Preface

Introduction: Reading and Writing about Values

Part I * LIFE

Family

Leave Ozzie and Harriet Alone

Gregory Curtis

``In the continuing political debate over family values, the phrase `Ozzie and Harriet' has become shorthand for an idyllic America of the past where mothers, fathers and children lived happily together.''

Daddy Tucked the Blanket

Randall Williams

``I was ashamed of where I lived. I had been ashamed for as long as I had been conscious of class.''

Floors: The Bronx---Then

Ruth Gay

``Even in the New World, floors-kitchen floors especially-were sure barometers of a housewife's standards and ability.''

The Deadbeat Dad

David Blankenhorn

``In our cultural model of the Deadbeat Dad, the core issue is money absence, not father absence.''

Once More to the Lake

E. B. White

``It is strange how much you can remember about places like that once you allowed your mind to return into the grooves that lead back.''

Everyday Use [story]

Alice Walker

```Maggie can't appreciate these quilts!' she said. `She'd probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use.'''

Angry Fathers

Mel Lazarus

``I never forgot that my vandalism on that August afternoon was outrageous.''

The Children of Divorce

Judith S. Wallerstein

Susan Blakeslee

``Children of all ages feel intensely rejected when their parents divorce.''

Mother to Son [poem]

Langston Hughes

``Well son, I'll tell you: Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.''

Values in Review

Education

The Lesson [story]

Toni Cade Bambara

```Imagine for a minute what kind of society it is in which some people can spend on a toy what it would cost to feed a family of six or seven.'''

A Lesson from History: On Courage

Robert Coles

``An elementary school child shows a capacity for probing moral analysis that encompasses the very nature of a belief, a value as it connects to lived life.''

``I Just Wanna Be Average''

Mike Rose

``Switching to College Prep was a mixed blessing. I was an erratic student. I was undisciplined. And I hadn't caught onto the rules of the game: why work hard in a class that didn't gab my fancy?''

Letter to John Adams

Abigail Adams

``If you complain of neglect of education in sons, what shall I say with regard to daughters, who every day experience the want of it?''

Indoctrination Isn't Teaching

Shelby Steele

``By seeing racial identity as the main source of the self-esteem of black children, we are left with little more than identity enhancement as a way to improve their performance.''

They Treat Girls Differently, Don't They?

Timothy Harper

``Boys are more individualistic and competitive. They create hierarchies and function well in them. Girls are less competitive and more willing to cooperate. Instead of creating hierarchies, they find ways to collaborate.''

Pison Studies

Malcolm X

``As you can imagine, especially in a prison where there was heavy emphasis on rehabilitation, an inmate was smiled upon if he demonstrated an unusually intense interest in books.''

``See Spot Run'': Teaching My Grandmother to Read

Ellen Tashie Frisina

``Years later, my grandmother still hadn't learned quite enough to sit comfortably with a newspaper o magazine, but it felt awfully good to see her try.''

Ethics without Virtue: Moral Education in America

Christina Hoff Sommers

``The student entering college today shows the effects of an educational system that has kept its distance from the traditional virtues.''

Values in Review

Work and Poverty

Sweatshops Are Back

William Branigin

``The return of the kind of sweatshops that flourished early in this century---and were thought to have been largely eliminated---reflects fundamental changes in the garment industry and, more broadly, in American society.''

Looking for Work [story]

Gary Soto

``One July, while killing ants on the kitchen sink with a rolled newspaper, I had a nine-year-old's vision of wealth that would save us from ourselves.''

I Borrowed an Axe and Went Down to the Woods

Henry David Thoreau

``There is some of the same fitness in a man's building his own house as there is in a bird's building its own nest.''

There's No Place like Work

Arlie Russell Hochschild

``Given the hours parents are working these days, why aren't they taking advantage of an opportunity to reduce their time at work?''

Children and Poverty

Jonathan Kozol

``Depression is common among children in Mott Haven. Many cry a great deal but cannot explain exactly why.''

The Hard Questions: Lost City

Jean Bethke Elshtain

``This economy is generating low-pay, service sector jobs with few prospects for long-term security, reliable benefits or opportunities to hone crucial career skills.''

When Dad Gets a Job

Frank McCourt

``When Dad brings home the first week's wages on a Friday night we know the weekend will be wonderful.''

Sorry, the Professional Class Is Full

Don J. Snyder

``They got the wrong guy. In all the jobs I had held across the years, from the first one picking vegetables when I was 13, 1 had never been fired.''

A Nation of Welfare families

Stephanie Coontz

``The myth of family self-reliance is so compelling that our actual national and personal histories often buckle under its emotional weight.''

Values in Review

Health and Health Care

They Tortured My Mother

Fred Hechinger

``The residents assured us that my mother could feel no pain. I knew---I saw with my own eyes---that this was not true.''

The War Room at Bellevue

George Simpson

```If you have any chance for survival, you have it here.'''

The Kevorkian Epidemic

Paul R. McHugh

``A search for death does not accompany most terminal or progressive diseases. Pain-ridden patients customarily call doctors for remedies, not for termination of life.''

A Visit of Charity [story]

Eudora Welty

``I'm a campfire girl.... I have to pay a visit to some old lady.''

What Nurses Stand For

Suzanne Gordon

``Nursing is not simply a matter of TLC. It's a matter of life and death.''

TV's Powerful Doctor Shows versus the HMO

Burkhard Bilger

``Medical dramas have long held up a warped mirror to the country's health care system.''

The Stealth Virus: AIDS and Latinos

Ann Louise Bardach

``Abetted by widespread shame about homosexuality, a fear of governmental and medical institutions...and cultural denial as deep as Havana Harbor, AIDS is moving stealthily and insistently through Hispanic America.''

Can We Stay Young?

Jeffrey Kluger

``Researchers believe there's no reason many adults won't one day live to see 120.''

Values in Review

American Values * Focus on Life

Part II * LIBERTY

Language and Speech

Telling Them Apart

Stephen Birmingham

``Brevity, simplicity, and the avoidance of euphemism are the chief hallmarks of the upper-class American vocabulary.''

Should English Be the Law?

Robert D. King

``The question that lies at the root of most of the uneasiness is this: Is America threatened by the preservation of languages other than English?''

Mute in an English-Only World

Chang-rae Lee

``For [my mother] the English language was not very funny. It usually meant trouble and a good dose of shame, and sometimes real hurt.''

Body in Trouble

Nancy Mairs

``Beyond cheerfulness and patience, people don't generally expect much of a cripple's character.''

Under My Skin

Sunil Garg

``Suddenly the color of my skin qualified me for special attention.''

On Racist Speech

Charles R. Lawrence III

``If the purpose of he First Amendment is to foster the greatest amount of speech, racial insults disserve that purpose. Assaultive racist speech functions as a preemptive strike.''

Primer Lesson [poem]

Carl Sandburg

``Look out how you use proud words.''

Women's Conversations

Deborah Tannen

``Men are more comfortable than women in giving information...whereas women are more comfortable than men in supporting others.''

From Outside, In

Barbara Mellix

``I discovered-with the help of some especially sensitive teachers---that through writing one can continually bring new selves into being, each with new responsibilities and difficulties, but also with new possibilities.''

Values in Review

Law and Politics

The Declaration of Independence

Thomas Jefferson

``We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.''

The Tyranny of the Majority

Lani Guinier

``When the rules seem unfair, I have worked to change them, not subvert them.''

For You O Democracy [poem]

Wait Whitman

``I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America....''

Speech to the New York State Legislature, February 18, 1860

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

``If the object of government is to protect the weak against the strong, how unwise to place the power wholly in the hands of the strong.''

Death and Justice

Edwad I. Koch

``Life is indeed precious, and I believe the death penalty helps to affirm this fact.''

What the Constitution Requires

William Joseph Brennan Jr.,

``The barbaric death penalty violates our Constitution.''

Letter from Birmingham Jail

Martin Luther King Jr.,

``We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights.''

Private Lives, Public Morality

Gertude Himmelfarb

``But the law is a feeble surrogate for manners and morals.''

An Ear for an Ear

Patricia J. Williams

``Is it still possible that we humans are still in the Dark Ages as to the social sciences?''

Values in Review

Rights and Beliefs

The Hollow Man

Michael Norman

``I am going to level with you. I hate the war.... I hate the war so much I cannot longer think of it in any terms other than personal.''

An Episode of War [story]

Stephen Crane

``Come along, now. I won't amputate it. Come along. Don't be a baby.''

Imperiled Men

Andre Dubus

``There was a memorial service aboard ship, but I do not remember it; I only remember a general sadness like mist in the passageways.''

Profession of Faith

Thomas Paine

``I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.''

Going to Church

Theodore Roosevelt

``I advocate a man's joining in church woks for the sake of showing his faith by his works.''

Prayer and the Civic Religion

Jimmy Carter

``I never permitted religious services to be held in the White House.''

Revolt against God: America's Spiritual Despair

William J. Bennett

``Our aspirations, our affections and our desires are turned toward the wrong things. And only when we turn them toward the right things---toward enduring, noble, spiritual things---will things get better.''

Temple Wars: When Values Collide

Peggy Fletcher Stack

``From Denver to Orlando to Seattle to Chicago to Dallas, neighborhoods have fought strenuously against the building of a temple in their midst.''

Almos' a Man [story]

Richard Wright

``One of these days he was going to get a gun and practice shooting, then they can't talk to him as though he were a little boy.''

I Was a Red-Diaper Baby

Erica Manfred

``Although to their deaths they never admitted it to me, my parents were both card-carrying communists.''

Values in Review

American Values * Focus on Liberty

Part III * The Pursuit of Happiness

Love

My Parents' Bust-Up, and Mine

Walter Kirn

``I was a divorced kid, too, now, a sexy, wild outcast. I'd been abandoned and wronged, but also freed.''

My Husband's Nine Wives

Elizabeth Joseph

``Plural marriage is not for everyone. But it is the life style for me.''

Annabel Lee [poem]

Edgar Allan Poe

``For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.''

Sex Is for Adults

Ellen Hopkins

``Could it be that teenage sex is no more inevitable than we once thought teenage drunken driving?''

Playboy Joins the Battle of the Sexes

Barbara Ehrenreich

``Playboy charged into the battle of the sexes with a dollar sign on its banner. The issue was money: Men made it; women wanted it.''

The Chaser [story]

John Collier

``Young people who need a love potion very seldom have five thousand dollars. Otherwise they would not need a love potion.''

Gay Marriage, an Oxymoron

Lisa Schiffren

``To present homosexual marriage as a fait accompli, without national debate, is a serious political error.''

Let Gays Marry

Andrew Sullivan

``We are only asking that when the government gives out civil marriage licenses, those of us who are gay should be treated like anybody else.''

Revisionist Nuptials

Phillip Lopate

``Nothing arouses my ire more than the practice of brides and grooms rewriting the traditional wedding ceremony and making speeches of their vows.''

Values in Review

Science and Technology

Letter to Joseph Priestly

Benjamin Franklin

``The rapid Progress true Science now makes, occasions my regretting sometimes that I was born too soon.''

The Birthmark [story]

Nathaniel Hawthorne

``Danger? There is but one danger---that this horrible stigma shall be left on my cheek!'' cried Georgiana. ``Remove it, remove it, whatever be the cost, or we shall both go mad!''

Dolly's Fashion and Louis's Passion

Stephen Jay Gould

But if I remain relatively unimpressed by achievements thus far, I do not discount the monumental ethical issues raised by the possibility of cloning from adult cells.''

The Internet? Bah!

Clifford Stoll

``What's missing from this electronic wonderland? Human contact.''

Old Media, New Media and a Middle Way

Jon Katz

``Enlightened people will educate themselves about media and culture.''

Rethinking Unscientific Attitudes about Scientific Misconduct

C. K. Gunsalus

``What happens to the scientific environment when people violate generally held concepts of right and wrong, and yet nothing happens to them either because their institution chooses not to act or because it is powerless to act, as a result of inadequate rules and procedures?''

Human Morality and Animal Research: confessions and quandaries

Harold Herzog

``Disagreements about the treatment of animals in research ultimately stem from our tendency to think simply about complex problems.''

To Science [poem]

Edgar Allan Poe

``Science! True daughter of Old Time thou art! Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.''

The Earth Does a Slow Burn

Bill McKibben

``Because of global warming, caused by cars, factories, and burning forests, the earth is shifting beneath us with stunning speed and unpredictability.''

Values in Review

Wealth and Leisure

The Way to Wealth

Benjamin Franklin

``Trouble springs from idleness, and grievous toil from needless ease.''

The Road to Timbuktu: Why I Travel

William Zinsser

``What impulse had driven me to seek out all those remote places?''

When in Rome [poem]

Mari Evans

``I'm tired of eatin' what they eats in Rome....''

Living in Two Worlds

Marcus Mabry

``More than my sense of guilt, my sense of helplessness increases each time I return home.''

The Standard of Living [story]

Dorothy Parker

``Always the girls went to walk on Fifth Avenue on their fee afternoons, for it was the ideal ground for their favorite game.''

Faces on the Wall

Jerome Charyn

``I can say without melodrama, or malice, that Hollywood ruined my life.''

Giving Saturday Morning Some Slack

Charles McGrath

``As an experiment, on a recent Saturday I watched children's TV for five hours straight, from 7 to noon. (Don't try this at home, parents, without medical supervision.)''

When Baseball Mattered

Hank Aaron

``When Jackie Robinson loosened his fist and turned the other cheek, he was taking the blows for the love and future of his people.''

The Sadness of the Hunter

David Stout

``So much has been written about the joy of hunting and so little about the sadness. . . .''

Values in Review

Individual and Community

In Defense of Joe Six-Pack

James Webb

``The prevailing attitude has been to ridicule whites who have the audacity to complain abut their reduced status, and to sneer at ever aspect of the `redneck' way of life.''

Song of Myself [poem]

Walt Whitman

``Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems.''

The Minsk Theory of Krypton

Jules Feiffer

``It wasn't Krypton that Superman really come from; it was the planet Minsk or Lodz or Vilna or Warsaw.''

Self-Reliance

Ralph Waldo Emerson

``Trust thyself, ever heart vibrates to that iron string.''

The Outcasts of Poker Flat [story]

Bret Harte

``In point of fact, Poker Flat was `after somebody.' ...A secret committee had determined to rid the town of all improper persons.''

A Unique Culture Grows in the Desert

Marjorie Miller

Ricardo Chavira

``Here on the border a 200-year-old, upstart culture meets one with roots that predate Christ. Together they meld into a new, third culture of the borderlands that blurs the very border from which it was born.''

Fighting to Fill the Values Gap

Melissa Healy

``The stories reflect a powerful feeling among Americans that the nation's sense of right and wrong---its moral compass---is dangerously out of kilter.''

Say Something: They're Only Children

Lucie Prinz

``But I am convinced that we can contribute to the larger solutions by refusing to recoil from kinds just because they are acting like kids.''

The Federalist, Number 10

James Madison

``There are to methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: the one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects.''

Values in Review

American Values * Focus on the Pursuit of Happiness

Credits

Index of Authors and Titles