Who Promised You a Rose Garden?: Re-Rooting America

By Julianne Cooper

This is the story of a little girl from rural Virginia who thinks she can change education in America. Raised in an era before feminism, political correctness, and multiculturalism, Julianne Cooper tells the story of her passage from farm girl to university professor to education visionary. In 2010, Cooper and her founding team designed an education system to energize the next generation toward individual achievement, resurrecting traditionsboth family and nationalrecreating the American dream, and a belief in God who holds it altogether. Then they built a school to prove it. Follow Cooper as she learns lessons that will later become the curriculum for a private secondary schoolLiberty Harbor Academy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503584853

Julianne Cooper

Julianne Cooper is a founder and president of Liberty Harbor Academy in Manchester, New Hampshire. University professor, entrepreneur, advertising/marketing executive, public speaker, radio personality, and historian, Cooper has a reputation for taking on the seemingly impossible and making it work. Dr. Cooper holds several degrees including a bachelor’s degree in marketing, a master’s degree in medieval Europe, and a dual doctorate in American and European history from the University of New Hampshire. Finally, she completed her education with a theology degree from Harvard University and certification in international protocol from the National Protocol School in Washington DC. She lives with her husband, Mark A. Reeder, cofounder of Liberty Harbor Academy, and their cat in Hooksett, New Hampshire.

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Copyright © 2015 by Julianne Cooper.

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Rev. date: 07/22/2015

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TABLE OF CONTENTS – THE PAST IS PROLOGUE

Foreword

Introduction — Prologue – The Past Is Prologue

•  Removing the reader from the present and constructing a past of information needed to relate to the present.

Chapter One — Act I, Scene 1 – Ancestors

•  Ancestors   •  Great Grandparents   •  Grandparents   

•  The Taylor Legacy

Chapter Two — Act I, Scene 2 – Childhood to Deaths of Father and Grandfather

•  Parents’ marriages   •  Birth

•  1953 – Death of Father Thomas Edward Siudowski

•  1954 – Death of Grandfather Edward Willard Taylor

Chapter Three — Act II, Scene 1 – A New Parent

•  Mother’s Re-marriage to Nicholas William Carter

•  Their Dating and Marriage

•  Seven to Twelve Years Old

Chapter Four — Act II, Scene 2 – From the Taylor Farm to Washington DC.

•  From Farm Girl to Suburban Teenager

•  Junior High and High School

•  Those Teenage Years

Chapter Five — Act III, Scene 1 – First Marriage

•  High School Graduation   •  College

•  David Gardiner Lane – First Husband

Chapter Six — Act III, Scene 2 – Motherhood

•  Birth of Daughter - Alexandra Taylor Lane

•  Marriage and Motherhood

Chapter Seven — Act III, Scene 3 – Second Marriage and Intellectual Awakening

•  Marriage to Donald Folsom Cooper   • Birth of the Intellect •  Bachelor’s Degree

•  Advertising Agency  • Step Children

Chapter Eight — Act III, Scene 4 – Third Marriage – The World by Degrees

•  Marriage to Jacob Albert Forst   •  Travel with Alex

•  Alex College

•  Alex Marriage

Chapter Nine — Act III, Scene 5 – Fourth Marriage, Integration

•  Marriage to Mark Alfred Reeder

•  Grandchildren   •  Teaching

Chapter Ten — Act IV, Scene 1 – The Founding of Liberty Harbor Academy

•  Leaving the University

•  Business Plan for Liberty Harbor Academy

•  Curriculum Design

•  Liberty Harbor Academy Graduation

Chapter Eleven — Epilogue – Death and Taxes

•  Living and Dying with Cancer

•  Birth, Death, and Immortality

Endnotes

FOREWORD

M Y INTRODUCTION’S SUBTITLE, The Past Is Prologue , references Shakespeare’s Tempest which is incidentally inscribed on the statue flanking the stairs of the United States National Archives in Washington DC. I would also point out that the left statue reads, Study the Past, a partial quote from Confucius, which in full reads, Study the past if you would define the future. Make no mistake that these passages are not arbitrary, given that the foundational documents of this country are housed there, not to mention the extensive collection of other important texts stored and hidden from view. These two passages ought not to be taken lightly. While they flank a national building and, hence, suggest something important about the larger history of this nation, they should, as they have long done so in me, stir internal and personal exploration and self-reflection. Indeed, my past is prologue. Over the last several years, I’ve been taking stock of my past, how it would define my future. This book began as an autobiography. I was originally compelled to write it because my current husband and I took a considerable risk to leave what had been a combined forty-year tenure of teaching together in higher education to start a private high school, Liberty Harbor Academy, in Southern New Hampshire. To say considerable risk here embodies at least a degree of understate ment.

Imagine, if you will, in the uncertain economic and political environment of 2010, putting at jeopardy a modest retirement portfolio to start a private high school. It is a very independent private school dependent on tuition and donations that attempts to literally change the prevailing public culture, one student at a time. That is what we did. After experiencing the decay of our education system and the concomitant decline in the culture of our youth, my husband and I decided we had to act. Using our curriculum designed to counter the education decadence, Liberty Harbor Academy opened with twelve students in the fall of 2011. Almost immediately, the unanticipated obstacles began to appear. My vital and hearty husband and partner became severely ill with a series of debilitating ailments, making it impossible for him to continue in the school. Yet the school grew and graduated the first class in the spring of 2014.

However, in the midst of the excitement of preparing that event, in March of 2014, another obstacle reared its ugly head. I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I endured a series of fits and starts in navigating the world of oncology from hope in a radical operation called the Whipple procedure, through three rounds of different chemotherapy in a yearlong torture, to final acceptance. So as the disease continues, this book has become something very different from what I expected it to be. I need to pass on some things, some advice I would like to share, much of which comes from tripping and falling. It is a life of sometimes losing sight of important lessons taught—lessons of values, morals, and standards, setting a high bar that I did not always reach. But those lessons also served as the foundation on which I landed, sometimes with a thud, and from which I had to pick myself up and reset the compass more than once. So I begin with a few quick remarks to tell you something of my present and my presence, even though the book is really about how my past is prologue. Throughout, I ask you to do the same—examine your past, the good and the bad, and take stock of what you leave for those in the future.

ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE,

AND ALL THE MEN AND WOMEN MERELY PLAYERS:

THEY HAVE THEIR EXITS AND THEIR ENTRANCES;

AND ONE MAN IN HIS TIME PLAYS MANY PARTS,

HIS ACTS BEING SEVEN AGES.

AT FIRST THE INFANT,

MEWLING AND PUKING IN THE NURSE’S ARMS.

AND THEN THE WHINING SCHOOLBOY,

WITH HIS SATCHEL AND SHINING MORNING FACE,

CREEPING LIKE SNAIL UNWILLINGLY TO SCHOOL.

AND THEN THE LOVER, SIGHING LIKE FURNACE,

WITH A WOEFUL BALLAD MADE TO HIS MISTRESS’S EYEBROW.

THEN A SOLDIER, FULL OF STRANGE OATHS AND BEARDED LIKE THE PARD,

JEALOUS IN HONOUR, SUDDEN AND QUICK IN QUARREL,

SEEKING THE BUBBLE REPUTATION EVEN IN THE CANNON’S MOUTH.

AND THEN THE JUSTICE, IN FAIR ROUND BELLY WITH GOOD CAPON LINED,

WITH EYES SEVERE AND BEARD OF FORMAL CUT,

FULL OF WISE SAWS AND MODERN INSTANCES;

AND SO HE PLAYS HIS PART.

THE SIXTH AGE SHIFTS INTO THE LEAN AND SLIPPER’D PANTALOON,

WITH SPECTACLES ON NOSE AND POUCH ON SIDE,

HIS YOUTHFUL HOSE, WELL SAVED,

A WORLD TOO WIDE FOR HIS SHRUNK SHANK;

AND HIS BIG MANLY VOICE,

TURNING AGAIN TOWARD CHILDISH TREBLE,

PIPES AND WHISTLES IN HIS SOUND.

LAST SCENE OF ALL, THAT ENDS THIS STRANGE EVENTFUL HISTORY,

IS SECOND CHILDISHNESS AND MERE OBLIVION,

SANS TEETH, SANS EYES, SANS TASTE, SANS EVERYTHING.

William Shakespeare

As You Like It

Act II, Scene 7

INTRODUCTION

Prologue – The Past Is Prologue

I   AM A PRACTICING Christian and a practicing acad emic.

I am not a feminist.

I am not politically correct.

I am not a multiculturist.

I am a baby boomer but not a hippie.

I survived the Cultural Revolution, the Vietnam War, the feminist movement, the sexual revolution, and the education reform.

I grew up without seat belts, bike helmets, computers, or cell phones. There was no Internet—you actually had to go to a library to do research. Yet I managed to complete an undergraduate degree, two master’s degrees, and a dual doctorate without the Internet and, except for the last couple of years of graduate school, without even a computer. I typed and retyped drafts of my papers on an electric typewriter. That of course was after I wrote it out long hand.

This is not a memoir concerned with the story of surviving a broken family, alcoholism, drugs, or sexual exploits. It is the memoir of a family that worked to instill truth, integrity, and meaning of life into an only child and only grandchild. It is the story and an example that seems so often missing in today’s world of anything goes. I was raised to achieve and serve. I was expected to take care of myself and anyone I was beholden to, as well as act in service to others. I do not remember ever having the idea that I should live separated from my obligations. There was never a sense that I was supposed to be a child for any length of time. I was expected to grow up and take on responsibilities and not complain or whine about what life handed me. On the other hand, I was raised never to expect that anyone else was going to solve my problems for me. My mother was often heard to say if I complained, Who promised you a rose garden? Hence, the title of this book.

The metaphor of the rose, or roses, weaves its way throughout my life story and yours, I am confident, if you take the time to examine it, which I encourage you to do. It is only through returning to the roots of your personal culture, as well as to the foundations of our cultural heritage, that we will restore ourselves. Let me play the academic for a moment and remind you of the heritage of the rose metaphor.

Like our lives, roses promise beauty and threaten pain since every rose has its thorns. Shakespeare has Juliet ask Romeo, What’s in a name that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet?¹ implying that it is not the name that matters, that what we call things does not change what they really are. This is a lesson much in need of thought today as our current culture has made a concerted effort to change the names of uncomfortable ideas in order to make them more palatable. No matter what you call a rose, it will still smell as sweet and have as many thorns as it always did. Therefore, being politically correct and changing names is something I argue against throughout this book.

Another reference to the rose is the mother of Jesus, the Virgin Mary. She is pictured as the holy rose with the five petals representing the five joyful mysteries, the five sorrowful mysteries, the five luminous mysteries, and the five glorious mysteries. The beauty and sweet smell contrast with the thorns in Mary’s life as well as Christ’s. In gifting roses, their colors carry different messages. The red rose symbolizes romance, sexuality; the yellow means friendship, joy, and wellness; the purple is associated with royalty, majesty, enchantment; pink connotes gratitude, and appreciation, while white represents purity, spirituality, sympathy, innocence, honor, and reverence. Not to mention such things as rose-colored glasses, the War of the Roses and even Guns and Roses. And those are just a few of uses of the rose. As an academic, I could probably go on for an entire book. But I defined myself up front as more than an academic so will refrain from the academic diatribe.

As I said above, I was raised to achieve and serve, and the service expectation assumes an active spiritual life. I believe with C. S. Lewis² that I do not have a soul; I am a soul. I have a body. It is this soul, me, that has experienced God and life on earth in such ways that those experiences have informed who I am and how I live. It seems that there are times when just telling a story connected with my life, triggered a memory in a stranger who for the first time allowed herself to confront her own questions. Let me attempt to explain how all this connects by telling a short story from my teaching career.

There was the time when a student followed me to my office after class and confessed something she had realized through the topic of the lecture. (At some point, I began to structure my lectures to touch on areas of life where my students were hungry for information and a thoughtful, nondogmatic assessment. Students needed someone to talk to who would not give them the politically correct answer of the day.)

Unfortunately, education has become an indoctrination where the students are given the correct answer yet are seldom encouraged to ask important questions. My philosophy as a teacher is that it is my job to listen to the other person, ascertain what they are using to create an opinion, and offer alternative information. Thus, through conversation, the individual begins to widen the possibilities for a different life choice or even a different vision of the world. Frankly, I believe it is my job to teach myself out of a job—to help the students to become autodidactic. Then they can teach me something. This reminds me of the Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle. Aristotle was a student under Plato for more than twenty years. However, what is most amazing to me is that in much of his philosophical writing, Aristotle disagreed with Plato—he actually wrote specifically in opposition to him. Teachers today might learn something from this. Can they teach a student how to think without requiring them to think like them? I have striven all my teaching career to avoid indoctrinating my students. Although I agree with very little Plato wrote, I have looked up to him as a role model for my teaching in this very instance.

I won’t pretend that it is an easy path to follow. I have to read and absorb literature from all sides as well as to pay attention to popular culture.³ Not only do I need the idea, but I also need to back up my sources. I try to teach students to ask questions and search for answers. Another part of the lesson is to always ask where others in the conversation may have obtained their information. Just because it is on the Internet does not make it true. Yet no matter how much we try, sometimes we (read I there) get caught in our own rhetoric. The culture around us is so pervasive that we are hard-pressed to escape it every time we should.

This reminds me of the time I was teaching a course to honors students at a New Hampshire university. It was a few days after 9/11, and listening to the radio on the way to school, I had heard that Bill Clinton had commented in a speech at Georgetown University that America deserved the 9/11 attack because of Western behavior during the Crusades. Now, as a historian, I know that the story of the Crusades has been revised to an unrecognizable extent in order to have it correspond with the current political correctness of progressive education. In any case, I opened the class with a rant about revisionist history and the audacity of Mr. Clinton to say such a thing. I had bought into the radio announcer’s version of the speech and was reacting to it without checking the sources for myself. In the back of the room, one student raised his hand. A young Rico McCahon, now dean of academic affairs and interim headmaster at Liberty Harbor Academy, asked, Dr. Cooper, did you hear the speech? Have you read a transcript? Because if not, how can you be so sure of your source?

Oh no! I had done exactly what I preached against every day. I was caught! Well, I said, you’re right. See you back here tomorrow. You can imagine what I did immediately after class. The transcript of Clinton’s speech was available online, and I read it. Fortunately, it did say exactly what the pundit had reported. Now at least I could back up my rant. I was so proud of Mr. McCahon. Not only had he learned to ask more questions than accept answers, he was also willing to respectfully challenge authority. If only we could get this lesson through to more people today. In fact, I would argue that one goal of this book is to prod the readers into doing just that, respectfully challenge authority (especially such ideas as multiculturalism and political correctness). Ask more questions while accepting fewer easy answers. I digress.

Let me return now to the young woman I mentioned above who followed me back to my office after class. She was perhaps in her late twenties and was taking my course in Western Civilization. I had woven sociology (along with psychology, archaeology, literature, and anything else I could find useful) into my courses. This particular day, I was discussing the Protestant Reformation in Europe. I talked a bit about the rise in the divorce rate and the corresponding growth in mixed families—yours, mine, and ours—and how we know about child rearing from diaries and journals. Anyway, this lecture had struck a chord with the student who came to my office after class. She explained that she had an eight-year-old son who was beginning to act out in negative ways toward himself. She then launched into a diatribe against the boy’s father and how she was determined to make sure her son knew what a piece of work his father was in order to make sure the son was never like him. I asked if she was open and clear about the flaws in the father—absolutely, and she added that it was true of men in general. The feminist message had obviously gotten through to her loud and clear—the message that men are and have always been against women that they have worked to maintain a hold over the possibility of female success in the public sphere. Men only wanted women to stay home barefoot and pregnant. Males were simply misogynists—against women—and determined to keep women in their place. With this rhetoric in mind, I have rejected the tenets of feminism from the beginning. The only problem in the situation of my student was that her son was a male.

Her son’s survival, at eight years old, was tied to his relationship with his mother who was his source of his very life. Without her care and approval, he was lost. He had to make sure his relationship with her was as positive and supportive as possible. At the same time, his mother was on the warpath against men, all men. It was not only his father but also men in general who were the enemy. Unfortunately, as a budding male, he could not change his genes. What was this boy to do? Simply as an accident of birth, he was born the sex his mother hated.

When my student realized what she had been doing to him all those years, she broke down and cried for half an hour. Then we discussed how she could begin to change her message, at least for her son’s sake, if not for her own. What was his choice? Her son could either turn on himself with self-loathing as the monster his mother envisioned of men in general, or he could become what she expected of men and act out her expectations. Either way, he portrayed the male he was assumed to be. While she tried to make sure she was raising a boy to become the opposite of his father, the only model he had was the one painted for him by his mother.

The last time I spoke with her at the end of the semester, there seemed to be a glimmer of light toward a more hopeful point of view for her son. I had suggested she find a family member—grandfather, uncle, brother-in-law—or an outsider who would be around regularly to present a more positive image of manhood. She promised to try. She thanked me for listening and said there was no one else she trusted enough to talk to about her problem because they would only tell her the same thing she heard every day.

What if I had not been there for her? I feel a little like the child on the starfish-covered beach who is busy throwing starfish into the water one at a time. A gentleman strolling the beach asked what difference he was making, since there were so many starfish. Holding up yet another rescued sea star, the child replied, It makes a difference to this one! Considering that one lone sea star, at that moment with the young mother, I knew I had an opportunity to make a difference for at least one student many years ago. This story of mother and son is one reason why writers like C. S. Lewis matters so much in education. All the academic education in the world makes little difference unless there is a soul behind it. Much of the soul of this book grows from the sense that education is meant to make one’s life better. This is the way I believe the academy and spirituality should manifest and work together today.

Lately, every new venture God places before me, I am again struck by the limits of my ability to know. I think God has given me several opportunities to become knowledgeable in specific areas so that when those areas came in contact with each other, I would be able to see things from a completely different angle than most people. Seeing things from a different viewpoint is an important aspect of the thesis of a book by Thomas Kuhn, a philosopher of science, entitled The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In this monograph, Kuhn posited the idea that paradigm shifts often occur from outside the domain of various disciplines. Kuhn argues from a philosophical and historical exploration of significant shifts in some of the greatest advancements in science were the products of the perspective of a well-educated and broadly knowledgeable person whose point of view is not bound by the conventional wisdom and orthodoxy that invariably pervades any school of thought. Simply put, advancements often come from outside the orthodoxy of any discipline. In other words, once a person has been steeped in a subject area, has, in essence, become an expert, he has accepted the boundaries of the discipline as doctrine and dogma.

However, an outsider to the discipline, who understands but nonetheless questions the prevailing model, can sometimes see alternatives that allow for great leaps in knowledge. In fact, sometimes the outside perspective may not even come from a contemporary outside observer. Kuhn points out how often an unrelated field of inquiry explored by someone in the distant past stirs the imagination of a well-known historical figure.

Take for example the work of the great German astronomer Johannes Kepler in the sixteenth century whose contribution to understanding planetary orbits was such that, without which, events like landing on the moon to satellite television to the act of sending a text message might never have occurred at worst while at best might be in a distant future. Indeed, before Kepler, it was an accepted fact that planetary orbits where perfectly circular, a vestige of thought dating to the Ptolemaic conception of the universe he formulated around AD 100. By Kepler’s age, complicated equations and theories had been devised to account for aberrations of celestial objects to bring them into the conformity of the dominant view of planetary rotation. But Kepler, though a product of all the great astronomers and their achievements and the resulting consensus, was nonetheless curious. For indeed he believed that God had created a universe that had rules, natural law as it would later be described, that if divined, lead to a greater understanding of the creator. That belief, an orderly universe governed by the laws of the creator and Kepler’s appreciation for the great thinkers of the ages, even if their worldview had become antiquated, lead to a profound shift.

Kepler’s love of geometry and mathematics led him to reacquaint himself with the work of Apollonius of Perga in 200 BC, two centuries before Christ. Kepler was captivated by Apollonius’s study of the properties of conic sections. Apollonius identified and wrote extensively about everything from parabolas to hyperbolas and ellipses. Ellipses and their geometric and mathematical properties captured Kepler’s attention. What if the orbits of planets were not circular but elliptical? Well, today we all know that Kepler made the discovery but rarely is it brought to attention that it was the work of not just an outsider to the realm of astronomy in Kepler’s day; it was the thinking of someone close to two thousand years before Kepler. For Kepler, the past was indeed prologue.

Finding oneself in outsider status holds promise and peril, especially when one feels obligated to ask unconventional questions, stemming from another great thinker of the ages. Two of Socrates’s most important provisos were the unexamined life is not worth living and the humble admission that I know nothing.

I am quite certain that God placed me in this outsider status more than once, and I did ask my share of unconventional questions. In fact, I don’t think I have ever been in a position where I came up through the ranks in the normal progression of things. In writing this, I was struck by the number of times I was confronted by an obstacle or an opportunity to do something I knew nothing about. When I am talking to young people, my advice is: "When you get an opportunity to do something you have never done before or to assess an issue from a different viewpoint, try to say yes!"

As I encounter the stories of my life again—from starting an advertising agency to learning to fly an airplane, to starting a private high school—I realize that you never know where life will take you. I was lucky in so many ways to have the kind of traditions and background that prepared me for the opportunities God threw at me. My advice? Be ready and able to exercise discernment and be cognizant of the moments where opportunity presents itself!

What I mean here is that we all have a legacy to leave behind us. In a very biological way, one’s legacy, perhaps even the most important one, may be to pass on life to the next generation. Otherwise, there would be no next generation. I have often reminded my students that once my daughter produced a living child, my biological reason for being here was done. I had made sure the chain of human existence was not broken so that human beings were going to continue to exist as long as there were at least sufficient offspring to replenish the population. However, that is really only the soulless aspect of legacy. The more important one is the one we leave pertaining to our traditions and culture.

As a university professor, I would often ask students if they had thought of what they wanted to give to the world. What was their legacy to be? What would they want people to say about them when they were gone? How did they want to be described? Most of them seemed to think that what was said about them was beyond their control. And that is true. They are, in some sense, the passive receptacles of someone else’s opinion. However, you are in control of your presentation. When I pointed out that it was their responsibility to determine who they wanted to be and to consciously create that persona, they were bewildered. My guess is that they have never been asked to contemplate what guides them in their life decisions. It once was that beyond the family and religion, education used to contour youth and urge them to explore and examine who they ought to become. Required philosophy courses opened up questions of personal integrity and character building. Students spent long hours trying to find meaning in the writings of the great thinkers of the past. Students learned that every generation asked similar questions of themselves. Each generation learned to find those values that will bring deeper meaning to their lives. The basic questions of philosophy, as they have always been, are: What is the good, and what is the good life?

Today when I ask students what they would be willing to die for, many answer, Nothing, or they are unresponsive. While they have given little thought to values and principles and people for whom they would be willing to lay down their lives, or even offer a minimum sacrifice of time and talent, they spend an extraordinary amount of time playing video games. At the base, the objective of these games is an unfettered killing field in which players kill avatars without any commitment on either side yet are unwilling to give themselves up for something real.

On the other hand, if we look at the general profile of young people who join the military, what we regularly find is a dedication to something larger than themselves which is often expressed as a commitment to God, country, and family. In fact, it is imperative to have faith in something greater in order to be willing to commit their lives. What will you lay down your life for? Our Founding