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Banning Corporal Punishment in Schools

What is corporal punishment? The National Association of School Nurses defines it as â€Å"the intentional infliction of physical pain as a method of changing behavior. It may include methods such as hitting, slapping, punching, kicking, pinching, shaking, use of various objects (paddles, belts, sticks, or others), or painful body postures. Still Legal in 22  States While corporal punishment such as paddling, spanking and hitting students disappeared from private schools by the 1960s, according to an article published by NPR in December 2016,  it is still permitted in public schools in 22  states, which can be broken down into 7 states that simply dont prohibit it and 15 states that expressly permit it. The following seven states still have laws on their books that do not prohibit corporal punishment: IdahoColoradoSouth DakotaKansasIndianaNew HampshireMaine The following 15 states expressly permit corporal punishment in schools: AlabamaArizonaArkansas  FloridaGeorgiaKentuckyLouisianaMississippiMissouriNorth CarolinaOklahomaSouth CarolinaTennesseeTexasWyoming What is ironic about this situation is that no accredited teachers college in the U.S. advocates the use of corporal punishment. If they dont teach the use of corporal punishment in the classroom, why is the use of it still legal? The United States is the only nation in the western world which still permits corporal punishment in its schools. Canada banned corporal punishment in 2004. No European country permits corporal punishment. So far, the United States Congress has not acted on requests from organizations such as Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union to enact federal legislation banning corporal punishment. Since education is widely viewed as a local and state matter, any further banning of corporal punishment will probably have to occur at that level. If, on the other hand, the federal government were to withhold funding from states where corporal punishment is legal, the local authorities might be more inclined to pass the appropriate laws. Rationale for Corporal Punishment Corporal punishment in one form or another has been around schools for centuries. It certainly is not a new issue. In the Roman Family children learned by imitation and corporal punishment. Religion also plays a role in the history of disciplining children by spanking or hitting them. Many people interpret Proverbs 13:24 literally when it states: Spare the rod and spoil the child. Why Should Corporal Punishment Be Banned? Research has shown that corporal punishment in the classroom is not an effective practice, and can cause more harm than good. Research has also shown that more students of color and students with disabilities experience instances of corporal punishment more than their peers. The research shows that children who are beaten and abused are more likely to be prone to depression, low self-esteem and suicide. The simple fact that corporal punishment as a disciplinary measure is not part of any education curriculum indicates that educators at every level know that it has no place in the classroom. Discipline can and should be taught be example and non-physical consequences. Most leading professional associations oppose corporal punishment in all its forms.  Corporal punishment is not allowed in the military, mental institutions or prisons, either. I learned years ago about corporal punishment from a man who was an expert in the field. I co-founded a high school in Nassau, Bahamas in 1994. As deputy director of the school, one of the first issues I had to deal with was discipline. Dr. Elliston Rahming, the owner and director of the school, was a criminologist. He had very firm views about the subject: there would be no corporal punishment of any kind. We had to find better, more effective ways than beating to enforce discipline. In the Bahamas, beating children was, and still, is an accepted disciplinary method in the home and in the school. Our solution was to develop a Code of Discipline which basically penalized unacceptable behavior according to the severity of the infraction. Everything from dress code to drugs, weapons and sexual infractions was covered. Remediation and resolution, retraining and reprogramming were the goals. Yes, we did get to the point on two or three occasions where we actually did suspend and expel st udents. The biggest problem we faced was breaking the cycle of abuse. What Happens in Americas Private Schools? Most private schools frown on the use of corporal punishment. Most schools have found more enlightened and effective methods for dealing with disciplinary issues. Honor codes and clearly spelled out results for infractions combined with contract law give private schools an edge in dealing with discipline. Basically, if you do something seriously wrong, you will get suspended or expelled from school. You will have no recourse because you have no legal rights other than those in the contract which you signed with the school. Things Parents Can Do What can you do? Write the state education departments of the states which still permit corporal punishment. Let them know that you oppose its use. Write your legislators and urge them to make corporal punishment illegal. Blog about local incidents of corporal punishment whenever appropriate. Organizations Opposed to Corporal Punishment in Schools The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry opposes the use of corporal punishment in schools and takes issue with laws in some states legalizing such corporal punishment and protecting adults who use it from prosecution for child abuse. The American School Counselor Association: ASCA seeks the elimination of corporal punishment in schools. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that corporal punishment in schools be abolished in all states by law and that alternative forms of student behavior management be used. The National Association of Secondary School Principals believes that the practice of corporal punishment in schools should be abolished and that principals should utilize alternative forms of discipline. The National Center for the Study of Corporal Punishment and Alternatives (NCSCPA) tracks information about this subject and puts out updates. It also offers an interesting reading list and other materials. Interview With Jordan Riak Jordan Riak is the Executive Director of Project NoSpank, an organization which is dedicated to the eradication of corporal punishment in our schools. In this article, he responds to some of our questions regarding corporal punishment. How Prevalent is Corporal Punishment in Schools? With the exception of those who are directly affected, most people are unaware that in more than 20  states, teachers and school administrators have the legal right to physically batter pupils. Children are sent home with bruised buttocks daily in untold numbers. There is a downward trend in the number of paddlings annually, which is encouraging, but still a small comfort to victims. Editors note: outdated data has been removed, but recent studies have shown that more than 100,000 students were physically punished in 2013-2014.  But the true numbers are surely higher than the records show. Since the data is supplied voluntarily, and since those reporting arent especially proud of what they are admitting to, under-reporting is inevitable. Some schools decline to participate in the Office for Civil Rights survey. When I inform people of the extensive use of corporal punishment in the schools, they almost invariably react with astonishment. Those who remember the paddle from their own school days tend to assume (erroneously) that its use had long since faded into history. Those who are fortunate enough to have attended schools where corporal punishment wasnt used or who lived in the states where bans were in effect are incredulous when presented with information about its current use. The following anecdote is illustrative. I was invited to address a class of students at San Francisco State University who were preparing to become school counselors. Some in the group already had teaching experience. At the conclusion of my presentation, one of the students—a teacher—opined that surely I was misinformed about the situation in California. Corporal punishment just isnt allowed here and hasnt been for years, she flatly insisted. I knew otherwise. I asked her where she had attended sch ool and in which districts she had worked. As I expected, the places she named all had district-wide policies against the use of corporal punishment. She was unaware that in neighboring communities students were being paddled legally. Paddlers dont advertise, and one cant blame her for not knowing. The use of corporal punishment by public school teachers in California became illegal on January 1, 1987. In the United States, there is a long-standing gentlemans agreement between government, the media, and the educational establishment to avoid any mention of teacher violence. Typical of such taboos, adherents not only refrain from entering forbidden territory but come to believe that no such territory exists. An indignant correspondent wrote me the following: In my twenty years as a teacher in Texas, I never saw one student paddled. Strictly speaking, he might have been telling the truth about what he hadnt seen, but its hard to believe he was unaware of what was going on all around him. Recently I heard this on the radio. An author who had written about sports heroes influence as role models on youth was just concluding an interview and was beginning to field listeners calls. One caller recounted his experience at high school where a coach routinely beat up players. He told how one student who had been victimized by the coach later encountered him in public and punched him. The show s host abruptly cut off the call, and said laughingly, Well, there you have the darker side. Sounds like a movie by____ and hastened to the next caller. Rest assured, the United States does not have a monopoly on denial in this regard. At a conference on child abuse in Sydney in 1978, when I raised a question from the floor about why none of the presenters had talked about caning in schools, the moderator replied, It seems the things you want to talk about, Mr. Riak, are not the things we want to talk about. At that same conference, where I had set up a table to distribute anti-corporal punishment literature, a member of the New South Wales education department told me this: The corporal punishment controversy that youve been stirring up here is causing more broken friendships in the department than any other issue I can remember. Caning is no longer legal in Australian schools, and hopefully, old friendships have mended. How Do You Define Corporal Punishment? There never has been, and probably never will be, a definition of corporal punishment that doesnt stir debate. The American College Dictionary, 1953 Edition, defines corporal punishment as physical injury inflicted on the body of one convicted of a crime, and including the death penalty, flogging, sentence to a term of years, etc. The California Education Code, 1990 Compact Edition, Section 49001 defines it as the willful infliction, or willfully causing the infliction of physical pain on a pupil. Proponents of corporal punishment typically define the practice in personal terms, i.e., what they experienced when they were children, and what they now do to their children. Query any spanker on what it means to corporally punish a child and you will hear autobiography. When one attempts to distinguishing corporal punishment from child abuse, the confusion deepens. Lawmakers, as a rule, duck this conundrum. When it is forced on them, they act as though they are walking on eggs as they grope for language doesnt cramp the style of child punishers. Thats why legal definitions of child abuse are models of vagueness—an heroic accomplishment for those trained in the art of exactitude—and a boon to lawyers who defend abusers. School corporal punishment in schools United States typically involves requiring the student to bend forward as far as possible thus making the protruding posterior a convenient target for the punisher. That target is then struck one or more times with a flat board called a paddle. This causes sharp upward jolts to the spinal column accompanied by bruising, soreness and discoloration of the buttocks. Since the locus of impact is close to the anus and genitals, the sexual component of the act is unarguable. Nevertheless, possible adverse effects on the developing sexuality of young victims are ignored. Furthermore, the possibility that certain punishers are using the act as a pretext for gratifying their own perverse sexual appetites is also ignored. When these risk factors are cited, corporal punishment apologists typically dismiss the suggestion with derisive laughter and retorts such as, Oh, comon, please! Gime a break! Forced exercise is one of several unacknowledged forms of corporal punishment. Though the practice is unequivocally condemned by physical education experts, it is widely used, even in states that ban corporal punishment. It is a staple of locked facilities where troubled youth are corralled ostensibly for the purpose of being reformed. Not allowing children to void bodily waste when the need arises is another form of corporal punishment. It is physically and psychologically dangerous in the extreme, but its use against schoolchildren of all ages is ubiquitous. Punitive restriction of movement also qualifies as corporal punishment. When done to incarcerated adults, it is deemed a violation of human rights. When done to schoolchildren, its called discipline. In school environments where buttocks beating is key to student management and discipline, all the myriad lesser insults to which children are prey such as ear twisting, cheek squeezing, finger jabbing, arm grabbing, slamming against the wall and general manhandling are apt to pass unchronicled and unrecognized for what they really are. Article updated by Stacy Jagodowski

Night Creature Hunter’s Moon Chapter 21 Free Essays

We remained quiet all the way home. I don’t know what she was thinking, but my thoughts were full of what would happen if one of us got furry. Would I be able to shoot her as she’d asked me to? Yes. We will write a custom essay sample on Night Creature: Hunter’s Moon Chapter 21 or any similar topic only for you Order Now Would she be able to shoot me? It didn’t really matter, because I’d be able to shoot myself. Jessie let us into her apartment. She went straight to the message machine in the kitchen. â€Å"You have no new messages.† Her sigh of disappointment plucked at something too near my heart. I’d been in love once. I’d lost him, badly. I understood where she was coming from. Will wasn’t back yet; he hadn’t called, and she was even more worried. I glanced at my watch. Three a.m. Not good. I was starting to worry myself. â€Å"Take a shower,† I told her. â€Å"Kiss my ass.† She’s baaack, my mind taunted. I’d been waiting for Jessie to snap out of her zone. It figured that she’d do so cursing me. â€Å"I’ll pass,† I returned, â€Å"but thanks anyway.† â€Å"I don’t want to take a shower,† she said mulishly. â€Å"I’m still on duty.† â€Å"And I bet the people you’ve vowed to serve and protect will be thrilled with your new look. Blood and werewolf brains are such a fashion statement.† â€Å"Do you have to be right all the time?† She stomped into the bathroom. â€Å"That was a rhetorical question, right?† She slammed the door in my face. I opened her refrigerator and helped myself to a can of soda. Then I sat on the couch and I considered what we’d learned. Not much. We still didn’t know where their lair was, and I had no idea what they were up to, hiding human bones in the mine. Hector was here. I was certain of it. But what was he planning? And how was the brown wolf involved? What about the power eater legend Will had been mumbling about? I had to think we were hip deep in something serious. A tap on the windowpane made me jump so high I nearly levitated. I spun around, gun in my hand, and came face to beak with a crow on the windowsill. The thing tilted his head, first one way, then the other, as if trying to figure out what I was. â€Å"Take off.† I set my gun next to my cola, then made a shooing motion, to no avail. Caw, he returned, then stretched out and tapped the glass again. I was so preoccupied with the damn bird, I didn’t notice the scratching at the door until it was too late. The lock clicked free. I’ve been set up, I thought. Crows and wolves work together in nature. Who’s to say they don’t work together unnaturally, too. Had the pesky bird drawn my attention away from the door long enough for one of the bad guys to get inside? I sprinted across the room, pressed my back against the wall, waited for the intruder to show himself. He did, and I jumped him. In a quick, professional movement, he flipped me onto my back, hard, then pressed a knee into my chest. â€Å"Oh, hi, Leigh.† Cadotte was back. He stood, then held out a hand to help me up. I couldn’t breathe. â€Å"You OK?† I shook my head. The bathroom door opened. â€Å"Leigh?† Cadotte’s face lit up from the inside out. He left me on the ground to die and ran to Jessie. â€Å"Will,† she whispered; then she slugged him. â€Å"Ow.† He rubbed his stomach. â€Å"What the hell was that for?† She grabbed his cell phone from his belt and waved it in front of his nose. â€Å"Turn it on once in a while, dick weed. You scared me to death.† Jessie tossed the phone upward. He snatched it from thin air as she stalked past him and into the living room. Observing me on the floor, she smirked. â€Å"Did he flip you?† I nodded. â€Å"He thinks he’s Jackie Chan.† Right now, I kind of thought he was, too. Jessie spun toward Will. â€Å"Where’s my gun?† â€Å"In the trunk of my car.† â€Å"Fat lot of good it’s going to do you there.† â€Å"Getting stopped with a loaded firearm would not be healthy, Jess.† I managed to get off the floor under my own power; then I collapsed in a chair. â€Å"Why not?† Will pointed a finger toward his face. â€Å"Indian. Gun. Too many cowboys.† â€Å"I still don’t get it.† Jessie made an impatient sound. â€Å"The civil rights movement hasn’t gotten here yet. There’s still a lot of prejudice against Native Americans.† â€Å"A loaded gun in the car is illegal,† I pointed out. â€Å"True. But there’d be a whole lot more than arresting going on if Will was stopped with one.† She glanced at him. â€Å"Sorry. I wasn’t thinking past your being safe from the werewolves.† He shrugged. â€Å"I’m fine. But why are you home, in the middle of your shift, wearing a towel?† Jessie gave me a narrow-eyed glare, which I took to mean, Shut up. So I did. â€Å"Never mind me,† she said. â€Å"Where have you been?† â€Å"Madison.† â€Å"You were supposed to be back eight hours ago.† He shrugged, his face sheepish. â€Å"I got distracted.† Neither one of them paid any attention to me. â€Å"What was it this time?† Jessie asked. I waited to hear what his vice was – drinking, drugs, gambling. Considering Jessie’s short fuse, I doubted it was women. â€Å"The book was ancient, Jess. Written practically on papyrus. You should have seen it.† His face went all dreamy. â€Å"Remarkable.† She rolled her eyes, shook her head, then looked at me with a shrug. I tried not to laugh. Cadotte’s vice was books. â€Å"Never mind that, Slick. What did it say?† â€Å"Right.† He pulled his glasses out of his shirt pocket and a sheaf of papers out of his pants. â€Å"I had to write all his down. They wouldn’t even let me use the copy machine. Can’t blame them. Who knows what artificial light would do to something so old?† â€Å"Steady, boy.† Jessie put a hand on his shoulder. â€Å"Don’t start mumbling and drooling on me now. I need that info.† He nodded, shuffled papers, shoved his glasses up his nose in an absent gesture that made Jessie’s face soften and her fingers tighten on his arm. â€Å"From what I can gather, the power eater is an obscure legend – â€Å" â€Å"Again?† Jessie said drily. He lifted his gaze from his notes and winked. â€Å"Stick with me, kid; I’ve got a million.† â€Å"The wolf god was an obscure legend, too.† Jessie faced me. â€Å"You know how well that went.† Will held up one finger. â€Å"But I know the whole legend this time. No missing pages.† â€Å"Then get on with it.† â€Å"A Weendigo becomes a power eater by eating power.† â€Å"Hence the name,† Jessie drawled. â€Å"Let him finish,† I snapped. She shot me a glare, but she closed her mouth. â€Å"Werewolves are very powerful,† Will continued. â€Å"Taking their life destroys the power forever unless – â€Å" â€Å"They eat it,† I guessed. â€Å"By eating the werewolf.† He nodded, then stared at his precious papers some more. â€Å"A human becomes a beast, a Weendigo, by practicing cannibalism, then being cursed. A Weendigo becomes a power eater by being a cannibal – of a different sort.† â€Å"Could a non-Ojibwe become a Weendigo?† I asked, remembering my earlier question in regard to Hector. â€Å"Of course. Weendigo is an Ojibwe term for ‘werewolf.’ A general word, not necessarily race specific.† â€Å"Uh-oh.† â€Å"What?† he asked. Will didn’t know about our Hector theory yet. I waved his question off for now. â€Å"You said the first Weendigo was cursed by the great mystery. What about the ones since then? How did they get to be the way they are?† He glanced at Jessie, frowned. â€Å"I thought Mengele – â€Å" â€Å"Yeah, yeah,† I interrupted. â€Å"But not every werewolf was created by him. Obviously, since the Weendigo legend predates the rise of the Reich and all the subsequent good times.† â€Å"True.† He shuffled his papers again, found one, began to read. â€Å"Humans who develop a taste for human flesh are cursed. They become the beast that lives within them.† â€Å"How?† He shrugged. † Poof! They’re a beast.† Well, stranger things had happened. â€Å"What does the blood moon have to do with any of this?† â€Å"That’s where it gets fascinating.† â€Å"I bet,† Jessie muttered. He ignored her and so did I. â€Å"Beginning on the night of the harvest moon the Weendigo hunts his own. He eats their power, night by night, gaining strength and ability, until the eve of the blood moon, the hunter’s moon, when the power eater becomes the supreme alpha.† â€Å"Yada yada,† I said. â€Å"So what?† Will’s lips twitched. He really was a nice guy. Most people would be sick of my mouth by now. But then look who he was in love with. â€Å"The power eater is the ultimate werewolf. A shape-shifter beyond anything the world has ever known.† He lowered his notes and stared at Jessie, then me, in turn. Any trace of amusement was gone. â€Å"The power eater can do anything.† â€Å"He’s already a shape-shifter; what more is there?† â€Å"I don’t know.† â€Å"Thought you knew everything.† â€Å"Everything there is to know from the book. Unfortunately, it was a little vague on the specifics.† More like a lot, but what can you do? â€Å"The ultimate werewolf,† I murmured. As if we didn’t have enough problems with the regular ones. â€Å"What, exactly, is a supreme alpha?† Jessie asked. â€Å"I think that means he’s in charge of all the other werewolves.† â€Å"Let me guess,† she continued. â€Å"They’re his army. He’s the head man-wolf. He gets to rule the world.† â€Å"Appears that way.† â€Å"What is it with wanting to rule the world?† â€Å"Got me.† Will shrugged. â€Å"Sounds like a pretty lousy job.† I had to agree. â€Å"How does the power eater become the supreme alpha?† â€Å"By eating the power of a hundred werewolves before the hunter’s moon.† â€Å"Yuck.† â€Å"You asked.† â€Å"What should we do?† Jessie was staring at me. I was kind of surprised. But then again, I was supposed to be in charge. â€Å"Kill them,† I said. â€Å"Kill them all.† How to cite Night Creature: Hunter’s Moon Chapter 21, Essay examples

The Perspective Construction of Masaccios Trinity Fresco and Medieval Astronomical Graphics Essay Example For Students

The Perspective Construction of Masaccios Trinity Fresco and Medieval Astronomical Graphics Essay Quite beyond the solemn reality brought to bear on the central mystery of the Christian faith, Masaccios Holy Trinity fresco has played a pivotal role in the history of art as both a definitive example of earty Renaissance linear perspective and as a kind of prophetic forerunner of the perspective method discussed neartye decade later by Leon 8attista Alberti1 While Albertis Della Pitture of 1435 may be the first written docu ment to articulate a new humanist ideal of pamting in which visual appearances are controlled by geometric principles em bedded in nature, Masaccios fresco of the Trinity is the first extant painting fully informed by that ideal.2 The magnificent vault arching over the austere figures in Masaccios fresco of the mid-1420s   is an utterly convincing illusion of archi tectural form oxtendmg into space, and for centuries it has boon justly celebrated on that account. Yet it is not an historical ex emplar devoid of uncertainties. It has been difficult, for Instance, to determine exactly where the figures of the Virgin and St. John stand with respect to the projected ground plane, and ascertaining the position of God the Fathers feet has proved a particularly mystifying problem. So far as the perspective con struction itself is concerned, there is little agreement among scholars about either the vertical position of the projected cen tnc point on the wall or the distance of the viewer from the painting1 These are important issues for ad historians to resolve, and much time has been spent in considering them within the con text of the Renaissance awakening. Yet having succumbed to the fascinating pursuit of Albertian consistencies, are we really any closer to understanding the method and conceptual frame work of Masaccios perspective scheme except in the limiting terms proposed by AJberti? Was Masaccio simply unable to master the difficultdisotto m su projection that would have suc cessfully foreshortened the awe inspiring figures in the fore ground of his fresco? Is it because the fresco has been moved several times that we are unable to decode Masaccios perspec tive projection? Or the stringently rational context of Albertis Delia Pttura really appropriate for understanding a painting cre ated in Ftorenco during the 1420s, when one might still expect to find a fluid dialogue between reason and faith in an image of the Corpus Dommi executed for the conservative Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella? Certainly Joseph fblzers detailed photographs of the points and lines embedded in the fresh plaster provide strong evidence that the illusionistic impact of the vault depended on many drf ferent artiste techniques. It needs now to be said that this di versity of techniques Includes orthographic, conical, and stereo graphic methods made familiar to late Medieval painters through instructive working drawings of architects and instrument mak ers as much as through practical geometry texts that had gov erned the artists early education.* If the very complexity of the Trinity fresco vault projection has long encouraged art histori ans to conjecture Filippo Brunelles chis involvement in its plan ning, the diversity of the projection techniques discovered there would seem all the more to confirm the architects participation in the complex project. Perhaps more importantly, as Poker has shown, that diversity of means is competingly unified both pictorially and theoretically at the level of mathematics and mea surement. The imaginatrve sweep of Masaccios accomplish ment is not to be found solely in the precise ordering of lines and planes, however, for ho (or more likefy Brunelleschi) dis carded earlier and more tentative experiments in favor of a ra tionally consistent method of structuring his own arching sepul chral vault which drew on and mirrored the mathematically defined coordinates of the vault of the heavens. It is the aim of the following essay to show that the one pre existing graphic tradition of great authority for projecting these mathematically regulated and symbolically charged spatial co ordinates was the tradition of medieval astronomical diagrams. This tradition was not only useful in practical detail, but it was also intrinsically suggestive to early perspectives, and prob ably determinative with respect to t he special viewing circum stances presented by the Trinity. Not only did this graphic tradi tion take into account the position of tho viewer looking intcntty upward; its most familiar projections were ordered according to the exemplary symmetries of a divinely created cosmos. The orthographic and stereographic protections of medieval astrono mers and the common ground they shared with mathematical diagrams provided a readily availaNe source to Masaccio and Brunelleschi of a full range of necessary diagramming techniques at the same time that they affirmed the mathematical order be lieved to control all of nature. Case Study Of High Strength Concrete Construction EssayThe rhetorical intent of Masaccios geometry is further suggested by the location of the incised centric point denoting the height of the â€Å"viewer. at al most 3 breccia above the church floor, a measure which carries with it the same connotations of the ideal as the circles and squares ol the surface geometry.M While Alberti would main tain that this was the height of the average viewer, giving it a seemingly practical sanction, it fits neatly into the Vitruvian scheme of ideal human proportions In addition, it is a com- monly known symbolic height in late medieval guide books to Jerusalem, where 3 breccia is proclaimed to be the height of the perfect man. Christ.Despite the fact that the location of the centric point coincides with e reasonable viewing height, its place ment confirms Masaccios attention to non-physical and non visual considerations associated with the time honored symbolic power of numbers as well as the p urity of mathematical relation ships and analogues. That one should find such doubly potent symbols of perfection in an image of the Tnnity in Santa Maria Novella is   keeping with the central role played by the Corpus Domim in the sacerdotal life of this conservative Dominican Church.’ M Masaccios fresco was adventurous, even radical, in its aggressive imitation of a powerful, physically present nature, the inteiectuel context of his grid and projection systems, as well as the newly rationalized aesthetic on which they depended, remained firmly linked to a traditional and highly suggestive re ligious interpretation of natural order in which mathematics func tions as a bridge between concrete, sensible reality and univer sal or divine truth.17 Quite beyond shape end measure conveying meaning in an obvious and frankly didactic way. the points, lines, and pianos which make sense to many as surface geometry, medieval math ematicians would have understood within the broader context of a mathematical graphics tradition intent on e xplaining another kind of absolute perfection, the continually changing relation ships among the coordinate systems of a vast and earth-cen tered universe as those systems were projected onto a plane surface. These projections were a part of an unbroken tradition of mathematical diagramming techniques dating back at least to the 4th century B.C. The many different diagrams bound by this tradition were found in widely circulated copies of ancient texts by Euclid. Archimedes, and Ptolemy, medieval commentaries by Messahala. Jordanus de Nemore. and Campanus of Novara, as well es in the practical geometry tracts that formed the foun dation of an artists education in the Florentineabbaco schools.The precision with which some of the still visible construction   lines wore scratched into the wet surface of the Trinity offers some proof that Masaccio (or more likely Brunelleschi) was not only familiar with this graphic tradition but even painstakingly followed its rules Not merely the result of convenience, the compositional grid of the Trinity is ihe product of a highly conflated application of different lines of mathematical reasoning to a spatial problem whose main features derive directly from the astronomical con ventions of the day. First of ail. Masaccios apparent use of a centric point to designate the projection of a ray (in this case, the principal line of sightl onto the plane of projection, together with the right angle relationship of ray to plane were not only defined by Alberti in 1435 but were typical aspects of medieval astro nomical projections.50 Also, certain lines, generally regarded as mero surface marks by art historians, would have been inter preted by mathematicians and anyone familiar with the astrolabe . the most popular astronomical siting device of the  late Middle Ages, as projections of planes perpendicular to the plane of representation.