After the Future

Bratton's Anti-TED TED Talk

His point is that TED is to cosmopoliticans what FOX is to conservatives:"TED of course stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and I'll talk a bit about all three. I Think TED actually stands for: middlebrow megachurch infotainment." Yes and No.

The whole thing is worth reading, but a couple of grafs from the close to give you a sense of where he's going:

One TED speaker said recently, "If you remove this boundary ... the only boundary left is our imagination". Wrong.

If we really want transformation, we have to slog through the hard stuff (history, economics, philosophy, art, ambiguities, contradictions). Bracketing it off to the side to focus just on technology, or just on innovation, actually prevents transformation.

Instead of dumbing-down the future, we need to raise the level of general understanding to the level of complexity of the systems in which we are embedded and which are embedded in us. This is not about "personal stories of inspiration", it's about the difficult and uncertain work of demystification and reconceptualisation: the hard stuff that really changes how we think. More Copernicus, less Tony Robbins.

At a societal level, the bottom line is if we invest in things that make us feel good but which don't work, and don't invest in things that don't make us feel good but which may solve problems, then our fate is that it will just get harder to feel good about not solving problems.

As before, yes and no. No, in that I think that Bratton is too hard on imagination. In fact we need a transformation of our collective imagination, which is impoverished by its materialistic assumptions and its spiritual banality.  Yes, in that the materialistic and spiritualy banal is too often celebrated at TED talks. The task demands the intellectual rigor to which he points, but in the end it is an act of imagination that effects the transformation, that changes a geocentric cosmos into a post-Copernican one.

The problem for us now is that too many of us are are living in a late 19th-century social imaginary, and our collective imagination hasn't caught up with what we know. There are many people, maybe more than at any time in history, who are doing the hard work of thinking about complexity. But no one who understands complexity has been able to effectively pull of the Copernican trick for a post quantum theory age. If some have been able to do it for themselves they have not had an impact, at least yet, on the broader collective imagination.

Yes, there's a lot of self-absorbed, Neoliberal-tinged drivel spewed through TED, but  the role that TED or the RSA and other popular education venues can play, and have played when they are at their best, is to take the complexity and to synthesize it in imaginative ways that help reshape our thinking rather than to just reinforce what we already think, as these talks too often do. 

Quote of the Day: Leon Wieseltier

The question of the place of science in knowledge, and in society, and in life, is not a scientific question. Science confers no special authority, it confers no authority at all, for the attempt to answer a nonscientific question. It is not for science to say whether science belongs in morality and politics and art. Those are philosophical matters, and science is not philosophy, even if philosophy has since its beginnings been receptive to science. Nor does science confer any license to extend its categories and its methods beyond its own realms, whose contours are of course a matter of debate. The credibility of physicists and biologists and economists on the subject of the meaning of life—what used to be called the ultimate verities, secularly or religiously constructed—cannot be owed to their work in physics and biology and economics, however distinguished it is. The extrapolation of larger ideas about life from the procedures and the conclusions of various sciences is quite common, but it is not in itself justified; and its justification cannot be made on internally scientific grounds, at least if the intellectual situation is not to be rigged. Science does come with a worldview, but there remains the question of whether it can suffice for the entirety of a human worldview. To have a worldview, Musil once remarked, you must have a view of the world. That is, of the whole of the world. But the reach of the scientific standpoint may not be as considerable or as comprehensive as some of its defenders maintain. (Source)

Scientism isn't science. Science is important for giving us explanations about how the world works mechanically, but close to useless for explaining why or for what purpose it does so. Science answers 'how' questions, not 'why' questions, and I'd argure that science is on shaky grounds even to answer 'what' questions. Science remains agnostic to 'why' and 'what' questions, and stops being science as soon as it begins to extrapolate.

'Scientism' is that extrapolation. It takes the materialistic and mechanistic dimension of our experience, and projects it outward as if it provides an especially authoritative explanation. For some this explanation has 'authority' because it is fact based, but what passes for fact is at best a provisional interpretation based on a body of knowledge that is open to reinterpretation when new 'facts' are added. For me the advocate for scientism is like the colorblind man who lives in a grayscale world and finds reports of color nonsense.

For the life of faith is at least in part a taking seriously the reports of people who say there is a world beyond what the senses can know. (That is not all it is, but it starts that way.) And so the world divides into people who take seriously those reports and those that don't. There are many reasons, good and bad, for taking those reports seriously, but here's a simple test. What is the  effect of one's hearkening to those reports? It is good if it has an expansive effect that cracks the shell that encloses us in small worlds or our own making. It is bad if it simply creates another shell that traps us in a small, safe world.

Those who embrace  a religious fundamentalism and those who embrace a materialistic scientism are mirror images of one another insofar as both are trapped in mental structures constructed to keep them safe in world made up of manageable, grayscale certainties. 

 

Problem/Solution

I found this interesting chart that shows how education reform is directed toward solving the education problems experienced by kids marginalized by the larger society. Suggests why the phrase 'education reform' in its current usage is oxymoronic (Source):

 

 

 

 

Mud (again)

[I posted this thought piece on the film Mud in June when it was in the theaters, but since the movie is out in DVD now, I thought I'd post it again. It might help those of you puzzled about what that post about Mandela and Che was all about--this angel/imp, Huck/Tom polarity is for me a central preoccupation, but I think it's also the central preoccupation of this film.]

Jeff Nichols' film Mud is one of those couple-of-times-a-year movies you wake up the next morning with on your mind. It's very, very rich. It asks important questions about love and truth, about the truth of youthful idealism, and its fierceness in a spirited, young soul, and also about its limits, its need to be tempered. It connects with a number of things I've been thinking about lately, so this is going to ramble a bit as I try to think out loud here about them. It won't make a lot of sense unless you've seen the movie, so see it.

I'm not going to belabor the obvious allusions to Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, in this case two fourteen-year-old boys, Ellis and Neckbone, and the runaway "Mud" as Jim. But it's important background information, because the "Tom "and "Huck" archetypes are central to the way the movie plays out. They are [angel and imp,] Cain and Abel, and Cal and Aron in Steinbeck's East of Eden (See my post "Shrewd as Serpents, Guileless as Doves"). Neckbone is shrewd, calculating, and suspicious imp. Ellis is purehearted angel, naively idealistic, and willing to put everything on the line for a noble cause. This movie on one level is about the necessary creative tension between these types, and how anyone is lost if he it too much of one or the other. 

Insofar as this is a story about Ellis and Mud, it's a more about Huck than it is about Tom. I think different cultural eras tend to celebrate one or the other. The Victorian era celebrated Hucks, but we live in an era now in which calculating, ambitious gamers like Tom Sawyer are the dominant prototype, so it's refreshing to see a movie where the guileless Huck gets his due. In this era where cynicism, irony, and calcuated self interest are the norms, we need more of the unreserved idealism of the Huck type. We also need to understand his need of a Tom in his life--and Tom's need for Huck. It's never one or the other; it's both together. This movie understands that. It is about Ellis's learning the limits of his idealism without becoming cynical, and it's also about Neckbone's being won over to Ellis's idealistic cause.

Huck types seem to walk with their feet not quite touching the ground. Toms are very, very grounded in the real world; they know how it works and how to work it. It's Ellis's idealism that gets things moving, but It is Neckbone and 'Tom' Blankenship, who in the end are essential for getting things to work. Blankenship is an image of Neckbone all grown up. 

After the movie, I was thinking about the Joni Mitchell song "Both Sides Now"--particularly the verse: "I've looked at love from both sides now/from give and take, and still somehow/It's love's illusions I recall/I really don't know love at all." It's song about a romantic idealist experiencing the thud of falling into a world that does not correlate with her ideals. This movie has a lot going on in it, but at its root it's a movie about love in a fallen world. The difference between Neckbone and Ellis lies in that Neckbone, like all Sawyer types, instinctively knows and accepts the world in its fallenness and accepts it as normal. But Ellis doesn't know that yet. He has yet to be snakebit, and then everything depends on how he recovers. The challenge for all Huck types is to learn the lesson without becoming cynical. Ellis recovers, and in doing so learns that people are not how we idealize them--they are more complex than that--and yet while people disappoint us they are nevertheless worthy of our affections and of our loyalty. 

***

So first, a digression about romantic idealization. When we fall in love, do we fall in love with something that we make up? Is it merely a subjective projection? Or is it based on a perception or intuiton of something real about the beloved? Is it all hormones, or is there something else going on? From the Sawyer/Neckbone perspective, it's all about hormones and nice titties and getting to second base; from the Huck/Ellis point of view, it's about touching the eternal. So for the Huck type, less than for the Sawyer type, it's an important issue: Do we see accurately or falsely when we are in the exalted state we call being "in love"? Was there nothing real about it, or was there something in it that points to a reality that we have fallen out of, so to say?  Is falling in love a deluional moment, or is it a privileged one?

Or is it both? In Charles Williams's The Figure of Beatrice: A Study in Dante he tries to answer this question:

What Dante sees is the glory of Beatrice as she is 'in heaven'--that is, as God chose her, unfallen, original; or (if better) redeemed; but at least, either way, celestial. What he sees is something real. It is not 'realer' than the actual Beatrice who, no doubt, had many serious faults, but it is as real. Both Beatrices are aspects of one Beatrice. The revealed virtues are real; so is the celestial beauty.

There is nothing new or uncommon about this experience; it is in a great many novels and films and plays and songs; our modern songs hold it as much as the lyrics of the metaphysical poets. All that is new is the seriousness with which Dante treats it and the style in which he expresses it. The lady creates in her lover the sensation of supreme content. It does not last. Why not? 

Dante, at least, had a perfectly definite answer. Everything desires its own perfection: "in this all desires are appeased and for the sake of this all is desired."  Our desires are everlasting, and to see an image of perfection is not the same thing as to be perfect ourselves, which until we are, possession, even the possession of Beatrice, must lack perfection. This is what all the talk of 'the ideal' comes to; the ideal can never satisfy us until we are [ourselves] ideal.  He who pursues any hope of satisfaction, without his own conditioning perfection is bound, sooner or later, straight for the Inferno.

"It does not last. Why not?" It's a cliche of the Romantic tradition that anyone who has fallen in love feels as though he or she is touching eternity. Well, how can anything eternal not last forever? The fervent commitments of lovers to love forever are sincerely felt, but sooner or later the exaltation passes, and you are with an everyday human being, and sooner or later every romantic has the moment when he asks: what was I thinking?  Were the Neckbones right all along? Does that mean that one's perception of the beloved while being 'in love' was not knowing love at all?

I like Williams's answer: No, it is not delusional; it's partial--it's a glimpse. It's a temporary beholding of the beloved as God created her to be, but not now as she is. And the glimpse is all that we, in our own imperfection, are capable or worthy of. It's a goad, so to say, that motivates our own moral development. A sneak peak at the communion that is our telos in the economy of salvation. It is the first wine given to guests at the Wedding of Cana; the second wine, the wine transformed or Christified, is the wine that we most deeply long for. For it is our own blood that is water turned to wine, it's a transformation we celebrate  in every mass--it's not just the transubstantiation of the bread and wine, but our own. That's my understanding of  William's phrase 'conditioning perfection'.

And if you are married and have stayed married, this is an experience that you have had. We all of us inevitably disappoint one another, but it's ok. Because a different kind of love begins to develop if you are able in the hardest moments to live faithfully in the memory of that glimpse as revealing a proleptic truth. Fidelity is in large part about living now into the future while holding fast to a memory of intuited truths, trusting in the truth of those intuitions while letting the fire of experience temper them. And the task becomes one of loving the real person as she or he is now, but also living in the memory of her and of oneself as temporarily gifted perceivers of the beloved not as she or I am now, but as a future possibility.

It is in this sense that faith--the practice of fidelity--is a virtue, a moral work, a work that transforms water into wine, and wine into blood, which is, the conditioniong of our own perfection. With such wine coursing in our veins we will become drunk with goodness, and that's the goal of moral effort, to become effortlessly, unihibitedly good. To become again like children, like Ellis, but like him after having been snakebit. I for one do not long to be washed by the blood of the lamb, but to be inebriated by it. 

***

Ellis is the fervent, open-hearted, naive idealist whom we see falling into the real world with several thuds. His parents' marriage is breaking up; he learns that his "girlfriend", May Pearl, wasn't ever his girlfriend; he learns that his mission in the service of true love, the reunion of Mud and Juniper, is a failure because they are not the Tristan and Isolde he idealized them to be. He comes to see Mud through Juniper's and Tom's eyes, confronts Mud, screams out his disappointment in him, and runs away falling into a mucky hole full of water mocassins, and he gets bit. Thud in the mud. Welcome to the fallen world, Ellis--a world ruled by serpents who see a dove like you as a fool and who will eat you alive. 

Matthew McConaughey's Mud is a wonderfuly ambivalent character. Mud appears out of nowhere and disappears at the end. He's like a figure in our dreams, but he's not. We never know whether to believe him. He's a murderer on the lam, and who knows how much of what he says is a desperate con? I found myself half the time looking at him like Neckbone--this guy is trouble, let's get out of here--and half the time time like Ellis--there's something noble in him, and he is worthy of my loyalty and commitment--and in the end it turns out that Ellis's intuition was correct.

Mud and Ellis are kindred spirits. He's an already snakebit Ellis all grown up. Juniper, played by Reese Witherspoon, is a Tom type like Neckbone, and so is the "assassin", Tom Blankenship, played by Sam Shepherd. Both Juniper and Tom tell Ellis that Mud is a liar, but it turns out they are the liars and everything Mud said was true. But Mud was snakebit--he already had his 'thud' experience, but the wonderful thing about him was that he was faithful to the memory of Beatrice/Juniper despite her being, from the point of view of Sawyerian calculation, not worth it. That's Tom Blankenship's point of view: Mud is a fool, and his foolish love for Juniper has made him vulnerable to manipulation by her. She's eating him alive. But there's more to Juniper than that--and there's more to Tom, too. Tom can't see it, but Mud does. 

But here's the thing about the Tom Sawyer types: they are often deeply moved by and love the Huck types who come into their lives. The Huck type represents a nobility of spirit that Toms find disorienting and hard to understand, but it points to something that they long for. It's why May Pearl, the girl Ellis thinks is his girlfriend, tells him to give her a call. He's just an 8th Grader, and she's much older, but he came to her rescue by recklessly punching a senior who was harrassing her in the 7-11 parking lot. Such guilelessness, such lack of calculation, such purity of heart blows Tom types away; it crashses their frame, so to say, and awakens hidden possibilities in them. It's as if they were waiting all their lives for such a one to find them. And that's why on their "date" later she kisses him. There is such a sweentess in the scene, and it is so lush with misunderstanding. Juniper is May Pearl all grown up. 

Tom types like May Pearl and Juniper are smitten by the Huck types', but cannot live for long in their idealized world, and while they love them, can never live with them--unless they come down to earth. It usually plays out with the Tom types admiring but never really being able to stick for long with the Hucks that come into their lives. They are too restless, and they see Hucks as nice guys they want as friends but not as lovers--perhaps in some cases because they feel that they can never measure up. They can never be the Beatrices Hucks see them as, and they shouldn't feel that they should measure up. It's not their job to. It's Huck's job to love them as they are. 

I think this describes Juniper: in the end she refuses to go with Mud as a act of love; it sets him free because she knows she is not worthy of him, and that she will be the destruction of him. But it's also that Mud, despite his name, has not come down to earth, not enough to make it work with Juniper. It's not completely her failure to be what he needs. That part is unresolved for me. I'd like to think that maybe they'd find one another again somewhere in South America and live there a real life, a down-to-earth life, a menschy life, a  grow-old-together kind of life in which second wine starts to course through their veins. 

There's more to say, but this is enough for now. I might add other thoughts in comments later. I want to say something about the Carver family, particularly about Senior and how he represents a perversion of the Huck type that typifies many on the religious right--religious moralism, or the kind of rigid code-centered, deeply alienating morality that we think of as Victorian--it's what keeps nice Huck types merely nice, and not transformed into something deeply, truly drunk with goodness. But I want to talk about dreams, fantasy, and truth in a broader sense. Why is it that it's love's illusion we recall? Is it really true that we don't know love at all? 

Democrat Establishment Wrong on Education Policy

Good piece today in Salon about how many Democrats who think of themselves as Progressive are really just "liberals", and as such have been conned into supporting corporate ed reform:

Writing at the Huffington Post, experienced political insider Mike Lux observed that the “battle” for the soul of the Democratic Party “isn’t between progressives and centrists” at all, but “between the biggest special interest corporations in the world … and those of us who want to confront and rein in their power.”

As with economic policy, America’s education policy has largely been driven by the big money of Wall Street and private foundations.

But now the real impacts of the education reform agenda are starting to play out on the ground. Americans are awakening to the catastrophic effects of the “reform” movement. And they’re responding by making the fight for public schools another front in the broad grass-roots struggle for equality of all kinds.

How will leaders in the Democratic Party respond?

The problem of course lies in the way so many people who think of themselves as Progressives have been seduced into thinking that political reality is defined by the Neoliberal frame. They will go out and enthusiastically support Hillary Clinton as the Progressive choice, when there is nothing progressive about her (or her husband's) policies when it comes to economic issues. They are exemplars of the Neoliberal elite consensus.

The uninformed are lulled into voting enthusiastically for corporate Democrats because these Dems are more in line with their cosmopolitan cultural values, even if they are in the pockets of the one percent. Cory Booker is an exemplar of this kind of Democrat. He's black; he's charismatic; he's right on all the cultural issues. He's a win for the D column. But he's a corporate hack. And all these corporate hacks support corporate ed reform.

As the article points out, It's not even clear where Elizabeth Warren stands on ed reform. She is no corporate hack, but It wouldn't surprise me if she were an ed reform supporter if it's not something that has been a priority for her. Why? If for no other reason than because like so many other Dems, she has assimilated unconsciously the elite consensus about it (i.e, the consensus of elites whose kids go to privat schools)  and doesn't understand its toxic effects. Obama himself doesn't seem to understand the implications of his own policy because he often says he's for things that are being directly undermined by his administration's Race to the Top policies. I see this all the time with local politicians here in Seattle who should know better. The Neoliberal frame is so strong, and  it dominates the mindset of the local "donor class", whom they must take  seriously. But they are educable. 

A very interesting, but long an technical post, eviscerating ed reform as it has been implemented in NYC under the Bloomberg regime is laid out here. It's a good resource for readers here who are new to the subject. 

 

 

 

Our Public Schools Lead the World

The idea that our public schools are failing is a manufactured myth meant to create a sense of crisis that justifies corporate reformers demanding that our public schools as we have known them be dismantled and privatized. For those of you who have uncritically absorbed  the corporate media narrative that our public schools are failing, then you should read this post on Diane Ravitch's blog:

For every administration of PISA and TIMSS, when controlling for poverty, U.S. public school students are not only competitive, they downright lead the world.

Science literacy

U.S. schools with less than 10% free/reduced – score=556 [1st in the world]

Finland – ranked 4th in the world

Reading literacy

U.S. schools with less than 10% free/reduced – score=559 [1st in the world]

Finland – ranked 5th in the world

Mathematics literacy

U.S. schools with less than 10% free/reduced – score=540 [5th in the world]

FInland – ranked 11th in the world

The problem is poverty, not failing schools or incompetent teachers. The writer makes an interesting analogy later in the same post:

The reports continue to be all about our failing or “mediocre” schools and incompetent teachers. I like the simple observation made by researchers in the past – if the argument is to be made that U.S. public schools and teachers are failing, then we have huddled all of our incompetent teachers and principals in our urban and rural schools, for they are the ones that struggle or “fail” – this is evidenced in the PISA data I provided and appears at every turn when outcomes are disaggregated based upon child poverty. Or are our urban and rural schools and teachers “failing” or “struggling” any more than our urban or rural police forces? Response times are higher in urban and rural areas (for different reasons), and crime rates are higher in our urban areas, so does this mean that our urban and rural police officers are failures? Can you imagine police unions if we were to erase officer tenure, step ladder structure for pay increases, LIFO, and bust their unions – and then demonize them because they can’t seem to solve the crime problems of our urban areas? Can anyone say value-added modeling for police officers estimating their effects on crime rates during their beat? The difference between police officers and teachers, specifically in this analogy, is that we [teachers] are push-overs, ah-hem, I mean caretakers.

You can't solve a problem unless you understand its causes. The best indicator of academic achievement is zip code. If you took the teachers in an affluent school district and swapped them out with the teachers in a poor school district, do you think they would get better results with the poor kids they'd be teaching? Do you think the kids in the affluent district would begin to fail?

Teachers aren't to blame, and neither are the kids. It's the larger society that is to blame, and insofar as that larger society accepts the Neoliberal conventional wisdom that markets and privatization will solve everything, it is just making things worse. 

Read the entire post. He does some interesting comparisons between public schools, Catholic and Lutheran Schools, and Conservative Christian Schools. 

Jerry Brown on the Common Core

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Gov. Jerry Brown blasted the notion of government-imposed standards for public schools, saying he opposed efforts from Washington and Sacramento to dictate education policy.

Using "data on a national or state level I think misses the point -- that learning is very individual, very personal," Brown said during an onstage interview with The Atlantic's James Bennet at a Silicon Valley Summit at the Computer History Museum. "It comes back to the teacher and the principal. The leader of the school is by far the most important factor."

When asked if he supported national education standards, Brown said, "No. That's just a form of national control."  (Source)

The goal is to educate our kids, not train them. The goal is to help them become competent human beings, not just competent workers. Doing good work is a part of living a good life, but it's not the most important part, and it should be subordinated to other concerns.

Brown gets this, but I would offer one caveat to his point about principals: Principals can be an important factor (never the most important, IMO) if they are genuine educators, but too often they are not. There are some men and women who are very effective principals and school leaders, but most are not. If you know an experienced teacher, ask them how often they've been in a school where the principal actually helped them to do their job better. 

In contemporary public school systems principals are more often middle managers more worried about test scores and performance numbers than they are about the welfare of their kids or their teachers. They are very often people who started off as teachers but didn't like it, or thought it was too small-time for them. They wanted more money or to be the boss rather than to work with the kids. They too often do not understand what motivates teachers because their own motivations are so different. They too often don't have a clue what the teachers are doing, so they rely on the numbers, and we all know that numbers don't lie, right?

The kids are the most important people in the school--everything about a school should be directed toward giving the kids the resources they need to become competent human beings. The teachers are the second most important people in the shcool, because they are on the front lines working with these kids. Everybody else in the system is there to support the teachers in their work with the kids. More often than not they would do both a favor by just getting out of the way. That's the way it should be, but it isn't. And if there is a problem with public schools these days, that's it. Could we do a better job of putting better trained educators in the classroom. Yes, but that's not what corporate education reform is ppushing for. The reformers want better trainers. 

Learning is something we all want to do; it's something that comes naturally to us. For too many kids "school" is what kills that desire to learn, and it happens around middle school. And a big part of why that happens is that when kids begin to feel that they have their own sense of agency and freedom, they pick up on whether they are there for the system or the system is there for them. And a school regime of teachers and principals obsessing about meeting their numbers sends a pretty clear message about who's there for what. They see that they are being trained to perform for the system. And spirited kids know it's all b.s.

If you are reading this blog, chances are you are someone who did pretty well in school. That means that you were successful in giving the system what it wanted, even if you weren't particularly interested in the subject that you were being taught. You saw, or were made to see, that it was in your self interest to give the system what it demanded of you. You probably grew up in a world where giving the system what it demanded was continuously reinforced at home.

So it might be hard for you to imagine why some kids, especially smart, talented kids  don't do well. "Why don't they apply themselves?," you may ask yourself. Well, why did you? Why did you bother, especially when it came to studying something you weren't particularly interested in? Well, it's probably because you didn't want to disappoint someone who was important to you.

But what if you grew up in a world where learning and academic achievement wasn't important? What if there was no one in your life who was a model for you of having applied himself and succeeed in giving the system what it wanted?  What if there was no one in your life who is living the results of having applied himself and succeeded?  What if there was no one in your life to help you imagine a better future or to give you the support you needed to get there? What if you lived in a world where all your friends thought that school was b.s.? What if since middle school you did poorly on standardized tests, which just reinforced what you already knew--that you and the system didn't match up  well? 

Well, if you're a corporate ed reformer, you don't think about the answers to these questions. It's much easier to blame the teacher for not doing a better job. Because the corporate ed reformer is only interested in measurable results. Poor results = poor teacher. Somebody's got to be held accountable, right? So he looks at the teacher as an assembly line worker, the kid as a widget, and tests as quality control to insure nothing defective is put out on the market. And when the corporate ed reformer thinks about improving the quality of teaching, he doesn't want better educators in the classroom, but better trainers, people who will more effectively train to the test, because the only thing that matters is getting a higher percentage of kids to pass quality control. This is all so dehumanizing, and that is why so many spirited kids hate school and don't learn anything in it. There are far more interesting things to learn on the street. 

 

In Other News about the Common Core . . .

The Pearson Foundation has agreed to pay $7.7 million to settle allegations that the nonprofit broke New York state law while attempting to profit from Common Core-aligned products. An investigation by New York state Attorney general Eric T. Schneiderman revealed the charitable side of Pearson spent years wooing the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in hopes the two would partner in creating Common Core courses. The Pearson Foundation and Gates Foundation joined together in 2011, creating 24 online courses that were then sold to the for-profit side of Pearson for $15.1 million.

As for the $7.7 million settlement, the Pearson Foundation has announced it will donate the money to 100kin10, a company that focuses on developing science, technology, engineering and mathematics education. Interestingly, the Gates Foundation has also pledged $7 million to 100kin10 over the next six years along with several other partners Pearson works with. Clearly, the new standards mean big business and big profits.

America’s most recent education reform, the Common Core State Standards, has divided teachers and parents across the United States. Whether or not the standards mark a step in the right direction for the education system, one thing is for sure. For the first time in American history, businesses are able to freely tap into the K-12 market on a large scale, and they aren’t waiting. (Erin Osborne)

This topic seems to be coming into the public spotlight, and that's a good thing. The Common Core, like the Pearson Foundation, is all about appearing one thing and being substantively something else. The article by Erin Osborne is a very good summary for readers who need background on corporate ed reform and how education is perceived as a "market" within the Neoliberal frame. This kind of con perpetrated by Pearson/Gates was utterly predictable because it's the whole point.

Big business in education isn’t new. Pearson and McGraw-Hill have dominated the textbook market while the College Board, makers of the SAT and Advanced Placement courses, are the veritable gatekeepers to higher education. The entire U.S. education system has been valued at nearly $1.5 trillion, second only to the healthcare industry. As media mogul Rupert Murdoch said after acquiring education company Amplify (previously known as Wireless Generations), “When it comes to K-12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed by big breakthroughs that extend the reach of great teaching.”

 Yes, it's all about what's good for the kids. From Seattle Education: 

This spring students, parents, and teachers in New York schools responded to administration of new Common Core tests developed by Pearson Inc. with a general outcry against their length, difficulty, and inappropriate content. Pearson included corporate logos and promotional material in reading passages. Students reported feeling overstressed and underprepared—meeting the tests with shock, anger, tears, and anxiety. Administrators requested guidelines for handling tests students had vomited on. Teachers and principals complained about the disruptive nature of the testing process and many parents encouraged their children to opt out.

Back to Erin Oborne:

Here is the key issue. These companies see success in terms of dollars and profit, not academic success and achievement. Education start-ups fail all the time, including ones backed by the giants like Pearson. Once investors start to see diminishing returns or trouble on the horizon they will pull the plug regardless of how well students may be performing with their product. Vetting new teaching methods for success takes years of research, observation and review. Plenty of businesspeople, big and small, will have profited from Common Core even if all the states move onto the next education reform in five years’ time, but at what cost to students in school today?

Technocratic v. Humanistic Education 3: Contra the Common Core

I am localist when it comes to education. I think parents and teachers know best what is in the interests of the particular children in their care. The main job of principals, superintendents, and legislatures is to support teachers and parents, not to prescribe for them in top-down paternalistic fashion what they think is in their best interests.

Regarding the Common Core Standards, many people might ask,"What’s wrong with setting standards"? Why should anybody think that's a bad thing? But what is the problem that needs to be solved here? Why are we spending these millions of dollars? Whose needs are being met? Is there a rampant national problem with teachers not knowing what their curriculum is? Do we have millions of parents across the land screaming for higher standards for their kids? No, most parent are fine with the education their kids are getting in American public schools, and American kids do fine on the International testing comparisons when you factor out poverty.

The problem narrative in the media is that our schools are failing, but this is simply not supported by the facts. Are many kids who go to schools in poor zip codes failing? Yes. But it’s not the schools that are failing them, but the larger society. Does anybody with an ounce of common sense think that raising standards is going to help failing poor kids to do better? Or is it rather going to reinforce for low achievers that they are not making the grade when they fail to meet these new "higher" standards and push them out of the system even earlier? Is the goal to get kids to perform at a standard level, or to help them to take the next steps that are right for them to improve their lives? Who knows what those steps are? Some bureaucrat in D.C. or Olympia, or the kid’s teachers and parents? Is the goal to work with kids to have them set their own goals for the life they want to lead, or to have their goals set for them by some cookie-cutter template designed in Washington or by the Gates Foundation?

Second, what’s driving this recent push for the common core? The same thing that has been driving education policy since at least 2000--so-called Education reform. What is driving education reform?  A Neoliberal mindset that dominates policy elites in both parties and that thinks markets solve everything, that almost everything public should be privatized, that unions are the enemy, that the democratic process is an impediment that prevents technocrats from doing what they know is best.

And so the common core cannot be evaluated outside of this larger historical political context that has defined education policy for the last decade and more. It’s focus is largely to blame teachers and unions for the poor achievement of kids especially in poor zip codes.

The bad teacher narrative is a false one. The "Bad Teacher" is the same kind of stereotype as the "Welfare Queen", and it serves the same rhetorical purpose, which is to undermine the legitimacy of the vast majority of the people who compose the group who bear no resemblance whatsoever to the negative stereotype. Are there bad teachers? Yes, just as there are some people who abuse the welfare system. But the vast majority of teachers and welfare recipients are not “bad”, and in the same way that you shouldn’t design a welfare system assuming that most recipients will be abusers, you don’t design and education system assuming that most teachers are incompetent. You deal with abusers and incompetents on a case-by-case basis.

So what does the common core have to do with this anti-teacher campaign? Well, what’s the point of having a common core if there aren’t going to be tests that assess whether kids are making the grade at the new standard? And are tests within the Neoliberal frame really about assessing the kids, or are they about assessing the teachers and linking their effectiveness as teachers to the performance of their students on high-stakes tests? Can't you see how this Neoliberal reform mindset, whether they are conscious of it or not, assumes that kids are widgets and that teachers are assembly line workers who have to produce students that pass quality control before they can be let out onto the job market? Isn’t that really the goal of Neoliberal reform—not to produce rounded, educated human beings but good workers? Career readiness is the mantra continuously repeated by the reformers; it’s all about how these kids are going to make a living, and much less about how they will make a life.

Sue Peters' and Dora Taylor's Seattle Education blog makes the point emphatically:

The same heavy-handed, top-down policies that forced adoption of the standards require use of the Common Core tests to evaluate educators. This inaccurate and unreliable practice will distort the assessments before they’re even in place and make Common Core implementation part of the assault on the teaching profession instead of a renewal of it. The costs of the tests, which have multiple pieces throughout the year plus the computer platforms needed to administer and score them, will be enormous and will come at the expense of more important things. The plunging scores will be used as an excuse to close more public schools and open more privatized charters and voucher schools, especially in poor communities of color. If, as proposed, the Common Core’s “college and career ready” performance level becomes the standard for high school graduation, it will push more kids out of high school than it will prepare for college.

This is not just cynical speculation. It is a reasonable projection based on the history of the NCLB decade, the dismantling of public education in the nation’s urban centers, and the appalling growth of the inequality and concentrated poverty that remains the central problem in public education.

Education reform is just another Neoliberal con. It's all about marketizing education on every level possible. There's lots of money to be made here, and it's just a new gimmick for the corporate education industry to suckle at the government teat. 

See also Humanistic v. Technocratic Education 2.

Socialism v. Neoliberalism

Corey Robin recently in a post entitled " Socialism: Converting Hysterical Misery into Ordinary Unhappiness for a Hundred Years"

In the neoliberal utopia, all of us are forced to spend an inordinate amount of time keeping track of each and every facet of our economic lives. That, in fact, is the openly declared goal: once we are made more cognizant of our money, where it comes from and where it goes, neoliberals believe we’ll be more responsible in spending and investing it. Of course, rich people have accountants, lawyers, personal assistants, and others to do this for them, so the argument doesn’t apply to them, but that’s another story for another day.

The dream is that we’d all have our gazillion individual accounts—one for retirement, one for sickness, one for unemployment, one for the kids, and so on, each connected to our employment, so that we understand that everything good in life depends upon our boss (and not the government)—and every day we’d check in to see how they’re doing, what needs attending to, what can be better invested elsewhere. It’s as if, in the neoliberal dream, we’re all retirees in Boca, with nothing better to do than to check in with our broker, except of course that we’re not. Indeed, if Republicans (and some Democrats) had their way, we’d never retire at all.

In real (or at least our preferred) life, we do have other, better things to do. We have books to read, children to raise, friends to meet, loved ones to care for, amusements to enjoy, drinks to drink, walks to take, webs to surf, couches to lie on, games to play, movies to see, protests to make, movements to build, marches to march, and more. Most days, we don’t have time to do any of that. We’re working way too many hours for too little pay, and in the remaining few hours (minutes) we have, after the kids are asleep, the dishes are washed, and the laundry is done, we have to haggle with insurance companies about doctor’s bills, deal with school officials needing forms signed, and more.

It took until the late 19th Century, early 20th century before even the most progressive minds in the Anglo American world figured out that poverty for most people is not a sign of their moral turpitude. The famine in Ireland? It was ordained by God, and the Irish heathens deserved it. Debtors prisons, work houses, the concept of moral hazard: these are all products of a social imagination dominated Victorian economic moralism. The old Catholic idea that the poor were closest to God gave way in the modern period in the capitalist countries to the Calvinist idea that your wealth was an indicator of your favor with God. At least in the first model, the rich had a sense of their moral responsibility for the poor. In the Calvinist model, the immiseration of the poor was their getting what they deserved because the poor were responsible for their own immiseration. 

So it was something of a breakthrough when the English sociologist Seebohm Rowntree made the distinction between primary and secondary poverty in a 1901 study entitled Poverty: A Study of Town Life. Primary Poverty affected those people who simply hadn't enough money to meet the basic necessities of life. Secondary Poverty was the condition of those who had enough money, but wasted it on "non-necessities". For Rowntree a non-necessity was meat if poor families could be taught to subsist on a vegetarian diet, but secondary poverty was really just a hangover from the Victorian Calvinist idea that people are poor because they blow their money on alcohol, gambling, and prostitutes. 

But the very idea of Primary Poverty, that a huge number of people were poor because they were unemployed or paid too little for the work they could find was actually a Victorian ethos frame crasher, so to say. Of course Marxists on the continent were saying this for about a half century already, but Marxism never found a congenial home in the Anglo-American ethos dominated by the Calvinist Liberal moralistic frame. 

The fact is that the difference between conservatives and progressives even today lies in that conservatives still work within that Victorian frame. They really believe that the poor are responsible for their own plight. That government handouts make them passive and dependent. They focus on the few who abuse government programs, the welfare queens, etc., and assume that they are the rule rather than the exception. And they would deny help to those who really need it if that's the only way to prevent the few undeserving from getting what they don't deserve.

Charles Blow did a piece in the NYT the other day about this zombie Victorian idea that poor people are passive and dependent:

We have gone from a war on poverty in this country to a war on the poor, in which poor people are routinely demonized and scapegoated and attacked, and conservatives have led the charge.

They paint the poor as takers, work averse, in need of motivation and incentive. 

Well, that is simply not my experience with poverty. I have been poor, and both my parents worked. I grew up among poor people, and almost all of them worked. The problem wasn’t lack of effort, but low pay. Folks simply couldn’t make enough to shake the specter of need....

To buy into this destructive lie about the character of the poor means you’ve either had no experience being poor, or have no capacity to empathize with their plight.

Being poor is a job unto itself. The daily juggle of supplying the most basic needs — food, shelter, medicine — and the stress of knowing that you are always just one twist of fate away from calamity.

We moderns and late moderns live in a world where money means too much. It's bizarre that it has become a signifier of moral worth. Money is important--we all need enough of it that we shouldn't be in a continuous state of anxiety about it, but there are so many other better things to do than to manage it and worry about it.

That's the difference between those who celebrate free market capitalism and those who lean toward social democracy. The former thinks that the economic sphere in our lives is the most important, and that happiness and meaning in our lives depends on being effective economic players. It's for them as if economic activity is an end in itself, the way you prove your worth as a human being. And really, how bizarre is that? It's such an impoverished concept of what it means to be human. It takes an idea that has a little bit of truth in it and makes an idol of it. 

People in the second group think that, yes, the economic sphere provides a foundation, but that it is not an end in itself. Each of us needs a stable economic foundation upon which to build a meaningful life, but that meaning is not built through economic activity, but in the sphere of culture--of friends, family, music and the arts, religious practice, learning, sports, hobbies, and other entertainments. That's where the meaning is. Happiness is not guaranteed for anyone, but the prospect of immiseration for anyone is never a worry. The focus for your moral responsibilty lies in whether you have made a life, not just in whether you have made a llving.

There is at its heart something deeply dehumanizing about the Liberal and Neoliberal ethos, and so whatever might be said about socialism and its limitations, it has a human heart, at least until the technocrats get hold of it. That's the danger of socialism--not the moral hazards associated with redistribution, but its proclivity toward a toxic top-downism dominated by another kind of moralistic elite, the Jacobin who becomes a commissar.

No solution is ideal, but this is where the Rawls's veil of ignorance thought experiment is useful. If you were told before birth that you would be born black and poor, with average intelligence and talent, would you choose to be born in Cuba or in the U.S.? 

The Logic behind Vouchers, Charters, and Privatization in General

Today’s American right is an uneasy coalition among libertarian plutocrats and working-class and middle-class whites who depend on Social Security and Medicare and can’t afford to send their children to expensive private schools.  The need to win white middle American votes means that the right can’t simply promise to abolish public services, leaving the mass of Republican voters on their own.  In order to be electable, conservatives have to abandon pure libertarian principle and accept the idea of vouchers funded by taxation — even though this is really just “voucher socialism,” as hardcore libertarians sometimes point out.  But this doesn’t necessarily harm the right-plutocrats, particularly if they can invest in health insurance, private schooling or retirement savings companies that can vacuum up voucher money.  (Source)

This is  the logic of corporate education reform. It's the wolf of privatization cloaked in the sheepskin of consumer choice. Privatization, whether it's in education or in other public goods, is about letting markets rule rather than letting people rule themselves through the democratic process. It's a con because it seems to affirm our basic idea of freedom, but in the long run it undermines our freedom because when the market rules, those with the most market power control what there is to choose. 

Third Way vs. Elizabeth Warren

Alex Parene:

[Third Way is] not afraid that Warren will run for president, they’re afraid that she’ll be so popular that other senators to start acting like her. They’re worried that she’ll have money to direct to candidates who share her views. They’re worried that Warren might embarrass Democrats into passing stricter bank regulations. They’re worried that finance’s iron grip on the Democratic Party might weaken. The impetus for writing the editorial was Third Way’s realization that Warren was sabotaging the decades-long project that turned cutting Social Security into a bipartisan goal. A lot of money and time was spent encouraging elite consensus around “entitlement reform,” and suddenly a bunch of senators are talking about making the program more generous. That, of course, is a wildly popular idea, judging by all polling conducted on the subject, but the anti-populism backlash relies on reinforcing the common Washington idea that it is brave to oppose policies most people want and would benefit from. The bankers and CEOs who back Third Way understand that their policy preferences have won out in the Democratic Party in spite of popular opinion.

Conservatives understood this in 1964. They proceeded to take over the entire Republican Party. I think most Warren supporters understand that the goal of “economic populism” isn’t getting an economic populist into the White House, but rather to change the way economic arguments are conducted in Washington and by Democratic politicians. The point is to make sure Cory Bookers don’t happen anymore.

Parene is right, that it doesn't matter who's president. What matters far more now is who owns the congress, and who owns the dominant frame, aka "elite opinion". 

The media isn't interested in structural questions or underlying frame battles. It can only focus on personalities, and that's why Elizabeth Warren is important. She's a compelling personality who in drawing media attention to herself also draws attention to her challenge to the existing dominant neoliberal frame and her program to replace it with an economic populist frame. If a Clinton v. Warren media narrative is the way to keep this frame debate in the public eye, great. 

Elite consensus matters far more than public opinion. Public opinion doesn't matter at all unless it can be mobilized. Public opinion is 'Entish", to use a LOTR reference. It's slow to mobilize, and needs a catalyst. It will be interesting to see if  Elizabeth Warren can play the catalytic role that Third Way fears. I hope so, but I had hopes once  that Howard Dean could do it, and then there was Obama who talked about the need to change the rules. The powers that be have all kinds of ways to neutralize would-be frame crashers. I stay hopeful, but I'm not optimistic.

Surprising things can happen. I don't think anybody in Argentina expected that their Cardinal Bergoglio to turn into Pope Francis. I'm sensing a shift that's in the air regarding the way we frame the economic debate. Third Way seems worried about it. Whether it's deep or superficial remains to be seen. 

What's the Difference between Mandela and Che?

Various notable individuals have lauded Guevara as a hero; for example, Nelson Mandela referred to him as "an inspiration for every human being who loves freedom",while Jean-Paul Sartre described him as "not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age". Others who have expressed their admiration include authors Graham Greene, who remarked that Guevara "represented the idea of gallantry, chivalry, and adventure", and Susan Sontag, who supposed that "[Che's] goal was nothing less than the cause of humanity itself." ... Praise has been reflected throughout the political spectrum, with the libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard extolling Guevara as a "heroic figure", lamenting after his death that "more than any man of our epoch or even of our century, [Che] was the living embodiment of the principle of revolution", while journalist Christopher Hitchens commented that "[Che's] death meant a lot to me and countless like me at the time, he was a role model, albeit an impossible one for us bourgeois romantics insofar as he went and did what revolutionaries were meant to do—fought and died for his beliefs. (Source)

Yes, I know this post should be about Mandela, but I've had Guevara on my mind, and Mandela's death gives me the opportunity to talk about what I've been thinking about both of them.

Steinbeck's East of Eden is a study of two personality types that define, I think in a profound way, a basic polarity that defines our human nature--the Cain and Abel or imp/angel archetypes.  Cal and Cathy Imps; Adam and Aron, Angels. But these basic archetypes are found everywhere: Tom Sawyer, Imp; Huck Finn, Angel. Ivan and Alyosha Karamazov, Angels; Fyodor, Dmitri, and Smerdyakov,Imps. (See my post on this theme.) 

Neither is morally superior, but the Imps type often gets a bad rap because they are a little too comfortable with their 'falleness' and tend to be transgressive rules breakers. The Angel type is an idealist and rules follower and is often embraced as "good" because he is an exemplar of tribal virtue. But for Steinbeck, Dostoyevski, Twain (and me) he isn't good or better than the Imp type. Like Imps, Angels have a moral task, a life work that they must accomplish if they are to become truly good. It's a harder road, I think, for the angel than it is for the imp. 

Imps are at home in the world and accept the world on its own terms. They are averse to making moral judgments. Some could be simply understood as people stuck in Kierkegaard's aesthetic stage. They live for enjoyment. Rules, laws, moral restrictions are hard for them to take seriously. This can have a naive or immature, good-old-boy character, in a person who lives unconsciously according driven impulsively by fear and desire. For such people the goal is simply to do as he pleases without getting caught. Or the Imp can be more shrewd and cold-blooded as in the characters Fyodor Dostoyevski or Cathy Trask, for whom everything is a calculation regarding maximizing gain and minimizing loss, for whom nothing ever is given without extracting something in return. We see these types all the time in popular fiction in books and on screens. 

Imps thrive on Wall Street. They have no concept of the common good. For them the common good a silly abstraction embraced by people--Angels--who don't understand how the world works. Imps in France in 1940 shrugged and did what was necessary to get along with the Nazis. The Angels joined the resistance--and they got their revenge on collaborators after the war. Angels can be harshly judgmental, and often ruthless in the service of their ideals or mission, but it has to be a mission they beliieve serves a higher purpose than their own self interest. 

Each Imp-dominant personality has a suppressed Angel, and each Angel-dominant personality has a suppressed Imp. The meaning of the gospel admonition to become shrewd as serpents and guileless as doves is for Angels to embrace their suppressed Imp, and for Imps to embrace their suppressed Angel, and in doing so to effect a balance--or metaxis--between the part of us that is attuned to heaven and the part that is attuned to the earth. To effect the integration is not easy; it requires living in an uncomfortable tension between them. It is much easier to be one sided--to be Angel or Imp. It's much harder to be both. 

But to succeed is to achieve a kind of greatness; to fail, or at least not to try, is to remain a soul mediocrity, a stagnant hodgepodge of instinctual impulses and culturally conditioned attitudes and beliefs. The challenge for each is to call the suppressed part of themselves out of the shadows and to integrate it into his personality. This is a moral task, but it is very different for the two types. In popular culture, this moral transformation is mostly described on 'Imp' terms, e.g., the self-absorbed sybarite, the narcissistic careerist who meets the woman of his dreams,usually an Angel-dominant type, who forces a choice, who calls him to commitment and to clean up his act. (See the film Tao of Steve for a classic, entertaining example about the classic move from Kierkegaard's  aesthetic to the ethical. Dickens's Scrooge is the story of a man who when confronted with the choice failed to make the move.)

Less common are stories about the moral transformation of Angels, and if the story is depicted at all, it's a story of their failure. How does this relate to Mandela and Guevara? They are both Angels; one succeeded in his moral transformation, and the other didn't. 

So the Angel type fails if he stagnates in conventional, rules-following mediocrity. These are the good little boys and girls that priggish adults love, and that the movies hate because they are so predictably boring.  Angels turning sour, however, is another possibility, and one that is worth writing about. Angels who sour come in three basic categories and combinations of them--the Cynic, the Drunk, and the Jacobin.

The Cynic is a lapsed idealist. He rejects his natural idealism as delusional once it becomes clear to him that the world has the effrontery not to conform to the way he thinks it should be. He can be angry and embittered or depressed and withdrawn.

The Drunk is another kind of soured Angel. He seeks escape from an ugly world he cannot abide, especially if there is a better one in his imagination. Dylan Thomas comes to mind. Christopher Hitchens was a combination of this and the first. 

The Jacobin is the most interesting of the three. His response to his discovery of an ugly world is to re-engineer it, to seek to control it, using whatever amount of violence and force necessary to make it conform to the ideal template he has for it in his mind.

Each is a failed response to a shock of some kind that can be an opportunity if the shock is dealt with effectively. And for each of these failed responses recovery is possible. But of these three possibilities, the Jacobin is the most attractive, especially in the young, because at least it's a positive response that engages with the world, and as such provides a better chance of recovery than that provided Drunks and Cynics. But Jacobins can become monsters if they fail.

Both Mandela and Che were Jacobins in their twenties. Che died one, Mandela didn't. The difference? Mandela went to prison, and Che went to Bolivia. Mandela matured; Che did not. Did Che die a monster? I think he did. 

I have Che on my mind because in October I rewatched The Motorcycle Diaries and saw for the first time Che, the two-part film by Stephen Soderberg. The Ernesto Guevara of The Motorcycle Diaries is well named. He is a classic Angel type who pairs up with Alberto, a classic, pleasure-seeking Imp--Che is Hal to Alberto's Falstaff. There is something big-souled and appealing about the twenty-three-year old Ernesto. He has a great, compassionate soul, and he has an intelligence and thoughtfulness that make him stand out. But there was a stubborn, perhaps even compulsive, absolutist quality to him, which is typical of Angel prodigies. That stubbornness--that refusal to accept the world on its own terms--can lead to greatness or monstrousness. 

In Soderberg's film, Che contrasts dramatically with Fidel, who is more practical, down to earth, and as such more human. Che was successful in Cuba because he had Fidel to temper his revolutionary angelism; Che failed in Africa and Bolivia because he was on his own and he had no one he trusted who could balance him out. He had a very hard time dealing with the political realities and the frailties of the people he sought to help. He lacked patience and could barely control his contempt for anyone who was not motivated by the same ideals and willingness to sacrifice as he. He needed Fidel (or Alberto) to bring him down to earth.

I'd argue that Che's story is one of tragic failure, not just because of the fiascos in Africa and Bolivia, but because those failures didn't temper him. If anything they reinforced his Jacobinism and kept him stuck. It's fortunate for the world that he never got into a position where his revolutionary angelism could have been given a wider scope. I'm not saying he'd be as bad as Mao or Pol Pot, but there would be similarities. It's unfortunate that he was shot and didn't spend time in prison to recover himself.

The crisis for Angels is usually a moment when life deals them a harsh blow, and everything depends on how they react to it. Breaking Bad's Walter White was an Angel stuck in conventional mediocrity when the news of his cancer delivered that blow--it transformed him into a bitter, cynical, control freak--a drug-lord Robespierre. Adam in East of Eden goes into an irresponsibly self-absorbed, child-neglecting depression after Cathy shoots and leaves him. Aron in the same book freaks out and runs away when he learns his mother is a madam at a nearby whorehouse. Alyosha Karamazov is devastated upon hearing of the humiliating premature decay of his hero Zossima's corpse. But Alyosha recovers. Those who recover, who find a way of keeping one foot in heaven and the other on the earth, are best described by the Yiddish word, 'mensch'. 

Marjorie Kinnan Rawling's The Yearling is also a success story about three Angel-dominant types, Penny and Ora Baxter, and their son, Jody. Penny Baxter is a mensch, he  is the model of the integrated Angel/imp, serpent and dove.  His wife, however, failed to recover from life's cruel blows and became embittered and depressed. The narrative arc of the book sets up a similar kind of blow that will be dealt to Jody, when he is told that he must destroy his pet deer, Flag. And the question that's implied in this crisis is whether Jody will respond to this blow as his mother did or as his father. Jody's reaction was a lot like Aron's in East of Eden--to run away. But he came back, and Penny's speech to Jody when he returns points out how it's possible for Angels to come down to earth and to live on it as a mensch:

You've seed how things goes in the world o' men. You've knowed men to be low-down and mean. You've seed ol' Death at his tricks...Ever' man wants life to be a fine thing, and a easy. 'Tis fine, boy, powerful fine, but 'tain't easy. Life knocks a man down and he gits up and it knocks him down agin. I've been uneasy all my life...I've wanted life to be easy for you. Easier'n 'twas for me. A man's heart aches, seein' his young uns face the world. Knowin' they got to get their guts tore out, the way his was tore. I wanted to spare you, long as I could. I wanted you to frolic with your yearlin'. I knowed the lonesomeness he eased for you. But ever' man's lonesome. What's he to do then? What's he to do when he gits knocked down? Why, take it for his share and go on.

If the blow for Che was his failure in Africa, the blow for Mandela was his being thrown into prison for twenty-four years. Everything depended on how they responded to those blows. It could have made them into embittered cynics or  bloodthirsty Jacobins--or it could have given them the opportunity to become mensches. Mandela became the mensch, and Che remained a Jacobin. That's the difference between Mandela and Che, regardless of their relative historical importance. Both were prodigies in their own way, both potential great souls, but Mandela realized that potential while Che did not. 

Mandela's imprisonment provided the context for his 'integration' of serpent and dove, for the Angel in him to develop a compassion that was stronger than his outrage at the  egregious injustices done to him and to his people. He came to accept the world as it was, and yet not to give up his ideals. Che, I would argue, would have benefitted from spending time in prison, too. It might have given him the chance to effect a similar kind of integration. It might have given him more time and perspective. But then again it might have more deeply embittered him.

I think Fidel is a wiser, shrewder man than Che. Fidel is a mensch, and he would have more admirers in the U.S. if his revolution had taken place at a time other than when Americans could only view it through a Cold War lens. History will be kinder to him than American public opinion has been, and he is a bigger, better man than Che was. 

Gary Gutting on Humanities Crisis

The point of work should not be just to provide the material goods we need to survive. Since work typically takes the largest part of our time, it should also be an important part of what gives our life meaning. Our economic system works well for those who find meaning in economic competition and the material rewards it brings. To a lesser but still significant extent, our system provides meaningful work in service professions (like health and social work) for those fulfilled by helping people in great need. But for those with humanistic and artistic life interests, our economic system has almost nothing to offer. (Source)

Yes and no.

I want to like Gary Gutting, but every time I read one of his pieces in the NYT Opinionater, there's something that seems off about it. And the same is true for his piece today about the crisis in the humanities. He's right, kind of, but his arguments strike me as clueless, and the only way to explain it is say he's trying to make an argument within a particular value frame that makes no sense given the basic assumptions of that value frame. And is the crisis really about people with humanities degrees getting paid decently or about what in fact the humanities represent and our ambiguity and confusion about what it means to be human?

HIs argument that people who take degrees in the humanities should find good paying jobs makes no ecnomic sense in an economy that is driven by market thinking. If you want to get paid, do something or produce something that people want to buy. The local symphony or opera is struggling and the local football and baseball teams are thriving because more people are willing to pay for the former. The university's football coach is getting paid more than the university president because, while both get paid well, the demand for football coaches who can win and draw the crowds willing to pay millions is valued in economic terms more than than fundraising and other administrative skills performed by a university president. If you accept the validity and fairness of the market frame, then it's silly to get all bent out of shape about it.

But if it seems unfair to you, skewed in some way that seems wrong, what's your alternative? Gutting's suggestions seem out of touch. I like his idea of creating a well-paid, elite K-12 teaching corp. That's what they did in Finland, and it transformed their educational system from mediocre to top performing on all the international assessments. In Finland they only accept people into teaching masters programs only from the top ten percent of undergraduates, and no one gets into a classroom without a masters degree.

There are so many good things that the Finns do, but it's unrealistic that the U.S. would adopt their model. Why? For the same reason Americans would never support a single-payer health care system. It's too socialistic. While we Americans say that we care about our kids' education, we really are not willing to pay for it, if it means paying for the education of kids not our own. Charters and vouchers make more sense to Americans because they are all about 'me' and not about 'us', and so market thinking aptly reflects what Americans really want and believe. Until that changes, nothing does. 

And then there's the larger issue of the values ethos of humanities departments in most universities today. Does it reflect and convey the great humanistic tradition of the West, or is it dominated by trendy fringe thinking that no one will care about one hundred years from now. That's the real crisis of the humanities, but that's a topic for another day. Or for comments if people want to talk about it there.

 

Douthat on the Leftist Pope

But the church’s social teaching is no less an official teaching for allowing room for disagreement on its policy implications. And for Catholics who pride themselves on fidelity to Rome, the burden is on them — on us — to explain why a worldview that inspires left-leaning papal rhetoric also allows for right-of-center conclusions.

That explanation rests, I think, on three ideas. First, that when it comes to lifting the poor out of poverty, global capitalism, faults and all, has a better track record by far than any other system or approach.

Second, that Catholic social teaching, properly understood, emphasizes both solidarity and subsidiarity — that is, a small-c conservative preference for local efforts over national ones, voluntarism over bureaucracy.

Third, that on recent evidence, the most expansive welfare states can crowd out what Christianity considers the most basic human goods — by lowering birthrates, discouraging private charity and restricting the church’s freedom to minister in subtle but increasingly consequential ways. (Source)

This Catholic case for limited government, however, is not a case for the Ayn Randian temptation inherent to a capitalism-friendly politics. There is no Catholic warrant for valorizing entrepreneurs at the expense of ordinary workers, or for dismissing all regulation as unnecessary and all redistribution as immoral.

Regarding number one: Capitalism has never had a productivity or innovation problem, but it has always had a very serious distribution problem. Its productivity has made some people very rich, its innovation disruptive to traditional societies, their values, and ways of life often immerserating them. GDP per capita is a poor way to measure wealth. Free-market capitalism as it has evolved, especially since the last half of the 19th century, has created new kinds of poverty and slavishness that simply did not exist before.

Regarding number two: I mostly agree; there should always be a bias for the local and voluntary. But subisidiarity also recognizes that the Feds have a responsibility to intervene when the locals are incompetent, incapable, or unwilling to deal with problems that negatively affect its citizens on the local level. The Feds did the right thing when Eisenhower sent the troops into Little Rock, and they should have done a better job when Katrina hit New Orleans. If the Feds were serious about improving educational achievement, they wouldn't be pushing on local communities ridiculous top down policies like No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and the Common Core. They would be finding ways to intervene to mitigate the toxic effects of poverty in the lives of children who grow up in it.

And this brings us to the last of his points, so regarding number three: Does Douthat really think that the U.S. is any in danger of becoming one of the most expansive of welfare states? As for crowding out, please. I understand the point, but we're not living in stable ante-bellum communities where everyone knows who you are and when a stranger arrives in town it's a big event.

Conservatives get all nostalgic in their complaining about how bureaucracies have replaced face-to-face relationships, but that's the price of number one: the disruptive, innovative power of capitalism. I don't like bureacracies either, and as I suggest in my response to number two, there are places I think the Feds should keep their noses out of. But the scale of the social and economic disruptions that follow from number one is not "subtle". It requires by the logic of number two that it intervene to do the mitigating welfare work of number three. And the huge scale of the problems, alas, requires bureacracies whose scale is equal to the suffering. There's still plenty of room for the churches and other local voluntary organizations so that they need not feel subtly or grossly crowded out. But they are not competent alone to deal with the huge scale of the problems modern market capitalism has created. 

The pope gets this, and Douthat, good Catholic that he is, won't go all Rush Limbaugh on him. He wants to find the middle ground, and good for him. And he's right that there isn't anything substantively different in what Francis is teaching that contrasts with his predecessors. His is, rather, a matter of emphasis. And it is a matter of a pope  embracing a prophetic role, his papal bully pulpit, but this time as one who speaks as the first pope from the southern hemisphere, and who knows concretely the kind of suffering that follows from Douthat's abstract neoliberalism.