John Sears

Wednesdays, March 24 - April 28   1:00 - 3:00 pm   6 sessions
King’s Chapel Parish House, 64 Beacon Street

John Sears will soon be 80, and therefore feels free to state his mind, especially where he differs with conventions. In six sessions based on heavy-audience participation, he plans to suggest changes in the way most people look at things. In a session on politics, he will suggest a different process for electing Presidents, and a different approach to the responsibility of Congress. In a session on international relations, we will review the rules on declaring wars and discuss worldwide nuclear disarmament and extensive re-drawing of the boundary lines of the world. We will analyze the celebrity culture, among other things, in a session on the media. We will raise doubts about our courts and police systems in a session on crime and correction. In a session on sports, John will raise questions about violence and triumphalism. We will discuss education. We will deal with the economy, where John believes we are in the midst of a new Teapot Dome scandal, and that the markets no longer reflect value – if they ever did. We will muddy the waters on the environment and in a discussion on culture. John will do his best to persuade you to share his contempt for our vulgarianisms and the mediocrity of our art. There will be ample time for rebuttals and expressions of outrage.

We will use some summaries of conclusions we reached after our last several election seminars. Our basic reading for this seminar will be your good daily newspaper; radio news and commentary on stations such as WBUR and WGBH; television news on all channels, but especially on PBS and CNN; and thoughtful writing, for example from the Economist, Newsweek, Time, the New Yorker and locally in periodicals like Commonwealth. We will lean on museums, theatres, concert halls and libraries – including your own.

John Sears, Beacon Hill’s historian, raconteur and man about town is a graduate of Harvard and Oxford and a lifelong civic leader. Among many official posts he has held, he was chairman of the Metropolitan District Commission from 1970-75 and served in the State Legislature and City Council.