Student Name: Date(s) absent/excused from class:

Unit Activity: Grade: Physical Education Daily Participation Make-Up Form Period:

You are responsible for making up every class activity you miss (except those that are school-sponsored). There may be a time when you may need to be excused from physical activity for a particular reason such as a recent injury or sudden illness. While these conditions may prevent you from successfully participating in physical activity for a time, they do not exempt you from progress toward success in P.E. If you cannot participate in physical education activities, walking, reading, writing, or other meaningful lowimpact activities will be used to replace physical activity in such circumstances. Just as a student who misses assignments in other classes is required to make them up so will students who miss P.E. and because physical education is a class which requires students to be active, students who do not participate during PE class will be required to do a physical activity make-up assignment where possible. Students who do not do the make-up activity will receive a deduction in points which will be reflected on the students report card.
Remember that we want you to be physically active and healthy. If for some reason you cannot participate due to injury or some other valid reason, please make sure you follow these procedures for requesting an exemption for PE. Acceptable PE excuses are: A note signed by a parent or guardian from home (up to 3 consecutive days), please include reason with accommodations. After 3 days, a doctor's note must be brought to class for exemption with any recommended accommodations. Extended non-participation must be accompanied by a dated doctor's note indicating exemption and accommodations.

Put a check mark next to the situation that applies to you: A. Absent (Do Part 2 only) B. No Note/Unexcused (Do Part 1 and usually 2 may bring in parent note next class meeting) C. Parent/Medical Excuse (Do Part 1 and sometimes 2 get assignment from teacher) D. Wearing improper shoes or clothing (Do Part 1 and possibly 2) E. ISS (Do Part 2 only) Part 1 - In Class Assignment Directions: Since you are unable to participate in PE today, please answer the following questions during our class. 1. Why are you unable to participate in P.E. today?

2.

Choose one student to watch during warm-ups, stretching, and the class activity. Write down what that person did. What was your impression on his/her effort/form/social skills?

3.

Write down what CUES or HINTS your classmates learned in class today.

4.

Write down how you feel about missing PE class today.

5.

Write a letter (or make a drawing) explaining what activities we did in class today.

Student Name: Date(s) absent/excused from class:

Unit Activity: Grade: Period:

Physical Education Daily Participation Make-Up Form Part 2 - At Home Assignment:

Regular physical exercise is importance for maintaining a healthy life style. Physical Education classes stress the development of fundamental skills and basic game strategies along with daily fitness activities. Our goal is to develop a positive attitude toward physical fitness and to teach useable skills that will carry over into post-secondary life. We encourage students to develop a habit of lifelong exercise and enjoy the benefits that fitness brings with it. You are responsible for making up every class activity you miss (except those that are school-sponsored). This may include absences, wearing improper shoes/clothing, and to some degree parent notes/medical excuses. Complete the top portion on the other side of this paper and then continue below. Choose one of the following assignments, complete it, and staple this form to your work for full credit (absences, medical excuses, and parent notes). This assignment needs to be legible and may be completed at any time during the semester. Points will not be added back into your grade until an assignment(s) is completed properly and reviewed by the teacher. 1. 2. Terms and definitions: List and define eight new and difficult (not everyday) terms and definitions related to the unit or activity we are participating in. Use resources like dictionaries, encyclopedias or the Internet. Newspaper/Internet Report: Read an article related to the current unit of study or one approved by the teacher. Use an outside source such as the internet or newspaper to find an article. The article should be more than 200 words in length. Read the article and highlight the key points. Write a half-page summary about the article and attach the article. No plagiarism. Biography Report: Write a one-page paper about a sports figure that has excelled in the current unit of study or one approved by the teacher. Read a biography on the chosen sports figure and report what you learned, discuss what you learned from the reading, cite the reference, and do not plagiarize. Sport/Game Report: Observe a sporting event that corresponds with your current unit of study or one approved by the teacher and write about it as if you were a sports writer. Answer all questions of who, what, where, when and how of the event. The assignment should be at least one page. There are many local sporting events (recreational events and school events) as well as some that are televised. Invent an Imaginary Game: Use your imagination to invent a game that imaginary people would play on an imaginary planet. You must include the rules, the equipment needed, and describe/draw the playing surface or area that would be required (one page minimum). Sports Collage: Find pictures from newspapers, magazines or your own personal pictures, cut them out and attach to another sheet of paper. The pictures must directly relate to the current unit of study, cover the entire sheet, and be creative. Write a two paragraph minimum summary of your collage. Physical activity: 30 minutes or more of physical activity (on any given day, may not combine longer workouts into multiple make-ups) related to the current unit activity or another activity approved by the teacher. Turn in a half page description of activities, drills, and skills practiced. Include a parent/guardian signature verifying you did the activity. Lunchtime/Intramural makeup: After the first 10 minutes of lunch period (during which time you should eat), report to a PE area and check in with the supervisor in charge to say that you want to do a PE make-up. Then, you walk or play basketball for the remainder of the period. Two of these make-ups or intramurals equals one PE absence. Provide teacher with the supervisors name that observed. Date:

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Parent/Guardian Verification:

PHYSICAL EDUCATION MAKE-UP ASSIGNMENTS

Whenever you have missed participating in PE FOR ANY REASON (other than truancy or school activity), you may choose to make-up the work missed by doing one of the following assignments for each class missed. Neatness counts. One page typed 12 font or 1 l/2 pages handwritten =1 day make-up (10 pts). page = 5pts 1. Design a drill, pertaining to your current PE unit using the skills we have learned during class. Include a written description of the drill, a diagram of the drill, and a discussion of the proper techniques used to do the skill. For weight lifting you can design a circuit course using the muscle groups we have discussed in the weight lifting unit. Write a paper describing a non-traditional game not covered in class. In the paper include the basic concept of how the game is played, give at least 10 rules of the game, and describe the main skills of the game and share with the class. Complete a page on (current PE unit) safety. Be sure to include at least 10 safety suggestions and an explanation of the rationale behind each. Read and clip or copy an article (newspaper, magazine, periodical, internet) dealing with your current PE unit. Describe in your own words what the article was about; what you liked or disliked about the article; how the article relates to health, PE, fitness, or sport. Be prepared to share it with the class and turn in the article. Attend a Normandy athletic event. Include a written summary including the following information: date of game; time of game; site of game; name of teams; score of the game and winner; level of team (7 th Grade, 8th Grade, JV, or Varsity); then complete the write-up with a description of the game and any exciting or unusual plays. Attend an after-school make-up session. You must wear PE clothes, arrive on time and run 1 mile per missed day. Must be arranged through your teacher. Fitness Journal: If out-of-town, record the type of exercise you did including the length of time you worked out. Include a parent signature for each day you were gone, not just PE days. Other ideas may be cleared, ahead of time, with your PE teacher.

2.

3. 4.

5.

6. 7. 8.

MAKE-UP WORK IS TO BE COMPLETED WITHIN TWO WEEKS OF THE CLEARED ABSENCE UNLESS SPECIAL PERMISSION IS OBTAINED OR AN ACADEMIC TUTORIAL WILL BE ASSIGNED.

Students Name: Students Signature: Parents Name: Parent Signature:

PE Teacher: Date: Phone #: Date:

Period:

Constructive Reconditioning Writing Assignment

Please rewrite on a separate piece of paper 50 times:
PLEASE PRINT

Paramount to maturity is the acceptance of the fact that the practice of being offtask or talking without permission is unacceptable and in order to annihilate the behavior and a catalyst for responsibility; one shall be reprimanded and succumb to the servitude of recopying this sentence.

Name: DIRECTIONS:

Teacher:

Period

Read the assigned article. After thoroughly reading the article, complete the graphic organizer that is included in this packet. The graphic organizer should include the 3 main ideas of the article along with evidence that supports these main ideas. Once you have completed the graphic organizer you should include a summary of the article. The summary should include information about the main ideas as well as how you could relate the information to your own life. Your work will be graded using the rubric provided below.
Title of Article: Grading Criteria:
Summary 4
Summary is complete and thorough. All major parts of the article are included.

Explanation 4
The explanation shows why the main idea relates to the article. Explanation exceeds the requirement and gives real life examples.

Presentation 4
Written information is presented in a neat and organized manner. Proper Grammar, Spelling, Capitalization, and Punctuation.

Graphic Organizer 4
Chart is filled in completely, three valid main ideas are listed, supporting ideas prove the opinion stated in all three examples.

3
A complete summary is given but some information is lacking or unclear.

3
A complete explanation is given but some information is lacking or unclear.

3
Occasional grammatical errors

3
Chart is complete, one main idea is inaccurate or one supporting idea does not completely prove the opinion.

2
Summary does not reflect the main idea of the article

2
No clear explanation of how the article relates to real life experience.

2
Written information in neat however lacks organization

2
Chart is complete, two main ideas are inaccurate or two supporting ideas do not prove the opinion.

SCORE: _____/16

Graphic Organizer: Constructing Support

Explanation: List two supporting themes from the article that support each of the main ideas that you have listed 1. 1._______________________________________ _______________________________________ _______________________________________ _______________________________________ 2._______________________________________ _______________________________________ _______________________________________ _______________________________________ 2. 1._______________________________________ _______________________________________ _______________________________________ _______________________________________ 2._______________________________________ _______________________________________ _______________________________________ _______________________________________ 3. 1._______________________________________ _______________________________________ _______________________________________ _______________________________________ 2._______________________________________ _______________________________________ _______________________________________ _______________________________________

When you have completed the assignment, please double check that the following information has been filled out: your name, period and current Physical Education teacher once this

has been done please place in the appropriate mail crate found on the table in the front of the middle PE office. If you have any questions, please ask one of the available PE teachers.

ARTICLE SUMMARY:

Name:
Students Name:

Teacher: Period LIVING WITH OR WITHOUT FREEDOM

Class Period:

Overview: The lesson compares the freedoms Americans enjoy due to the countrys founding documents with the lack of freedom for citizens of totalitarian states. The goal is for students to understand and appreciate the freedoms they enjoy as Americans. Often students take them for granted and are unaware these rights are not universal. Students will define and discuss the following words and classify them as to whether they support or deny freedom of individuals. Questions for class discussion: Do any words fit in both categories? Why?
DO DO NOT NOT WRITE WRITE ON ON FORM FORM

Define & Discuss

1. dictator 2. habeas corpus 3. checks and balances 4. corruption 5. dissent 6. discrimination 7. due process of the law 8. impeach 9. persecute 10. segregation 11. totalitarianism 12. compromise 13. genocide 14. despot 15. tyranny 16. censorship 17. liberty 18. oppression 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

Support Freedom
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

Deny Freedom

DO DO NOT NOT WRITE WRITE ON ON FORM FORM

When Repression Masquerades as Social Justice: Confessions of a Cuban Boy

By Carlos Eire June 2007 Vol. 12, No. 18

Carlos Eire is the Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University and author of Waiting for Snow in Havana (2003), the One Book/One Philadelphia selection for 2007. This essay is based on his presentation at Living Without Freedom: A History Institute for Teachers sponsored by FPRIs Marvin Wachman Fund for International Education, May 56, 2007, held at and co-sponsored by the National Constitution Center and the National Liberty Museum in Philadelphia. FPRIs History Institute program is chaired by David Eisenhower and Walter A. McDougall and receives core support from the Annenberg Foundation. The program on Living without Freedom was supported by a grant from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. See www.fpri.org for video casts and texts of this and other lectures. As Elie Wiesel reminds us, there is no more eloquent witness against injustice and evil than eyewitness memory. A colleague of mine at Yale, the theologian Miroslav Volf, who spent time in prison in Croatia simply because his father was a Protestant minister, has argued that evil can triumph multiple times: first when an injustice is committed, and over and over if the record of that injustice is wiped out and the memory of it denied.[1] In 1959, when Fidel Castro took power, the population of Cuba was only 6 million. But except for the scale, life there was much like it was in the Soviet Union. Imagine having lived in a repressive state, and then from the moment you reach the United States constantly being told what a wonderful place you came from and how wonderful the Castro revolution has been to your people. Imagine being told constantlysometimes directly, sometimes insinuatedthat you are simply selfish, you didnt want to share your property with other people, and thats why you are here. Thats my story and why I wrote my memoir. I face this every day still, even recently at the UN, because I come not from Europe but from the third world.

Cuban History
Cuba was a Spanish colony until 1898, when the Spanish-American war freed Cuba from Spain. In 1898, the population of Cuba was 2 million; slavery had existed until 1888. Cubans had been fighting against Spain unsuccessfully for forty years, but in 1898 the U.S. marched in and took over. In 1902, the U.S. granted independence to Cuba (which it did not do for the Philippines and Puerto Rico, the other two colonies it won from Spain). Cuba got its own constitution, but under the Platt amendment, the U.S. had the right to intervene in Cuban affairs any time it felt its interests were threatened. Cubas first president, Tomas Estrada Palma, had spent most of his adult life in the U.S., teaching at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York State. Between 1902-1952, the U.S. intervened directly and indirectly numerous times, removing presidents and ensuring that other presidents were installed. Between 1900-1930, one million European immigrants arrived in Cuba, completely changing the island. Contrary to prevailing myths, the country was not quite a third world country in 1959. In fact, at that time, it had more collegeeducated women than the U.S. per capita. It had more TV sets than all of Italy. It had a very prosperous economy and a huge middle class. Yes, there was poverty, but the country also had a high literacy rate and a liberal 1940 constitution. But unfortunately, the country was politically immature, subjected to one dictatorship after another and a great deal of corruption.

In 1952, an army coup brought to power Fulgencio Batista, who ruled with an iron fist. He made sure that the opposition met its end very quickly. But there was a degree of press freedom. Cuba had several TV stations, more than 80 radio stations, and more than 60 newspapers. There was censorship, but it was not extreme. You simply could not say anything contrary to Batistas regime. Castro took on Batista, beat him, and succeeded him, but his was only one of 17 different revolutionary groups fighting against Batista. The first thing Castro did when he marched into Havana was to ensure that these other revolutionaries quickly disappeared. By 1960, he was expropriating American property and foreign investments and also beginning to abolish private property. Before long he had declared Cuba a Marxist-Leninist state. From the beginning there were opponents of the regime, even among men close to Castro who had fought with him. But promised elections were never held, and people kept disappearing. There were already exiles in 1960, and the CIA decided to help them invade Cuba. While the vast majority of the men who landed in the Bay of Pigs invasion had fought against Batista, they were not there to reinstate Batista, but to fight what they had been fighting against since the mid 1950s. Castro had coup revolution, and from day one spoke for the entire Cuban people. Anyone who did not agree with him was no longer part of the Cuban people. They were worms, gusanos. Many of the Cubans who were concerned with the way the revolution was going assumed that it wouldnt last long, given the long history of U.S. involvement in Cuba. By 1961, there was a Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) on every city blockcitizens who would spy on their neighbors, distribute ration cards, and handle petitions for promotion or for higher education. CDR members got the most rations. All school-aged children were requested to perform volunteer labor for six weeks each summer, laboring in the countryside for no pay, in living conditions worse than those of any sweat shop in the Western world, with terrible food and no contact with their parents. (This continues today.) Beginning around 1960, many parents became concerned about their childrens future. Men and women who opposed the Castro regime wanted desperately to get their children out of Cuba. So the State Department and the CIA devised a plan to grant the children visa waivers, since children did not need security clearances. The State Department gave carte blanche to three Cubans in Havana to print up visa waivers on a mimeograph machine in a house that was directly across the street from the G2, Castros secret police. But Cubans are very neighborly. Mothers began to share this information, and before you knew it, purely by word of mouth, news of the program had spread like wildfire. Womenit was only the motherwere flocking to this house. The G2 inquired why so many people were visiting the house and was told it was a canasta tournament. Between 1960-1962, 14,600 children were airlifted to the U.S. I was one of them. My parents put me on a plane with my brother and sent us to the U.S. We had no family here, and my parents didnt know where wed end up or if we would ever see each other again. But they were willing to do that. As it turned out, I never saw my father again after April 6, 1962. The regime would not allow him to leave. Families were separated continually. If the family applied for an exit permit, the father would be fired from his job and sent to perform slave labor in the countryside for an indefinite period of time, until youve paid off your debt to the revolution. When the missile crisis almost brought the world to an end in October 1962, Cuba sealed its borders. This meant that the parents of over 10,000 of us children were stranded in Cuba. And yet years later, in November 1999, when five-year-old Elian Gonzales was rescued from the waters off of Florida, the Cuban government insisted that he be returned to Cuba because every boy deserves to be with his father. Between 1962 and 1976, when my father died, the longest conversation I ever had with him was three minutes, the limit on the length of calls, with someone else listening in on the Cuban end, laughing, making snide remarks, and calling us worms. My brother and I were separated once we got to the U.S. Eventually we found our way back together in a home for juvenile delinquents and spent nine months there, not because we had done anything wrong but because that was the only place for us. Three and a half years later our mother was able to leave through Mexico. She knew someone who knew someone who knew someone at the embassy there. But twice before that, she had her exit permit, made it to the airport, and was sent back home, told to reapply, because her seat was needed for someone more important. The Gonzales case moved me to write my memoir. Over decades I had written on my Yale University stationery to practically every major publication in the U.S. asking them to do a story on the airlift and the way the Cuban government had split families up, and got not one acknowledgment. So for four months in the summer of 2000 every night I wrote at my life story. Simon & Schuster agreed to publish it, but not as a novel, as I had submitted it. They found it out as true and insisted that it be published as a memoir.

Man does not live by bread alone; truth is more important than bread. I wrote the book because of the countless times even highly educated people tell me that in the third world human rights means something completely different, that there it is a full plate of food. One college honor student who had been to Bangladesh and Cuba found the two places the same, telling me with welled-up eyes that You dont understand. In the third world what really matters is getting food. It doesnt matter what kind of restrictions they live under. Cuba remains like the pre-Gorbachev Soviet Union. My memoir has been banned there, and Ive been declared an enemy of the revolution. Government permission is required to travel abroad, change jobs or residence, own a computer, access the Internet, sell products or services, gain access to a boat, retain a lawyer, organize activities or performances, or form a business. One cannot receive religious instruction, watch independent TV stations, read anything not approved or published by the government, earn more than the government-controlled rate ($17 per month for most jobs, $34 per month for professionals), refuse to participate in mass rallies organized by the Party, or criticize the laws, the regime, or the Party. Sugar is no longer the chief source of income; last year, the regime closed down half the sugar mills. Much of the countryside now is fallow. An invasive plant has taken over much of these formerly rich producing sugar fields. Tourism, mostly European and Canadian, is now the main source of income. Since the 1950s, the only construction that has taken place in Cuba is that which the Soviets did, which is very little. The population is nearly double what it was in 1959, but there is no new housing. There are cases where a couple divorces, each remarries, and all four live together. European firms, mostly Spanish, Italian, and French, invest in hotels in Cuba because they make good money. They put up all the capital, Cuba provides only the land, which it leases. The laborers are paid European union wages. But the workers dont receive this; the government skims it. It requires special government approval to work in one of these highly coveted hotel jobs. The only Cubans allowed to set foot in these hotels and restaurants or use their beaches are those who work there. So the best beaches, hotels, and stores are off-limits to Cubans. If I werent an enemy of the people and was allowed to visit, my 81-year-old uncle wouldnt be allowed to meet me in the hotel or join me for a swim. Last year, a thick book of laws came out regulating contacts between Cubans and foreigners. It is now illegal for any Cuban to accept a tip or gift from a foreigner. My uncle has revealed to me two very sad things about Cuba today. First, the verb to steal, robar, no longer exists in Cuba. No one steals; they just solve their problems. And if there is no private property, can you have any theft? Second, there is no trust. Everyone knows that everyone else is looking to get something from them. And so it is very difficult for me to read things like the following, from an August 2003 article in The Guardian by then Labour MP Brian Wilson entitled Revolution revisited: Cuba isnt perfect, but it is living proof that it is possible for a third world country to combat poverty, disease, and illiteracy: Cubas primary service to the world has been to provide living proof that it is possible to conquer poverty, disease and illiteracy in a country that was grossly over-familiar with all three. The fact that it has been delivered in the face of sustained hostility from an obsessive neighbor [the U.S.] makes it all the more stunning. Heres a response to a 2004 PBS documentary on Fidel Castro from a man in Texas, posted at the PBS website: Everyone below the age of 50 dont know about the conditions of Cuba before Fidel. When a revolution is successful there is a reason and the reason in Cuba was poverty. Without the strength of Castro, Cuba will fall into decline searching for a direction and will come under the fold of the United States just as it was in the 40s and 50s. Whats behind this? (bigotry of the worst sort). It is pure ignorance based on the assumption that unless they have a strong leader like Fidel Castro, Cubans cant take care of themselves. I call it the Mussolini principle. In the 1930s many Americans and British praised Mussolini because he made the trains run on time, he made those unruly Italians mindful of time and efficient. Travel writers do Cuba great disservice. As an exception, Thomas Swick of the South Florida Sun-Sentinelwrote a beautiful piece, recording the inane comments his fellow travel writers made on their trip (Our Gang in Havana, Mar. 24, 2002). The comments sound like they are discussing Rousseaus noble savage or Kiplings White Mans Burden. Sarah Shuckburg, a travel writer for the UKs Telegraph, writes as follows: I sit on a bench in a tiny park, and the colour, music, and exuberance of old Havana engulfs me. An intoxicating blend of Spanish guitars and African drumbeats drifts from a nearby bar, where an elderly couple is performing an afternoon

salsa. Three barefoot boys in tattered shorts kick a dented can over the cobbles. Bare-chested men exchange jokes as they push barrows of rubble. A grizzled, toothless man approaches me and holds out his hand. I give him a few tiny coins. (A little local colour, Mar. 5, 2006) She thinks of this as praise for the revolution. But where are the sports programs? And the old man is grizzled and toothless because Cubans dont have any razors or toothpaste. They have awful dental and medical care. Even Castro had to call for a Spanish surgeon to come and save his life. Ill conclude by letting you think about how Shuckburg summarized her experience in Cuba, based on what weve discussed: Cubans are lucky, with several giants to worshipprincipled, visionary reformers. Fidel Castro is one of them. There are few photographs of him, and no statues, but for most Cubans, Castro is a living legend who has maintained his communist ideals despite the collapse of communism elsewhere, and despite sanctions and embargoes from the `enemy to the north. The Cubans I speak to all shares Castros patriotism and his distrust of democracy, and are intensely proud of Cubas egalitarianism, education, health care and sporting achievements. None of them mention human rights or freedom of expression.

Living Without Freedom in China

June 2007 Vol. 12, No. 20 By Edward Friedman

Edward Friedman is professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This essay is based on his presentation at Living Without Freedom: A History Institute for Teachers sponsored by FPRIs Marvin Wachman Fund for International Education, May 56, 2007, held at and co-sponsored by the National Constitution Center and the National Liberty Museum in Philadelphia. FPRIs History Institute for Teachers program is chaired by David Eisenhower and Walter A. McDougall and receives core support from the Annenberg Foundation; this program was supported by a grant from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. Its not easy for American students to know what it means to live without freedom. They know all the bad things about their own countryVirginia Tech, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, the Enron and Halliburton scandals, the LA riots, elections stolen, federal attorneys fired for pursuing criminals rather than a political agenda, etc. How democratic is America? ...they cynically wonder. When you tell them how awful these other places are, they ask, arent you just whitewashing your own society? The hardest place to understand what the lack of freedom means is China, which is nothing like the Stalin model or Cuba or North Korea. Its by no stretch of the imagination a totalitarian society. In post-Mao China, Chinese travel abroad in huge numbers. The country has the fifth largest tourist population in the world, on its way to being number one. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese students are abroad; in internet use, China is about to overtake the U.S. as number one in the world. Its a market society, brutally competitive; the economy is less state-owned than France or Austrias, for example. Life is not dominated by communist bloc units; you can buy your own house or car, theres no forced labor. You can choose your physician freely; most young Chinese would say they live in a free, democratic society. So what does it mean to say that Chinese people live without freedom? First, it is a brilliant system at making people complicit with the no freedom. For days after the June 4, 1989, massacre in Beijing of democracy supporters headquartered in Tiananmen Square, there was great tension in the city between people who live there and the occupying army. How did the party respond? Teachers were ordered to teach their students a new song: The Army loves the people, the people love the Army. Parents couldnt say the song was untrue lest their children repeat this back at school. You cant bring up your children the way you want to. This is true for many lies the Chinese are forced to let stand uncontested. There still are committees for the defense of the revolution. They have to make their own money and often turn into Avon ladies, visiting house to house, but you know that if you arent complicit, maybe you wont get a passport. It may be held against your child when s/he applies for college. You and your family will be shunned in the neighborhood. You could be committed to a psychiatric hospital. China is not the worst stable authoritarian regime in the world: a North Korean might consider it free. Even foreigners who go to North Korea and then come back to China feel they are returning to a free country. But you get faced every day with decisions that bring it home to you that youre not. If your child is ill, should you go to the pharmacy and buy some medicine? Of course, but medicines are often frauds in China. There have been cases where baby formula is bogus and children have died from receiving no nutrition. China has a ruthless free market, no regulation, no safety standards, no FDA, no CDC, no NIH. Its also the world leader for people dying in industrial accidents, and about 400,000 each year die from drinking the water, which is undrinkable. A Chinese journalist recently went to 10 Chinese hospitals wanting to

get his blood tested. So he complained of certain aches and pains that he knew would cause them to test his blood. But he didnt give them his blood, he carried in a thermos with tea and poured that into the cups. Eight of the ten reported to him that he had the most serious blood disease and that it would cost them endless money for treatment. China has people who see the problems of this corrupt, arbitrary society and try to do something about them. There are courageous lawyers and journalists. The leading political crime in China is land seizures. The economy is growing at a fantastic rate, which means that you can sell pieces of land to a developer for a lot of money. You dont want ordinary people to get rich. All the goodies are grabbed as much as possible by the ruling group. Over 97 percent of all millionaires in China are relatives of the top party elite. There are those who complain and resist, who stick to their guns. Lawyers come in to defend them. Accordingly, China is first in the world in the number of lawyers, journalists and Netizens in prison. These things are hard to see when one is visiting, but there are signs one can see if one looks hard. Go to the railroad station at midnight, and you will see tens of thousands of people sleeping in the street. It is probably the most unequal stable society in the world. Income in the poorest rural areas has been declining. Theres no union, with one exception: the government is now promoting getting unions into multinational corporations, but as an instrument of party control, not to help the workers. The Party doesnt like foreigners doing things they dont know about. They want their agents in the places where the foreigners are, to control things as much as they can. Freedom means the ability to hold your government accountable. There is no way to do this in China, and people die. China is said to have 16 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world, and some would say it would be 20 out of 20 if they didnt lie about the other four. Everything is corrupt. The only way you can get anything done is through corruption. This creates a sense of no morality. But people want meaning in their lives. So theres a tremendous religious revival. All over China, all religions are reviving. The Party fears it. How does it respond? It crushes Christian house churches, it doesnt like Lama Buddhism, its careful about Hui Muslims, but beyond that, its pushing essentially its own state religion, a combination of Han chauvinism, in which Chinese worship the yellow emperor, and an authoritarian Confucianism. The state is building Confucian temples. The vision is that China is going to explain its extraordinary rise to its own people and to the world as the result of its unique ethical religion, its Confucianism. Its going to spread Confucian societies all around the world, its going to teach everybody that China produces a better quality of people because it has this moral authority and all others are inferior. Confucianism is the only way to raise people, and the world is properly hierarchically ordered with Confucian Chinese at the center of it. China is a superpower. Its economy is rising, its military is rising, and Chinese people in surveys are more popular in most countries of the world than are Americans right now. Chinas going to be using this money to serve certain purposes. Among them are undercutting the power of the United States, democracy and human rights and supporting authoritarian regimes. Whether its Sudan or Nigeria, they can buy up the oil and governments dont have to listen to any kind of international pressure about conforming to human rights. China has already defeated the international human rights regime. Chinas rise means that freedom is in trouble. The era were in is very much like the era after WWI. Authoritarian models are rising and are becoming more attractive. I can imagine a future in which unregulated hedge funds lead to an international financial crisis and this is seen as coming out of the Anglo-American countries, London and New York being the two centers of these monies. But China regulates capital, so these things are not allowed in. The Chinese model may yet look even more attractive than it does now. In describing this Chinese rise and how I believe it has the potential of being a threat to freedom in an extraordinary way that we havent seen since the end of WWI, I am not trying to suggest that Chinese dont care about freedom; people do not need a Greek-Roman Christian heritage to care about freedom. That kind of claim is parochially and culturally very narrow. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with its beautiful preamble, is a Mencian document (Mencius is one of Confucius disciples). The word individual never appears in the document. The language was shaped by the philosophy of Mencius because one of the crafters of the Universal Declaration was a Chinese gentleman named P.C. Chang. Of course this is December 1948, the day after the Genocide convention was passed. The communists didnt come to power for another year. There is no trouble in understanding freedom and human rights in any culture in the world. People living in tyrannies may in fact have a better understanding of what freedom is about than American teens, who think its just that you get your

drivers license in your late teens. The Chinese regime has fostered a nationalism to trump democracy. People are taught that they are threatened by democracy, that democracy would make people weak. Party propaganda has it, How did Rwanda occur? ...because they tried to build a democracy. If the Hutus had simply imposed their will, they never would have had that problem. If it moves in a democratic direction, China is going to fall apart; it will be like what happened to Russia, to Yugoslavia. Do you want to end up like Chechnya and Bosnia? Thats what the Americans really want. You are fortunate to be a Chinese living in an ethical, authoritarian system. The TV will show pictures of say the Los Angeles riots, the Sudan, and people are made frightened and confused. Theyre proud to be Chinese and want to raise ethical kids. They want a country they can be proud of, certainly not like American kids. The Chinese are taught that American youth are smoking at an early age, use pot, have babies in their teens, watch pornography on TV, spread AIDS, get divorced, and dont care what happens to their elderly parents. Why would you want to live in such an immoral way? This propaganda seems to work with many Chinese. So what is growing in China is an authoritarian, patriotic, racially defined, Confucian Chinese project which is going to be a formidable challenge not just to the United States but, I think, to democracy, freedom, and human rights all around the world. China is going to seem quite attractive to many people. That is why it is so very important to understand what living without freedom really means.