School Administration And Supervision Quotes

The Zen sect had been favored by the Ashikaga shogunate and had, during the Ashikaga (Muromachi) and the earlier Kamakura periods, supervised commercial and cultural relations with China through the famous Tenryūbune (Tenryūji ships) sponsored by the Tenryūji branch of the Rinzai school in Kyoto. Zen temples played an important cultural role with their schools, the so-called terakoya, and they controlled the celebrated Ashikaga College (referred to by Xavier as the "University of Bando"), a major center for classical Chinese learning. At the beginning of the Tokugawa period, the temples still had important administrative and diplomatic privileges, for instance in the issuing of passports (Boxer 1951, 262). Only later in that period did Zen suffer a setback owing to the rising tide of Confucian orthodoxy.

By the end of the war, small groups of freedmen were already learning their first lessons in political participation. At Mitchelville, in the South Carolina Sea Islands, blacks, under army supervision, had elected a mayor and city council, who controlled local schools and the administration of justice. On Amelia Island, Florida, blacks voted alongside whites in a local election.

You can see the all-encompassing play-crushing power of safetyism in figure 3.10, sent to me by a friend in Berkeley, California. The administrators at this elementary school don’t trust their students to play tag without adult guidance, because . . . what if there’s a dispute? What if someone is excluded? The school offers similarly inane lists of instructions and prohibitions to help children play other games. In the rules for playing touch football, the sign says football can only be played if an adult is supervising and refereeing the game. The administrators seem to be committed to preventing the sorts of conflicts that are inherent in human interaction, and that would teach children how to manage their own affairs, resolve differences, and prepare for life in a democratic society.