an opportunity to opt-out of any materially changed Privacy Policy or alternatively, delete the information you have provided to us. We recommend that you check the Site from time to time to inform yourself of any changes in this Privacy Policy or any of our other policies. Any changes that are made to this Privacy Policy will apply to both any personal information that we hold prior to the effective date of the amended Privacy Policy and any personal information that we collect on or after such effective date.
e. Contacting Us
If you have any questions about CrowdRise generally, this Privacy Policy or the Site, please feel free to contact us either by sending an email to info@charitypluspower.com or through the Contact Us feature.
f. Users From Outside the United States
The Site is hosted in the United States and is governed by United States law. If you are visiting the Site from outside the United States, please be aware that your information may be transferred to, stored and processed in the United States where our servers are located and our central database is operated. The data protection and other laws of the United States and other countries might not be as comprehensive as those in your country. By using the Site, you consent to your information being transferred to our facilities and to the facilities of those third parties with whom we share it as described in this Privacy Policy.
g. No Rights of Third Parties
This Privacy Policy does not create rights enforceable by third parties.
h. California Privacy Rights
If you are a California resident, California law permits you to request certain information regarding our disclosure of personal information to third parties for their "direct marketing purposes" as such term is defined by California's Shine the Light Law (California Civil Code 1798.83). To make such a request, please email us or write us: info@charityluspower.com and Charity+Power, Inc., PO Box 2508, Los Angeles, CA 90078. We will provide a list of the categories of personal information disclosed to third parties for third-party direct marketing purposes, along with the names and addresses of these third parties. This request may be made no more than once per calendar year. We reserve our right not to respond to requests submitted other than to the email or postal address specified above. You should put "California Privacy Rights" in the subject line and in your request. You must provide C+P with specific information regarding yourself so C+P can accurately respond to the request.
We are a Broker of Electricity
Charity+Power is a broker of electricity. This means that we do not take title to the power before it is sold to you. This minimizes our risk and allows us to focus on our mission. As a broker, we have been able to negotiate significant discounts from our suppliers, which allows us to remain competitive with your utility provider and, at the same time, provide a donation to your favorite charity. Because we are a broker, you will not see our name on your utility bill. Instead, you will see the name of the supplier you selected, who will be acting on your behalf with your utility provider.
© 2018 CHARITY+POWER INC.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Book a package and save on flight and hotel.
Whether you like five stars or hot bars with your hotel, we can help you find the right place to stay at the right price. A cheap price doesn't always mean a cheap hotel; our best price guarantee will help you have a better night's sleep.


Haya de la Torre, Víctor Raúl vēk´tôr räo͞ol´ ä´yä dā lä tô´rĕ [key], 1895–1979, Peruvian political leader, founder of the APRA party. Although he never held power and spent much of his political life in exile or in prison, he had great influence on contemporary hemispheric politics. A leading advocate of nationalist revolutions in Latin America, he championed the cause of the indigenous people and fought for radical, although expressly non-Communist, social and economic reforms. He was exiled in 1923 and after eight years returned to Peru, where he ran unsuccessfully for the presidency in 1931 and was imprisoned for 15 months. Because APRA advocated the overthrow of the oligarchy that had ruled Peru since colonial days, the party was outlawed from 1931 to 1934 and from 1935 to 1945, when José Luis Bustamante y Rivero became president with APRA's support. Dissident Apristas revolted in Callao in Oct., 1948; the party was again outlawed. In November, Manuel Odría seized power and forced Haya to seek asylum in the Colombian embassy in Lima. The Peruvian government granted him safe conduct in 1954 only after years of bitter denunciations from liberals throughout the hemisphere. APRA was legalized in 1956, but Haya continued to live mostly abroad until 1962 when he returned to campaign for the presidency. He obtained a slim plurality but not enough to be constitutionally elected; a military junta nullified the elections. Running again in 1963, Haya was defeated, but APRA remained popular.
See study by R. J. Alexander (1973).


Absolute Networks are a Midlands based IT specialist. Founded in 2003, Absolute Networks have designed, installed and supported IT systems across 30 different industries allowing customers to focus on their core business activities by providing robust, fit for purpose technical platforms.
You can free up your time to focus on your core business activities as Absolute Networks take on the administrative and technical burden of managing your IT infrastructure. Think of them as your remote IT department.
By getting to know their customers' businesses, Absolute Networks provide only the most appropriate solutions. Coupled with outstanding support, it's no wonder that Absolute Networks has high customer satisfaction and retention rates.


text:
Consulting & Technical Assistance
Learning Design
Games & Simulations
The People of CRESST
50/50 Blog
CRESSTCON
ELPA21
View Page Menu
Leverage Points for Improving Educational Assessment
Robert J. Mislevy, Linda S. Steinberg, Russell G. Almond, Geneva D. Haertel, and William R. Penuel
Advances in cognitive psychology deepen our understanding of how students gain and use knowledge. Advances in technology make it possible to capture more complex performances in assessment settings, by including, for example, simulation, interactivity, collaboration, and constructed response. The challenge is in knowing just how to put this new knowledge to work. Familiar schemas for designing and analyzing tests produce assessments that are useful because they are coherent, within the constraints under which they evolved. Breaking beyond the constraints requires not only the means for doing so (through the advances mentioned above) but schemas for producing assessments that are again coherent; that is, assessments that may indeed gather complex data to ground inferences about complex student models, to gauge complex learning or evaluate complex programs–but which build on a sound chain of reasoning from what we observe to what we infer. This presentation first reviews an evidence-centered framework for designing and analyzing assessments. It then uses this framework to discuss and to illustrate how advances in technology and in education and psychology can be harnessed to improve educational assessment.
Mislevy, R. J., Steinberg, L. S., Almond, R. G., Haertel, G. D., & Penuel, W. R. (2001). Leverage points for improving educational assessment (CSE Report 534). Los Angeles: University of California, Los Angeles, National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST).
KEYWORDS: K-12, Methodology Development, Ontology, Testing, Tools
© 2021 CRESST


Notice: This vocabulary word list for Antony and Cleopatra is for personal use only.
The study of the word list will improve reading comprehension. Any commercial use of the vocabulary word lists at MyVocabulary.com is expressly prohibited unless requested and permission granted.
Email jancook@myvocabulary.com or use the Contact Us in the footer below.
Thank you to Janice Cook in Vero Beach, FL for being the contributor at www.myvocabulary.com for a vocabulary word list for Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare.


Enter your information and click update. After you clicked "Update" you will receive a message on the top of the page telling you "Account Information updated successfully!" in red. This message will indicate that your account was a success.


Peter Sauber has transferred a third of the equity in his team to chief executive officer Monisha Kaltenborn.
Team principal Sauber, who has retained the remainder of the shares, said the decision "represents an important step for me in providing continuity".
The 68-year-old added: "My desire is to ensure the company continues to be led as I would want over the long term."
A spokesman said the shares were "a gift" and no financial transaction was involved.
Monisha Kaltenborn has been at the team in various roles since 1999 and was promoted to CEO in 2010. She is the first woman to be in charge of an F1 team.
Sauber said Kaltenborn had been "instrumental in the team's survival" following the decision of former partner BMW to pull out of F1 at the end of 2009 and that "since then she has been doing outstanding work as CEO".
He added: "Monisha Kaltenborn and my son Alex, who joined the company as marketing director in 2010 and has since also been a member of the board of management, both embrace this aim. It means we can offer our employees a positive outlook for the future."
Kaltenborn said: "For me this step is a mark of the greatest possible trust, which I will do everything in my power to justify."
Sauber entered F1 in 1993, initially as the works team for Mercedes engines, but continued as a privateer until they were bought by BMW in 2006.
The team have generally been midfield runners but this year has seen a marked upturn in form, with the cars regularly qualifying in the top 10 and contending for points.
Sergio Perez scored their best result since Canada 2008 when he finished second to Fernando Alonso's Ferrari in Malaysia, the second race of this season.


text:
You are here: Home / Interviews and Reflections / Carl N. Degler: "Vassar College"
Carl N. Degler: "Vassar College"
Carl N. Degler, the emeritus Margaret Byrne professor of American history at Stanford University, taught in Vassar's history department from 1952 until 1968. His essay, "Vassar College," appeared in American Places: Encounters with History, edited by William E. Leuchtenburg. Its inclusion in the Vassar Encyclopedia is courtesy of Professor Degler and by permission of Oxford University Press, Inc. http://www.oup.com/
I am so pleased to have this essay in a Vassar publication. It originally appeared in a scholarly work by well-published historians, each of whom selected an historical event, institution, or place to write about. My selection was Vassar College. It seemed an obvious choice for me, since it is an historical event—early women's education—an institution—with distinctive architecture and design—and it was very personal place to me. Underneath all that were the people at Vassar I learned so much from: the democratically organized administration, the wonderfully acute students with a magnificent library to which they had free access. I could research and write, while the instituition financially supported my early writing career. And finally there were the congenial and knowing faculty, with whom I could have good and often vigorous talk at Faculty tea.
In short, this is my thank you note to Vassar College. Thank you, thank you!!
Carl N. Degler
My first sight of Vassar College on the outskirts of the mid-Hudson river-town of Poughkeepsie, New York, occurred on a dark November night in 1948. The occasion was intended to be a brief—in fact, a very brief—honeymoon from New York City, where Catherine Grady and I had married that afternoon. Since both of us were working at universities and had only a weekend to celebrate, and possessed no car, we looked for a hotel near Princeton University, which was close enough by train from New York for a weekend. There were no rooms, however, since the hotels were overfull because of a big Princeton football game. Looking for another nearby college campus, we thought the short train trip to Poughkeepsie would give us a chance to explore Vassar College, which we had heard of but had never visited. After checking into a small hotel, we walked to the campus.
As we entered the nearest opening onto the grounds of the college, we could see a partly lighted, large brick structure with thick white pillars sustaining a triangular roof front. As we came closer, we could hear some talk and laughter from what seemed to be a large crowd inside. Years later, I found out that it was the Students' Building, the largest auditorium of the college. On that occasion it was being used for a student theatrical performance, and when we entered, it became clear that women were portraying men as well as women. Vassar, of course, was then exclusively a women's college. We watched the performance for a while, then retreated to our hotel and thence to New York and work.
Four years later, when I was seeking a teaching job, I saw Vassar in daylight. This time I entered in the proper way, driving through the large, elaborate gatehouse, which arched over the entry road that stretched a hundred yards, a line of fir trees on each side, before it reached Main Hall, the principal and largest building on the country-style campus. Even today Main appears huge and unusual for an edifice constructed more than a century ago, when it was said to be the largest civilian structure under one roof in the country. Main then encompassed most of the college's activities, including classrooms, offices, and student rooms. It was a lengthy, four-story, dark-red brick building with two large towers at each end and a large cupola over its slate-covered roof. When I arrived, the original front entrance was obscured by a porte cochere, which
reached to the second floor. Near Main I could see several buildings, including the President's House, a drama theater, which at the college's inception had been a riding school, a stone Gothic-style chapel, and a similarly styled library. Looking beyond these immediate buildings, I could see extensive lawns, flower beds, and many other buildings behind and beyond Main, including a small observatory. I could easily believe that this was the classic American campus: open, physically attractive, and far removed from New York City College's closely placed buildings devoid of even a patch of grass, where I was then teaching. Even the flowers and the lawns of Columbia University, where I was then completing my Ph.D., could not challenge Vassar's colorful and appealing bucolic country campus, especially now that I had gained a family of two children below the age of two.
That attractive campus easily captured for me what little I knew then about Vassar College. My conception was quite different from my own experience at Upsala College in East Orange, New Jersey. True, Upsala sported an "Old Main" too, although much more recently constructed, and displayed a few stretches of lawn, but its location in a residential part of the city limited its extent to a few blocks; Vassar's campus stretched to a thousand acres with a lake to boot. Like the other so-called Seven Sisters—the leading private women's colleges of the northeastern United States—Vassar was not only physically attractive but also prestigious in reputation, wealthy, and, for prospective students, costly as well, all of which Upsala had not been. And I was not alone in my conception of Vassar. Some years later, after I had joined the Vassar faculty, an indignant critic of a popular article of mine publicly berated me as a "pedagogue of the rich." In fact, the founder of the college, Vassar, himself told the trustees at the outset that his college was not intended to be a "charity school." Students or parents would be expected to pay for that education, though, in justice to him, he subsequently provided fellowships. As at the beginning, the Vassar College I knew in the 1950s and 1960s was an expensive educational experience. Demography reinforced that judgment. Over 40 percent of the fathers of Vassar students in the 1950s were professionals, and another 45 percent were businessmen. Compare that with the 30 percent of the fathers of students at teachers' colleges who were manual workers.
Matthew Vassar had not intended to invest his money; rather he intended to undertake a minor revolution. His purpose was to educate young women on a level comparable to that of young men at colleges like Yale and Harvard. Vassar himself had been born in England, arriving as a boy in Poughkeepsie. His schooling was meager, and he began work at his father's small brewery. In time, Matthew took over the brewery from his father, then built a new one, moved into local politics for a while, and invested successfully in railroads, whaling, and banking, from which by the 1850s he had accumulated a substantial fortune. Childless and advancing in age, Vassar obtained from a local educator named Milo Jewett the idea of endowing in his lifetime a first-class college for young women. Jewett became the college's first president.
The idea of educating young women was not new. Oberlin College in Ohio had admitted women along with men in 1837, and by the 1850s several colleges for women had been founded in both Georgia and upstate New York; there were also several dozen two-year seminaries for women designed to improve their manners, reading, languages, and aesthetic abilities. The distinction that Vassar intended for his college lay not in being a four-year school, as was Elmira College in upstate New York, but in exceeding in equipment, resources, and size any women's college then in the country—or the world. Women would gain in one stroke that quality of education then available at the country's best private men's colleges. Remember that in 1861, when the first ground was broken at Vassar, Harvard College had been in existence accumulating wealth and prestige for two centuries, and Yale College was not far behind.
With the innovative guidance of Jewett, Matthew Vassar wanted to make sure that his new college would indeed reach the high level he envisioned. Consequently, he put his money where his mouth was by endowing a two-hundred-acre farm outside Poughkeepsie along with four hundred thousand dollars' worth of securities—then considered a rare amount for founding any kind of college, especially from a single donor. Sophia Smith's endowment, for example, ten years later, did not meet Vassar's. In line with his concern for quality, Vassar also enlisted the skills of James Renwick, the architect of the recently constructed St. Patrick's Cathedral on New York's Fifth Avenue. It was Renwick who designed the immense Main building and the elaborate gatehouse.
It may have taken the four years of the Civil War to open the college, but at its opening the staff and their equipment represented a virtual revolution in women's higher education. At the outset, as Vassar had insisted, two of the eight professors were women, and thirty of the thirty- five assistants were women. The facilities for the teaching of a full array of scientific work were present: astronomy, chemistry, physics, botany, zoology, as well as courses in mathematics. The telescope proudly ensconced in the observatory was said to be the second largest in the nation; below, in an apartment on the first floor, lived Maria Mitchell, a nationally known astronomer and outspoken advocate of young women's independence. The teaching of physiology and health was there from the beginning as well, largely because those who expressed doubts about women's higher education feared women's bodies were as fragile as their minds. Matters of physiology and health were not recognized as useful for men until much later in the century.
As observers at the time anticipated, many of the early students chose classes in languages and the arts, as was the usual practice at the female seminaries. The novelty of a Vassar education, however, was strikingly apparent at the outset. Forty percent of the students chose science courses, while 21 percent selected the classics, the long-established measure of a liberal education at the private men's colleges. (Only 7 percent picked the social sciences.) As I learned when I joined the history department in 1952, all those sciences were still operative, with others added. (Indeed, at the time of the discussions about a possible move to Yale in the mid-1960s, proportionately more women majored in some sciences at Vassar than men did at Yale College.)
Behind Jewett's and Vassar's idea for higher education for women stood the fear that not enough young women would take the risk. Numbers turned out to be no problem—almost four hundred women, not all of them young, sought admission—but the preparation needed for admission to a first-class college was another matter. Only 31 percent of the entering students were ready to engage Latin and other fundamental subjects at college level. For almost a decade the college maintained a preparatory department to bring the students up to the required level. The preparatory experience nicely measured how limited education had been for women while revealing, at the same time, how urgent women's drive for higher education had become. Within fifteen years after Matthew Vassar's experiment, Wellesley and Smith had been founded, and by the turn of the century new private universities like Chicago and Stanford opened their doors to women and men.
When I arrived at Vassar in 1952, women's rights, even feminism, were subjects of importance to women faculty members. As I soon learned, however, that importance did not emerge from frank and direct remarks about feminism or women's rights; the time was not yet ripe for that. It came most obviously from the intense interest many of the women faculty members felt in seeing young Vassar alumnae achieving in the outside world. Students, on the other hand, rarely articulated concerns about women's rights, though they usually worked hard to succeed academically and often planned for graduate school. Few of the
students knew that there had been a nineteenth-century women's movement begun as early as 1848 at Seneca Falls under the leadership of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucretia Mott. Yet as late as the opening of the twentieth century, the third president of the college, James Monroe Taylor, forbade lectures on campus on women's political activities or the suffrage. To Taylor and certainly to the trustees, Matthew Vassar's goal for his college was not to reform society but to educate women under the same standard as men. In line with that kind of thinking, Taylor also resisted to the end of his presidency in 1914 the introduction of any courses or activities at Vassar College that would prepare women for the very likely possibility that most would be wives and mothers.
The new president, Henry Noble MacCracken, acted on a quite different conception of Vassar education. Ironically, just those subjects or courses Taylor had so strongly resisted became the new ideas that MacCracken, the political liberal and ardent proponent of women's suffrage, now introduced into the education of young women at Vassar. MacCracken endorsed a course of study called euthenics that recognized the special needs of Vassar women as homemakers and mothers. Later he expressed the motivation behind his innovation: "Celibate life, independent careers, increase of divorce, limitation of children, were all, or seemed to be, evidence that the American family needed attention." (As early as the turn of the century, some political leaders, especially Theodore Roosevelt, had openly worried about "race suicide" because college women were not marrying and reproducing. And it was true that before the twentieth century more than 40 percent of Vassar women had never married; by 1921, however, the figure had fallen to 25 percent.)
Euthenics did not survive at Vassar, but a more enduring sign of the shift away from Taylor's opposition to courses for women as wives and mothers was the establishment in the 1920s of the Child Study major in connection with the opening of a nursery school. Soon other elite women's colleges added that aspect of women's education to their programs. Of course, no elite men's colleges followed suit. (From my standpoint, the nursery school was a decided plus; both of my children entered it soon after I was appointed.)
My own rising interest in feminism did not develop from any strong expressions of feminism emanating from my women colleagues; only occasionally did they press on me their views on that subject. It emerged instead largely because I was surrounded by lively young women seeking to learn about themselves and their future from the American past. I soon began to make some connections between my professional interest in the American past and the place of women in it. That was especially potent when I wandered through, and then scrutinized, the substantial collection of books and studies in the Vassar library about and by women. Suddenly it became clear that women's history did indeed have a good deal of relevance for the history of African Americans, in which I had become deeply interested since my days at Upsala and later in graduate school. It was while scanning those many books on women at the Vassar library that I read, with engrossing interest, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 1899 tract Women and Economics. I had never heard of the book or its author but soon undertook to read most of her many writings and then published an essay on Gilman's books and her many popular articles. Later, when Betty Friedan came to lecture at Vassar, I sent her a copy of my article on Gilman's ideas, because Gilman had anticipated so many of the ideas that appeared in Friedan's Feminine Mystique. Graciously, Friedan acknowledged the similarities, though in the course of her research she, too, had not come across Gilman's book or name. From that first encounter at Vassar with Friedan emerged my joining with her and a handful of others in Washington, D.C., to found the National Organization for Women.
During most of the sixteen years I taught at Vassar, the president was Sarah Gibson Blanding, who had served as dean of the School of Home Economics at Cornell University before coming to Vassar. She was the college's first woman president, but that did not make her a feminist, though she invariably insisted on using the description "young women" in referring to the students rather than "girls," then a widely used designation. Like her predecessor, Henry MacCracken, Blanding always said that Vassar's principal job was to provide young women with the best education and that education would contribute heavily to their being the primary teachers and supporters of their families.
Sarah Gibson Blanding
As a person, Sarah Blanding was open and liberal, full of fun that was often punctuated with bursts of loud, exuberant laughter and with well-disciplined Christmas parties. ("Time to go, Carl," she would interrupt in order to move me out of her living room.) Though she was rather conservative educationally, she was a solid Democrat, for she had been born in Kentucky and still sounded so. Nothing pleased her more than to discover that I was increasingly interested in the history of the South. An important result for me was a steady stream of financial support for my annual visits to the meetings of the Southern Historical Association at various southern cities. Another Vassar colleague, also of southern heritage, Mildred Campbell, supported my southern interests by letting my family and me live in her rural house in East Tennessee. She felt it necessary, if I were to teach southern history at Vassar, that I gain some direct southern experience, especially in the agricultural South, since I had been born and reared in Newark, New Jersey.
Along with fostering my intellectual development, Vassar showed me how young faculty members could soon comfortably ease themselves into a serious and congenial collegial environment. Before joining the Vassar history department, I had taught freshman courses at New York University, Hunter College, Ade1phi University, and City College, while pursuing graduate study at Columbia. At all of these institutions, I was little more than a transitory person, barely recognized, except by a few contemporaneous colleagues. As one of them remarked at lunch one day, "We are all, you know, a part of the 'fluid bottom,' " existing, as we were, in truth, on a tide you knew not where to or from.
At Vassar there was no fluid bottom. Virtually from the beginning, as an assistant professor, I felt accepted as a teacher, perhaps as something of a scholar, and certainly as a professional. By my time, Vassar had achieved a democratic governance in which faculty of all ranks met together periodically and in full cognizance that the faculty and the trustees had worked out a written and strictly honored body of agreements. Although I knew about the governance, I was much surprised early on that Charles Griffin, my chairman, actually asked my opinion about a general college issue. No chairman at my earlier posts had included me in any of our infrequent faculty discussions. At Vassar, though, I was soon encouraged to speak out at the full faculty meeting if I thought I had something to add to the discussion. It is true, as I have reflected since at equally democratic faculty senate meetings at Stanford, that a democratically organized faculty with power can also stifle or slow down necessary changes, because coalitions among departments and groups seeking their self-interest can and do do just that. Yet I have always felt that Vassar showed me how a faculty-administration arrangement might or even ought to function.
On a level closer to students, I learned the importance of teaching classes in history, where there were rarely more than twenty-five or thirty students. Indeed, in my department, history was seen as so important that no one was supposed to lecture at all! Class discussions were based on assigned topics, accompanied by reading lists because students had access to an open-stack library. The students were encouraged—prodded, if necessary—to express their thoughts and reactions to the reading. I have never been sure that a class discussion, as opposed to a seminar, was always appropriate in history, even at Vassar, but in learning to lead class discussion, I came to see the limitations of depending upon lectures only, as had been the practice of many of my graduate and undergraduate teachers. In the context of Vassar's belief in the value of
published scholarship, the discussion method subsequently provided me with an opportunity to publish my first book. Many universities at the time assumed, as they still do, that a young scholar's Ph.D. dissertation ought to become in time a book, especially if he or she expected to achieve tenure. A number of the senior faculty at Vassar had published scholarly works, but no one pushed me in that direction at the beginning, for which I was grateful. To be candid, I was not sure that my dissertation was something I wanted to work on at all. I still recall the reaction of my chairman when he asked me what my present research project was about. When he heard it, he said he thought the topic seemed too narrow and just plain boring, both of which it was.
Taking that implicit advice, I looked to some other projects. Because I was teaching a general course on U.S. history and chose to emphasize changing interpretations of the past, I thought it would be interesting and even intellectually exciting to do a book organized around that theme. One of the obvious advantages I obtained from Vassar was that I could design my own course and discuss with students in my class changing interpretations of American history. That was something which did not often happen at the places I had taught before. Most of them usually required young instructors to follow a departmental design. What was most valuable to me was another example of Vassar's fine cooperative relation with young instructors: the college's policy of offering competitive faculty fellowships evaluated by a Vassar faculty committee instead of through the traditional sabbatical, which was determined by term of service. As things turned out, I received a full year's fellowship at the end of my fourth year. The result was my first book, Out of Our Past, the text of which I had drawn from my course in American social history. Needless to say, no university and few other colleges would have provided such generous support for a young scholar, especially since the book was intended to be a popular and not a scholarly work. (That fellowship policy, I should add, no longer prevails).
From the outset, the college had encouraged young women students to serve society even if it may also have looked to marriage and family as a primary role for post-Vassar women. Teaching or education, medicine, and social work were possibilities, especially as the city and the factory created new needs that socially responsible educated women could fill. During the 1950s and 1960s most Vassar students perceived marriage as an important early step in their lives because a career often appeared to exclude marriage. At one time in my years at Vassar, all my superiors—president, dean of faculty, dean of students, and departmental chair—were single women. Almost all of the male faculty were married. In a student body increasingly determined to marry, a career, as opposed to a job, was difficult to contemplate. As I came to appreciate the implications of Matthew Vassar's mission, I began to recognize that the goal of achieving equal education for women could be personally confusing for many Vassar women given the times and circumstances. That recognition laid the groundwork for my trying to unravel the complexities many Vassar women seemed to face in confronting marriage and work. It later became my book At Odds: Women and the Family from the Revolution to the Present.
I became aware of the issue in the early 1960s. Vassar students worked hard—probably harder than students in most of the private men's colleges—and learned as much as or more than the men. Yet given the opportunities available for women's employment at the time and joined with the pressure for marriage, Vassar women approaching graduation found themselves in a dilemma that men had no need to think about. In the 1950s and 1960s young men could strike out directly from college into a career. When marriage and family came, that may have added a new burden, but it did not usually interfere with a man's career. Indeed, it might actually enhance the reason for continuing the career. Vassar women, however, as I learned from them, could indeed pursue a career since they possessed the necessary education. But what would happen when marriage and family arrived? Once, in discussing these issues in class, I told the students about a real-life solution that I heard about. It concerned two loving academic friends in the 1930s, Ada Comstock of Smith College and Wallace Notestein of Yale University. When Cormstock was offered the presidency of Radcliffe College, Notestein proposed to her. She refused him, for she knew that as a married woman—that is, with the likelihood of a family—she could not take up the offer from Radcliffe. When she retired at sixty-five, Notestein, who had not
Ada Comstock and Wallace Notestein in London, 1947. The Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University http://www.radcliffe.edu/schles/
married, proposed to her once more. They then married and lived together for more than twenty-five years. To my students that story was romantic, but hardly a solution for them. Indeed, only reliable and easily available contraceptive devices, the loosening of sexual habits, and revised conceptions of marriage and women's careers reduced substantially the sharpness of college women's dilemma, though without entirely resolving it.
It could be said, too, that one evidence of that dilemma was the college's decision in 1968 to become coeducational. The underlying drive, as I perceived it, was the issue of marriage and family versus career. It was a male president, to be sure, Alan Simpson, who initiated, in conjunction with Kingman Brewster, president of Yale, a possible linkage of the two colleges. In the difficult and sometimes acrimonious process of discussing the merger, which, in the end, did not take place, Vassar become coeducational, as did Yale. That decision clearly broke a tradition among prestigious private colleges that the best education depended upon a separation of the sexes. For a while even Mount Holyoke and Smith seriously contemplated coeducation, but among the men's colleges the change spread rapidly across the nation. Today there are a number of private women's colleges, but only a handful of men's colleges remain. Even West Point and Annapolis are coeducational.
By the time the decision was made for Vassar to become coeducational and to stay in Poughkeepsie, I had decided to move to Stanford University, after sixteen years of teaching, learning from, and loving Matthew Vassar's college. I was leaving Vassar not because of coeducation; after all Stanford been coeducational from the beginning. Rather, I wanted a strikingly different as well as more comfortable location, a larger academic scene, and to be able to work with some colleagues I knew there. As I think about Vassar today, I reflect that once again Vassar was there in the forefront of higher education, first at its beginning when it constituted a major shift in women's education, and more recently in helping expand coeducation across the country. (Not all of Vassar women at the time agreed with that evaluation, I need to admit.). Although I supported coeducation at Vassar and Yale, my feminist outlook appreciates the continuation of single-sex institutions for women. In a still largely male-dominated society, women's colleges provide a needed diversity for young women seeking higher education.
When one leaves a job or an institution after a substantial number of years, those left behind usually entertain one of two general responses. One is that those who remain are glad you have gone, though they may not say that. The other is that those who remain are very sorry you are going and wonder if you did the right thing in deciding to leave. The response I received from my associates at Vassar did not suggest either message to me, They did not feel that I was escaping them, or even that I was injuring them. Instead, as Evalyn Clark, one of the senior Vassar women in the department, said to me: "Carl, this move will be good for you because it will provide a wider and more exciting opportunity for your talents." She knew, of course, as I've been saying, that Vassar had done so much for me that my staying could be easily justified. But that was not the Vassar I had learned about; it sought, rather, to develop its faculty as well as its students.
Coeducation At Vassar
Evalyn A. Clark
The Disappointing First Thrust of Euthenics


…out on the other side feeling relaxed and sleeping better. Stop into a Dream Shop today and find the sheets, cooling mattress protectors, and pillows that are right for you. There's one located inside every Jerome's showroom and stand-alone Dream Shops located in San Diego and Riverside County too!


The SEC's Cyber Unit: Friend or Foe to Registered Entities?
Home Perspectives The SEC's Cyber Unit: Friend or Foe to Registered Entities?
In recent years, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has prioritized the regulation, monitoring, and enforcement of cybersecurity activities. On Sept, 25, the SEC reinforced its commitment to cybersecurity when the Enforcement Division announced the formation of a "Cyber Unit" that will target cyber-related misconduct affecting the securities markets.


text:
Clicking on banner ads enables JWR to constantly improve
Jewish World Review March 3, 2003 / 30 Adar I, 5763
Tom Purcell
JWR's Pundits
World Editorial
Cartoon Showcase
Mallard Fillmore
Mona Charen
Greg Crosby
Suzanne Fields
James Glassman
Paul Greenberg
Bob Greene
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
Marianne Jennings
Mort Kondracke
Ch. Krauthammer
Lawrence Kudlow
Dr. Laura
John Leo
MUGGER
Kathleen Parker
Wes Pruden
Sam Schulman
Amity Shlaes
Jonathan S. Tobin
Ben Wattenberg
Bruce Williams
Mort Zuckerman
My Family's Tragic Secret: We're French
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | My father still hasn't gotten over the news.
About nine years ago I was researching our family background. My father's father died when my father was only three, so I found some people who knew the man and wrote a column about him. In the process, I learned something tragic about my Great Grandma Purcell. She wasn't Irish, like we thought.
She was French.
As painful as it was for me to learn this tragic news -- as painful as it is to make this family secret public now -- my father has taken it especially hard.
Father used to tell us about our Great Grandma Purcell. She was full of wit and spirit. She had a huge, loving heart. She also had a distillery in the basement, as all good Irish families in Pittsburgh did during Prohibition.
So when I first told him she was French, he didn't take it well.
"The heck we're French!" he said.
I can't blame father for his reaction. I certainly don't want to be French.
It's partly because of the way they run their affairs over there. They seem to enjoy the large socialist economy that produces lots of bureaucrats, impediments to business growth and high unemployment rates.
It's partly because of their lack of gratitude. After a good run in the 19th century, they suffered many military setbacks in the 20th century, and America bailed them out. We sacrificed American lives to liberate them in WWI. And after they let the Germans waltz in, we sacrificed more American lives to liberate them in WWII.
It's partly because they are so snooty. The French are against everything American just because it is from America. They pass laws to keep our movies and culture out (though I can't entirely fault them there). They treat American tourists with rudeness and disgust. And they resist every solution we offer about anything, particularly the situation with Saddam Hussein.
Though I think Conan O'Brien has the best explanation as to why. Saddam Hussein hates America, keeps mistresses and wears a beret, says O'Brien. The French don't want to attack Hussein because he is, well, French.
My family has been trying to come to grips with our terrible secret. We meet with a counselor monthly and he is helping us face our French heritage head on.
During one session, I realized I suffer from many French tendencies. When I was a lad, for instance, I never was much of a fighter. It is true I had no brothers and that my five sisters taught me all I know about "fighting." Well, the neighborhood bulley kept pushing me around, so one day I looked him dead in the eye and said, "You are soooooo immature!" Then I attempted to appease him by giving him half of my Snicker's bar in exchange for peace, but after he whipped me, he took the whole thing, anyway.
I've realized that my French-ness also exhibits itself when I'm in restaurants. I'm most picky about my coffee and it is hardly ever right. Thus, I'm forced to yell at the wait staff, manager and, if I can find the bugger, the cook. It is simply unconscionable what some people try to pass off as coffee these days.
Our counselor says my family has a tendency to exaggerate the positive aspects of our Irish heritage, while downplaying the fact that we're almost half German. He pointed out that the Germans have been almost as difficult as the French where Iraq is concerned. That may be true, but we don't mind being half German. It is because of our Irish-German mix that we're able to drink so efficiently.
Our counselor says that to embrace our French heritage, we should focus on the more positive aspects of being French. Napoleon was no sissy. Joan of Arc was a terrific testament to courage. And France is a beautiful country rich in culture and history. I know he's right. It just seems to me that France would be so much nicer if the French didn't live there.
In any event, I think father is finally coming around. It was he who introduced the rest of the family to Cognac, and I think he's on to something.
When you drink enough of that stuff, being French isn't so bad after all.
Enjoy this writer's work? Why not sign-up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment on JWR Contributor Tom Purcell's column, by clicking here.
02/21/03: I'm worried about my people
02/14/03: George Washington Makeover
02/07/03: Making quiet sacrifices
01/24/03: "Gimme the, goo-goo, gah-gah, remote!"
01/21/03: "Misunderestimated"
01/10/03: Republican night life
01/06/03: Exercise pills
12/31/02: They provide unending joy to those who are wise enough to let them in
12/13/02: Hurried Man Syndrome
12/06/02: In DC, snowstorms have important ramifications --- or, at least, they should
11/26/02: Police advertising
11/15/02: An Interview with Osama
11/01/02: How to vote in America
10/25/02: On edge in Washington, D.C
10/11/02: Giving new meaning to "selling your body"
10/04/02: Bush's Angels
09/27/02: Conservatives, Liberals, Dick Armey and Barry Manilow
09/20/02: Are SUV drivers are the new GOPers?
09/13/02: Bubba is Dubya's man
09/06/02: The Freedom to Picnic
08/16/02: Ah, the $izzle of anti-terrorist pork
08/09/02: Vacationless prez and gutless Americans
07/26/02: Study gives women permission not to hide their emotions
07/15/02: Patriot food
06/28/02: Eavesdropping on a San Fran classroom
06/21/02: The crowded skies
06/14/02: Contemporary Father's Day: A conversation for the ages
06/07/02: Legal rights for animals?
05/19/02: Advice for prom goers this year: Hold onto your money
05/10/02: Don't take her for granted
05/03/02: Letter to the parents of a tubby teen
04/26/02: Zacarias Moussaoui gets expert legal advice
© 2002, Tom Purcell


This entry was posted in Dublin. Tagged Dublin, Ireland, photography, Pig's Ear, restaurant, travel.
Just stay away from pig ear dishes. I once tried Orejas in Spain and they were disgusting.
this place has a mix of new agey entrees, but pork belly was the most adventurous of them. I stuck with the sides and turned vegetarian for the evening!
Pork belly is fine. I'm pretty adventuresome with local cuisines, and I can't believe some of the things I ate when we lived in Spain. But going veggie is usually safe.
I wish I had been more adventurous, but sometimes when you are traveling it is better to be safe than sorry!!!! what I had was great!
You have to be really careful when you travel. We don't eat in restaurants when we travel. We buy food in the markets and make sandwiches and whatever we can with what's available. When we were in Paris in 2013, we rented an apartment so we had a kitchen. When we lived in Spain, I could be more adventurous because we lived there. Out of the 4 years we lived in Spain we only ate in a couple of restaurants. I had the pig ears at a reception after playing a concert in one of the villages outside Madrid.
that is what we usually do too, but this was for work and we had dinners and lunches etc. everyday. I am going to Paris with two of my sisters and my niece in February and we have rented an apartment, we are so excited but we will do as you did, with buying food at the markets ….best way.
Where's your apartment located? We were a block from the Opera in a great location. We went to the Lourve every day for two weeks and didn't scratch the surface. It's immense. There is a local guide of happenings, forgot the name, where we found some fantastic free classical concerts in it while we were there. They were in not so well know churches, but well worth the effort of attending. Also heard some really great organ concerts in Notre Dame. We need to go back for a year to do and see all the stuff we wanted to see. BTW, we thought the boat tours looked cheesy at first, but we finally bought an all day on-off ticket for one of the boats, and it was really fun. We spent a whole day riding up and down the Seine, getting off to see things and then getting back on. I recommended the tour boats.
our apt in on the Ile de St. Louis in the middle of the Seine and on the little island that is next to the island that the Notre Dame is on. We have also stayed in one in Montmartre too. I love finding the free concerts like you did and I hope it is not too cold to ride the bateau mouche at night because everything is so beautiful in the lights at night. we will be there for two weeks too. so excited!
That's a great location. We looked at an apartment in that area, but it got booked while negotiating with the agent.


This air pump version of the Profi Tap is for use with 5 litre mini kegs. Cheaper to use than the CO2 version, it will dispense the perfect pint of ale. The pump is detachable allowing the use of an optional CO2 unit or regulated gas line.