My wife is reading a book called Deep Democracy by Judith Green (no relation) as one of the required readings for her summer courses. My understanding of the book, and I haven’t seen it, is that deep democracy isn’t just a flag pin on the lapel; it’s working for the opportunity to make sure that each individual has the opportunity to pursue the American dream.
So what does patriotism mean to you? For me voting; but also being an informed voter. Perhaps working on a campaign; I owe time to TWO of them this year. Participate in the “marketplace of ideas”.
I believe that participating in the Census qualifies.
Civil protest, when injustice exists.
How about you?
And what do you think of this new study of sixteen countries, which “shows that in nearly every democracy surveyed, government helps assure that every eligible citizen is registered to vote. If the United States were to modernize voter registration in this way, it would add between 50 and 65 million citizens to the rolls.” How do you feel about compulsory voter registration? I think I’m against it, but I can be convinced.
There’s much more at Social Security’s Popular Baby Names site such as the names of twins born in 2008, by rank: 1 Jacob, Joshua 69 2 Daniel, David 59 3 Jayden, Jordan 56 4 Ethan, Evan 50 5 Taylor, Tyler 43 6 Gabriella, Isabella 42
Interesting stuff. The problem I have with most of the the stories is that it doesn’t tell you the change in the nature of naming children.
For instance, below are percentages of boys, girls born with these names: 1880 1 John 8.1541%, Mary 7.2381% 2 William 8.0511%, Anna 2.6678% 3 James 5.0057%, Emma 2.0521% 4 Charles 4.5167%, Elizabeth 1.9865% 5 George 4.3292%, Minnie 1.7888% 6 Frank 2.7380%, Margaret 1.6167% 7 Joseph 2.2229%, Ida 1.5081% 8 Thomas 2.1401%, Alice 1.4487% 9 Henry 2.0641%, Bertha 1.3523% 10 Robert 2.0404%, Sarah 1.3196%
1930
1 Robert 5.5021%, Mary 5.4969% 2 James 4.7781%, Betty 3.2794% 3 John 4.6417%, Dorothy 2.6064% 4 William 4.1855%, Helen 1.7076% 5 Richard 2.8491%, Margaret 1.5743% 6 Charles 2.8197%, Barbara 1.5683% 7 Donald 2.5723%, Patricia 1.3507% 8 George 2.0155%, Joan 1.3280% 9 Joseph 1.8579%, Doris 1.3250% 10 Edward 1.5346%, Ruth 1.2804%
1980 1 Michael 3.7039%, Jennifer 3.2811% 2 Christopher 2.6531%, Amanda 2.0132% 3 Jason 2.5994%, Jessica 1.9064% 4 David 2.2600%, Melissa 1.7776% 5 James 2.1205%, Sarah 1.4464% 6 Matthew 2.0417%, Heather 1.1223% 7 Joshua 1.9454%, Nicole 1.1189% 8 John 1.9018%, Amy 1.1148% 9 Robert 1.8475%, Elizabeth 1.0972% 10 Joseph 1.6285%, Michelle 1.0743%
2008 1 Jacob 1.0355%, Emma 0.9043% 2 Michael 0.9437%. Isabella 0.8941% 3 Ethan 0.9301%, Emily 0.8377% 4 Joshua 0.8799%, Madison 0.8199% 5 Daniel 0.8702%, Ava 0.8198% 6 Alexander 0.8566%, Olivia 0.8196% 7 Anthony 0.8442%, Sophia 0.7729% 8 William 0.8438%, Abigail 0.7250% 9 Christopher 0.8268%, Elizabeth 0.5748% 10 Matthew 0.8061%, Chloe 0.5692%
In 1880, two boy names were used by almost one-sixth of the population, while Mary was nearly thrice as popular as the next most popular girl’s name. By 2008, the #1 names was considerably less dominant than the #10 names in 1980.
I decided to pick out some boys’ and girls’ names not entirely at random to note their trends.
Male
Roger 1880-349 1930-57 1980-134 2008-463 highest year-22 in 1945 (unsurprisingly)
Darrin not in top 1000 until 1959 1980-505 not in top 1000 since 2004 highest year-102 in 1965
Gordon 1880-233 1930-77 1980-345 2008-946 highest year-70 in 1935
Rex 1880-519 1930-233 1980-488 2008-799 not in top 1000 in 1999-2002 highest year-171 in 1951
Arthur 1880-14 1930-23 1980-147 2008-363 highest year-14 in 1880-1884, 1886-1899, 1901
Norman 1880-133 1930-40 1980-286 not in top 1000 since 2005 highest year-36 in 1931
Leslie 1880-167 1930-139 1980-354 not in top 1000 since 1997 highest year-81 in 1895
Female
Carol 1880-685 1930-54 1980-232 not in top 1000 in 1883 not in top 1000 since 2006 highest year-4 in 1941
Lydia 1880-77 1930-233 1980-287 2008-120 highest year-75 in 1883
Gertrude 1880-25 1930-96 not in top 1000 since 1965 highest year-22 in 1906
Marcia 1880-614 1930-231 1980-414 not in top 1000 in 1992 not in top 1000 since 1994 highest year-74 in 1951
Gladys 1880-370 1930-48 1980-628 not in top 1000 in 1998 not in top 1000 since 1999 highest year-11 in 1901
Karen 1880-not in top 1000 until 1881 1930-687 1980-54 2008-183 not in top 1000 in 1882-1884, 1888, 1891, 1895-1905, 1907-1911, 1913-1917, 1919-1923, 1925, 1925, 1927 highest year-3 in 1965
Leslie 1880-655 1930-601 1980-61 2008-147 highest year-56 in 1981
Note that the specific spelling matters. For instance, on the boys’ side in 2008, Arthur is #363, but, separately, Arturo is #352. Similarly, on the girls’ 2008 list, Leslie is #147 and Lesly, #447; Lesley fell off the chart in 2008.
As every American fifth-grader knew when I was growing up, the aboriginal people of the Americas were called Indians because the Europeans who headed west to get east thought that they had reached Asia, probably the East Indies (Indonesia, et al), but it is THIS place that’s involved in the current discussion: There developed real confusion when saying Indian whether one meant someone from the Asian subcontinent or from the Americas. Subsequently, there was a movement by some Americans to use the term Native American instead of American Indian as more “sensitive” to the first Americans. Yet there were and are many entities that still use the term Indian, from the American Indian Movement to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, part of the US Department of the Interior to the new Museum of the American Indian, pictured above, which incidentally is staging an exhibition of Native American comic art. So what do the people involved feel? Seems from this article that there is really no consensus: A 1995 Census Bureau Survey of preferences for racial and ethnic terminology (there is no more recent survey) indicated that 49% of Native people preferred being called American Indian, 37% preferred Native American, 3.6% preferred “some other term,” and 5% had no preference. As The American Heritage Guide to English Usage points out, “the issue has never been particularly divisive between Indians and non-Indians.
Further: In the end, the term you choose to use (as an Indian or non-Indian) is your own personal choice…The recommended method is to refer to a person by their tribe, if that information is known…[W]henever possible an Indian would prefer to be called a Cherokee or a Lakota or whichever tribe they belong to.
The 2010 Census is coming up and the Bureau will be using “American Indian or Alaska Native” as the designation for native peoples, just as it did in 2000. At least one of the reasons may lie in this true story I heard from someone who works at the Bureau. Census forms are tested periodically. In some neighborhoods with large immigrant populations, Census was finding an anomaly; a large number of people were checked as Native American, often inconsistently within a family structure. It soon became evident that the new arrivals were checking their country of origin for themselves, but their children who were born here they designated as Native American. The children WERE native to America.
Still, I am still quite uncomfortable referring to the Major League Baseball team in Cleveland or the National Football League team in suburban Washington, DC by their respective nicknames. It just feels wrong to me. At least the NFL team doesn’t have that dopey grinning logo, Chief Wahoo, which reminds me very much of the caricatures of black people in old minstrel shows. For those of you not into sports or from the United States, the topic of sports nicknames “honoring” Indians at the high school, college or professional level has been an ongoing debate, as you can see, for instance, in this article.
I get this e-mail from Lenny Gaines from Empire State Development, forwarding this Census report. He says: “For all you baby-boomers out there…. Seems like we’re no longer the largest school-age cohort.
“This report contains only national data.”
Yeah, yeah, whatever…
This is the kind of e-mail I get all of the time. I eat this stuff UP. It’s a disease, I know. Alas, no known cure.
I promise to NOT subject you to this stuff TOO often.
School Enrollment Surpasses 1970 Baby-Boom Crest, Census Bureau Reports
The number of students enrolled in elementary and high school in 2003 – 49.5 million – surpassed the previous all-time high of 48.7 million set in 1970 when baby-boomers were of school-age, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today.
After peaking in 1970, total elementary and high school enrollment fell during the 1970s and early 1980s. The enrollment increase of children of baby-boomers is expected to decline slightly between 2005 and 2010. This is due to a small decline in annual births from 1990 to 1997.
In 2003, 75 million people – more than one-fourth of the U.S. population age 3 and older – were in school throughout the country, according to School Enrollment – Social and Economic Characteristics of Students: October 2003. Nine million children, age 3 and older, were enrolled in nursery school and kindergarten, 33 million in elementary school and 17 million in high school. There were nearly 17 million college students.
In addition to an increase in births during the late 1980s, immigration also contributed to the growth of the student population in elementary and high schools. In 2003, more than 1-in-5 students had at least one foreign-born parent.
Other highlights:
— Nursery school enrollment has increased dramatically, from about one-half million in 1964 to about 5 million in 2003, an increase from about 6 percent to about 60 percent of children ages 3 and 4.
— The vast majority of 5-year-olds (92 percent) were enrolled in school in 2003, likely reflecting the availability of public kindergarten in most states. During the past three decades, the share of children this age attending all-day kindergarten increased, from 1-in-5 in 1973 to more than 3-in-5 in 2003.
— Elementary and high school students today are more diverse than the baby-boom generation of students. In 1970, the student population was 79 percent non-Hispanic white, 14 percent black, 1 percent Asian and Pacific islander and other races and 6 percent Hispanic. In 2003, 60 percent were non-Hispanic white, 16 percent black, 4 percent Asian and 18 percent Hispanic. (Data by race for 2003 refer to the single-race population, and Hispanics may be of any race.)
— The high school dropout rate of 3.8 percent in 2003 was not significantly different from the 3.3 percent rate in 2002, but was lower than the 4.7 percent rate in 2001.
— In fall 2003, 46 percent of high school graduates ages 18 to 24 years old were enrolled in college. College enrollment, totaling 16.6 million students, was up from 14.4 million a decade earlier.
— In 2003, 1-in-3 of the nation’s 13 million undergraduate college students was attending a two-year educational institution.
The data are from the October 2003 Current Population Survey. As in all surveys, the data are subject to sampling variability and other sources of error.
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