DOS policies threaten education

In Philadelphia, birthplace of the Union and a virtual metaphor for American personal liberties, educators from across the nation met this past summer to share their experiences and sharpen their skills as teachers of the Classics in a society that has gradually drifted away from tradition. The American Classical League (ACL) is a bit different than most educational organizations in that its membership spans the entire range of educational experience. At its annual Summer Institute, ACL members present programs or workshops oriented toward teaching students from elementary school through university levels.

Zee Ann Poerio, chair of the ACL's Excellence Through Classics committee, teaches 3rd grade at St. Louise de Marillac School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As every parent well knows, this is a challenging age and holding the attention of a child in that group requires not only skill and patience but also ingenuity. Mrs. Poerio discovered several years ago, that children have a natural fascination with money. It is something they can immediately relate to and the exchange of money is something they experience daily in their own lives. Poerio describes her discovery of ancient Roman coins, as a source of Latin terms and phrases, as a sort of epiphany. Not only did she find that genuine 2000-year-old Roman coins are quite readily available, they are in many cases very inexpensive. As she learned more about these coins, she learned that others had also come to realize their educational value. A group of private collectors had formed the non-profit support group Ancient Coins for Education (ACE) and were nurturing classroom programs across the country. Poerio became a member of the ACE Board of Directors and serves as a bridge between academia and the private collector community.

Taking her newly found resource back to the classroom, Mrs. Poerio developed the concept of an Ancient Coin Museum that is created by and for the students. The students not only help create exhibits of material related to their classical studies, they serve as docents at public displays of their "museum". On one recent occasion, the St. Louise museum was set up in a local Barnes & Noble bookstore as part of a cooperative Book Fair that raised funds for the school. The weekend program included skits by young students dressed in Roman attire and incorporating Latin terms they had learned in class. With the Ancient Coin Museum as a backdrop I was honored to participate by giving a short presentation on the history of ancient coin collecting as a hobby and signing copies of the "Ancient Coin Collecting" series of introductory books that I authored several years ago. The event was well attended and was a very successful reinforcement of the classroom experience.

The involvement of collector organizations in education, particularly in youth programs, is not a new development. The American Numismatic Association (ANA) sponsors a "Coins in the Classroom" program that is geared toward exposing teachers to the educational value of coins. The ANA also hosts a Roman Coin project that encourages and rewards young collectors and holds a series of summer seminars each year at its Colorado Springs headquarters that is open to young and old alike. The Ancient Coin Collectors Guild (ACCG), a non-profit advocacy group for the hobby, supports both the ACE and the ANA programs, as well as initiatives of its own, through its Education and Youth Programs Task Force. The combined membership of these organizations includes almost 50,000 coin collectors.

In stark contrast to this altruistic effort, the U.S. State Department has taken a stance that threatens the very existence of these programs. With passage of the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act in 1983, the department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) became the central decision making point for matters falling under the purview of a 1970 UNESCO convention. One of the provisions of that act is a process by which the State Department can recommend, and the President can impose, emergency import restrictions on objects defined as cultural property. In reality, the UNESCO convention's description of cultural property is so broad that it encompasses virtually anything manufactured by human beings more than 100 years ago. Equally vague is the definition, or at least the interpretation, of what constitutes "emergency" protection. The current view of UNESCO convention supporters is that all cultural property should be controlled by states rather than individuals. In a few words, they believe that private individuals should not be allowed to collect these objects. This is largely the view adopted by academic archaeologists and by their professional associations. Over the past 30 years, the staff of ECA has become decidedly favorable to the view of UNESCO and its small but academically elite cadre of U.S. supporters. Consequently, the bureau tends to look favorably upon requests for import restrictions on cultural property. This pits an agency of the U.S. government directly against a large segment of the American people who support individual property rights. This was amply demonstrated at the 2006 Wisconsin GOP State Convention, where the assembly of delegates passed a strongly worded resolution supporting collector rights and opposing import restrictions on ancient coins and other similar objects. The ECA view also pits the State Department against educators nationwide who use common ancient coins to teach history and the classics.

Not only is the State Department inclined, in this case, to support the interests of foreign states over those of the American people, the department has been challenged by several groups for its aura of secrecy in the processing of requests for cultural property restrictions. Requests for information by affected groups have been routinely denied and Freedom of Information Act requests have been swallowed by the bureaucracy in a fashion that frustrates all who have sought answers. Even requests from several members of the U.S. Congress for information have been stonewalled and treated with what is increasingly described as State Department arrogance.

In an era when subjects like the threat of terrorist activity and the potential proliferation of weapons of mass destruction dominate both the media and the attention of important decision makers, a subject as seemingly mundane as the restriction of cultural property imports fails to generate any alarm on Capitol Hill. But the protection of American freedom is not merely a question of protecting our citizens and resources against bombs and physical threats. Our freedom is equally threatened by alien ideology that is forced upon us by small but unchecked segments of our own government. If we do not defend ourselves against this sort of internal threat, we will soon have no need for protection of our borders. The ACCG, along with numismatic trade associations and allies in the art and museum world, has steadfastly opposed import restrictions on classes of artifacts that do not, by any definition, meet the standard of "national treasure". That opposition is turning into a broadly based grass roots effort that draws bipartisan support in its rejection of cultural property nationalism and academic elitism.