Understanding Social Justice in Rural Education
Hernán Cuervo Youth Research Centre
Graduate School of Education
University of Melbourne Melbourne, Australia
ISBN 978-1-137-50514-9
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-50515-6
ISBN 978-1-137-50515-6 (eBook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016951098
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.
Cover illustration: © Tim Hester / Alamy Stock Photo
Printed on acid-free paper
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature
The registered company is Nature America Inc. New York
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
I express my sincere gratitude and appreciation to all the students, teachers, parents, and principals of the rural schools who generously participated in this research project. Thank you for opening the doors of your school, house, and community. Special thanks to both principals for their generous support and to those teachers who welcomed me into their homes.
This book would have been much harder to complete without the support and intellectual stimulus of my colleagues and students at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education and the Youth Research Centre, at the University of Melbourne. In particular, I thank Professor Johanna Wyn, the Centre Director, for her unfailing support for this project. Thanks to my publisher, Palgrave Macmillan, and in particular, Mara Berkoff, Milana Vernikova, and Sarah Nathan, who assisted with the publication of this book. I am also grateful to my parents and brothers who supported me in the other part of the world from the very beginning, tirelessly and with no hesitation. Finally, I want to thank my family for their relentless support and encouragement during this work.
Chapters 5 and 6 are derived in part from articles published, first, in the Journal of Youth Studies: Cuervo, H. (2014). “Critical reflections on youth and equality in the rural context,” Journal of Youth Studies 17(4), 544–557, copyright Taylor & Francis, available online at DOI: 10.1080/13676261.2013.844781. Second, in the Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education: Cuervo, H. (2012). “Enlarging the social justice agenda in education: an analysis of rural teachers’ narratives beyond
the distributive dimension,” Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education 40(2), 83–96, copyright Taylor & Francis, available online at DOI: 10.1080/1359866X.2012.669829
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
The concept of social justice is one of the central virtues and pillars of contemporary democracies. Nowhere are its consequences more keenly felt than in the education of each new generation of children and young people. The injustices and inequalities experienced by rural school participants, as this book will show, place the concept of social justice at the center of any discussion of education. The problem, however, is that social justice is a term that does not have the same meaning for everyone. It is usually understood as merit, need, fairness, equality, or equity, and it is in many instances used by philosophers, political theorists, sociologists, and educational researchers as self-evident and self-explanatory. One of the difficulties in conceptualizing social justice is that it is a contested term that carries often conflicting social, political, cultural, and economic meanings. Different political, economic, and social actors in society create a pluralistic agenda and each of these groups sustain their ideas and objectives through different rival conceptualizations of social justice, such as merit, need, or equality (MacIntyre 1985, 1988). These competing concepts of social justice and disparate positions do not arrive at a definitive concept of what social justice is. The same competing forces could be seen, for example, in the field of education, where different political and social groups have opposite visions of what “legitimate” knowledge or “good” teaching and learning consists of, rooted as they are in conflicting views of structural justice (e.g. gender, class, and race) in education and society (Apple 2001, p. 410). Yet paradoxically, there exists a rhetoric of consensus tied up with the implied universality of the concept—a
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 H. Cuervo, Understanding Social Justice in Rural Education, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-50515-6_1
1
sense that we all understand what we are referring to when we speak of social justice which masks these very real differences. What this rhetoric of consensus does is foreclose an ongoing discussion about how best to attend to these differences in constructing a just society.
While social justice is a contested term but usually invoked as an explicit concept, there is very little research that examines what socially just education means and looks like for rural school participants themselves.1 This seems surprising given the different well-documented inequalities endured over time by rural schools (e.g. lack of breadth of curriculum, staffing shortages, deficient infrastructure, prohibitive cost of services, and students’ educational performance) (Alloway et al. 2004; Boylan and Wallace 2007; Bradley 2008; Council for the Australian Federation 2007; Department of Education and Training [DET] 2007; Gonski 2011; Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission [HREOC] 2000a; Welch et al. 2007). This picture of rural education is occurring as many rural communities across Australia, and around the world, have been experiencing important structural change and, in many cases, decline, in the last 20 years (Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics [ABARE] 2008; Alston 2002; Brett 2011; Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics [BITRE] 2008; Carr and Kefalas 2009; Corbett 2007; Falk 2001; Kenway et al. 2006; Shucksmith 2012; Squires 2003; Woods 2011; Yang and Fetsch 2007). It is not my intention to present yet another deficit story about schooling in rural places, but given the opportunities and challenges occurring in rural education and communities, it is timely to ask people how socially just they feel teaching and learning is in rural places. In doing so, this book responds to the educational and political challenges of theorizing social justice education (Gewirtz 2002; North 2006), by bridging a gap between the theory and practice of normative social justice and social sciences (Brighouse 2004; Griffiths 1998b).
This book examines what social justice means to participants (students, teachers, principals, and parents) in two government (public) schools in rural Victoria, Australia. Including these voices in the discussion offers an important contribution to understanding what is going on in rural schools, which dimensions of social justice are being applied, and what the real needs are. This book contributes to an understanding of how an abstract concept, social justice, can work as an effective policy guide, in an operative way, by taking it from its theoretical isolation and putting it in the immediate context of rural schooling. Exploring the subjective element of social justice can make an important contribution to
understanding how social injustices are experienced, tolerated, and perpetuated in disadvantaged settings and can assist in outlining an agenda for change. It is in this vein that the different chapters of the book aim to answer important questions: What does social justice mean to rural school participants? Which dimension of social justice is dominant in rural school practices? What are the possibilities for enacting a more plural social justice in rural schools? And, how can socially unjust discourses and practices be interrupted in rural schools? Answers to these questions open up a path to examining what is happening in rural schools, and how we can address the needs of rural school participants and analyze the different dimensions of social justice that redress or reinforce inequality in rural schools. Without this understanding, policymakers, educators, and researchers alike risk continuing to adopt an insufficient or limited model of social justice, a one-size-fits-all approach to issues of social inequality.
My analysis of social justice draws upon the theoretical work of Iris Marion Young, a political theorist, feminist, and radical egalitarian, to reclaim the discourse of social justice from the liberal dominance of the principle of distributive justice. Distributive justice, simply put, focuses on how major social institutions assign rights and duties, and distributes benefits and burdens through social cooperation (Rawls 1972). Like Young, I search for a position that offers a plural model of social justice—one that overcomes the shortfalls of the liberal-egalitarian model that equates social justice mostly with distributive justice at the expense of other forms of redress. This is a much needed critical exercise in a field like rural education which is dominated by analyses of disadvantage in terms of funding and material resources. The emphasis on distributive issues might seem unsurprising given the problems with staffing, facilities, and breadth of curriculum that have perennially affected the quality of rural education. In modern Australian education policy, significant documents like the Karmel Report and the Schools Disadvantage Commission in the seventies up until the current Gonski Review have focused on a politics of distribution to redress the poor educational outcomes evident in rural education. By pluralizing social justice I am not denying the relevance of appropriate funding and distribution of material goods—they are a critical component in the delivery of a good quality of education. This was also the case for Young, who in her seminal book, Justice and the Politics of Difference, already stated that distributive matters in society were critically important but not the end point of an analysis about justice. In rural schooling the adequate distribution of funding, facilities, and staffing is a perennial and
major concern. But it is at this point where I believe analyses of rural schooling should be problematized by opening up the discussion of social justice to other dimensions that heterogeneize inequality and disadvantage. Here is where the work of Young (1990, 1997a, b, 2000, 2001, 2006a, b) becomes very useful to analyze discourses and practices of justice based on the elimination of oppression and domination through the recognition and participation of all actors in the process of education and schooling rather than merely on the distribution of benefits and burdens by major social institutions. Hence, in addition to distributive justice, I argue for another two dimensions of social justice: recognitional and associational. Recognitional justice, simply put, attends to the redressing of cultural domination and disrespect experienced by marginal social groups or individuals (Young 1990). Recognitional justice, for example, in rural schooling refers to the promotion and celebration of diversity through the inclusion and legitimation of all social groups’ culture and identity but also the respect and empowerment of teachers’ work as critical actors in interrupting injustices. Recognition, empowerment, and autonomy are crucial but they are not complete without participation. Thus, a third dimension that we should care about if we are interested in interrupting and subverting social injustices and inequality is associational justice; that is defined by the degree of participation by individuals or groups in decisions which affect the conditions in which they live and act (Gewirtz 2006). It incorporates the notions of participation and of “voice,” of being able to express own needs in one’s own idiom (Young 1997a, 2006a) through processes of participative dialog. Associational justice in schooling makes the process of education as relevant as the products or outcomes. In rural schooling this dimension is vital in constructing spaces for teachers and principals’ participation in policymaking structures and in making decisions about their everyday working practices in relation to the curriculum. These dimensions of social justice need to be considered in temporal and spatial contexts because justice may very well have different meanings for different social groups in different historical moments. As Gewirtz (2006, p. 78) alerts us, social justice has to be understood within the “competing norms” and “external constraints” that shape discourses and practices in schools. What happens in schools must be understood in relation to dominant discourses, power relations, and normative socioeconomic constraints. In this book, the impact of neoliberal policies on education in the last two decades and the context of rurality are critical to understand current discourses of social justice. Thus, I examine how discourses and
practices of social justice in education have shifted from progressive politics to an economization of schooling underpinned by the need to skill-up the national workforce (Rizvi and Lingard 2010; Wyn 2009). This does not mean that social justice in education is completely abandoned, but it is reframed through neoliberal policy technologies based on monitoring and auditing of school processes and outcomes, which impact on the creation of new meanings of what counts as knowledge for students, and redefine what counts as an “effective” and “good” teacher. I paid also particular attention at the radical transformation of rural spaces, placing rurality as a central component of analysis rather than as a backdrop to a study on schooling. I take up the challenge of constructing “research in and for rural communities” to disrupt the metro-centric bias of educational studies that has condemned rural education to a residual space in research (Corbett and White 2014, p. 1, emphasis in original).2 The concept of rurality is not simply put to use as research context but sees the way people make “rural sense of, and with their lives” (Howley et al. 2005, p. 2) as central to understanding how socially just schooling is for school participants and the community at large.
THE STUDY
The book draws on data from a research study conducted over a period of four years (2006–2010) that aimed to understand the meaning of social justice for rural school participants in two Victorian schools. I visited each school four times over a period of two years. In the first couple of visits I introduced my research ideas to potential school participants and had informal conversations about schooling and living in rural Victoria.3 The third and fourth visits entailed the collection of data, which involved focus group, semi-structured interviews, and gathering documents (e.g. school and community newsletters). The majority of people that participated in focus groups were later individually interviewed. Twenty-three members from Highland school (the pseudonym used for one of the communities and schools throughout) participated in focus groups (10 students, 8 teachers, and 5 parents), while 19 members from Lowland school (also a pseudonym) took part (8 students, 6 teachers, and 5 parents). In total I conducted 47 semi-structured interviews, including 2 interviews with each principal (In Highland, 12 students, 5 teachers, and 4 parents were interviewed, while in Lowland, 10 students, 8 teachers, and 4 parents). In general terms all participants were very supportive of the research.
Teachers were the group more inclined to be open about the sorrows and happiness of living and working in rural Victoria. Some parents who decided to participate were also eager to comment on their issues, mostly about their worries and problems. This idea of becoming an outlet to communicate their problems presented me with the delicate task of not hanging on to a “deficit” view of rural life and schooling.
The Communities
Both communities are approximately 400 kilometers away from Melbourne, the state’s capital, and approximately an hour and a half away from a small regional town. Highland is located in the northwest of Victoria, in the Mallee region, and Lowland is in the southeast, in East Gippsland area. According to the 2006 Census (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS] 2006), Highland has a population of 448 people (300 of them living in the town and the rest in farms) and Lowland has a population of 2,252 people. They both have a fairly monocultural population, although Lowland has a stronger presence of Indigenous people (6 % are Indigenous), and they have a fairly mature median population, around the mid-forties, in comparison with a younger national median population. Both towns share a recent history of decline in their services that have affected their social and economic lives and resulted in a loss of population during the rationalization of public and private services during the 1990s (with Highland losing approximately 18 % and Lowland approximately 20 % of their total population) (McKenzie 2006). Highland residents experience a lack of many major services, such as banks, supermarkets, or clothing stores. The last owner of the supermarket could not find a buyer for it and left the town closing its doors. The main, and only, commercial street consists of one large block with an automotive mechanic shop, a café/milkbar/takeaway food shop, the stationery shop (which carries the mail), an abandoned shop, and the pub/restaurant/motel (which includes an ATM machine in its facilities). There is only one government school and a small health post. Many of the community facilities are shared with the school (e.g. basketball court, swimming pool, library, football ground). Unlike Highland, Lowland has a variety of services beyond the school facilities, such as library, post office, police station, health center offering a range of health services, a fire brigade, the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria, supermarkets, banks, pubs, various cafés, and motels.
Agriculture is a key industry for both towns, more so in Highland where the sheep, beef cattle, and grain farming employs 41 % of people aged 15 years and over (ABS 2006). The Mallee region where Highland is located has been severely affected by the drought (at the time of the research study), putting great social and economic pressure on the community.4 Lowland’s main commercial and industrial activities are agriculture, timber, retail trade, and tourism. During the 1990s the town suffered a major restructure of local government services and lost the shire epicenter to the nearby medium-size regional town (Centre for Research and Learning in Regional Australia [CRLRA] 2002). In addition to this, the traditional timber industry has experienced massive job cuts, and since then the town has tried to recreate itself as a tourist destination based on the pristine beaches a few kilometers away, the national parks, and the attraction of the famous Snowy River (CRLRA 2002; Dowling 2008).
In both communities there was a social group that was referred as “the minority” by participants. In Highland, this was the newly arrived members of the community escaping the housing price bubble: first migrating from Melbourne to regional centers and then to small towns like Highland. In Lowland, the minority group consisted of Indigenous people. Unfortunately, I was not able to interview any of the parents or students from these two minority groups.
The Schools
Both schools are the only secondary schooling option in their respective towns.5 Highland school is a government school that educates from preschool to Year 12 (K-12) and in 2006 had a population of 147 students enrolled.6 The school is the hub of the community. Approximately 30 % of students received Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA) and very few of them come from homes where English is the second language. Highland’s school enrolment has increased in the last years, mostly due to new families settling in the town and from students from nearby towns, reversing a trend of declining enrolments from 1993 to 2001. According to the principal, this is the result of the quality of education offered by the school. The school reports emphasize the “strong record of high academic achievement,” which is attributed to a combination of “good teaching, small classes and a strong school-student-parent partnership.” Nonetheless, challenges lie ahead with a “declining prep intake over the next few years.”
While there are a couple of primary schools, government and nongovernment, in the town, Lowland school is the only secondary college with an enrolment of 352 students. Differently than in Highland school, there is a strong emphasis on their vocational education stream, through their “Community VCAL [Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning] course, which provides a pathway for previously ‘at risk’ students.”7 A school report points out to a “decline in enrolments, due to changing demographics” (losing 50 students in the last two years), which prompted the school to take an active role to design “specialized areas” to cater for a diverse population. This refers to a robust partnership between the local industry and the school focused on the senior years of schooling and the post-school pathways. This focus has been sustained with an investment in the school’s vocational facilities, including a Skills Centre (a collaboration between state government and local industry).
CHAPTERS OUTLINE
The next three chapters provide the rural and educational context and the normative framework of justice that informs this book. In these chapters I draw and reflect on my interdisciplinary research interests: from education research and rural studies to sociology of youth and political theory, to depict the profound changes in education, rural spaces and youth lives and to offer an analysis of what a normative plural social justice can look like. Chapter 2 is divided into two parts. In the first part I problematize the idea of rurality through an analysis of the economic, political, and social changes that occurred in rural Australia in the last decades. Examining these changes is critical if we want to understand the dynamic social context of rural communities that affect the processes and outcomes of education, and the post-school opportunities for students. The analysis of rural change is based on the multifunctional rural transition framework, with its landscapes of production, amenity and conservation, and on the impact of “roll-back” and “roll-out” neoliberal policies in the creation of new rural spaces and subjectivities based on resilience and individual (regional) responsibility. The second part of the chapter looks at the centrality of rural education in educational research and a historical analysis of the place of rural education in policy. A central claim throughout this chapter is the increasingly peripheral position of rural education and rural affairs in the educational and social and economic imagination of the nation. In Chap. 3, I continue my examination of the state of rural education placing the
focus on what happens in rural schools. I do it firstly by mapping the broad changes in Australian education policy in the last few decades: from a progressive politics in the 1970s to the hegemonic dominance of the neoliberal project. This project not only has redefined the idea of social justice, through the marriage of efficiency and productivity with equity, but also transformed what it means to teach and learn in schools. In particular, teachers’ work has been affected by neoliberal policy technologies of performativity, accountability, and marketization, generating boundaries of what is possible in the classroom and at school. Needless to say, this does not mean teachers are not able to transcend these boundaries but it does mean that the task has become harder. These challenges are complicated by the difficulties of recruiting and retaining teachers in rural schools, which has significant implications on the delivery of good quality education. Finally, drawing on research about the sociology of youth and mobility, the chapter analyzes the discourses that underpin the current normative idea of youth transitions associated with continuing with education well into their twenties, which for many young people in rural places means leaving their communities.
Chapter 4 provides the core theoretical work of this book. Here I explore what a plural idea of social justice might look like. I begin by explaining why universal, neutral and impartial conceptualizations of social justice are not useful to understand socially just situations, experiences or even policies to move on to three critical dimensions that pluralize the term. As mentioned earlier, I draw on the work of Iris Marion Young to overcome the shortfalls of liberal-egalitarian frameworks that presume that social justice outcomes will be attend through the proper and just distribution of material goods. I believe that focusing on the distribution of resources on schooling is just one critical dimension to attain socially just education but that rural people need and deserve other forms of justice, cultural and political, to overcome inequality and injustice. Hence, I move the argument forward toward issues of recognition and associational justice through the work of Young to encompass the different problems and solutions needed by rural schools.
The next three chapters are structured in time and space. The chapters are purposefully quite descriptive by bringing in the voices of school participants to highlight the heterogeneity of social justice claims and the economic, political, social, and environmental complexities that surrounds schooling in rural places. By temporally and spatially locating their experiences in the past, present and future, and school and post-school
pathways, I argue we can achieve a richer understanding of the context of participants’ responses. I view time and space not as merely neutral objects but processes shaped by social structures and social relationships. Each social time and space is a singular process, albeit interdependent of others, which offer multiple meanings, they are socially produced and interpreted; they are a product of social relationships and take part in the construction of social relationships (Lefebvre 1991; Massey 1994; Soja 2010).
So, in Chap. 5, I examine how rural school participants understand social justice in relation to their experiences in the present institutionalized time and space of rural schooling. The meanings that participants give to social justice contribute to understanding what is going on in rural schools—the challenges and opportunities they face. In Chap. 6, I examine the post-school educational and employment options for rural young people, where a metamorphosis of social justice views is produced from the “certainty” of rural community life to the unpredictability of a future away from their local space due to the lack of opportunities. Participants’ comments, however, offer a tension between the needs of youth to migrate and the sustainability of the town, and what is more challenging, a lack of recognition that some young people in both places cannot mobilize the needed resources to migrate and that in them lies the hope of the community. In Chap. 7, I highlight teachers’ discourses and interventions that contribute to a more plural conceptualization of social justice and to resist, challenge and reshape the pressures and constraints of neoliberalism. I use the concept of hope as a heuristic tool to develop a narrative of change and inclusion for all members of the community and highlight different practices that show that a plural social justice is attainable. Five years after this study was carried out some of the challenges faced by rural schools and its participants continue. In the last chapter I examine these challenges and reflect on possible avenues of socially just change.
This book argues that social justice matters in the endeavor to address the disadvantages faced in rural schools. But discussion about social justice in rural education has been historically based on a narrow liberal consensus that sees leveling the playing field between urban and rural schools through more funding and material resources as the answer. In order to make it relevant in concrete ways and affect real social justice outcomes, this book presents what we can learn when we examine what social justice would look like for participants themselves and reveal it in all its rural complexity.
NOTES
1. A plethora of empirical studies have looked into beliefs and meanings about the idea of social justice. These studies were developed in a widerange of disciplines: political science, philosophy, public policy, social psychology, sociology, law, political economy, and political psychology, among others. For instance, several studies were concerned with income distribution and welfare matters, such as housing and health (e.g. Headey 1991; Hochschild 1981; Mitchell et al. 2003; Sefton 2005); others focused on the principles of equity and equality as allocation norms (e.g. Kahn et al. 1982; Törnblom and Jonsson 1987); some studies were concerned with justice in the workplace (Dubet 2009), and still others on the sense of (in) justice in the distribution of resources and grades in schools (Jasso and Resh 2002; Sabbagh et al. 2006). They, however, were based on liberal theories, mostly informed by distributive justice, focusing on the principles of equality, desert, and need.
2. A decade ago Arnold et al. (2005) already complained about the paucity of rural themes in the education literature, and only just recently Howley and Howley (2014) stressed the difficulties of rural education manuscripts to attract the attention of publishing houses and journals.
3. As an “outsider” to the environment of Australian rural schools, I had to rely on expert advice to meet potential research participants. During an annual meeting of the Victorian organization Country Education Project I was invited by a senior officer of the organization to visit several rural schools. From this trip I made a pre-selection of four schools as possible research sites. This trip to several schools and another that I undertook to a one-teacher school had a profound impact on me. I was impressed with the quality and quantity of the staff and infrastructure of the schools, which did not resemble the many impoverished rural schools I worked with in my native country Argentina (see Cuervo 2006). Principals of the four schools were contacted seeking interest and support in this project. While all principals show interest in it, I selected two research sites that reflected the variety of rural communities and schools, which have been shown to indicate differences in the experiences of rural people (Alloway et al. 2004; Kenyon et al. 2001).
4. A quarter of Highland residents are employed within the government sector—school and health post- while the sectors “other food product manufacturing” and “cafes, restaurants and takeaway food services.” represent the other employment sector. Highland’s unemployment rate in 2006 was below the national rate at 4.6 %, where a high proportion of the population is occupied as managers (mostly due to the high proportion of small independent businesses). The local median individual income, rent per week
and housing loan repayment was approximately two-thirds below the national figures (ABS 2006).
5. Both schools included students from families of poor socio-economic background, small business people, farmers struggling with the drought, Indigenous families and parents from professional background.
6. The school newsletter publishes and promotes news and events related to the school and to the community as well. It is common to find stories related to the drought and community events, including extra-curricular activities that involve the whole community. Interestingly, there are several stories that celebrate the anniversary of the establishment of family-owned farms with the hope that they remain in the “family name for many more years to come”. According to the annual school report, the predominant parental occupation is farming (grain growing).
7. A school report also claimed there was an improvement in student connectedness with key staff receiving training in “Restorative Practices” and in “Understanding Poverty”.
REFERENCES
Alloway, N., Gilbert, P., Gilbert, R., & Muspratt, S. (2004). Factors impacting on student aspirations and expectations in regional Australia. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia.
Alston, M. (2002). Inland rural towns: Are they sustainable? Canberra: Academy of the Social Sciences Session on Rural Communities.
Apple, M. (2001). Comparing neo-liberal projects and inequality in education. Comparative Education, 37(4), 409–423.
Arnold, M., Newman, J., Gaddy, B., & Dean, C. (2005). A look at the condition of rural education research: Setting a direction for future research. Journal of Research in Rural Education, 20(6), 1–25.
Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE). (2008). Australian farm survey results 2005–06 to 2007–08. Canberra: ABARE.
Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). (2006). 2006 census community profile series: Basic community profile. Canberra: ABS.
Boylan, C., & Wallace, A. (2007). Reawaken education policy and practice in rural Australia. In Collaboration for success in rural and remote education and training, conference proceedings of the 23rd national rural education conference Perth: Society for the Provision of Rural Education in Australia.
Bradley, D. (2008). Review of Australian Higher Education [Bradley review] Canberra: Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. Brett, J. (2011). Fair share: Country and city in Australia. Quarterly Essay, 42, 1–68.
Brighouse, H. (2004). Justice. Cambridge: Polity.
Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics (BITRE). (2008). About Australia’s regions. Canberra: BITRE.
Carr, P., & Kefalas, M. (2009). Hollowing out the middle: The rural brain drain and what it means for America. Boston: Beacon Press.
Centre for Research and Learning in Regional Australia (CRLRA). (2002). VET’s potential for building social cohesion in divided communities. Hobart: CRLRA.
Corbett, M. (2007). Learning to leave: The irony of schooling in a coastal community. Black Point: Fernwood Publishing.
Corbett, M., & White, S. (2014). Introduction: Why put the ‘rural in research? In S. White & M. Corbett (Eds.), Doing educational research in rural settings: Methodological issues, international perspectives and practical solutions (pp. 1–4). New York: Routledge.
Council for the Australian Federation. (2007). Federalist paper 2: The future of schooling in Australia. Melbourne: Department of Premier and Cabinet.
Cuervo, H. (2006). Misiones Rurales Argentinas: Más de Medio Siglo de Historias. Buenos Aires: Editorial Armerías.
Department of Education and Training (DET). (2007). Summary of statistics for Victorian schools, March 2007. Melbourne Statistical Information and Analysis Unit, DET.
Dowling, J. (2008, October 23). Boat from the past brings river town hope for the future. The Age. Melbourne.
Dubet, F. (2009). Injustice at work. St Paul: Paradigm.
Falk, I. (2001). Challenges facing rural regional Australia in new times. In I. Falk (Ed.), Learning to manage change. Developing regional communities for a local–global millennium (pp. 3–11). Adelaide: National Centre for Vocational Education Research.
Gewirtz, S. (2002). The managerial school: Post-welfarism and social justice in education. London: Routledge.
Gewirtz, S. (2006). Towards a contextualized analysis of social justice in education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 38(5), 69–81.
Gonski, D. (2011). Review of funding for schooling (Gonski review). Canberra: Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations.
Griffiths, M. (1998b). Educational research for social justice: Getting off the fence. Buckingham/Philadelphia: Open University Press.
Headey, B. (1991). Distributive justice and occupational incomes: Perceptions of justice determine perceptions of fact. The British Journal of Sociology, 42(4), 581–595.
Hochschild, J. (1981). What’s fair: American beliefs about distributive justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Howley, C., & Howley, A. (2014). Preface. In C. Howley, A. Howley, & J. Johnson (Eds.), Dynamics of social class, race, and place in rural education (pp. vii–x). Charlotte: Information Age Publishing.
Howley, C., Theobald, P., & Howley, A. (2005). What rural education research is of most worth? A reply to Arnold, Newman, Gaddy, and Dean. Journal of Research in Rural Education, 20(18), 1–6.
Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC). (2000a). Emerging themes: National inquiry into rural and remote education. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia.
Jasso, G., & Resh, N. (2002). Exploring the sense of justice about grades. European Sociological Review, 18(3), 333–351.
Kahn, A., Nelson, R., Gaeddert, W., & Hearn, J. (1982). The justice process: Deciding upon equity or equality. Social Psychology Quarterly, 45(1), 3–8.
Kenway, J., Kraack, S., & Hickey-Moody, A. (2006). Masculinities beyond the metropolis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kenyon, P., Sercombe, H., Black, A., & Lhuede, D. (2001). Creating better educational and employment opportunities for rural young people: A report to the national youth affairs research scheme. Hobart: Australian Clearinghouse for Youth Studies.
Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space. Oxford: Blackwell. MacIntyre, A. (1985). After virtue. London: Duckworth.
MacIntyre, A. (1988). Whose justice? Which rationality? London: Duckworth. Massey, D. (1994). Space, place and gender. Cambridge: Polity Press.
McKenzie, F. (2006). Spatial analysis and research. Melbourne: Department of Sustainability and Environment.
Mitchell, G., Tetlock, P., Newman, D., & Lerner, J. (2003). Experiments behind the veil: Structural influences on judgements of social justice. Political Psychology, 24(3), 519–547.
North, C. (2006). More than words? Delving into the substantive meaning(s) of “social justice” in education. Review of Educational Research, 76(4), 507–535. Rawls, J. (1972). A theory of justice. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Rizvi, F., & Lingard, B. (2010). Globalizing education policy. New York: Routledge. Sabbagh, C., Resh, N., Mor, M., & Vanhuysse, P. (2006). Spheres of justice within schools: Reflections and evidence on the distribution of educational goods. Social Psychology of Education, 9(2), 97–118.
Sefton, T. (2005). Give and take: Public attitudes to redistribution. In A. Park, J. Curtice, K. Thomson, C. Bromley, M. Phillips, & M. Johnson (Eds.), British social attitudes: The 22nd report – two terms of new labour: The public’s reaction (pp. 241–253). London: Sage.
Shucksmith, M. (2012). Class, power and inequality in rural areas: Beyond social exclusion? Sociologia Ruralis, 52(4), 377–397.
Soja, E. (2010). Seeking spatial justice. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Squires, D. (2003). Responding to isolation and education disadvantage. Education in Rural Australia, 13(1), 24–40.
Törnblom, K., & Jonsson, D. (1987). Distribution vs. retribution: The perceived justice of the contribution and equality principles for cooperative and competitive relationships. Acta Sociologica, 30(1), 25–52.
Welch, A., Helme, S., & Lamb, S. (2007). Rurality and inequality in education: The Australian experience. In M. Duru-Bellat, S. Lamb, & R. Teese (Eds.), International studies in educational inequality, theory and policy, Vol. II, Inequality in education systems (pp. 602–624). Dordrecht: Springer. Woods, M. (2011). Rural. New York: Routledge.
Wyn, J. (2009). Touching the future: Building skills for life and work. Camberwell: ACER.
Yang, R., & Fetsch, R. (2007). The self-esteem of rural children. Journal of Research in Rural Education, 22(5), 1–7.
Young, I. M. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Young, I. M. (1997a). Intersecting voices: Dilemmas of gender, political philosophy and policy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Young, I. M. (1997b). Unruly categories: A critique of Nancy Fraser’s dual systems theory. New Left Review, 222, 147–160.
Young, I. M. (2000). Inclusion and democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Young, I. M. (2001). Equality of whom? Social groups and judgements of injustice. The Journal of Political Philosophy, 9(1), 1–18.
Young, I. M. (2006a). Education in the context of structural injustice: A symposium response. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 38(1), 93–103.
Young, I. M. (2006b). Taking the basic structure seriously. Perspective on Politics, 4(1), 91–97.
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER FOUR DISPATCHING RUNNERS TO THE YOSEMITE
The Servitors of Tlamco were held strictly responsible for the conduct of their respective offices. Promotion and preference did not depend upon birth but on deeds.
“What has he done?” was the question propounded when a candidate presented himself for an office of public trust, and the same query met his lifeless body when it was offered for burial. Socially, and in the temples the same rule followed; so that distinctive service was the mainspring of their civilization.
Next to the priestly office, agriculture ranked highest in the choice of occupations. Men profoundly learned in every branch of it were continually in attendance at Iaqua. There were stations devoted to observation of climatic conditions; to the reclamation of wild fruits and cereals, or the propagation of new ones for food; to the surveying and proper distribution of lands; to the building of aqueducts, canals, bridges, granaries and public highways—to say nothing of the research in the extraction of dye stuffs from both vegetable and mineral substances.
Nearly all of the cereals and fruits known to man were reclaimed from a wild state by the contemporaneous inspiration of these times.
The surrounding country was divided into four sections or provinces, while the populace was grouped into tens, having an official who attended to minor details. Every thousand of the population had a magistrate. Each ten thousand, or fraction thereof, had a governor, who was one of the Counselors of State.
Orondo was at the head of the Civil Counselors, and it was to him, as first judge, that all questions of moment were submitted. Monthly
reports were made to him by inspectors sent out for this purpose— men who served a lifetime without any other remuneration than the medals and prestige their positions insured. The priests owned nothing for themselves or their temples, nor did the advocates or healers receive recompense for service.
The community was superior to the individual, and the government provided for the needs of all its people. The land was divided into three parts; that belonging to the sun supported the priesthood, and built and maintained its temples.
Education was in the hands of the warrior-priests and the Virgins of the Sun; so the universities and schools drew their support from the same source. The next third belonged to the government and was cultivated for its benefit.
The unit of value was a day’s labor, and all the taxes were paid in this way. When the people had planted the remaining third of the land for their own use, they worked alternately for the government (constructing public roads) and on the sun lands.
Hospitals for the aged, for orphans, and for the sick were a part of the government expense, institutions universally copied from, but seldom accredited to the Aztecs and Peruvians by modern civilization.
No man was allowed to take advantage in a barter. Disputes arose every day among the guilds in the bazaars, but there was the same clannish feeling among them that has since made and maintained the family. Each trade was loyal to its own. They were ashamed to have a neighboring guild know that they quarreled, and it was a very aggravated case which invoked the law.
When planting-time came, Orondo turned the first furrow of sod, and the Virgins of the Sun dropped the seeds, while Akaza commended the undertaking to the four elements.
There were songs of rejoicing, and much exhibition of skill in cultivation, which at the close of the season, was rewarded by prizes and medals from Yermah’s own hand. There were no idle men and women, and no paupers in these communities, while to be accused of laziness was a great disgrace.
The private houses in Tlamco were of sun-dried bricks, covered with stucco, elaborately ornamented and delicately tinted. They were
seldom more than one story high, with ceilings of ornamental woods, while the walls were tinted or hung with simple cotton tapestries. The flat-roofs were often bright with potted plants, and these dwellings were invariably surrounded by flowers and a stretch of greensward.
The hospitals, the barracks, the Brotherhood houses and those occupied by the priestesses faced the cardinal points and were the squares within the circular streets. They were uniformly four stories high, with truncated sloping roofs, and terraced grounds, forming ornamental bits of landscape among the trees, and commanding a fine view of bay and harbor.
Clusters of sunflowers grew here and there in out-of-the-way places. Free use was made of cherry, laurel, clove and lavender plants along the highways, because they were known to produce ozone; and the gardens contained their favorite flowers—narcissus, hyacinth and mignonette in abundance.
Orondo was giving an audience to the mathematicians who were employed in the Hall of Quippos, at Iaqua, where the government accounts were kept. And when it was known that Alcamayn had arrived Orondo sent and begged his presence. When the jeweler stepped into the hall, he found the place littered with quippos of all kinds. They were scattered about on chairs, on the tables, and some were hanging upon the walls, while clerks called the numbers and tallied the curiously knotted cords in a monotonous drone.
There were intricate estimates for the warriors shown by the red cords and fringes; yellow denoted the gold used in the mechanical arts and industries and in the temples; but these were few and simple in combination compared with the white ones, indicating the enormous amount of civil transactions for the current month.
Silver was used for state accounts, and its knots were curious little buttons, full of meaning for the men who mastered the art of the quippos. The largest bundle of all was the green, which, by its varying shades and fanciful combinations recorded the amount of wheat, corn and all agricultural produce owned or used by the pueblo city of Tlamco.
“One knot! Red signal corps,” called the teller.
“Signal corps, ten,” answered the tally.
“Two single knots, and one knot doubly intertwined, silver, Alcamayn.”
“Two knots, twenty; one doubly intertwined, one hundred,” repeated the tally.
“One knot, triply intertwined, yellow, Alcamayn.”
“Hold!” cried Orondo. “Alcamayn, hast thou made requisition for a thousand grains of gold? Thy parchment is not properly stamped, and we cannot give thee so much treasure on irregular demand.”
“Wilt thou grant me to see it?” said Alcamayn, reaching out for the document. “I must have both gold and silver quickly. There will scarce be time enough to prepare the gifts needed because of thy going to the Monbas.”
“It grieves me that I cannot aid thee; but thou must have recourse to the Dorado.”
“A foolish blunder leaves it without number, also,” said Alcamayn, with a frown, handing the order to a tamane. “Yermah is engrossed with the priestesses caring for the fatherless. Dost thou know that he has issued an edict that all guilds and communes must sup together once in each lunation?”
“The Azes are grown lax in hospitality, and we must give them an example,” responded Orondo.
The tamane returned with the parchment properly numbered and viséed.
“He whom we delight to serve bids thee follow me. He would fain have counsel with thee.”
In obedience to the message, Orondo crossed the hall, and passed to the right, avoiding the audience chambers.
Yermah had risen and was dismissing the priestesses, after issuing orders on the state granaries for their requirements.
“Spare no efforts to make these flowers of humanity happy as birds of air,” he said. “I charge thee to give them plenty of sweets, music and games for their amusement.”
“Wilt thou not lend us thy presence?”
“Affairs of urgency prevent indulgence of personal desires, but I shall not forget to send best thoughts.”
“May Jupiter the beneficent be in the ascendant throughout thy journey.”
He made the sign of submission and bent the knee in courtly fashion.
“May his jovial and benign rays descend on all thy efforts. Success be with thee and thy wards,” was Yermah’s reply.
“The secret of happiness,” said Setos, sententiously, “is in having constant employment for both body and mind. I shall advise—”
“What wilt thou advise, Setos?” asked Yermah, as he seated himself at the council table in his private office, where Alcamayn and Orondo had been waiting for him.
“Duty compels me to suggest severe measures for women neglecting their households and allowing their children to be seen in filthy rags. Near the Temple of Neptune I complain of three houses unlawfully dirty. It surprised me that Akaza made no mention of this in conference to-day.”
“It were possible that he saw them not. He would be for mercy; and so am I.”
Yermah was in a genial mood as his voice and manner indicated.
“What hast thou done with the offenders?” asked Orondo, quietly.
“The first family was warned; the second are now being paraded up and down the street. They have been admonished once before, and if it were in my discretion, they would be soundly whipped. Humiliation may serve with some natures, but corporal punishment is better for others.”
“Thou sayest they. Whom dost thou mean?”
“The father and mother, and two young girls. The law is no respecter of persons.”
“And, in addition, thou wouldst have me order them whipped?”
“N-o-o; I only wish thy consent to propose the measure at the next council meeting.”
Yermah made a gesture of dissent, and asked pointedly:
“What punishment hast thou meted out to the third offense?”
“I have application here, awaiting thy signet, that I may take the children away from the shiftless sloven who gave them ingress to light.”
“Is she widowed?”
“Yes; but she has been found guilty the third time.”
“The application is denied for the present. Alcamayn will be guardian of streets in our absence. Upon returning, I shall lend mine ear to domestic affairs. Of late disturbances and complaints have been frequent from that quarter.”
Touchy, vain-glorious Setos nettled at this.
“Do my fellows think me unmindful of duty?”
“No; only over-zealous. It is not in the province of good government to meddle with private affairs. The best interests of posterity and the economic use of sustenance, with care of the person, are all that can be demanded.”
“Akaza is competent to advise thee,” interposed Orondo. “These matters properly come under his dominion.”
“Akaza will undoubtedly agree with me,” said Setos, catching at a straw for justification. “The first evidence of initiation is a sensitive condition of the organs of smell. The novitiate is required to discover the deadly effects of putrescent gases, and even children are taught that whatever offends the nostrils injures the body.”
They rose simultaneously, and Orondo opened the door leading into the public reception hall.
“The runners are here, waiting to carry our greetings to the Monbas and their high priestess.”
“Go and dispatch them, Orondo. I trust thee to lay the lash on them lightly. Go, thou, also, Setos, to see that they get the regulation stripes before setting forth.”
The Dorado picked up the parchments signed and sealed earlier in the day, and locking them in a strong box of curious design, dismissed the two courtiers with a nod and a smile.
“I pray thee return quickly. Alcamayn needs advice from thee respecting thy special departments of service.”
CHAPTER FIVE
THE TEMPLE OF LOVE IN THE LAND OF FIRE
The watchers on the top of Mount Diablo looked anxiously for sunrise the morning Yermah and his followers rowed slowly across San Francisco Bay, hugging the shorelines until the mouth of the Sacramento River was reached.
Four times in the year the early visitor to Mount Diablo sees the “Shadow of the Devil” cast a triangular outline against its grizzled peak. The contacts last but a second and fade like a breath of mist from a looking-glass.
All of the cluster of piny hills which surrounds Diablo like brilliants around a stone of the first water are still in darkness, and the two large valleys at either side seem an indistinct blur, when the heavy, phantom-like shadow is thrown on the scene, slantingly, clear, and sudden.
On the right side of the mountain, the light nearest the black line that accentuates the shadow is palest yellow, shading gradually into green, until it is lost in the yellow-brown of the hills. To the left the line is reddish, and the shadow blue-black.
That the triangle shaped itself perfectly, and gave good omen of the enterprise in hand, was evident from the excitement among the men whose duty it was to signal the good news to the Observatory tower in Tlamco, and also to the fleet in the bay and river.
Without mishap or deterrent incident the expedition found its way up the river past the bog-rushes, or tules, which gossip among themselves throughout the year. Occasionally the cry of a lone bittern or loon warned the invaders of a priority of claim upon the sustenance hidden by the murky waters or along the grassy banks.
The wild things were startled and much distressed by such unaccustomed tumult, but their feeble protests failed to disturb the serenity of the human contingent secure in a might-made right to be the over-lords of all less gifted creatures. When they arrived at the point which is now occupied by the city of Stockton, the entire party disembarked, and, taking to the saddle, pushed on with as little delay as possible.
Who can describe springtime in California? From Yuma to the Klamath what waving of leafy banners, what marvelous music of bird-song, what conquest of grass-blades, what routing of first usurpers!
Mystical California! Where the Ice Age never came, and where the magnetism of pre-historic times still lingers to attract race skandhas which shall begin the upward spiral of a new sub-race great in psychological possibilities!
The days of peonage have passed forever. The cavaliers and the padres were oppressed by the Aztec; he, in turn, suffered at the hands of the Argonaut.
Over the surface of placer and quartz mines, vines, fig-trees and olives hide the scars made by sturdy miners, and dispute prestige with the golden grains which have been the staff of life to many alien born, and the end is not yet.
The California of Cabrillo’s day was a continuous flower-garden from north to south. It must have been fair to view before mission sheep and horses tramped down the hills, where once only the grizzly bear and deer roamed unafraid long after the memory of Atlantis itself had been lost in accumulating centuries.
The early mariners of our dispensation called the southern hills the “Land of Fire,” because of the blaze at poppy-time—the copo del oro of the padre and cavalier, the Yankee gold-cup, the Russian eschscholtzia. Then as now the yellow lupines, loved by the rag-tagand-bobtail of the insect world, flourished beside the blue and purple blossoms of more pretentious claims, flirting with daintier bees and butterflies.
The mints are a family of pedigree, and with all their kith and kindred they camped in clans about field and wood. Sage, thyme, and
savory have always been well spoken of for yeoman service, while rosemary and lavender are beloved of the poets.
California has both white and purple sweet wild mint, and her sage-bushes yield to the bees honey next to that made from clover for richness and whiteness. Everywhere on the trail Yermah’s companions found the Yerba Buena, which name in later years was applied to their beloved Tlamco.
There were no quartz or gravel mines in those days. The battea of the Mexican and the horn-spoon of the “forty-niner” had no place in the pack-train—for the auriferous gravel had not been thrown to the surface in great ridges, and the blue veins which are the natural beds for gold were in some instances thousands of feet below the surface.
The combined action of air, water, sunshine, frost and earthquake were yet to disintegrate the matrix of quartz and set the precious metals free, or else to ingulf them in tons of molten lava after vaporizing them in the bowels of the earth.
Time has wrought many of these changes since, and the heavy rains have washed the light silica into the water courses, and thence to the valleys, thus forming the soil and gravel which has yielded gold in this sun-down land.
It was here that the early prospector found his reward, and it is here also that the battle over the disposal of the débris left by hydraulic process has been fought out by miner and husbandman.
Then the cactus family, those outcasts of the desert which are said to have survived the last glacial period, flourished in all their quaint ugliness. By long centuries of adaptation of scanty means to the ends of growth, the cactus has discarded its leaves and developed a fleshy stem, cylindrical, rectangular, triangular, flat, or round, but always armed with long needles. As a compensation, it bears exquisite blossoms of dainty tissue pistils and yellow ravelings of stamens, while its fruits might have been the golden apples of Hesperides.
Akaza directed his party to take a trail leading to the south side of the Merced River, nearly two thousand feet lower than the route followed by tourists of later times. Suddenly from out one of the gray-green clusters of cacti darted a coarse-plumaged bird, marked with brown and white specks on the upper part, while the lower portion of its body was a dingy white.
Oghi gave chase immediately, but it distanced him, with insolent flinging of sand and dust which quite surprised this intrepid hunter. He did not know whether to be frightened or ashamed of himself. At an encouraging word from Yermah, he laid his ears back close to his head and again tried the chase. The bird manifested no disposition to fly or to leave the trail.
The trumpeter blared a command to halt, and the entire expedition came to a standstill.
“Dismount for refreshment and rest, first giving attention to the horses,” was the word passed along the line.
Soon the tamanes were bustling about and making necessary arrangements for Yermah’s comfort, while he and Akaza were intent upon examining the covert from which the road-runner started. A shout brought Setos and Orondo to his side, and after them, one by one, the whole party.
“I am of opinion,” said Setos, “that this strange bird, or beast, intended to eat the rattlesnake it had killed.”
“Not so,” returned Akaza. “The body has been pecked full of holes and the bird was evidently about to abandon it when disturbed by Oghi.”
“See how well the creature has outlined a circle in laying these pieces of cactus leaves around the snake,” remarked Orondo, intently examining the crude architectural plan.
“Dost thou know anything about its habits?” inquired Yermah, turning to one of the piloting tamanes.
“Yes, my master. This bird is the natural enemy of rattlesnakes. It remains concealed until the reptile is fast asleep in the warm sand. With its sharp bill it is easy to take off part of a cactus leaf, as thou seest. Instinct teaches how to place them in a circle. This done, it throws caution to the wind and rouses the snake. Then there is a battle royal. The snake can not crawl over the cactus needles and finally dies of its own bite.”
“Does the bird eat any portion of its victim?” asked Setos.
“Nothing except the eyes. The remainder of the body is scattered about in the sand, as thou seest.”
“Oghi will bring him back captive, but, I fear me, badly mutilated.”
“The ocelot will never catch him. These birds outfoot a thoroughbred. They are quicker, shyer, more alert even than Oghi. Besides, the smell of them is quite enough for a fastidious animal.”
It was long after, and when the column was once more on the move, that Oghi came back—with his tongue hanging out; his tail between his legs; evidently disgusted and thoroughly fagged.
Arriving at what is now called Cold Springs, the party began the ascent of the Chowchilla Mountains. Trees begin here—Sequoia gigantea,—of world-wide fame, but their habits were not new to the men of this expedition.
Long before there were written words to express the ideas of man, the forest has furnished symbols of the various stages of human existence. The pliancy of youth, the exuberant strength of maturity, the decay of age, have suggested eloquent parallels between man and the tree.
In contemplating the monarchs of the woods the greatest poets and the denizens of the untracked forests have risen together to the same heights of imagery and the same tokens of emotion and sentiment.
Who can resist the silence, the whispering, the soughing, the writhing, the twisting and groaning of a pine tree, from the first flicker of a needle until the whole growth is in a Titanic struggle with the vagrant wind. The onset tests the strength of root, bole, branch and tendril to their utmost, then suddenly departs, leaving each needle erect and still as if listening to the music of the stars.
In all ages, and among all people, certain groves have been held sacred. The tree-alphabet of the Chinese, the curling roofs of the truncated pagodas, the numerous legends of the tree and vine, symbolizing life, are universal testimonials of this ancient veneration.
The trees giving shelter to Yermah defied the Ice Age and escaped destruction in the flood. There are giants in Mariposa Grove to-day contemporaneous with the Star of Bethlehem and the departing grandeur of Egypt. The green spires of this living forest, three hundred feet high, filter the air through innumerable branches, making one shiver at their mysterious whistle, like the rustling silk robes of an unseen company.
The mystic and appalling are there as well. How often in active life the specter stands among men and trees!
The very strength gained by such close lifting of fibers during decades of existence will not permit these giants to seek rest prone upon the welcoming breast of Mother Earth. Still must they stand, bleached by sun, beaten by rain, and buffeted by winds, leading a spectral existence when remains of other members of the forest have silently sunk to rest, and are no longer distinguishable in substance from the very soil from which they sprung.
For a century or so there is a struggle among the children of the fallen monarch. At last but few remain, to become giants in their turn —set on the rim of the pit formed by the decaying roots of their ancient ancestor. Rings of this kind can still be found, showing the broken roots projecting like the staves of a barrel, overgrown with ferns and wild oxalis, or filled to the brim with fresh spicy redwood sprouts.
No one who visits the Yo-Semite to-day, can imagine the abundance in early times of wild flowers and luxuriant grasses reaching up to the saddle-girths, or the almost total absence of undergrowth and brush in the groves, thus affording clear, open views from either side. The valley lies nearly in the center of the State, north and south, midway between the east and west bases of the Sierras.
Not a sound broke the impressive stillness as Yermah caught his first grand view from Inspiration Point, save occasional chirps and songs of birds, or the low, distant sigh of waterfalls in the verticalwalled chasm below. Here and there was a dark yellow pine rooted in the crevice, and clinging tenaciously to its dizzy elevation. The wind swept these trees to and fro, and there was a faint, plaintive murmur in their leaves as of pain.
Yermah did not notice that coveys of grouse beat the air with their wings in clumsy and obstinate flight, nor did he see that deer sprang up here and there, making for the undergrowth, lying in an opposite direction. He reined his horse sharply out of the green forest and stood upon a high jutting rock overlooking a rolling, uplifting sea of granite mountains of a beautiful pearl-gray. The colors were cold in
effect—all the character being given by the vertical parallel lines of gray, brown, and black which stripe a portion of the walls.
The sun winked at them from behind the pine-trees on the top of the hills, and threw shimmering lances among the cliffs and crags, burnishing up their edges. Its rosy tints etched furrows on the mountain’s face, seeming to take pride in bringing out strongly the wrinkles which the master of the hourglass and scythe had been busily engaged upon for so many thousand years.[3]
The first impressive thought was that the granite ledges were standing pale and dumb before their Creator! The towers, the domes, the spires, the battlements, the arches, the white columns of solid granite surging up into the air came to everlasting anchor! The silence seemed to quiver with sound, just as the warm air shimmered without stir all along the rocky outlines. The scene conveys to the soul of man through the eye what might the orchestra of heaven through the ear, were peals of thunder compassed into harmonious notes of music. As the king of day rode farther out, he gently touched the falls of Upper Yo-Semite, transforming a downpour of crystals into tears of liquid silver, which the winds whirled into fantastic wraiths against the frowning cliffs.
All that was mortal in the visitor swept back; all that was immortal surged to the front, and bowed down in awe.
“Here speaks the voice of God; and here His power is manifest.”
It was Akaza’s voice that broke the silence.
“Hail! smiling morn that tips these hilltops with alchemic gold! Teach us the secret of thy magic.”
Again it was Akaza’s words.
“Here we have visual evidence of the power and glory of the Supreme Ruler. The majesty of His handiwork is in that testimony of rocks.”
A softening haze hung over the valley, and the clouds partly dimmed the higher cliffs and mountains. Obscurity of vision increased the reverential mood of the party. A peculiarly exalted sensation seemed to fill their minds, and their eyes swam with fellowly drops of emotion, though their tongues refused their office. By common impulse they pushed forward, and coming down back of
Cathedral Rocks, found themselves at nightfall near the valley’s mouth, with El Capitan on the left and Bridal Veil Falls on the right.
On the plains of the San Joaquin, sixty miles below, El Capitan had been first sighted, and now they gazed curiously at its bare, smooth sides, entirely destitute of vegetation, towering above their heads fully three thousand feet—a solid mass of granite, set squarely out into the valley, as if meaning to bar their passage.
Here they were met by a delegation of Monbas accompanied by their own runners. After listening to an address of welcome, they were invited to meet the high-priestess, Kerœcia, at Mirror Lake, higher up the valley.
“This glorious sun gives light to the ceremony of purification by fire, demanding the presence of all our people, else had they been here to give welcome to our friends. We are bidden to serve thee in the name of the high-priestess, and make familiar the grandeur of this noble temple,” said Ben Hu Barabe, the Civil Chief.
“Accept our humble thanks and faithful obedience,” responded Yermah.
“May the warmth and light flooding us genially be an augury of felicitous days to come,” said Orondo.
“May our inmost thoughts be in harmony with Divine Will,” added Akaza, while Setos called attention to a chucah, a curious basket-like structure, suspended from a tree near where he stood. Upon examination, it was found to contain a parchment scroll filled with a detailed report of the runners’ journey and reception.
“The Monbas will remain only long enough to ascertain and comply with the wishes of the Azes, after the ceremonies now in progress cease,” continued Ben Hu Barabe. “The emissary, Eko Tanga, comes on mischief bent, and we must be ready to meet him.”
The determined tone and angry scowl indicated the sentiments of the speaker.
“When once outside these sacred precincts, we have matters of moment to discuss with thy leaders,” said Yermah.
“We are pledged to the leadership of the high-priestess, and humbly await her pleasure. She will hear thee fully,” was the response made by the young warrior.
There was something in his loyal speech which impressed Yermah greatly. He looked at him with an eye of favor, and asked him to show the way up the valley.
Rahula and Ildiko, refreshed by a night’s rest, accompanied by Orondo and Setos, recrossed the valley to view Bridal Veil Falls. The women were in raptures at the sight of the great falls, and insisted that their palanquins should be lowered frequently, to enable them to examine the graceful undulating sheets of spray. It fell in gauzelike folds, expanding, contracting and glittering in the sunlight like a veil of diamonds. Then changing into one vast and many-colored cloud, it threw its mystic drapery over the falling torrent, as if to shroud its unspeakable beauty.
Down the water leaps in one unbroken chain to an immense bowlder-formed cauldron below, where it boils and surges furiously, throwing up volumes of spray, while the sun haloes the abyss with two or more gorgeous rainbows. The swaying from side to side under the varying pressure of the wind, and the jarring roar of the water, thrilled and hushed the beholders into silent, spellbound admiration.
Yermah followed the north wall on past the Three Brothers which rise in steps, one behind the other, with their heads turned in the same direction.
The lofty columnar rock called Washington Tower has diamondlike cascades, which tumble down the sides of the Royal Arches more than two thousand feet. These wing-like spans form a sort of lion’s head, not unlike the winged lions of Nineveh.
With the column which forms an angle to Teneya Cañon, they seem intended for a base of adequate magnitude to support the North Dome.
The mighty powers of Nature, which have wrought such wonders in this region, cleft this tower in twain, and disposed of the fragments in a manner as mysterious as it must have been awful.
On the opposite side of Teneya Cañon is Half Dome—a perfectly inaccessible crest. From a distance one might fancy that the stonecutter’s art had been brought to bear upon its perfectly rounded summit. Upon closer inspection it is found that Time has been the sculptor. The ages have cut out huge concentric layers of granite, and scattered them about in picturesque confusion.
Yermah rode on up the cañon until his ears caught the notes of a folk-song; then he dismounted and, fastening Cibolo to a live-oak, made his way toward the music. Astonishment and delight transfixed his gaze.
At his feet lay the “Sleeping Waters,”[4] embowered by trees, and environed on high by the dome already described. This water course leaps from crag to pool, until it reaches equilibrium, and the surface of the lake is as motionless and smooth as a mirror. The reflected domes, peaks and trees are seen on its glassy bosom in perfect outline, seemingly five hundred fathoms down, in exact representation of the beauties that reach one mile into the air!
Yermah stood spellbound, not so much by this stupendous grandeur as by the scene being enacted before him. He was so intently regarding it that he scarcely saw or felt the shower of flintheaded arrows which fell in profusion and ruffled the surface of the lake.
His eyes were riveted on a young woman who was in the act of speeding a golden arrow over the heads of three other girls of nearly her own age, and who were putting off from shore in a crescentshaped boat, which they propelled with long silvery oars. They were chanting softly, and the air was redolent with the perfume of flowers, which completely filled the boat, hanging in graceful profusion from prow and stern, in wreaths of all sizes and colors.
The boat moved like a thing instinct with life, and as it disappeared on the opposite side, Yermah’s tense gaze made itself felt on its object. Kerœcia moved uneasily, and then looked fixedly into the water stretched out before her. She first saw her own image, then beside it the ideal of her dreams—a helmeted figure, reflected fulllength in the limpid stream.
His tunic was of purple cloth, confined at the waist by a wide striped silk sash, which tied over the left hip and hung in long, heavy, fringed ends. The short, full skirt was of orange silk, with a wide band of embroidery around the bottom, and underneath were long, closely-woven woolen leggins of purple. The feet were protected by sandals with jeweled sides and straps across the instep. From his shoulders hung a leopard-skin cloak, double-faced, so that it was alike on both sides.
He wore a square breastplate of stones, containing twelve jewels, proclaiming that he was Master of the twelve councilmen, and ruled continuously while the sun traveled through the twelve signs of the zodiac. At his side hung a burnished bronze sword, with a beautifully engraved scabbard, delineating a lion hunt from meet to finish.
At first Kerœcia was fascinated, then a feeling of fear stole over her. She made a movement as if to fly, but in turning stood face to face with Yermah. An inarticulate sound died on her lips as she started back amazed and fearful. Her wide-eyed vision and strained attention searched the countenance of the pale and agitated man, who stood so near her that she felt the radiating warmth of his body. He remained motionless, but she shrank back, and was momentarily rooted to the spot.
With a regal sweep of the arm, he bared his head, and with his right hand made the hierophant sign of command. He opened the hand, palm outward, the first two fingers pointing upward. He bowed profoundly, and carried the helmet hand to his heart lightly.
Kerœcia quickly comprehending his intent as well as his rank and station, courteously made the Atlantian sign of submission.
Yermah recognized it by a downward movement of his open right hand.
“Pleasing in my sight, and welcome to all the Monbas, is the Servitor of Aztlan,” she said. “He who created the four elements forbid that fatigue or discomfort should be thy portion.”
“It were an earthy spirit which could be mindful of the physical in this magnificent temple,” replied Yermah.
His calm, even tones quieted and reassured her completely.
“Have none of my fellows shown thee courtesy? Thy exalted station and goodness of heart demand much.”
“Ample consideration met us at the newel-post of this wondrous structure. It were a puny effort indeed that would fail to convey such welcome as the season and occasion warrant. In harmony with this spirit, I have stolen away from my companions and have sought audience direct with thee. If ill-considered abruptness gives rise to inharmonious thought, forgive me. The head, and not the heart, is at fault.”
“Offense were not possible with this intent. And I were an unworthy handmaiden should I harbor ill will on this day, holiest of all the year to the Monbas.”
“I stand athirst for knowledge of the sacred rite already partially witnessed. Is it lawful for an alien to know its import?”
“We who find divinity in the flowers, the birds, the sunshine, the trees, the rocks, the streams, and the hills, have no secrets apart from any living thing. But before thy special question, tell me of thy comrades. Shall I face them here?”
“In this place, and soon. They skirted the southern wall. The women came in chairs, lest fatigue should render them unfit to give heed to thy many accomplishments. Tell me the office of the three graces in the flower-laden boat.”
“All the ills of my people are consigned to those flowers. The ark in the center contains a symbol of the all-pervading essence of creation, and when the sun comes high enough to send a vertical ray into this ark, the flowers which have been collected for the past three days will be sacrificed by fire; and then we can go hence happy and content, free from evil tendency within and without. Our faith is simple. We try to live in harmony with the laws of Life and Love.”
“An artist who revels in the beauties of creation receives direct the thoughts of the Eternal Father,” returned Yermah, reverently.
“A child inhaling the fragrance of a flower receives in the process of transmutation the thoughts of the Creator.”
“Without the intervention of planetary influence?”
“The open flower, with its sun-rayed form, is to vegetation what the sun is to the planets, and as man is to animal life. Flowers crown Nature’s dominions.”
“The soul of man crowns all animate things,” persisted Yermah.
“When he crushes a beetle he destroys the life of what may some day be his brother,” she answered, with a smile.
“Dost thou believe in transmigration? I am agreed with thee that life is a vibration of Divine Will, moving in a spiral, but physical man is the lowest rung contacted by the ego.”
“Oh, say not so! Is not the ego a ray of the creative energy itself? Thinkest thou the human family the only emanation of Divinity
worthy to contact its Creator?”
“Yes,” he answered; “and only then by aspiring to a spiritual plane.”
“How many planes dost thou allot to man?”
“Three—the physical, the mental and the spiritual. A novice must perform the nine labors in order to achieve perfection. Each plane is threefold, like the alchemical sun, whose prototype blesses us with its preserving rays. Unfold to me the principles of thy system.”
“The first degree is that of the crystallized mineral, typifying death. The rocks and stones are of both sexes. Their sympathies and antipathies constitute their laws of natural selection determined by the vegetation produced from their soil. The second degree pertains to the subjective spaces of the mineral world—the tiny races within the higher round of that zone. Each life-atom is busy at its own appointed task, happy beyond conception in its lowly spiritual state. The third degree is the vegetable kingdom. The leaves are so placed that a line wound around the stem of a plant, and touching the petiole of each leaf would be a spiral. Where the leaves are in two rows, it is one-third the circumference, and so on in successive trines.”
“No one could be more loyal than I to the great family of endogens,” said Yermah. “They all go by threes, and are correlated to the Trinity. We make the lily the type of purity; the palm, the type of perfect life, which is service. The grains give the staff of life; the grasses cover the earth, and feed our animals. The onion not only contains the immortal elixir, but in its circles represents the growth of the universe, and the orbits of the planetary system.”
“The exogens,” said Kerœcia, “are closer to our own lives. The rose gains in beauty as it loses its power of reproduction, and the flower which carpets our hillsides with patches of gold drops the calyx when it arrives at perfection. It lives with the sun—opening and closing with his coming and going, and is so delicate that we make it the symbol of the soul.
“In the fourth degree are the flower nymphs, disporting themselves like butterflies in the luminous ether of their round. Some bear resemblance to beautiful girls, but are bright green, with large heads and small bodies. In the full scale they show all the colors
of the rainbow. The fifth degree is the animal kingdom; the sixth is semi-human; the seventh is man. Love is the only condition of creation—that love which is perfect equilibrium between thyself and the universe.”
Neither spoke for several moments; then Yermah said, with a sigh of contentment: “This is a veritable Temple of Love.”
“In very truth it is,” she returned; “and this is the season of renewal. It is the breeding-time of flowers and of the feathered tribes. Look here!”
She drew back a branch of eglantine, heavy with bloom, and nestled cozily in the fork of the parent stem was a tiny grayish-white mass of hair, fashioned into a nest by a gold-throated humming-bird. The mate industriously sipped honey from blossom to blossom, while the watcher on the nest put up its long, tube-like bill, waiting to be fed.
The birds twittered conjugal confidences unmindful of prying eyes. Disturbed at last by the voices, both balanced in air, leaving exposed to view two little spotted eggs, not larger than fine shot. They darted about in evident distress, keeping up a constant humming with their gauzy wings.
The man and woman paused but a second, and then passed on.
The Monbas believed in five sub-human kingdoms, peopled by entities. The mineral kingdom was represented by gnomes; the vegetable kingdom, by sylphs; the reptile, by fire or salamanders; water, by undines and fishes. Kerœcia’s followers were the forerunners of the ancient Druids and the modern gypsies.
The aim of all religions is to harmonize man with the laws which govern the universe. The Monbas did this by metempsychosis of the sub-human elements. They solved the great problem of absorbing into the astral system the pure psychic elements about them, and reached divinity by this process. It is for this reason that the gypsies never mingle with other civilizations. They go to nature direct for their wisdom, and keep away from cities for fear of losing their psychic powers.
On Good Friday, the gypsies still have their patriarch carry an ark or basket, in the bottom of which has been placed a Saint Andrews cross. Each member of the tribe lays a flower on the cross to abjure
