
Public sentiment is a growing power the World over. In our country its influence is most marked. Here it creates law and repeals it. A law in violation of public sentiment is dead letter, and therefore demoralizing, for laws habitually violated tend to lawlessness. Reverence for law is a wholesome sentiment, which should be early implanted in the juvenile mind. Laws in reference alike to the support of schools or attendance upon them must depend largely upon public sentiment. Laws, just and right in themselves, and adapted, if sustained, to promote the greatest good of the greatest number, may yet fail utterly from the want of popular sympathy and support. The question, therefore, of the expediency of compulsory attendance at school in any given State depends on the enlightened public sentiment of the community. Wherever good schools have been so long maintained that the people generally regard them as essential to their individual thrift and happiness and to public security, morality, and prosperity, laws for the prevention of illiteracy may be wisely enacted. In those States where free public schools are still a novelty, or where illiteracy most abounds, where multitudes appreciate neither the advantages of education nor the evils of ignorance, compulsory attendance is considered impracticable. However, in those States where the traditions of the people from their earliest history have fostered the general appreciation of common-school education as their most precious heritage, as the source of their success and prosperity, as indispensable to their future growth, as essential to skilled industry, as the cheapest police-agency comes at length to be recognized as the universal right, duty, and interest of humans. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

If the State has a right to provide for any internal improvements, it has the right to provide for that education which is the condition of all progress. If the State may enforce regulations for the health of the body, it may do the same for the mind. If the State has a right to hang a criminal, it has a better right to prevent one’s crime by proper culture. The right to imprison and to execute implies the right to use the best means to prevent the need of either. What have to get this fatalistic idea out of people’s heads that we are on a downward spiral that cannot be stopped. The public school system in which the United States of America takes pride is one of the most paradoxical if not self-contradictory institutions in American life. On the other hand, it is completely socialized. No family pays directly for the education of those of its children who attend it; each family pays taxes more or less according to its ability, receives according to its need. All the children in the school share its services, expect where segregation and discrimination occur. The public high school in particular is the most cosmopolitan and equalitarian congregation of people in any community. Education is not merely available to all children, but compulsory during certain ages in each state. No child can be rejected as a pupil, save for reason of severe defect. The entire staff of the school—administrative, professional, and maintenance—is salaried. The whole roster of citizens in each community is eligible to participate in selecting members of its board of education and in affecting their policies. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

On the other hand, in the actual conduct of teaching and learning, conventional procedure is the incarnation of competitive individualism. The assignment of pupils to grades, rooms, and seats usually ignores the social ties among them. The marking systems rank each on the basis of rivalry with all. Beyond this marking system is the swarm of psychological test devised on the premise of an individualistic psychology to which few theorists remain willing to commit themselves. The tasks imposed on pupils are for the most part individual tasks, with no group decisions and no group responsibilities. To the extent that the problem of motivation is consciously considered at all, it is generally assumed sufficient to rely on the stimulation of rivalry for grades, and on parental interest in fostering the art of getting on in the World. Yet realistically, the spectacle is one of a majority sentenced to unfavourable comparisons and burdensome compulsions, from which they escape daily and yearly as fast as they can—5.3 percent dropouts in the high school years is still the rough national average; but California has a dropout rate of 10 percent. It would be redundant to recite here the long struggle between those who want the school to concentrate upon putting vocationally useful knowledge into children’s heads, and those who have declared their aim as the development of the entire personalities of children. The liberal educationalists tend to be those who emphasize the school’s functions in developing people for their responsibilities of citizenship; the vocationalists, those who emphasize training for economic competition. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

Nevertheless, there occur numerous crossings for these lines. To further highlight this illustration, if one considers the method of examination employed in purely vocational schools run on a commercial basis, the pupil is usually passed on the achievement of a standard level of objective competence, rather than upon the calculation of a minimum numerical average maintained in competition with other pupils. As the scope of formal education comes to include adults and the very young, it is notable also that this new population in nursery schools and adult programs is not subjected to the usual competitive apparatus. Methods in adult education especially, where participation is completely voluntary, relay largely on noncompetitive motivation such as: group recognition, recruitment through friends, sociability, a degree of student choice of subject matter, choice of instructors, and design of methods. Forums, workshops, round table, committees, conferences, and seminars characterize adult methods. In public school extracurricular activities, it is obvious that only voluntary methods seem appropriate to induce participation, that motivation depends primarily upon the membership standing of a person in a group. Any teacher in a high school can give examples of seemingly dull, resistant, apathetic youths, who suddenly come alive in extracurricular activities, and exhibit prodigies of ability, energy, and ingenuity when given a responsible share in the tasks of a voluntary group. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Any teacher in a high school can give examples of seemingly dull, resistant, apathetic youths, who suddenly come alive in extracurricular activities, and exhibit prodigies of ability, energy, and ingenuity when given a responsible share in the tasks of a voluntary group. Not as many teachers have grasped the possibility of finding ways in which channels of motivation can be put to the service of serious learning. Since much of the best learning occurs in extracurricular activities, how could this be made to include more of the ordinary curriculum subject matter, thus making the child’s learning a art of one’s active involvement with one’s fellows? The evolution of policy within the school falls readily int our familiar three stages, although this may not be as readily apparent as with other types of family agencies. At the first stage, the intervals of spontaneous activity by pupil—recess, playground periods, assemblies, and singing—are regarded as concessions, as ways for children to let off steam, so they can return more seriously to the work of learning. At the second stage, extracurricular activities are recognized as having some values on their own account, more facilities and encouragement are provided, and these activities become more definitely and extensively organized on a group basis, but with a substantial element of adult guidance; counseling services grow, starting with health and going on to home visits and intensive testing. At the third stage which is far from being realized, the responsible self-governing group which is characteristic of many extracurricular activities permeates school activities, less as a concession to recreational demands, or as an attempt to supply social graces to children from limited home environments, but as a beneficial program of complete education. #RandophHarris 5 of 19

The parent-teacher associations connected with public schools are potentially the bodies through which all adult citizens may participate directly in the planning and evaluation of the educational programs in their communities. At present, however, the bords of education are too remote from ordinary citizens on the one hand, and the parent-teacher associations are too frail on the other. School boards, consisting of a handful of unpaid citizens elected for several years on a normally nonpartisan basis, tend to leave initiative and leadership to the salaried administrators. They are less governing boards than boards of audit and review. Their members are often so busy and exhausted that they have less intimate day-by-day knowledge of what goes on in the schoolrooms than do the parents of school children. Yet, in the hands of boards of education rests the ultimate power to modify what goes on in the schoolrooms day by day. Lacking any such power, parent-teacher associations normally operate (save in certain small school districts) under the handicap of seeming to be purely “social” organizations, where acquaintances may be made, tea drunk, and speeches heard. Biennial elections of school boards, and, in smaller places, annual school meeting to hear and accept reports, are usually pale and bloodless versions of what might be possible if the powers and functions of boards of education and parent-teacher associations could be fused in some workable manner. A few boards have made grouping efforts in this direction, of course, is not peculiar to public school systems. It is the characteristic shortcoming of local government in general. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

The frequently heard suggestions for a revival of town meetings or their equivalent fail to appreciate the peculiarly modern nature of the problem—the frustration of citizenship in the city. So far no inventor of social procedures has suggested a solution which has worked as well as town meetings are reputed to have worked in their time. As it is universally admitted that the members of the human family must be prepared by instruction, and training, for the service which devolves upon them in this life, many are advocating for the maintenance of our public schools. Without education, each human must begin jut where one’s ancestors began, and however much wisdom or knowledge on obtains by one’s own efforts, one leaves none of it to one’s posterity when one dies; there is no opportunity for the advancement of one’s race. Humans, uneducated, are not prepared either to serve the World most effectively, or to enjoy the World most fully. The difference between a human who has been well instructed and trained from one’s youth, and what the same human would have been like if one had grown up untaught and untrained, is the difference, in some cases, between a civilized human and an uncultured human. The one may fulfill a noble mission, lead a life of high enjoyment, add to the happiness of one’s fellow humans, many of whom one never saw, and, when one dies, after a brief sojourn here, may leave the World better, richer, and more prosperous for one’s having lived in it. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

The other, in some cases, may become a burden to one’ fellow humans to oneself, while one adds nothing to the World’s wealth, and, at the best, renders no more service to one’s race than if one had been a horse or an ox. People in China are certainly preparing for the World of the future. China is breaking existing rules in three major ways. First, it combines participation in the resource development projects in Less Developed Counties (LDCs) with large-scale development assistance focused on the building of their infrastructure. The government is acting in tandem with resource companies, providing financial and organizational support. Western firms do not work together with their governments in this fashion and thus cannot offer similar packages. (To compete with China, Japan, and South Korea are starting to rapidly move in the same direction at this point.) Second, the development assistance China provides is, mostly, neither official development aid ( developing country itself, China does not want to bear donors’ responsibilities), nor purely commercial loans and investment. It is something in between: concessional loans (extended on better terms than commercial credit) and investment backed and subsidized by the state. China often extends resources-backed development loans, meaning that the borrowers pay its debt not in cash but with oil, cocoa beans, or metal ores. It is a mutually beneficial scheme. The Chinese side gets resources it needs, while cash-strapped loan recipients do not have to pay in precious hard currency. In the late 1970s, to build its own infrastructure, China obtained similar loans from Japan leveraging its coal, oil, and other resources. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

Third, unlike the West and to its great embarrassment, China’s assistance is not conditioned on the recipient states’ record regarding democratization, human rights, economic liberalization, or anticorruption measures. To access natural resources, it does not hesitate to cooperate with the most dictatorial and abusive regimes in the World. In such countries it easily becomes a de facto monopolist as Western firms are prohibited from going there by law. Compared to the West, China provides its assistance quicker and more easily, without complicated screening procedures, and often on a larger scale. Let us pick up Africa as one of the major examples. Here, between 2004 and 2010, Beijing concluded agreements on the resource-backed loans with at least seven states for a total of nearly $14 billion. It extended the oil-backed loan o Angola with Chinese companies building roads, railways, hospitals, schools, and water systems. Nigeria got two loans to finance projects for utilization of gas to generate electricity. The hydropower project in the Congo was prepaid in oil and the one in Ghana in cocoa beans. The former also received a $3 billion copper-backed loan to build infrastructure, hospitals, and universities. In 2004, the Export-Important Bank of China extended three loans to the Angolan government at interest rates ranging from LIBOR plus 1.25 percent to LIBOR plus 1.75 percent, with generous grace periods and long repayment terms. Commercial lenders, such as Standard Chartered Bank, charged Angola LIBOR plus 2.5 percent or more, without any grace periods, and required faster repayment. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

China’s $3 billion joint mining venture in the Congo gives the Congolese government a 32 percent stake, while in the joint ventures (JVs) with companies from other countries its share ranges from 7 percent to 25 percent. Also, China is starting to actively create and manage Special Trade and Economic Cooperation zones in Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Mauritius, Zambia, and so on, building infrastructure and facilities, especially with the aim of boosting low-cost manufacturing production and exports. This is exactly what African countries need to diversify and upgrade their industrial structure and to create jobs. In fact, the Chinese are replicating their own pattern of economic development at its earlier stages. The zones also serve as platforms for the entry by Chinese companies searching for new markets and lower costs. Encouraging the transfer of production of low-end and/or energy-intensive manufacturing items, the government subsidizes part of their start-up expenses. The $5 billion China-Africa Development Fund has acquired equity shares in three of the seven planned zones. In contrast, the U.S.A. Congress does not all the U.S.A. Agency of International Development to finance any activities leading to the relocation of Americans’ jobs overseas. Parties to an economic transaction can exploit their high-quality inside information using a relational contract, and a formal contract that must be based on lower-quality publicly verifiable information acts as a fallback in the event of cheating within their relationship. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

Actions are costly to the agent, and observable only to oneself. The principal cares only about one’s own outcome minus one’s payment to the agent. The principal wants to motivate the agent’s actions, but there is some uncertainty so actions cannot be inferred precisely from the outcome. In the standard theory of the agency, the principal’s outcome is assumed to be verifiable, so outcome-based bonus or incentive payments can be designed and written into a contract that can be enforced in a court of law if necessary. However, in reality the principal’s true outcome is rarely verifiable to outsiders, even though the parties may have good information about. External, legally enforceable contracts then have to relay on some other performance measure that is an imperfect proxy for the principal’s outcome, and an even more imperfect proxy for the agent’s action. (The traditional economic theory of agency formulated the problem as a trade-off between giving the agent stronger incentives and making one bear more risk.) The simplest example of this situation is an employment contract, where the principal is the owner of a firm and the agent a manager or worker. However, it can also be interpreted in the context of a firm’s outsourcing decision. The principal firm buys from an agent firm a component that I an input to one of the principal’s final products. The principal firm’s ultimate objective is profit, but the contribution of the component to the final product, and indeed the contribution of the final product to the profit of the firm as a whole, are so thoroughly concealed in the account of the firm as to be unverifiable to a court of law. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

Matters like the quantities and time of delivery of the component are recorded and easily verifiable; therefore a contract that specifies the firm’s payment to the component supplier as a function of these matters can be written and enforced by the government’s civil courts. However, the two firms may have a much better idea of other matters, such as the quality of the work, and can base a relational contract on such inside information. The finding that relational contract work best when the parties value the future highly and when the external performance measure is of very poor quality is surprising. However, one result is not so immediately obvious, and repays further thought. This is the finding that when the incentive constraint is binding and the relational contract yields a second best, a partial improvement in the external performance worsens the outcome of the relational contract. This reminds one of various “second-best” propositions in economics: when an economy has two or more distortions, a reduction in the size of one distortion may aggravate the overall distortion and reduce economic welfare. In this instance the explanation is tied to a general property of tacitly cooperative equilibria of repeated games. The harsher is the punishment that faces a deviator, the better the equilibrium that can be achieved. In this model, the punishment consists of having to fall back on the formal contract based on the external performance measure. The more accurate is that measure, the better is the payoff from the formal contract and therefore the weaker the punishment. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

Similar results appear in other contexts. For example, Kranton (1996) models self-governing repeated interactions with well-matched partners, when the consequence of cheating is having to go to an anonymous arms-length market with inferior matching but enforceable contracts. A partial improvement in the quality of matching in the market then tightens the incentive constraint on self-governance and worsens its outcome. In Kranton’s context this leads to a cumulative process leading to an equilibrium where one or the other of the modes survives. More generally, one can argue that cooperation within a group is better sustained if the consequences of deviation are made worse, which requires worse outcomes from dealing with people outside the group. This is a trade-off: better within-group cooperation may require worse cross-group relations. In starker terms, a beneficial sense of “us” may be fostered only by sharpening the sense of “us versus them” hostility. In the economic context, the result has potentially serious implications of less-developed countries and transition economies that are attempting to install a formal system of contract law or to improve an existing one. The new institution of governance cannot be expected to leapfrog to perfection. The organizations and people are sure to need a period of trial and error, of experimentation and learning. The above results say tht the process of gradual improvement of state law may inflict an interim cost on the economy, by worsening the outcomes of the currently used relation-based system. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

Therefore it is important to explore the results in greater depth, and look for empirical evidence bearing on it. In an established bilateral relationship it is the relationship itself that determines the degree of cooperation, regardless of whether the courts are effective. This is encouraging for the prospects of improving the courts gradually without causing short-term harm. However, the finding runs contrary to the theoretical result. If the theoretical model is broadly right, effectiveness of the courts would be irrelevant to the outcome of relational contract only if the parameters puts the equilibrium in a region that increases one’s temptation to renege on the relational contract. A second possibility is that the accuracy of the external measure is so poor that the alternative relational contract is not recourse to the courts but a total breakdown of the interaction. The third possibility, of course, is that the theoretical model is missing some key aspect of reality; that provides a challenge and an opportunity for future research. The upper-symbolic economy makes obsolete not only our concepts of unemployment but our concepts of work as well. To understand it and the power struggles that it triggers, we will even need a fresh vocabulary. Thus, even the division of the economy into such sectors as agriculture, manufacturing, and services today obscures rather than clarifies. Today’s high-speed change blur once-neat distinctions. Instead of clinging to the old classifications, we need to look behind the labels and ask what people in these companies actually do to create added value. Once we pose this question, we find that more and more of the work in all three sectors consists of symbolic processing, or “mind work.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

Farmer now use computers to calculate grain feeds; steelworkers monitor consoles and video screens; investment bankers switch on their laptops as they model financial markets. In matter little whether economist choose to label these as agriculture, manufacturing, or service activities. Even occupational categories are breaking down. To label someone a stockroom attendant, a machine operator, or a sales representative conceals rather than reveals. It is a lot more useful today to group workers by the amount of symbolic processing or mind work they do as part of their jobs regardless of the label they wear or whether they happen to work in a store, a truck, a factory, a hospital, or a office. In what might be called the “mind-work spectrum” we have the research scientists, the financial analyst, the computer programmer or, for that matter, the traditional file clerk. We include file clerks and scientists in the same group because, while their functions obviously differ and they work at vastly different levels of abstraction, both—and millions like them—move information around or generate more information. That makes their work symbolic. In the middle of the mind-work spectrum we find a broad range of “mixed” jobs—tasks requiring the worker to perform physical labour but also handle information. The Federal Express or United Parcel Service driver also operates a computer at one’s side. In advanced factories the machine operator is a highly trained information worker. The hotel clerk, the nurse, and many others have to deal with people—but spend a considerable fraction of their time generating, getting, or giving out information. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

Auto science engineers at BMW dealers, for example, may still have greasy hands, but they also use a computer system designed by Hewlett-Packard that provides them with an “expert system” to help them in trouble-shooting along with hundreds of gigabytes of technical drawings accessible via the Internet. The system asks them for data about the car they are repairing; it permits them to search through the masses of technical material intuitively; it makes inferences and then guides them through the repair steps. When they are interacting with this system, are they “auto science engineers” or “mind workers”? It is the purely manual jobs at the lower end of the spectrum that are disappearing. With fewer manual jobs in the economy, the “proletariat” is now a minority, replaced increasingly by a “cognitariat.” More accurately, as the super-symbolic economy unfolds, the proletariat becomes a cognitariat. The key questions about a person’s work today have to do with how much of the job entails information processing, how routine or programmable it is, what level of abstraction is involved, what access the person has to the central data bank and management information system and how much autonomy and responsibility the individual enjoys. We will continue more of this discussion in the upcoming days. The “voice of the devil” as an angel of light is more difficult to detect when it comes with wonderful strings of texts which makes it appear like the voice of the Holy Spirit. Voices from without, either as from God or angels, may be rejected, yet the believer may be deceived by “floods of texts” which one thinks are from God. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

Therefore, detection of the source of supernatural voices requires further inquiry: Does the believer rely upon these “texts” apart from the use of one’s mind or reason? This indicates passivity. Are these texts a prop to one, an undermining of one’s reliance on God Himself; weakening one’s power of decision and one’s (proper) self-reliance? Do these texts influence one and make one elated and puffed up as “specially guided by God,” or crush and condemn one, and throw one into despair and condemnation, instead of leading one to sober dealing with God Himself over the course of one’s life—with a keen and increasing knowledge of right and wrong obtained from the written Word by the light of the Holy Spirit? If these and other such-like results are the fruit of the “texts” given, they may be rejected as from the deceiving spirits, or at least an attitude of neutrality should be taken concerning them until proof of their source is obtained. The voice of the devil is also distinguishable from the voice of God by its purpose and outcome. If the outcome is not in accordance with the guidance given, then one definitely needs to check with fellow believers regarding its validity. For, obviously, if God speaks directly to a human, the human will then be infallibly correct with regard to the specific matter in question. Thus far, creation has been considered within the order proper to it, the essential order. However, man as the creature the exercises freedom brings us to the boundary line of the existential order of tragedy and dissolution. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

God as the creator is beyond the distinction of essence and existence. He does not depend upon essences or divine ideas which govern His creativity. His creative vision simultaneously embraces both the essence of a creature and each moment of its existence. However, created being does not lie buried within the divine life. It exists in the universe of reality, and its existence is different from its essence. Humans provide the clearest insight into creaturely existence because only they possess finite freedom. Humans, and analogously the rest of reality, is not only grounded in the creative ground of being, but they are also outside it inasmuch as one “stands upon” one’s self when one exercises one’s freedom. One can only actualize one’s essence, be a real human, by positing free acts which inevitably clash with one’s essential nature. Fully developed creatureliness is fallen creatureliness. At this pivotal point of freedom the doctrine of creation (the essential order) and the doctrine of the fall (the existential order) merge and become indistinguishable. Being a creature means both to be rooted in the creative ground of the divine life and to actualize one’s self through freedom. Creation I fulfilled in the creaturely self-realization which simultaneously is freedom and destiny. However, it is fulfilled through separation from the creative ground through a break between existence and essence. Creaturely freedom is the point at which creation and fall coincide. Creation is the beginning of the fall. One who feels in one’s heart genuine tie with the life of one’s people cannot possibly conceive of the existence of the Christian people apart from “Queen Sabbath.” We can say without exaggeration that more than America preserved the Sabbath, the Sabbath preserved America. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

If I were asked to single out one of the great historical institutions more essential for our preservation than all others, I would not hesitate to declare that it is the observance of the Sabbath. Without this, the home of the Church or Mormon Temple, the festivals and the holy days, the language and the history of our people, will gradually disappear. If the Sabbath will be maintained by those who have observed it and will be restored to those who have abandoned it, then the permanence of Christianity or Mormonism is assured. Every Christian or Mormon who has it within one’s power should assist in the effort to restore the Sabbath to the man from whom it has been taken away from. No deeds of charity or philanthropy, no sacrifices of tie or fortune made by anyone, equals in beneficent result the expenditure of time and money looking toward the re-establishment of the Sabbath among God’s people. No amounts of prating about morals will ever take the place of rooted habits ruthlessly plucked out. The observance of the Sabbath brings deep and abiding rewards to the Christian and Mormons. It re-creates one’s spirit as it regenerates one’s physical and nervous system. It brings one into communion and with God, links one with the profoundest aspirations of America, and draws one into the orbit of the Book of Mormon or the Christian Bible. It therefore follows inseparably that the failure to observe the Sabbath brings its penalties in the impoverishment of the spirit, the denudation of Christian and Mormon values and alienation from Christian and Mormon community, literally “that soul is cut off from its kinsmen.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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