After the Future

Quote of the Day: John Kuhn

“Poverty isn’t destiny” is trite and meaningless and pretends to honor poor kids for their wide-open potential while actually disrespecting their experiences and neglecting to patch their holes; it posits that there is no such phenomenon as generational need and that neither public policy nor wealth distribution warrants consideration as a contributing factor in the formation of American kids. Poverty is water in the gas tank of education, but its apologists facilely condemn a pit crew of teachers who—not allowed to say the water won’t combust—are pushing sputtering lives, but not fast enough, around a track where youthful suburban rockets whiz by in their mall rat garb.

John Kuhn is superintendent of the Perrin-Whitt school district in Texas.  Read more--please. The whole piece is worth reading. My first reaction to hearing about John Kuhn was "How did this guy ever get hired as a superintendent?" It's encouraging to hear from time to time that there are oases of sanity and humanity in Texas. 

Salon's Andrew O'Hehir on "Won't Back Down"

Pretty funny:

Even Gyllenhaal’s 500-watt smile and Davis’ permanent air of wounded propriety can’t redeem a script that has that disconnected, amateurish quality distinctive to conservative-oriented entertainment and plays written by fourth-graders. It’s as if the right-wing disapproval of pop culture extends to rejecting the Aristotelian conventions of plot and character. Possibly this film is so avant-garde that I’m not getting it!

Here’s the principal narrative accomplishment of “Won’t Back Down”: It reverses the usual racial polarity in this kind of story, in that it’s Gyllenhaal’s character, Jamie, an endlessly earthy and upbeat bartender-receptionist who favors skin-tight jeans and midriff-baring tops (when she’s not wearing her combat-fatigue “Parentrooper” T-shirt), who brings some joie de freakin’ vivre back to Nona, Davis’ burned-out, beige-clad teacher, who describes herself as “the first black Stepford wife.” Jamie convinces Nona to put those middle-class problems up on the shelf and kick back with a virgin mojito, a Pittsburgh Penguins game and a little impromptu Texas line dancing. Because that’s the thing about white folks: We’re all about spontaneous fun, keeping it real, and convincing black people with decent middle-class incomes to give up 150 years worth of hard-fought progress and work harder for less money. She’s the magic redneck! (Source)

In Washington State we have a ballot initiative that if approved this November will permit the establishment of charter schools. The state has rejected the attempt to do so on several occasions, and it's a credit to Washingtonians that they have. I-1240 is a piece of trash and it has the Gates Foundation, Walton, Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) hedge funders--the usual neoliberal types--supporting it, and everyone in the state who knows something about education against it. Nevertheless its approval is polling ahead of disapproval. I think in the end, we'll find a way to say No, but the timing of this movie celebrating the "parent trigger" has worried me.

I haven't been able to see the movie yet because it won't be released here in Seattle until the weekend, but reviews like this one are encouraging. Maybe no one will bother to see it. It's probably too optimistic to think that the stupidity of the movie movie will be a net negative, but at as propaganda goes, it looks as though it's not very skillful. As Parene points out, "Waiting for Superman" was far more effective in delivering a similar message. 

The real problem in Washington State public education is its being terribly underfunded. Despite the relative affluence of our state and the high level of education of its citizens, we have somehow found a way to allow our funding levels to drop so that it ranks now 46th in the country. It's an embarrassment. It's so bad that the state's supreme court last year ruled in the McCleary decision that the government is not meeting its constitutional responsibility to adequately fund education, and it better get its act together.  

And so the best argument that the NO on 1240 people are making is that first things first. We need solutions that benefit all kids, not just the handful that might get into a charter, and even if they get in there's a greater chance that the charter will underperform the typical public school than outperform it. And that means getting schools in this state funded. And that requires doing something about taxes. 

 

Civilization and Culture

Civilization is the head and culture is the heart or the soul of a society, and the soul of a society is framed by how its culture prioritizes what is worth caring about. And so if the culture defines what's most important to care about, the society's head develops a civilization to provide for the culture what it wants by developing the tools, laws, economic practices, and any else it does to organizes itself to get more of what the culture defines as desirable.

And so using this measuring stick, we can talk about primitive or highly developed civilizations, usually based on the level and sophistication of the technologies it has developed to provide for the needs of its citizens. And we tend to associate the idea of "progress" with the increasing sophistication of these technologies. But it should also be clear that progress in this sense has little if anything to do with moral development or the development of virtue. Some primitive civilizations have far more highly developed moral cultures. And the reason for this is that much of the impetus driving higher levels of civilization in this sense has been rooted in the morally corrupting will to power.

As I've been pointing out, Liberalism in its pure form makes no judgments about what is or is not worth caring about. It simply creates an empty framework which allows people to decide for themselves. And what American culture has decided it wants more than anything else is freedom, and freedom in American culture means having choices. Anything that promotes choice is good; anything that restricts choice is bad. And so if Liberals ever go on a "moral" crusade, it's about promoting the freedom to choose.

And so American civilization has developed in such a way as to accommodate this pluralistic understanding that everyone should be free to choose on an individual basis what is important for him, and it's nobody else's business how he prioritizes or determines what is important or unimportant, valuable or not valuable. And it could be argued, as I have myself done in the past, that the great thing about American society is that while it is true that its citizens are free to be as morally depraved as they wish to be (so long as they don't infringe on the rights of others), they are also free to be as good and virtuous as they want to be. But I have since come to think that this is a psychological and spiritually naive position. It should be abundantly clear that it is very, very difficult for a choice-driven culture to develop within it prodigies of virtue. Our lack of them is proof. We produce at best mediocrities of virtue, and here's my take on why:

In order for anybody to grow to some level of greatness in any field, he has to build on what has been achieved before him in that field and learn from those who have achieved the most in it. If you want to be an excellent violinist, your talent will not develop very far if you have to figure it out on your own. You have to be introduced to a tradition and to the body of achievement of those who have gone before you. You need to find a teacher who is himself someone who has mastered the instrument and the violin repertoire and who can mentor your development until you yourself become a master. In other words, in order to become a fully realized talent, you need a trellis on which that talent can grow, and you need help from someone, a gardener so to speak, who can nourish you by his own example and weed out any bad habits you might develop. And when you become a master, you are free in a deeper sense to use your skill in freedom.

In other words there is no true freedom without true mastery. And mastery comes first by submitting to learn from the great ones who have preceded us. I play the violin badly. I can pick it up and doodle around with it as the whim takes me, but that's not real freedom. I don't have the capability to play what really good players can play, and so I am not free to play in the way that masters are free to play. I can choose to play "twinkle" or "row, row your boat", but I am not free to play any piece that requires real mastery. Freedom is in that sense only a potentiality that is in each of us to be actualized--we have to earn it.

And the same is true in the realm of morality and virtue. Our moral freedom is a function of our moral mastery, and that mastery is only achieved by submitting to the discipline that the moral tradition prescribes. Each soul shouldn't have to figure things out on his own from scratch; he needs mentors, and these mentors have value only insofar as they themselves have become morally mature, because they have learned to become that from those who mentored them. But there are hardly any, and the church is the last place I'd look for one these days. I'm not saying that there aren't a lot of good, decent people who struggle as best they can to lead lives of integrity. But they are rather like a person with musical talent who finds an instrument and starts doodling with it. It would be very difficult for such a person to go far in the development of his talent.

Maybe some would disagree with me on this, but I think it's pretty obvious that American society does not produce prodigies of virtue--or as they used to be called, saints. I'm not saying there are no good people; I am saying there are very few people who are great in their goodness. There are few heroes of goodness. And I would argue that the reason for it is that a prosperous, choice-driven culture makes it as difficult to achieve greatness in this realm as it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.

When you live in a society that is organized around consumption, it's like trying to run a race on a track that has four feet of chocolate mousse piled on it. Why fight through it; it's so much easier to just sit down and eat it. It's hard enough to run this race even under the best of conditions, but we live in a society that makes it about as tough as it could possibly be. Our prosperity works against us. If we are prodigies of anything, we are prodigies of complacency.

For me these days it always comes back to the way I think about what my teenage son has to go through for the next ten years. He's a great kid, and I want him to become the best man it is in him to become. But to whom do I point as a model? Who is there who might inspire him to be more than the complacent consumer the world around him repeatedly tells him he needs to become? It's so, so seductive. And it isn't enough that I should train him to say No to all of that. At some point, if not already, he's just going to decide I'm an old crank. I want there to be something for him to which he can say an enthusiastic Yes. It's just not there right now in the culture. All we have is a civilization that is primarily designed to satisfy our most primitive needs.  

[Ed. note: This is a repost of an essay I wrote in April 2005 before I moved over to typepad. I'll be doing this from time to time as I attempt to retrieve what I've been thinking about over the last ten years.]

Primitives, Hacks, Naifs, Fools, and Mensches

There are three types of people who work for or enthusiastically support well-funded, national political organizations:

(1) Primitives--people driven exclusively by self-interest, greed, powerlust and glory in it. I'm thinking of the Gordon Geckos and Marc Antonys of the world. Primitives don't do well in bureaucracies, but many do well as entrepreneurs. And there are places, for instance in the more buccaneering precincts of Wall Street, the energy industry, in the military and police, and in the entertainment industry where this type can find a niche and thrive. The film industry loves to glorify this type because they are uninhibited adrenal personalities, and adrenaline sells tickets. Their agenda might coincide with that of the hacks below, but hacks are sneakier, more calculating, and more into gamesmanship. Primitives are all about the open, unihibited use of power to get what they want.

(2) Hacks--people who are more at home in bureaucracies and big organizations who know that a cynical game is being played, but play their part knowingly because, one, they love the game and winning at it; two, they're paid well to do their part. When winning the game, when private interest and expediency trump basic decency, then you have a hack. When you have people who justify their deception as a noble lie in the Leo Strauss sense you have a hack. Many, if not most people who rise to positions of leadership in large corporate, foundation, and governmental bureaucracies fit this description. The Grand Inquisitor was a hack, and so was Paul Wolfowitz--although a lot of the neocons are Fools--see below. The key characteristic of a hack is fully conscious dishonesty in all its many variations. 

(3) Naifs--people, usually young idealists, who innocently believe the dishonest cover story prepared by the hacks. I think a lot of kids in our military fit this description. Good kids, nobly motivated, but who are being manipulated to put their lives on the line by hacks. Many naifs become cynical when they find out the game was rigged; others become mensches (see below). The cynic comes to see his ideals as delusional; the mensch retains his ideals and noble sense of purpose, but reframes them realistically, and comes to see himself in resistance to the hacks.  

(4) Fools--idealistic naifs who have been presented with evidence that the game is being played cynically, but who refuse to believe it for whatever reason: cognitive dissonance, personal loyalties, group or ideological value affinities, inconvenience, fear, confusion, wanting to believe in the best in people, etc. A lot of people who work as staff for large corporate, foundation, and governmental bureaucracies are naifs if they truly don't know what their organization is doing; they become fools when they are confronted with bubble bursting evidence, but continue to think as they did before the bubble burst. Ideologues--people who have pre-fab answers for every question no matter what the evidence--are always fools. I'm not sure if Obama is a hack or a fool. Romney is clearly and unambiguously a hack. Hannity is a fool, and Limbaugh is a hack. 

(5) Mensches--Is it possible to be part of a political organization or movement with your head screwed on right, and your heart where it should be? Is it possible for people with common sense and common decency to become part of a political movement? I think it's rare, but it happens. I think the American Civil Rights movement had plenty of people in it that fit this description, but I don't see many on our current political landscape, at least any that have any stature. And certainly not anywhere in corporate education reform. MLK and Mandela are mensches. Diane Ravitch in the educational sphere is a naif who later in life became a mensch. Stewart and Colbert also qualify. A mensch isn't without his flaws, but a basic honesty and decency prevails in the way he or she lives and thinks. 

Let's take Teach for America (TFA), for instance. TFA, while it presents itself in idealistic terms, as a kind of Peace Corp for America's poorly served urban schools, is one of the pillars of the American branch of the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM). For some background on TFA if you're unfamiliar with it, read "Looking Past the Spin: Teach for America". As the article points out, many of the kids who join TFA, the ones who aren't in it primarily to pad their resumes, are in the third category, the naifs. I could see myself as a 22 year old being attracted to it as the naif I was at the time. But it's hard for me to see how anyone could stay with the organization after a couple of years without migrating into the hack or fool categories. There are exceptions; there always are. 



Corporate education reform is a cynical game being played by hacks. The evidence to support that assertion is pretty overwhelming, but that doesn't mean that a lot of the people who promote it aren't inhabitants of categories 3 and 4. But the naifs and fools are not running the show, and you don't get to run any show unless you are in category 1, 2, or 5, and nobody in category 5 would be associated with this particular show. 

Background on "Won't Back Down"

The film about intrepid parents fighting a corrupt teachers union stars Maggie Gyllenhall, Viola Davis, and Helen Hunt. It's propaganda along the lines of Waiting for Superman. From the Center for Media and Democracy: 

"Won't Back Down," is a production of Walden Media, owned by billionaire investor and right-wing extremist Philip Anschutz. Anschutz participates in the Koch brothers' secretive political strategy summits and funds David Koch’s Americans for Prosperity group, which backed Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's union busting proposal and is working to defeat Barack Obama and other Democratic candidates across the country.

Anschutz bankrolls ALEC and ALEC member groups. In 2010, The Anschutz Foundation, gave ALEC $10,000 and his Union Pacific firm was an ALEC sponsor the following year. The Foundation funded three ALEC members who sat on the ALEC Education Task Force which approved the Parent Trigger Proposal: The Independence Institute, Center for Education Reform, and Pacific Research Institute. 

Anschutz has also supported the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which backs legislation designed to cripple unions; the Discovery Institute, which seeks to get creation “science” accepted in public schools; and the Mission America Foundation, whose president considers homosexuality to be a “deviance.” He also owns the conservative magazine, the Weekly Standard.

Walden Media was one of the producers of the pro-charter documentary film “Waiting for 'Superman'.” This film was criticized by Diane Ravitch as propaganda and as “a powerful weapon on behalf of those championing the ‘free market’ and privatization.”

Read the whole article if you think think that the parent trigger is all about empowering parents. It isn't.

 

 

 

Quote of the Day: Joe Nocera

The Chicago teachers’ strike exemplifies, in stark terms, how misguided the battle over education has become. The teachers are fighting for the things industrial unions have always fought for: seniority, favorable work rules and fierce resistance to performance measures. City Hall is fighting to institute reforms no top-performing country has ever seen fit to use, and which probably won’t make much difference if they are instituted.

The answer lies elsewhere — in a different approach to teaching education and to dealing with the unions. It won’t be easy, but it is not impossible. It’s the way forward. (Source: "How to Fix Schools", NYT 9/17)

He points to Ontario and Finland as top performers the US reformers should be emulating but is not.

While it is encouraging that a guy with a platform at the NY Times (that's unexpected; Kristof's thinking seems more representative.) seems to be one of those people, there is so much momentum going in the wrong direction, I fear that it will have to be proved disastrously wrong before we change course. If it were just a matter of intelligent people of good will being persuaded as to the right approach, it would be easy. There is a rigid, neoliberal/technocratic mindframe that dominates thinking about education reform, and there is a lot of money to be made in privatization, and those are obstacles you don't just argue away. 

 

How the Technocratic Mind Works

It has little to do with common sense. If you're familiar with Value Added Teacher Evaluations, no need to watch this video, but if not, it tells you what public school teachers are up against and why GERM is driving the good teachers out. 

Someone said that linking teacher effectiveness to student scores is like linking a doctor's effectiveness to a patient's cholesterol levels. But it's worse than that because at least there are accurate means to measure the cholesterol.  

 

This American Life: Back to School

One of the most frustrating things about the corporate reform, aka GERM (Global Education Reform Movement) is its glib attitude toward the impacts of poverty on a child's learning. "Poverty isn't destiny", its proponents proclaim. And for some kids, surely it's not. But the GERM strategy to focus almost exlusively on improving teacher quality measured by their students' improvements in their math and reading test scores defies common sense.

Even if there were  "a great teacher in every classroom", it would do little to close the so-called achievement gap unless deeper problems that relate to the negative impacts of poverty are addressed. GERM puts way too much of a burden on schools and their teachers to solve complex historical/cultural problems, and as the Chicago Teachers Union is trying to get through Emmanuel's thick skull, teachers cannot be held accountable for variables they have no control over. 

This weekend's This American Life addresses this problem in an interesting and constructive way. It explores how the negative impact of poverty has less to do with the lack of money and more to do with the culture of poverty: the way children's continuous exposure to stress, trauma, and violence shapes their brain development. There are remedies for this that can be taught in school, but no techniques can work if children are continuously traumatized. I'm not saying that reading and math are unimportant; I am not saying that all standaridized test are useless. The problem lies in that we have allowed them to become the tail wagging the dog. 

This episode also talks about the work of James Heckman, a University of Chicago Nobel laureate economist, whose work on the central importance of a child's development of non-cognitive skills should debunk once and for all (like that might happen) the approach that math and reading scoreswe tell us predictive about future success and productivity.  

I think that the programs that teach kids these non-cognitive life skills look promising. They are an important puzzle piece in a larger picture that needs to be assembled. [See item 3 at this post.] The jury is still out on how scalable teaching these skills can be in changing the academic outcomes for the great majority of kids who grow up poor and are failing. As with anything, it's all about motivation, and if kids aren't motivated, they aren't going to learn anything, even these important life skills.

Are Teachers Obama's Sister Souljah?

From an Audie Cornish interview with EdWeek editor Stephen Sawchuck on NPR:

CORNISH: Stephen, one interesting thing about Chicago is that its former schools chief Arne Duncan was tapped President Obama to be the U.S. secretary of Education. And of course, prior to being Chicago mayor, Rahm Emanuel was White House chief of staff. So, how is this issue in any way tricky for Democrats to essentially be going up against teachers unions?

SAWCHUK: I don't think I can overstate enough how politically fraught this is. And you really hit the nail on the head. A lot of the ideas that they have pushed and that we've talked about, such as revamping teacher evaluations, schools closures, has been strongly supported by the Obama administration. They have not typically been labor priorities. So, it is a little bit of a Nixon-goes-to-China moment in that respect, and it is making it complicated from that perspective.

But also, keep in mind that the election is coming up. Teachers unions tend to be very important donors to Democratic candidates, particularly at the state level. And, of course, they are the boots on the ground when it comes to canvassing and things like that. So, it's definitely safe to say that this will be very, very closely watched. You know, not just by we education geeks, but by politicos, basically by anyone who has a stake in the outcome of the election.

 

The Democrats' Struggle to Define the Nation's Ethos

We Democrats think the country works better with a strong middle class, real opportunities for poor people to work their way into it and a relentless focus on the future, with business and government working together to promote growth and broadly shared prosperity. We think "we're all in this together" is a better philosophy than "you're on your own." Who's right? Well since 1961, the Republicans have held the White House 28 years, the Democrats 24. In those 52 years, our economy produced 66 million private sector jobs. What's the jobs score? Republicans 24 million, Democrats 42 million! --Bill Clinton in Charlotte

I want the Democrats to win, not because I think the national party has the best interests of the country in mind, but because I think the Republicans are as a group irresponsible at best, and crazy at worst. While I think Bill Clinton is loathesome on so many levels, I also think he is one of the best political communicators ever. While Obama is no Clinton, he doesn't have to be. Romney makes him good enough.

I assume that the Dems will win this one because with Romney candidacy the GOP seems to be mailing it in. They'll concede this one to Obama, keep their House majority, obstruct for the next four years, and then get the far more appealing Chris Christie or Jeb Bush to run and probably win. While I won't be spending much time watching the cable campaign hype, I'll be following the presidential campaigns as most Americans will be. My interest lies primarily in parsing the respective advantages and disadvantages of each party in the long and short runs:

So here's my assessment of the way I think this will play out: 

The Republicans' Advantages--First, the traditionalist values/free-market/small government narrative resonates with a lot of Main Street Americans. There is a very strong tribal story about being a "real American" that appeals especially to American white Christian males, who feel they are an endangered species.

The GOP has captured this fear, and it has given an adrenalized quality to the base, which believes it's cornered and in a fight for its tribal survival. The Republican base is far more energized and committed than the more diffuse Democrat base. But while cosmopolitan Liberal types dismiss at these people as fanatics, there are a lot of moderates, especialy among ethnic Catholics and blue collars, who feel more at home in the GOP traditional-values ethos than they do in the "anything-goes" ethos that seems to define the Dems. They lean GOP unless there is a compelling reason not to.

Second, the GOP has access to enormous amounts of money for messaging, and Republicans are very skillful, effective propagandists. They find ways to legitimize crazy ideas and the crazy people who hold them, as was exemplified in the Birther nonsense. They unselfconsciously profess that they won't let their "campaign be dictated by fact checkers".

Republicans don't believe their facts free stories are lying. They admit that they might be stretching the facts or exaggerating to dramatize a larger truth they sincerely believe to be the real story. The facts are incidental to the bigger truth they are trying to tell, and the narrative works or seems "truthy", to use Colbert's word, because it fits with stereotypes about Republicans and Democrats that pre-exist in the mind of those who aren't paying a lot of attention. They are, therefore, given far more MSM credibility than they deserve, and they get away with propagandistic distortions that forty years ago would have been dismissed for the absuridities that they are. This is a tremendous advantage.

Third, the economy is still weak and fragile; lots of people are hurting, and that's always an advantage for the challenger. There are positive signs, but hardly anyone is feeling confident and optimistic, unless they're in the 1%. The GOP owns the populist narrative through its identification with the Tea Party. It has done a good job of making the case that the Dems are in bed with Wall Street, and this aids them in the promotion of their Main Street resentment of eastern financial elites, whom the traditionalist narrative has always held in contempt.

The Republicans' Disadvantages--First, their candidate is a weak, clumsy, panderer whom the adrenalized base does not like or trust. And because he is forced to continuously shore up his base, he has a hard time reaching out toward the middle, which he must do if he has any chance of winning. Yesterday's clumsy statements about Obama's handling of the attack on the Libyan embassy illustrate his dilemma and disclose his campaign's desperation. This plays to the base, but alienates those in the middle.  

The Democrats' Advantages--First, they have the more appealing candidate. If the goal is to capture the rather small segment of undecideds, this alone might be enough to give him the 52 to 53% that, barring the unforeseen, I think he'll probably get. 

Second, the convention last week shows that the Dems understand their advantages in winning the middle, and are doing what they can to reinforce that advantage. 

Most of the Democrats' speakers all week were values speakers, trying to define how Democrats' values align with the values of most Americans. The rhetorical objective was to win over the ambivalent middle. This is not easy, because selling a pluralistic values, or big-tent ethos, does not have the visceral appeal that the traditional values ethos has for the GOP. It is rather abstract and hard to grasp, except if you already consider yourself a pluralist. So the Dems' talk about tolerance and the big tent, and they hope that there are enough voters, especially young voters, who work with, go to school with, or are neighbors with Blacks, Latinos, Gays, Muslims and other "non-traditional" Americans. I thought the convention was very effective in executing this messaging strategy.  

Michelle Obama's speech was particularly good a merging her family's story with the larger traditionalist "American Dream" story. Her rhetorical objective was to communicate to the ambivalent people in the middle: "Hey, I'm just like you. My values are your values." It was pretty effective. 

Bill Clinton's speech was masterful for its balance of values and facts. See the quote above. It hit with an ethos left jab, and then followed with a logos right roundhouse.

President Obama's speech seemed to have the most modest objectives, which were primarily to lower expectations: "I'm the president. Stick with me; I inherited a mess, and I generally have things moving in the right direction."  This is a message that is designed primarily to appeal to the middle and to remind people further to the left, who think in some respects he did make things worse,  that "Even if you're not crazy about me, I did some good things in very difficult circumstances. Do you think you could have done better?"

The Democrats' Disadvantages: The Democrats as a party are like the Whigs of the late 1840s/early 1850s. They have lost their compass. Apart from their politically correct appeals for tolerance and the big tent, they don't represent the values and real concerns of ordinary Americans. They pander to Wall Street. They are on the wrong side of education reform. They have not resisted the post-9/11 erosion of civil liberties and the growth of the surveillance state. They come off as feckless and weak. They can't hold a house majority, and if they win the white house, they will get little done in the next four years, and they will be ripe for an ass-kicking in 2016. 

 

 

 

Chris Hedges on the Chicago Teachers' Strike

 

Hedges points to the obvious, but it's not something you hear discussed a lot: This is Obama's guy, Rahm Emmanuel, taking on the teachers' union. It tells you precisely where the Democrats are in relationship to what used to be their base. In the same way mainstream Democrats have supported and in some cases made worse the Bush-era erosion of civil liberties and the strengthening of the surveillance state, we see it here continuing the Reagan legacy of anti-unionism. 

 

Governing Principles for the Development of Local Humanistic Learning Communities

Jonathan in an interesting response to my post last week about Humanistic vs. Technocratic Education suggests that I might be surreptitiously introducing my own social engineering scheme. I don't think so, but I'm willing to get more specific about the guiding principles that I think will make easier--no guarantees--a more humanistic approach. And always when it comes to policy, the devil is in the details. 

First--A bias toward de-centralization. Parents and teachers know what their kids need; bureaucrats do not. Our first instinct should be to trust concrete, living, local communities and to their capacity for decision making. Does this guarantee that every school will deliver a quality education to every kid? No, and I do think where there are egregious failures, interventions will be required, but that's something that should be determined within the framework defined by item 2.

Second--An insistence on democratic accountability. Democracy means that an engaged citizenry deliberates and decides what is in the best interest of the community. People decide, not markets.  Charters are not the answer. On the other hand. Elected school boards set local policies, not mayors, governors, legislatures, or foundations. Decision making should be as close as possible to the people who will be most affected by them. 

Third--A commitment to equity, and this means developing and funding aggressive, effective programs inside and outside the school building that mitigate the negative consequences of child poverty. The market is not going to solve this problem, and school alone cannot solve this problem. It will be solved only when we as a society commit ourselves to solving it. The funding part of this is the primary role for the state to play, not in dictating programs, curriculum, and standards. There should be a bias toward funding locally initiated programmatic solutions unless there is a history of corruption and incompetence in a particular troubled community. I don't want to make this sound easy. But no solution, humanistic or technocratic, is going to deliver results quickly. It's more important that a realistic framework for a solution be developed than just flailing and throwing money at these thorny, deeply engrained historical and cultural problems. 

Fourth--A long-term plan to improve teacher quality and professionalism. We want to attract the best people and retain them. That means paying them at a level commensurate with their education and professionalism, but it also means, making fundamental changes in the way teachers are recruited and trained for careers in the classroom. It means developing more effective ways of enhancing professional development and collaborative support among teachers. The current evaluation and accountability systems are useless and counterproductive. They are doing more to chase good teachers out of our classroom than to weed out the bad teachers who shouldn't be in them in the first place.

You can't make anything happen; you can only argue for and work for what you think is best and trust that while in the short run people often make stupid, shortsighted mistakes, in the long run they learn from those mistakes and choose what is better. Right now we're in a kind of stupid stage. People have very little sense for the big picture or the common good, and so are inclined to make, parochial, shortsighted decisions. I think that this is in large degree due to a lack of high-quality alternatives that most people can agree on. In the long run that will change, but in the short run we can only do what we can do to prepare the ground for something new to grow. 

 

Video of the Day: Jamie Vollmer

Next time you hear someone say schools should be run like a business, show them this video:

 

 For more of this talk, here's the link.

Moyers/Lofgren Interview

 

I just put this up for future reference purposes. Lofgren, who describes himself as an Eisenhower/Reagan Republican, left the party to become an independendt. In this interview he isn't saying anything that anybody with a lick of sense doesn't know already, but here's the crux:

Bill Moyers: The title of your book is "The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy." How did Republicans go crazy?

Mike Lofgren: I think they went crazy when they started identifying Obama as the Antichrist.

Bill Moyers: Meaning?

Mike Lofgren: Meaning, "He's not a legitimate president. We must do everything we can to obstruct him."

Bill Moyers: The second subtitle, "The Party Is Over: Democrats Became Useless." How did Democrats become useless?

Mike Lofgren: I think they got complacent during the '60s, '70s, and '80s. And then finally after that period, they woke up, found they had lost three straight presidential elections. So they had to retool and make themselves more corporate friendly.

Bill Moyers: Corporate friendly?

Mike Lofgren: Absolutely. And it certainly helped Bill Clinton get elected. And while he did some good things like balancing the budget, he also unleashed Wall Street by repealing Glass-Steagall, and he signed bills that would end regulation on derivatives. So he is at least to some degree responsible for the Wall Street debacle.

Bill Moyers: And that's how, to quote a third of your subtitles, "The Middleclass Got Shafted"?

Mike Lofgren: Both parties don't really seem to care about having a vibrant manufacturing base in this country, regardless of their rhetoric. I remember throughout the '90s the Clinton administration was lobbying relentlessly for free trade deals. And the promise for each one was, it will bring jobs to America. And in every case, the jobs left.

And later:

Bill Moyers: But what do we do about it? Nothing seems to tame the power of money in politics.

Mike Lofgren: The only thing that will achieve it is fundamental political reform. And the only way you're going to get that is mass defection from the parties. Because the parties simply do not serve our interests anymore.

Is a third party is realistic as a solution? It happened before, of course, when the Republican party was formed from disaffected Whigs and anti-Slavery Democrats. Perhaps something similar could happen in which anti-corporate Dems join with sane Main Street Republicans like Lofgren (I know there are more like him out there).

In the meanwhile, the best approach is to get involved locally with the Dems and make sure the corporate types don't even get nominated.