If you would, please indulge me in some thoughts of a more personal commentary. Last weekend, I hit another one of those birthday milestones. Admittedly, 65 does not have quite the be-all connotation it once had. Enrollment in Medicare arrives, but full-benefit Social Security retirement is now delayed to age 66. AARP enrolls you at 55; retailers offer senior discounts anywhere from 55 to 65; you can retire early with a partial social security benefit at 62. Conversely, mandatory retirement age in many companies has been pushed back towards age 70. Nevertheless, “65” still has that aura of being the doorway to senior citizenship status – a status with an ever-enlarging peer group.
From my vantage, there are really four key birthdays that are important to notice. The first is your Day1 original birthday when living starts. All the world is brand-new, frightening in its newness given your quick realization that you have no immediate context or self-coping skills for this existence other than inherited instincts. So the next 20 years are spent trying to figure out the structure and makeup of this human life, and the tools needed to survive – if not thrive – in it. The tools we ultimately choose are quite individual to our experiences, outcomes and the scope of our worldly education from those early years.
Which brings us to the 21 milestone. We have loaded ourselves (for better or worse) with what we think will be effective tools for making it in this world, coupled with what we think is a good understanding of how life works and the rules of the game. Then we set out on what we believe is our path to follow – maybe even with some glimmer of what the path’s end is supposed to look like. We rent apartments and buy houses, get jobs, begat a family, serve as parents, earn money and pay bills, and try to leave some room for fun along the way.
Until somewhere around 40, the 3rd major milestone. (For some it is as early as 30, or as late as 50, but this milestone inevitably shows up somewhere.) We have been diligently following our path, using our tools. But now we have a track record we can assess. And that assessment begins to raise doubts. Was this the right path for me, or were other choices possible which I may have denied or not even seen? Did my toolkit have the right tools in it, and/or did I use the right ones at the right moment in the right circumstance? Was my earlier understanding of life accurate, or did I miss a couple of key elements in that understanding? Have I been riding life’s wave, avoiding life’s wave, or has the wave been riding me? Doubts arise, basic truths get questioned, and dread grows that we may have locked ourselves into a play in which our role actually belongs to someone else.
In this phase we may plunge on and reach our greatest heights professionally as our hard work to date on this path begins to pay off. Or we may abruptly change directions to head down a different road, making a dramatic change as the only way out of the current play and into another. Or we make an uneasy truce – achieving a level of success on the current path yet all the while knowing that our ground work is weakening, out principles are bending, our needs are shifting. That which we previously clung to so tightly begins to move as we loosen our grip. Over time, recognition grows that our life is unfailingly morphing to a different place.
And then we reach 65, a progressive journey to a milestone that demands a choice: to hang on stubbornly to what was, or to let go what is no longer really important or truly needed and move into a clearer view of what one’s own life is really about.
Change has been pretty much a constant through my entire life. Surprisingly so, given my upbringing. At 21, 65 was a number with which I had no connection or meaning. At 40, 65 was a number visible on the radar but always still out there in the future, yet increasingly a marker of time left on a ticking clock. So much left to do.
But here I am. Arriving at 65, it is not the disaster I had once anticipated. Nor is it an end to life’s journey, though maybe a necessary end of what has gone before. It instead serves as a door opening into yet another phase of never-ending change. Jobs end, but careers continue even if in new forms. Doubts about what I could possibly do after 65 yield to doubts about how/what I will do with the opportunities in front of me. What I have learned yields to what is still to be learned.
My physical stamina is definitely reduced from 5 years ago. The soreness from a day working to maintain this mountain refuge takes a little longer to ebb. The impending finiteness of my life is more real to me now, given that 82% of my 79-year old life expectancy has already statistically expired. But death is not as frightening a prospect as it once was, though the manner of my death remains a concern. The timing is pretty much out of my hands.
I know the physical side of my life from this point will get progressively more difficult. That is a shame, since I just now feel like I am really understanding what my life is about. (As with the old saying, it is a shame that youth is wasted on the young!) I keep hearing that we are supposed to live “in the now.” Yet right now I have an advantage of seeing and understanding from an informed lifetime of experiences, answers, and learning. I think it is important to draw on those as I live through my now-ness.
65 is a milestone. One that demands a pause for deep reflection before proceeding. Because this upcoming phase can be radically different from all those many birthdays of before. My reflection says that life is pretty darn good right now. A settled-ness, clarity and peace not experienced before. And if I am perceiving current clues and insights correctly, what awaits around this corner can be better than ever. So I am embracing this latest change. And so would I similarly hope for you, at whatever your age.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
Equality of the Dollar
Take a dollar bill from your purse/wallet. Examine it closely. Ask someone close by to do the same. Other than a different serial number on each, I am guessing that each bill looks exactly the same (wear & tear notwithstanding!). And I assume that your $1 bill looks exactly like mine.
When we each deposit our $1 bill into our respective bank account, the only thing that is recorded on our computer file is “1.00.” That’s it. Your digital “1.00” looks just like my “1.00.” There is no other tag attached to our 1.00s, no indication of our age, gender, race, religion, profession, marital status, etc. Just a generic lookalike “1.00.”
When we write our checks to pay our taxes – federal, state, county, local – our “1.00 without a suffix” goes into another bank account filled with lots of other 1.00s. Those 1.00s come from many people with a myriad number of backgrounds, demographics, personal opinions, spiritual/religious beliefs and affiliations; people who live their lives in countless different ways. All of those individual people are nondescript and neutral to the tax treasury – just a whole lot of identical 1.00s mushed together. In fact, our public treasuries are one of the great equalizers of our wide-ranging diversity. The commonality of our 1.00s makes us all equal, shared co-owners of the public funds, wrapped together across our individual human differences.
When it comes time to dispense all of those collective 1.00s, we are all shareholders in those decisions. EQUAL shareholders, because such decisions are not based upon how many 1.00s you contributed versus I versus others. Unlike a corporation, a greater pay-in does not buy you greater shares of public stock and thereby give you greater voting control. My one vote is the same as your one vote for the Congressperson or city council member who will likewise each have one vote on how to spend the money.
While the majority of one-votes accumulated will decide how the money will be spent, such decisions need to still reflect and honor the individual sameness of all of those 1.00s that contributed to the pot. The time-honored American tradition is that, while the majority rules so that we can move forward, the rights of the minority must still be respected. So public expenditures must be as “category-neutral” on human criteria as possible. Funds provided from diverse sources should not be spent so as to favor homogeneity or favored groups. We are obligated to preserve the same neutrality going out as the 1.0s were neutral coming in.
Yet when large sums of public funds are dangled in front of adoring eyes, these principles of neutrality and the avoidance of favoritism seem to get quickly lost. A failure to proactively support one interest group’s cause over other groups is often seen as an attack on that first group, a limiting of its causes, instead of recognizing that a preferential treatment today can easily be tomorrow’s discriminatory treatment. Yet with public institutions supported by public dollars paid by taxpayers with different views and values, it is only by remaining neutral that we can ensure that all expressions can be made possible, all citizens/taxpayers can be included, and no one is legally preempted out of participation.
Instead we choose to argue about whether the Ten Commandments should be displayed in secular courthouses. These Jewish teachings may be 10 good principles for moral living, but only a few of them have been made into actual laws. (Maybe I should honor my father and mother, and proclaim only one particular god, but thankfully these admonitions have not been made into American statutory law.) Likewise, when an organization puts a cross on a hilltop in a publicly funded national park and then disingenuously claims it to be a non-religious monument to WW1 dead, it speaks in contrast to the many beautiful and moving memorials to our war dead that required no obvious symbol of only one religion in order to be meaningful – witness the Viet Nam or WW2 war memorials in Washington. When we eliminate the saying of prayers in public schools, we are thereby protecting our children and all religions from abuse by any one preferred religion – because who’s prayer would we use that would be applicable to all of the diverse children in the classroom? Which child would have to leave the room? When my county commissioners open a public meeting with a prayer that concludes “In Jesus’ name we pray,” are non-Christians thereby implicitly excluded from the subsequent political discussion? When students in a California law school seek to form a club open only to Christians pledging a non-homosexual lifestyle, AND seek to have the club funded from a pool of student fees paid equally by ALL students, do these would-be lawyers not see the inherent conflict of their request?
Some religious and lay leaders now claim that America is “A Christian Nation” and was founded as such. Just as I guess Iraq and Iran were founded as an Islamic Nation or Israel as a Jewish Nation. But nothing could be further from the truth about America’s founding or purpose. Our country was founded by men and women who predominately (but not exclusively) attended some form of a multitude of Christian churches, but whose personal religious views encompassed many different viewpoints and expressions. Given the experiences of their forefathers/foremothers in colonizing America to escape persecution and the abuse of state-supported churches, religious tolerance and religious freedom were in fact their over-riding concerns and what was collectively written into their Constitution for us. Promote none; allow for all. And over the course of our 200+ years, we have gotten better at extending such equality and neutrality in the public arena to differences of race, gender, economic wealth, and marital/sexual status.
If we want homogeneity of thought and a single point of view, that is where we have the power to utilize our privately-funded churches, schools, topic-specific clubs, and corporations. But when you take my 1.00 of taxes and merge it with your identical and no-more-powerful 1.00, please do not turn around and try to have it spent in a way that insults or minimalizes me. Let us instead respect and look out for each other in our common endeavors, and go our separate ways only in our private endeavors. Picking none, we are open to allowing for each of us.
When we each deposit our $1 bill into our respective bank account, the only thing that is recorded on our computer file is “1.00.” That’s it. Your digital “1.00” looks just like my “1.00.” There is no other tag attached to our 1.00s, no indication of our age, gender, race, religion, profession, marital status, etc. Just a generic lookalike “1.00.”
When we write our checks to pay our taxes – federal, state, county, local – our “1.00 without a suffix” goes into another bank account filled with lots of other 1.00s. Those 1.00s come from many people with a myriad number of backgrounds, demographics, personal opinions, spiritual/religious beliefs and affiliations; people who live their lives in countless different ways. All of those individual people are nondescript and neutral to the tax treasury – just a whole lot of identical 1.00s mushed together. In fact, our public treasuries are one of the great equalizers of our wide-ranging diversity. The commonality of our 1.00s makes us all equal, shared co-owners of the public funds, wrapped together across our individual human differences.
When it comes time to dispense all of those collective 1.00s, we are all shareholders in those decisions. EQUAL shareholders, because such decisions are not based upon how many 1.00s you contributed versus I versus others. Unlike a corporation, a greater pay-in does not buy you greater shares of public stock and thereby give you greater voting control. My one vote is the same as your one vote for the Congressperson or city council member who will likewise each have one vote on how to spend the money.
While the majority of one-votes accumulated will decide how the money will be spent, such decisions need to still reflect and honor the individual sameness of all of those 1.00s that contributed to the pot. The time-honored American tradition is that, while the majority rules so that we can move forward, the rights of the minority must still be respected. So public expenditures must be as “category-neutral” on human criteria as possible. Funds provided from diverse sources should not be spent so as to favor homogeneity or favored groups. We are obligated to preserve the same neutrality going out as the 1.0s were neutral coming in.
Yet when large sums of public funds are dangled in front of adoring eyes, these principles of neutrality and the avoidance of favoritism seem to get quickly lost. A failure to proactively support one interest group’s cause over other groups is often seen as an attack on that first group, a limiting of its causes, instead of recognizing that a preferential treatment today can easily be tomorrow’s discriminatory treatment. Yet with public institutions supported by public dollars paid by taxpayers with different views and values, it is only by remaining neutral that we can ensure that all expressions can be made possible, all citizens/taxpayers can be included, and no one is legally preempted out of participation.
Instead we choose to argue about whether the Ten Commandments should be displayed in secular courthouses. These Jewish teachings may be 10 good principles for moral living, but only a few of them have been made into actual laws. (Maybe I should honor my father and mother, and proclaim only one particular god, but thankfully these admonitions have not been made into American statutory law.) Likewise, when an organization puts a cross on a hilltop in a publicly funded national park and then disingenuously claims it to be a non-religious monument to WW1 dead, it speaks in contrast to the many beautiful and moving memorials to our war dead that required no obvious symbol of only one religion in order to be meaningful – witness the Viet Nam or WW2 war memorials in Washington. When we eliminate the saying of prayers in public schools, we are thereby protecting our children and all religions from abuse by any one preferred religion – because who’s prayer would we use that would be applicable to all of the diverse children in the classroom? Which child would have to leave the room? When my county commissioners open a public meeting with a prayer that concludes “In Jesus’ name we pray,” are non-Christians thereby implicitly excluded from the subsequent political discussion? When students in a California law school seek to form a club open only to Christians pledging a non-homosexual lifestyle, AND seek to have the club funded from a pool of student fees paid equally by ALL students, do these would-be lawyers not see the inherent conflict of their request?
Some religious and lay leaders now claim that America is “A Christian Nation” and was founded as such. Just as I guess Iraq and Iran were founded as an Islamic Nation or Israel as a Jewish Nation. But nothing could be further from the truth about America’s founding or purpose. Our country was founded by men and women who predominately (but not exclusively) attended some form of a multitude of Christian churches, but whose personal religious views encompassed many different viewpoints and expressions. Given the experiences of their forefathers/foremothers in colonizing America to escape persecution and the abuse of state-supported churches, religious tolerance and religious freedom were in fact their over-riding concerns and what was collectively written into their Constitution for us. Promote none; allow for all. And over the course of our 200+ years, we have gotten better at extending such equality and neutrality in the public arena to differences of race, gender, economic wealth, and marital/sexual status.
If we want homogeneity of thought and a single point of view, that is where we have the power to utilize our privately-funded churches, schools, topic-specific clubs, and corporations. But when you take my 1.00 of taxes and merge it with your identical and no-more-powerful 1.00, please do not turn around and try to have it spent in a way that insults or minimalizes me. Let us instead respect and look out for each other in our common endeavors, and go our separate ways only in our private endeavors. Picking none, we are open to allowing for each of us.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
A Uniform Betrayed
For the better part of the last decade, we have watched a very public agony of revelations regarding a major religious organization. Seemingly month after month, more stories of the sexual abuse of countless numbers of children over the past 60 years by priests of the Catholic Church have come forward. Originally this sad phenomena appeared to be a purely American aberration, albeit it a national one. But subsequently this story has become international, from Ireland to across the European continent.
For a long time I had avoided commentary on this subject. The severity of these actions by so many priests across such a broad geography seemed to speak sufficiently for itself; I had nothing to add to the revelations themselves. But as the stories of abuse continue to unfold, there is perhaps a broader theme of betrayal that emerges.
There are three stories of fact that have emerged from this religious debacle. The first is that thousands of children were sexually abused by church leaders. As bad as that story is, the second correlated story is that the abuse was not acknowledged by church superiors in spite of the documented evidence and victim telling, and in fact was denied and/or covered up by church officials. Disciplinary action, such as it was, meant no acknowledgment of the truth of these occurrences, but simply moving offenders to another locale, often in a similar capacity for access to new children, thereby allowing for a third story of the abuse cycle being continued unchecked. The priorities of protecting the image and reputation of the church and its priests trumped the physical safety and mental / spiritual development of these vulnerable children. We hear these very personal stories come forth, watch and judge the inconsistent responses of church officials, and wonder what lessons we should draw from all of this.
The abuse of a child – whether physical, emotional or sexual – is inherently a horrible thing. Horrible because it is a corrupt expression of adult power, made possible by the very vulnerability of a child. A vulnerability arising from: the child’s physical inferiority of size and strength (thereby lacking the physical ability to resist), as well as; mental / emotional immaturity – a lack of sufficient life experience to provide a context for understanding what is happening to him/her. Yet something deep inside that child, from some unknown source of being, alerted the child that something wrong was happening, caused by someone who should be doing no wrong. And that is the true abuse: the violation of trust by someone the child assumed to be his/her perfect teacher and protector. Which then typically leads the child to a lifetime of mistrust, confusion, and a false seeking of (defensive) control over one’s life instead of the trust to live one’s life fully as it comes.
In these instances with the Catholic Church, the sin of inappropriate contact between priest and child was doubled by the sin of its repetition, and of the silence and cover-up that followed. For that which the child inherently knew to be wrong, no punishment of the perpetrator ensued; no quick end of the activity came; and in all likelihood the child continued to be told what “a good saintly person” his/her perpetrator was, leaving the child in total confusion and self-blame. When a supposed institutional greater good (protecting the church) is built on a foundation of wrong (abuse of children), there is no greater good to be had. There is only an insidious cancer created and lurking inside that institution, chipping away like an unseen (unspoken) termite at whatever institutional good was previously there. The Catholic Church (or any number of other current institutions) risks being undone as much by its failure to address its wrongs as by the original act of indecency itself.
In these instances of abuse, supposed priestly goodness was all for show, a sham covering a very human weakness. Adorned in the special robes and collar, reinforced by pronouncements of supposed dedication to living in God’s way, the uniform of the priest is designed to separate one from normal adult roles and accountability. The uniform is intended to make an immediate statement about one’s self, even if no facts have yet been presented for substantiation. It is the same for me when I put on my special robe for meditation, or the pendant that I wear around my neck that garners so much comment. I wear these to help reinforce in my mind that I am not in my everyday doing of things, that I am spending a few moments to be in a different place mentally than usual, experiencing a different experience. And these adornments do in fact help me make that transition.
So it is with all of the uniforms that we wear, which is why we wear them. A policeman’s uniform to show invested authority; the military uniform and the distinctive service branches and rank within each; the uniform of the janitor, the fast food worker, or the IT geek; the pin-stripe suit of the business man or woman; the overalls of the farm worker; the apron or the cocktail dress of the housewife; the torn jeans and colored spiked hair of the adolescent; and the American flag lapel pin that seeks to proclaim one’s patriotism. All of these uniforms are worn to make immediate visible statements - to ourselves and to the world - about who we believe we are, who we associate with, and who we aspire to be. Carried to the extreme, even “no clothes” serves as the uniform of the nudists.
The problem becomes when we, the insider, begin to believe that those uniforms in/of themselves make us who we want to be. The other problem is when we, the outsider looking in, accept another’s uniform as a confirmation of whom one is aspiring to be versus who one is. We forget that is all about who one truly is inside, not who he/she claims to be on the outside. In the case of religious leaders, the need for us to look beyond the trappings is even more crucial. Most all of the great spiritual masters warned us against accepting false gods (Moses) or false teachers (Mohammad, Jesus and Buddha) who claim spiritual authority but live untrue and unspiritual lives. The challenge to us is to look beyond the frock and to ignore the nice words. We need to remember that whether priest or nun or pope, lama or roshi or imam, reverend or pastor or bishop – the uniform (and title) means little. We must not be cynical, but we must be vigilant in our questioning and assessment of those who seek to lead us.
As Jesus and Buddha told us in their different ways, look not at the robes but at the deeds, and whether those deeds have led to positive or negative actions. Where love and acceptance flows forth downstream, that is where spiritual and godly leadership can truly be found. It is in the actions of love and benefit to others, not the adornments of uniform, that trust is truly deserved.
For a long time I had avoided commentary on this subject. The severity of these actions by so many priests across such a broad geography seemed to speak sufficiently for itself; I had nothing to add to the revelations themselves. But as the stories of abuse continue to unfold, there is perhaps a broader theme of betrayal that emerges.
There are three stories of fact that have emerged from this religious debacle. The first is that thousands of children were sexually abused by church leaders. As bad as that story is, the second correlated story is that the abuse was not acknowledged by church superiors in spite of the documented evidence and victim telling, and in fact was denied and/or covered up by church officials. Disciplinary action, such as it was, meant no acknowledgment of the truth of these occurrences, but simply moving offenders to another locale, often in a similar capacity for access to new children, thereby allowing for a third story of the abuse cycle being continued unchecked. The priorities of protecting the image and reputation of the church and its priests trumped the physical safety and mental / spiritual development of these vulnerable children. We hear these very personal stories come forth, watch and judge the inconsistent responses of church officials, and wonder what lessons we should draw from all of this.
The abuse of a child – whether physical, emotional or sexual – is inherently a horrible thing. Horrible because it is a corrupt expression of adult power, made possible by the very vulnerability of a child. A vulnerability arising from: the child’s physical inferiority of size and strength (thereby lacking the physical ability to resist), as well as; mental / emotional immaturity – a lack of sufficient life experience to provide a context for understanding what is happening to him/her. Yet something deep inside that child, from some unknown source of being, alerted the child that something wrong was happening, caused by someone who should be doing no wrong. And that is the true abuse: the violation of trust by someone the child assumed to be his/her perfect teacher and protector. Which then typically leads the child to a lifetime of mistrust, confusion, and a false seeking of (defensive) control over one’s life instead of the trust to live one’s life fully as it comes.
In these instances with the Catholic Church, the sin of inappropriate contact between priest and child was doubled by the sin of its repetition, and of the silence and cover-up that followed. For that which the child inherently knew to be wrong, no punishment of the perpetrator ensued; no quick end of the activity came; and in all likelihood the child continued to be told what “a good saintly person” his/her perpetrator was, leaving the child in total confusion and self-blame. When a supposed institutional greater good (protecting the church) is built on a foundation of wrong (abuse of children), there is no greater good to be had. There is only an insidious cancer created and lurking inside that institution, chipping away like an unseen (unspoken) termite at whatever institutional good was previously there. The Catholic Church (or any number of other current institutions) risks being undone as much by its failure to address its wrongs as by the original act of indecency itself.
In these instances of abuse, supposed priestly goodness was all for show, a sham covering a very human weakness. Adorned in the special robes and collar, reinforced by pronouncements of supposed dedication to living in God’s way, the uniform of the priest is designed to separate one from normal adult roles and accountability. The uniform is intended to make an immediate statement about one’s self, even if no facts have yet been presented for substantiation. It is the same for me when I put on my special robe for meditation, or the pendant that I wear around my neck that garners so much comment. I wear these to help reinforce in my mind that I am not in my everyday doing of things, that I am spending a few moments to be in a different place mentally than usual, experiencing a different experience. And these adornments do in fact help me make that transition.
So it is with all of the uniforms that we wear, which is why we wear them. A policeman’s uniform to show invested authority; the military uniform and the distinctive service branches and rank within each; the uniform of the janitor, the fast food worker, or the IT geek; the pin-stripe suit of the business man or woman; the overalls of the farm worker; the apron or the cocktail dress of the housewife; the torn jeans and colored spiked hair of the adolescent; and the American flag lapel pin that seeks to proclaim one’s patriotism. All of these uniforms are worn to make immediate visible statements - to ourselves and to the world - about who we believe we are, who we associate with, and who we aspire to be. Carried to the extreme, even “no clothes” serves as the uniform of the nudists.
The problem becomes when we, the insider, begin to believe that those uniforms in/of themselves make us who we want to be. The other problem is when we, the outsider looking in, accept another’s uniform as a confirmation of whom one is aspiring to be versus who one is. We forget that is all about who one truly is inside, not who he/she claims to be on the outside. In the case of religious leaders, the need for us to look beyond the trappings is even more crucial. Most all of the great spiritual masters warned us against accepting false gods (Moses) or false teachers (Mohammad, Jesus and Buddha) who claim spiritual authority but live untrue and unspiritual lives. The challenge to us is to look beyond the frock and to ignore the nice words. We need to remember that whether priest or nun or pope, lama or roshi or imam, reverend or pastor or bishop – the uniform (and title) means little. We must not be cynical, but we must be vigilant in our questioning and assessment of those who seek to lead us.
As Jesus and Buddha told us in their different ways, look not at the robes but at the deeds, and whether those deeds have led to positive or negative actions. Where love and acceptance flows forth downstream, that is where spiritual and godly leadership can truly be found. It is in the actions of love and benefit to others, not the adornments of uniform, that trust is truly deserved.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Educate, Not teach
Much has been written of late about the Texas Board of Education’s rewrite of American history textbooks. In normal circumstances, this could be one of many “local actions” in the hinterlands that we could safely choose to ignore. Unfortunately, the reality is that “as Texas goes, so goes textbooks around the country.” Why? Because of Texas’ volume buying, publishers will do whatever Texas specifies, and then pass those changes on to all other states as the “standard text.” Only California has greater buying power and influence, but they will not make their next revisions until 2014. So Texas in effect sets the standards for all our kids for the next 4 years.
Why do we care? Because their changes are not being defined by academics, historians, or the teachers of this subject matter. Each change is being decided by majority vote of Board members, none of whom are academics, historians or teachers. They have expressly stated that their intention is to “correct” what they view as a “liberal bias” in existing textbooks. And what corrections need to be made to restore their version of “balance”? Examples:
• Removal of Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures who inspired the American revolution because he coined the phrase “separation of church and state” (apparently his authorship of the Declaration of Independence is an irrelevant qualification);
• Confederate President Jefferson Davis is to be treated as equally important to American history outcomes as Abraham Lincoln (even as a native southerner, that is hard to see as a “balanced” intention for what was clearly a poor performance as a president, regardless of his cause);
• “Capitalism” (apparently a negative term) is to be replaced by “free enterprise system” (thereby ignoring any goals of replacing rhetorical labels with substance);
• Studies of cultural movements in music will include Tin Pan Alley, the Beat Generation, rock ‘n roll, and country music, but hip-hop music was voted out as culturally unimportant (and American blues music – a truly indigenous musical form that has impacted all other American music forms – wasn’t even considered!);
• According to this Board, Joseph McCarthy’s slanders during the 1950s were apparently true (even though he never proved a single one of his “communists are everywhere” charges and ruined many countless innocent lives by his unsubstantiated accusations);
• Ronald Reagan was “our greatest U.S. president” (pushing aside the entire portfolio of presidents carved into Mount Rushmore); and
• Edward Kennedy and Justice Sonia Sotomayor will disappear entirely from view as irrelevant to our history (apparent figments of our imaginations).
Don McLeroy, Board member and former Chair, wrote that, “The theme of [American history] is freedom. [Our founders] understood America and the principles upon which she stood: self-evident truths; liberty, with its twin corollaries of limited government and individual responsibility; the embrace of Judeo-Christian values; and a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.”
Sounds nice. But a true student of history who has actually read the writings, actions and statements of our founders knows that every one of McLeroy’s statements (except for the first statement about freedom) is counter to documented truths, documented even by the founders themselves. And my freedom starts with not having my education limited to Mr. McLeroy’s personal view of our history. But such recorded history is apparently of little concern to Mr. McLeroy. Welcome to a white, protestant, single-culture view of America’s history that discounts all other cultural contributions not in McLeroy’s personal experience. A view based upon one’s personal learnings, perspectives, experiences and dream-scenarios that someone seeks to make everyone’s truths.
I could actually make a partial case for what the Texas Board is doing except for one thing. The problem that seems to be escaping Mr. McLeroy and his colleagues is not just that they are putting out shameful distortions of information they clearly do not understand. The bigger concern is that they are unapologetically committing the exact same sin that they are accusing the left-wing biasers of – including in textbooks only that information which one has personally chosen to believe. That would leave both sides in error. The error of believing that teaching kids is about presenting a point of view that is purported to be “the single truth.”
In reality, our schools should be about education, not teaching. An educated person is not really marked by memorization of a determined set of facts. An educated person is one who is open to and knows about many perspectives and aspects of a topic, and has developed the experience and skills to apply a good thought process to those perspectives in order to derive a personal conclusion. A conclusion that most often leads to ACTION – hopefully a wise and good action. On that basis, those who truly support “education” should feel a responsibility not to advocate, but to present all possible points of view to a student, and then help that student develop fact-finding, filtering and discernment skills to analyze those facts, and logic and intuitive skills to derive his/her conclusions.
We should not fear differences of opinions. The reality is that if we are truly comfortable in our own skin and beliefs, most of the time it does not matter if you and I believe the same thing. If you believe in evolution and I believe in a creation story, what impact do our differences really make to the way either of us lives our everyday lives? If you believe Alexander Hamilton was our greatest founder and I think the same instead about his arch-enemy Thomas Jefferson, and we both have read their life stories and their writings, should your support of Hamilton’s view of government cause me to treat you any differently? Even if he was president of a confederacy that supported an aspect of a way of life that we now view as abhorrent, shouldn’t Jefferson Davis’s influence on American history be assessed on his performance as a government leader rather than his support of the cause of that period?
We need to trust in our kids better than we do. The only “corruption of their minds” that I fear is that they will grow up not understanding that there are different points of view in this world, views that come from different experiences and thought processes, and they have a right to hear those differences and decide for themselves. I fear more greatly their lack of exposure to all ideas than I do their exposure to “the wrong ideas.” Truly educated kids are the ones who grow up to be adults that make high-quality informed decisions. And that is why freedom of speech and freedom of the press are formalized ideals in our American Constitution.
Our schools should be laboratories of ideas where students can experiment with and create intellectual outcomes. After their schooling is complete, these kids are going to spend the rest of their adult lives encountering situations, propaganda, self-advocating demagogues, ideas, and beliefs different from what they have been previously taught. We need to arm our kids not with seeming facts and conclusions that we believe, but with all of the information available from which they can develop their own opinions. And in that process, hopefully they learn tolerance and appreciation for the views of others, without fearing differences of opinion. As much as I am a lover of history, history is ultimately not about knowing facts. It is about knowing the many stories of our history, the different values that have clashed over time, and how the stories and values have led to personal or collective decisions of belief and actions. We need to not teach our personal views; we need to educate all people, regardless of age or backgrounds, how to learn for themselves. And then get out of their way.
Why do we care? Because their changes are not being defined by academics, historians, or the teachers of this subject matter. Each change is being decided by majority vote of Board members, none of whom are academics, historians or teachers. They have expressly stated that their intention is to “correct” what they view as a “liberal bias” in existing textbooks. And what corrections need to be made to restore their version of “balance”? Examples:
• Removal of Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures who inspired the American revolution because he coined the phrase “separation of church and state” (apparently his authorship of the Declaration of Independence is an irrelevant qualification);
• Confederate President Jefferson Davis is to be treated as equally important to American history outcomes as Abraham Lincoln (even as a native southerner, that is hard to see as a “balanced” intention for what was clearly a poor performance as a president, regardless of his cause);
• “Capitalism” (apparently a negative term) is to be replaced by “free enterprise system” (thereby ignoring any goals of replacing rhetorical labels with substance);
• Studies of cultural movements in music will include Tin Pan Alley, the Beat Generation, rock ‘n roll, and country music, but hip-hop music was voted out as culturally unimportant (and American blues music – a truly indigenous musical form that has impacted all other American music forms – wasn’t even considered!);
• According to this Board, Joseph McCarthy’s slanders during the 1950s were apparently true (even though he never proved a single one of his “communists are everywhere” charges and ruined many countless innocent lives by his unsubstantiated accusations);
• Ronald Reagan was “our greatest U.S. president” (pushing aside the entire portfolio of presidents carved into Mount Rushmore); and
• Edward Kennedy and Justice Sonia Sotomayor will disappear entirely from view as irrelevant to our history (apparent figments of our imaginations).
Don McLeroy, Board member and former Chair, wrote that, “The theme of [American history] is freedom. [Our founders] understood America and the principles upon which she stood: self-evident truths; liberty, with its twin corollaries of limited government and individual responsibility; the embrace of Judeo-Christian values; and a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.”
Sounds nice. But a true student of history who has actually read the writings, actions and statements of our founders knows that every one of McLeroy’s statements (except for the first statement about freedom) is counter to documented truths, documented even by the founders themselves. And my freedom starts with not having my education limited to Mr. McLeroy’s personal view of our history. But such recorded history is apparently of little concern to Mr. McLeroy. Welcome to a white, protestant, single-culture view of America’s history that discounts all other cultural contributions not in McLeroy’s personal experience. A view based upon one’s personal learnings, perspectives, experiences and dream-scenarios that someone seeks to make everyone’s truths.
I could actually make a partial case for what the Texas Board is doing except for one thing. The problem that seems to be escaping Mr. McLeroy and his colleagues is not just that they are putting out shameful distortions of information they clearly do not understand. The bigger concern is that they are unapologetically committing the exact same sin that they are accusing the left-wing biasers of – including in textbooks only that information which one has personally chosen to believe. That would leave both sides in error. The error of believing that teaching kids is about presenting a point of view that is purported to be “the single truth.”
In reality, our schools should be about education, not teaching. An educated person is not really marked by memorization of a determined set of facts. An educated person is one who is open to and knows about many perspectives and aspects of a topic, and has developed the experience and skills to apply a good thought process to those perspectives in order to derive a personal conclusion. A conclusion that most often leads to ACTION – hopefully a wise and good action. On that basis, those who truly support “education” should feel a responsibility not to advocate, but to present all possible points of view to a student, and then help that student develop fact-finding, filtering and discernment skills to analyze those facts, and logic and intuitive skills to derive his/her conclusions.
We should not fear differences of opinions. The reality is that if we are truly comfortable in our own skin and beliefs, most of the time it does not matter if you and I believe the same thing. If you believe in evolution and I believe in a creation story, what impact do our differences really make to the way either of us lives our everyday lives? If you believe Alexander Hamilton was our greatest founder and I think the same instead about his arch-enemy Thomas Jefferson, and we both have read their life stories and their writings, should your support of Hamilton’s view of government cause me to treat you any differently? Even if he was president of a confederacy that supported an aspect of a way of life that we now view as abhorrent, shouldn’t Jefferson Davis’s influence on American history be assessed on his performance as a government leader rather than his support of the cause of that period?
We need to trust in our kids better than we do. The only “corruption of their minds” that I fear is that they will grow up not understanding that there are different points of view in this world, views that come from different experiences and thought processes, and they have a right to hear those differences and decide for themselves. I fear more greatly their lack of exposure to all ideas than I do their exposure to “the wrong ideas.” Truly educated kids are the ones who grow up to be adults that make high-quality informed decisions. And that is why freedom of speech and freedom of the press are formalized ideals in our American Constitution.
Our schools should be laboratories of ideas where students can experiment with and create intellectual outcomes. After their schooling is complete, these kids are going to spend the rest of their adult lives encountering situations, propaganda, self-advocating demagogues, ideas, and beliefs different from what they have been previously taught. We need to arm our kids not with seeming facts and conclusions that we believe, but with all of the information available from which they can develop their own opinions. And in that process, hopefully they learn tolerance and appreciation for the views of others, without fearing differences of opinion. As much as I am a lover of history, history is ultimately not about knowing facts. It is about knowing the many stories of our history, the different values that have clashed over time, and how the stories and values have led to personal or collective decisions of belief and actions. We need to not teach our personal views; we need to educate all people, regardless of age or backgrounds, how to learn for themselves. And then get out of their way.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Sore Losers and Violent Threats
Last week, Congress passed and President Obama signed a final version of a major reform of health care delivery in this country. It culminated a contentious 13 month ugly legislative process that in many ways unfortunately showed America at its demagogic worst – for the world to see and for us to see in each other. Yet the process realized a goal of near-universal health care proposed by presidents (Republicans) Theodore Roosevelt and Richard Nixon, and (Democrats) Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton. Whatever its details may or may not be, it is the most significant change in health care delivery nationally since Johnson got Medicare instituted in the mid-1960s.
Is it a perfect bill or an ideal solution to keeping America healthy? No. I do not think anyone at any point in the political spectrum is entirely satisfied with the outcome. That is probably one measure of a pretty good outcome: no one entirely won or lost, but all got something beneficial (even if some feel they cannot say so!).
For me, the downside is that the bill perpetuates two fundamental flaws in our health care delivery that I have discussed in previous blogs (see 9/8/2009 and 8/19/2009):
1. It leaves decisions about what health care one will receive in the hands of private insurance companies, whose primary and understandable obligation is to maximize shareholder profits and employee pay by either raising premiums or reducing payouts – a profit obligation diametrically opposed to my critical care needs;
2. It leaves intact the current system whereby the majority of access to that insurance is through employer benefit plans, benefits given significantly unevenly to the population at large and which are naturally a secondary focus of employers, and burdens those companies with a major pricing disadvantage in competition with the rest of the world – none of whom burden their companies with adsorbing the cost of employee health care.
But these flaws proved politically unapproachable at this stage of our social evolution, and must wait for another day.
What is sad to see is that the lies, misinformation, grandstanding, and denial of past speeches and records on this topic are continuing, all done simply for political gain. What has passed for informative debate would make a high school speech teacher flunk the whole class, and the civics teacher shake her head in embarrassment at current practitioners. From Sarah Palin’s notorious outright lies about “death panels” to the scare tactics of the “lost of personal doctor or one’s current insurance” and “employer bankruptcies,” the unanimous NO votes of all Republican representatives and senators confirmed that this was never a process or debate about how to improve people’s lives through better health care. It was only about defeating a popular president and avenging a brutal 2008 election loss. Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) famously predicted that “health care would be Obama’s Waterloo defeat,” and all Republicans rallied confidently around that primary political goal. But by trapping themselves into that all-or-nothing strategy they would up the big losers yet again, unable to deliverable to their shrinking base despite the bravado talk. DeMint et al as the defeated Frenchman Bonaparte, Obama et al as the winning Englishman Nelson.
Yet for those of either political extremes who seek to make all attempts at legislation and governance a blood sport of winners and losers, the expectation of good sportsmanship seems not to be a part of this winner/loser game. Truth is, there are some battles in life we win, and some we lose. Then we pick up and go on to the next confrontation of life. Two football coaches meet at midfield at the end of the Super Bowl and compliment each other for a great season and effort, win or lose. Silver and bronze Olympic medalists stand at the side and applaud the gold medalist standing on the center higher stage. Because it is the right thing to do.
Instead, the supporters of the “you lie” and “baby killer” screamers, and the followers of the “party of no” vow to fight a continuing rear-guard action to repeal or void what has just passed. Attempting to void the decision on the field by Monday-morning quarterbacking appeals to the off-court judges. Changing the accepted rules in place after-the-fact. Overturning “majority rules” (a concept that the U.S. Senate seems to have long forgotten) by minority subversion. Isn’t this kind of political terrorism exactly what the now-defeated brethren would have screamed about when they were in power?
More frightening still is the continued call for revolt that is being spoken in greater and greater violent terms. The previous pictures of Obama as Hitler are being replaced by Speaker Nancy Pelosi in front of a wall of flames, calling for her “to be removed.” Calls for bricks to be thrown, office glass to be broken. Exhortations of “you should be angry” urged upon a near-mob already more than angry enough. Threats and epithets (racial, homophobic, and political) shouted to elected Congresspersons on their way to vote. Future election outcomes and TV ratings still trump Truth. Pelosi correctly said recently, “Words matter. I believe that words carry great weight.” And so they do, as most every great spiritual teacher has reminded us.
It is time for everyone to now quiet down. The dozen Attorneys General threatening to sue the bill on unconstitutionality grounds need to get back to get back to the more pressing fight against white collar financial crime. Congresspersons need to move on to other great issues the people need addressed – financial/banking reform, energy needs, and most importantly, our jobs and economic health. To paraphrase the Kenny Rogers song, “You [no longer] hold ‘em, [so you gotta] know when to fold ‘em.”
For people like me who lived through the late 60s/early 70s, the threat of violence on our American institutions is all too real. We have seen what violence our citizens are capable of doing to each other by murder, lynching, assassinations, and mental and physical cruelty. Back then it was civil rights and Viet Nam that were creating hyper-emotionalism, and we watched our TVs in dread of the next outbreak of news stories. Today it is high anger over two questionable wars, a threat against our way of life by foreign faceless terrorists, and the near collapse of our economy with incredibly unequal and immoral consequences that are not being addressed. In both decades, it is the collapse of institutional trust and confidence that incites our emotion. I have genuine fears that the violent outcomes we saw 40 years ago are dangerously close to being repeated again in 2010.
Our leaders owe us more than petty foot-stomping like kindergarten kids. There are very positive lessons we need to be showing out kids, lessons taught by example, not words. We had our debate, it came to conclusion by the same rules used in the past by all political parties. Let us now move on, stop the finger-pointing, and play nice before something very serious happens. There are more than enough nut cases out there who cannot separate reality from rhetoric, sports metaphors from battlefield tactics. Will someone now have to die to show us anew how to speak and act responsibly, and that “words indeed do have power”?
Is it a perfect bill or an ideal solution to keeping America healthy? No. I do not think anyone at any point in the political spectrum is entirely satisfied with the outcome. That is probably one measure of a pretty good outcome: no one entirely won or lost, but all got something beneficial (even if some feel they cannot say so!).
For me, the downside is that the bill perpetuates two fundamental flaws in our health care delivery that I have discussed in previous blogs (see 9/8/2009 and 8/19/2009):
1. It leaves decisions about what health care one will receive in the hands of private insurance companies, whose primary and understandable obligation is to maximize shareholder profits and employee pay by either raising premiums or reducing payouts – a profit obligation diametrically opposed to my critical care needs;
2. It leaves intact the current system whereby the majority of access to that insurance is through employer benefit plans, benefits given significantly unevenly to the population at large and which are naturally a secondary focus of employers, and burdens those companies with a major pricing disadvantage in competition with the rest of the world – none of whom burden their companies with adsorbing the cost of employee health care.
But these flaws proved politically unapproachable at this stage of our social evolution, and must wait for another day.
What is sad to see is that the lies, misinformation, grandstanding, and denial of past speeches and records on this topic are continuing, all done simply for political gain. What has passed for informative debate would make a high school speech teacher flunk the whole class, and the civics teacher shake her head in embarrassment at current practitioners. From Sarah Palin’s notorious outright lies about “death panels” to the scare tactics of the “lost of personal doctor or one’s current insurance” and “employer bankruptcies,” the unanimous NO votes of all Republican representatives and senators confirmed that this was never a process or debate about how to improve people’s lives through better health care. It was only about defeating a popular president and avenging a brutal 2008 election loss. Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) famously predicted that “health care would be Obama’s Waterloo defeat,” and all Republicans rallied confidently around that primary political goal. But by trapping themselves into that all-or-nothing strategy they would up the big losers yet again, unable to deliverable to their shrinking base despite the bravado talk. DeMint et al as the defeated Frenchman Bonaparte, Obama et al as the winning Englishman Nelson.
Yet for those of either political extremes who seek to make all attempts at legislation and governance a blood sport of winners and losers, the expectation of good sportsmanship seems not to be a part of this winner/loser game. Truth is, there are some battles in life we win, and some we lose. Then we pick up and go on to the next confrontation of life. Two football coaches meet at midfield at the end of the Super Bowl and compliment each other for a great season and effort, win or lose. Silver and bronze Olympic medalists stand at the side and applaud the gold medalist standing on the center higher stage. Because it is the right thing to do.
Instead, the supporters of the “you lie” and “baby killer” screamers, and the followers of the “party of no” vow to fight a continuing rear-guard action to repeal or void what has just passed. Attempting to void the decision on the field by Monday-morning quarterbacking appeals to the off-court judges. Changing the accepted rules in place after-the-fact. Overturning “majority rules” (a concept that the U.S. Senate seems to have long forgotten) by minority subversion. Isn’t this kind of political terrorism exactly what the now-defeated brethren would have screamed about when they were in power?
More frightening still is the continued call for revolt that is being spoken in greater and greater violent terms. The previous pictures of Obama as Hitler are being replaced by Speaker Nancy Pelosi in front of a wall of flames, calling for her “to be removed.” Calls for bricks to be thrown, office glass to be broken. Exhortations of “you should be angry” urged upon a near-mob already more than angry enough. Threats and epithets (racial, homophobic, and political) shouted to elected Congresspersons on their way to vote. Future election outcomes and TV ratings still trump Truth. Pelosi correctly said recently, “Words matter. I believe that words carry great weight.” And so they do, as most every great spiritual teacher has reminded us.
It is time for everyone to now quiet down. The dozen Attorneys General threatening to sue the bill on unconstitutionality grounds need to get back to get back to the more pressing fight against white collar financial crime. Congresspersons need to move on to other great issues the people need addressed – financial/banking reform, energy needs, and most importantly, our jobs and economic health. To paraphrase the Kenny Rogers song, “You [no longer] hold ‘em, [so you gotta] know when to fold ‘em.”
For people like me who lived through the late 60s/early 70s, the threat of violence on our American institutions is all too real. We have seen what violence our citizens are capable of doing to each other by murder, lynching, assassinations, and mental and physical cruelty. Back then it was civil rights and Viet Nam that were creating hyper-emotionalism, and we watched our TVs in dread of the next outbreak of news stories. Today it is high anger over two questionable wars, a threat against our way of life by foreign faceless terrorists, and the near collapse of our economy with incredibly unequal and immoral consequences that are not being addressed. In both decades, it is the collapse of institutional trust and confidence that incites our emotion. I have genuine fears that the violent outcomes we saw 40 years ago are dangerously close to being repeated again in 2010.
Our leaders owe us more than petty foot-stomping like kindergarten kids. There are very positive lessons we need to be showing out kids, lessons taught by example, not words. We had our debate, it came to conclusion by the same rules used in the past by all political parties. Let us now move on, stop the finger-pointing, and play nice before something very serious happens. There are more than enough nut cases out there who cannot separate reality from rhetoric, sports metaphors from battlefield tactics. Will someone now have to die to show us anew how to speak and act responsibly, and that “words indeed do have power”?
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Education Accountability
I have written before about the state of K-12 education in this country (see blogs of 9/11 and 9/21, 2007). My complaints have centered not just on student outcomes and “return on investment” of the significant dollars we invest in public education. Rather, my objections have centered on the basic services and teaching model itself upon which our educational programming is built. Namely, our expectation that all kids, regardless of family environment, family history, economic circumstances, intellect, interests, talents and god-given gifts, should all be expected to learn, understand and perform well the same material taught in the same manner at the same chronological age. But that is the underlying ridiculous assumption of the American educational system. It is a factory assembly-line approach to mass production – and in this case the “product” is supposed to be an educated young person.
Clearly this system is not creating a quality product consistently from all of the educational factories. We have some spectacular outcomes, average products, and some horrific environments that are barely better than low-quality baby-sitting. We have talked about these problems for years, yet bright spots of creative and fresh innovation have barely made a dent in the overall paralysis of our educational structure. Magnet schools; charter schools; teacher innovation and quality awards; centers for learning; state takeovers of bad districts; over 1,000,000 children now being home schooled; these are all reflective of our various frustrations. But these efforts are not enough.
George W. Bush put his education effort into the No Child Left behind (NCLB) bill, passed with by-partisan congressional support in 2001. While promising tough standards, instituting performance measurement tools, and punitive steps for under-performing schools, years later not much new has been accomplished except illusionary change. States and schools have simply downgraded their standards or testing criteria in order to look better than they really are; many teaching innovation attempts have been stymied; and converting educational goals to testing skills goals have been the predominant outcomes of NCLB.
At the centerpiece of this “expectations versus outcomes” tussle are the critical players – the school administrators and teachers who ultimately create the classroom experience. I have memories of some wonderful teachers who helped and guided me in my early life. People who taught me not just facts to memorize, but stories and ideas. Teachers who encouraged imagination and curiosity, and who made continual life-long learning a consistent part of my character. I remain indebted to those great people. But their very quality also helped me to recognize those teachers who had long passed their prime, were no longer learning their subject matter or investing in their teaching, or perhaps never had much ability in the first place. Today we still have those same energetic and creative teachers, the average middlin’ teachers, and way too many burned out and/or untalented teachers who should have left the profession years ago.
Unfortunately, for those of us looking from the outside in, it is this bottom-end group that is dictating the educational future. Stuck in old methodologies; protected by union regulation, tenure or employment traditions; as bored with teaching as their students are of listening to them drone from their yellowed lesson plans; too many teaching colleges still thinking it is the 1950s classroom; this “cadre of the protected” stands firm in resisting virtually any changes in the status quo. So the skilled, good teachers or the energetic new teachers (1/3rd of whom leave within their first three years) either bail out of the profession or hunker down and do the best they can to work around the system they are stuck within. God love their perseverance.
After many years of talking about change, the call for accountability, change and new results is growing. An entire school faculty and administration was recently fired en masse in Rhode Island following years of bad results. Detroit has lost 1/4th of their school population, yet teachers are fighting the responsible closing of numerous schools to reflect this new reality. Similar stories everywhere. So semi-autonomous charter schools are growing, as is the home school population for people who have given up entirely. Yet in center stage officials from teacher unions cry, “No,” or “just give us more money” as the solution. But more of us are now saying NO back – show us a new plan first instead of just holding our kids hostage. If we (correctly) fault congressional Republicans as simply being the Party of No that offers only the same old disproven ideas, then we must now fault teacher unions and a large preponderance of their membership as also just being no-sayers. This chorus of no, and what can’t be done, the lack of truly new ideas, has to stop. The very talented teachers whose jobs are legitimately protected by their skills have to reclaim their union and turn it into the change agent it could and should be. Start offering real and flexible solutions instead of continual resistance. Else they will also go down in this expanding sinking ship.
I have no doubt there were some quality, dedicated teachers that were fired in Rhode Island. But as long as they leave their future, and our children’s/grandchildren’s future, in the hands of these defenders of the last century, they will lose also. The current system does not work for too many; the creative mind of the individual student is being lost in the assembly line of standardization. Memorizing facts is neither an education nor reform. Reform is urgently needed, and will ultimately happen as pressures mount. Who will lead this reform – the teachers who should, or the outsiders who are forced to do so?
Clearly this system is not creating a quality product consistently from all of the educational factories. We have some spectacular outcomes, average products, and some horrific environments that are barely better than low-quality baby-sitting. We have talked about these problems for years, yet bright spots of creative and fresh innovation have barely made a dent in the overall paralysis of our educational structure. Magnet schools; charter schools; teacher innovation and quality awards; centers for learning; state takeovers of bad districts; over 1,000,000 children now being home schooled; these are all reflective of our various frustrations. But these efforts are not enough.
George W. Bush put his education effort into the No Child Left behind (NCLB) bill, passed with by-partisan congressional support in 2001. While promising tough standards, instituting performance measurement tools, and punitive steps for under-performing schools, years later not much new has been accomplished except illusionary change. States and schools have simply downgraded their standards or testing criteria in order to look better than they really are; many teaching innovation attempts have been stymied; and converting educational goals to testing skills goals have been the predominant outcomes of NCLB.
At the centerpiece of this “expectations versus outcomes” tussle are the critical players – the school administrators and teachers who ultimately create the classroom experience. I have memories of some wonderful teachers who helped and guided me in my early life. People who taught me not just facts to memorize, but stories and ideas. Teachers who encouraged imagination and curiosity, and who made continual life-long learning a consistent part of my character. I remain indebted to those great people. But their very quality also helped me to recognize those teachers who had long passed their prime, were no longer learning their subject matter or investing in their teaching, or perhaps never had much ability in the first place. Today we still have those same energetic and creative teachers, the average middlin’ teachers, and way too many burned out and/or untalented teachers who should have left the profession years ago.
Unfortunately, for those of us looking from the outside in, it is this bottom-end group that is dictating the educational future. Stuck in old methodologies; protected by union regulation, tenure or employment traditions; as bored with teaching as their students are of listening to them drone from their yellowed lesson plans; too many teaching colleges still thinking it is the 1950s classroom; this “cadre of the protected” stands firm in resisting virtually any changes in the status quo. So the skilled, good teachers or the energetic new teachers (1/3rd of whom leave within their first three years) either bail out of the profession or hunker down and do the best they can to work around the system they are stuck within. God love their perseverance.
After many years of talking about change, the call for accountability, change and new results is growing. An entire school faculty and administration was recently fired en masse in Rhode Island following years of bad results. Detroit has lost 1/4th of their school population, yet teachers are fighting the responsible closing of numerous schools to reflect this new reality. Similar stories everywhere. So semi-autonomous charter schools are growing, as is the home school population for people who have given up entirely. Yet in center stage officials from teacher unions cry, “No,” or “just give us more money” as the solution. But more of us are now saying NO back – show us a new plan first instead of just holding our kids hostage. If we (correctly) fault congressional Republicans as simply being the Party of No that offers only the same old disproven ideas, then we must now fault teacher unions and a large preponderance of their membership as also just being no-sayers. This chorus of no, and what can’t be done, the lack of truly new ideas, has to stop. The very talented teachers whose jobs are legitimately protected by their skills have to reclaim their union and turn it into the change agent it could and should be. Start offering real and flexible solutions instead of continual resistance. Else they will also go down in this expanding sinking ship.
I have no doubt there were some quality, dedicated teachers that were fired in Rhode Island. But as long as they leave their future, and our children’s/grandchildren’s future, in the hands of these defenders of the last century, they will lose also. The current system does not work for too many; the creative mind of the individual student is being lost in the assembly line of standardization. Memorizing facts is neither an education nor reform. Reform is urgently needed, and will ultimately happen as pressures mount. Who will lead this reform – the teachers who should, or the outsiders who are forced to do so?
Friday, February 26, 2010
Power to the Purchasers
It is pretty clear these days that major change is not going to be coming out of Washington, D.C. anytime soon. At least maybe/maybe not until after November 2010. So for those of us who would still like to see some things done and real solutions brought to bear, what are our alternatives?
One thing we can do is to identify previously unrecognized pockets where real “power to impact” exists. Places where the opportunity for collective action can multiply outcomes beyond our usual sense of “what can one person do?”
One of America’s greatest characteristics, both past and present, is innovation. It is the ability to see a need and bring a solution to it. Quickly. The insight to look at something old and see a new use, a new opportunity no one else has seen before. The imagination to envision that which has been heretofore unimaginable.
But innovation needs to be nourished and supported. Support includes startup funding, time to put an organization in place, and a market willing to pay for “Version 1.” Especially when version 1, hot off the assembly line, is typically not cost-economical until either version 2 (or even version 3) shows up, or enough sales can drop the unit cost. Fear of risk, fear of failure, an unwillingness to fund a new market, stymies innovation.
We have seen this with many recent attempts at innovation. Alternative fuels and energy. Alternatives to gasoline-powered automobiles, or over-sized cars, or to cars themselves. Alternative manufacturing techniques. These, and other innovation attempts, all wander in search of the money to reach their new marketplace. So who is the potential white knight hiding in the shadows, waiting to be called upon to bring our innovation potential to fulfillment?
Meet America’s purchasing agents. These are the typically nameless, faceless people who guide and oversee the buying of goods and services for corporate and government institutions. They usually are not the final deciders of what will be bought, but they minimally have the power of influence and enforcement. And if so delegated, they can actually define the standards for acceptable goods and services.
Why is this important? Because these people collectively manage the decision process for trillions of dollars of purchases every year. At their worse, they are exemplified by the horror stories of the Pentagon’s $400 toilet seats, and the wasted money that literally goes down the graft commode. Or they themselves are the object of bribes or payoffs. But at their best, they help negotiate the price savings that make institutions operate cost-effectively and accomplish their missions. Properly armed and directed, especially when acting in a group, they have the potential to be a prime enabler in accomplishing economic and social transformation.
The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) is the prime centralized procurer for all federal agencies. They buy all the “stuff” that other federal agencies need, and then bill them back for the cost of the purchase. In their 2008 budget request, they stated that this stuff amounted to $56B in sales volume for their client agencies. That’s a lot of stuff, and a lot of decision-making for “this item instead of that.” More specifically, the GSA stated that in FY 2006 it had bought 60,000 vehicles during that one year.
We’ve wasted 30 years of phony energy policy planning trying to squeeze miniscule gas mileage increases out of recalcitrant auto and gasoline industries. Yet in our profit-driven world, if the GSA came out and said, “next year, we will buy 30,000 new cars that will give us 5 more mpg,” don’t you kind of bet that some innovative automaker – looking at that guaranteed sales number – would be right there on the GSA’s doorstep, ready to serve? Or similarly for a new electric car? Or for any number of other desirable economic and/or social objectives?
Thank about it. What would happen if just the five most populous states (California, Texas [well, probably wishful thinking], New York, Florida and Illinois, representing 36% of the population – or even the 10 most populous states, who have 53% of the entire US population) banded together with their collective buying power and made a similar offer or demand? With a guaranteed market, a new product, support structure, and distribution center network could be put together in record time.
Instead of trying endlessly to pass congressional laws regulating the auto industry (or any other industry), or throwing research and development money at industry and university researchers, why not just offer the capitalist prize that entrepreneurs want at the end of the race – sales? Entrepreneurs, meet purchasing agents. Mr. President and governors, meet your change engines. It is in the buying, not the legislating. Instead of continuing to buy what we say we do not want, start buying what we say we do want.
It is time to quit just talking about it and making excuses. Stop rewarding those who cannot do, and reward through the marketplace those who will do. It is investment by simply redirecting the spending that you are already doing for things we already need and have to buy anyway. And it provides billions of available dollars. It really is just that simple.
One thing we can do is to identify previously unrecognized pockets where real “power to impact” exists. Places where the opportunity for collective action can multiply outcomes beyond our usual sense of “what can one person do?”
One of America’s greatest characteristics, both past and present, is innovation. It is the ability to see a need and bring a solution to it. Quickly. The insight to look at something old and see a new use, a new opportunity no one else has seen before. The imagination to envision that which has been heretofore unimaginable.
But innovation needs to be nourished and supported. Support includes startup funding, time to put an organization in place, and a market willing to pay for “Version 1.” Especially when version 1, hot off the assembly line, is typically not cost-economical until either version 2 (or even version 3) shows up, or enough sales can drop the unit cost. Fear of risk, fear of failure, an unwillingness to fund a new market, stymies innovation.
We have seen this with many recent attempts at innovation. Alternative fuels and energy. Alternatives to gasoline-powered automobiles, or over-sized cars, or to cars themselves. Alternative manufacturing techniques. These, and other innovation attempts, all wander in search of the money to reach their new marketplace. So who is the potential white knight hiding in the shadows, waiting to be called upon to bring our innovation potential to fulfillment?
Meet America’s purchasing agents. These are the typically nameless, faceless people who guide and oversee the buying of goods and services for corporate and government institutions. They usually are not the final deciders of what will be bought, but they minimally have the power of influence and enforcement. And if so delegated, they can actually define the standards for acceptable goods and services.
Why is this important? Because these people collectively manage the decision process for trillions of dollars of purchases every year. At their worse, they are exemplified by the horror stories of the Pentagon’s $400 toilet seats, and the wasted money that literally goes down the graft commode. Or they themselves are the object of bribes or payoffs. But at their best, they help negotiate the price savings that make institutions operate cost-effectively and accomplish their missions. Properly armed and directed, especially when acting in a group, they have the potential to be a prime enabler in accomplishing economic and social transformation.
The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) is the prime centralized procurer for all federal agencies. They buy all the “stuff” that other federal agencies need, and then bill them back for the cost of the purchase. In their 2008 budget request, they stated that this stuff amounted to $56B in sales volume for their client agencies. That’s a lot of stuff, and a lot of decision-making for “this item instead of that.” More specifically, the GSA stated that in FY 2006 it had bought 60,000 vehicles during that one year.
We’ve wasted 30 years of phony energy policy planning trying to squeeze miniscule gas mileage increases out of recalcitrant auto and gasoline industries. Yet in our profit-driven world, if the GSA came out and said, “next year, we will buy 30,000 new cars that will give us 5 more mpg,” don’t you kind of bet that some innovative automaker – looking at that guaranteed sales number – would be right there on the GSA’s doorstep, ready to serve? Or similarly for a new electric car? Or for any number of other desirable economic and/or social objectives?
Thank about it. What would happen if just the five most populous states (California, Texas [well, probably wishful thinking], New York, Florida and Illinois, representing 36% of the population – or even the 10 most populous states, who have 53% of the entire US population) banded together with their collective buying power and made a similar offer or demand? With a guaranteed market, a new product, support structure, and distribution center network could be put together in record time.
Instead of trying endlessly to pass congressional laws regulating the auto industry (or any other industry), or throwing research and development money at industry and university researchers, why not just offer the capitalist prize that entrepreneurs want at the end of the race – sales? Entrepreneurs, meet purchasing agents. Mr. President and governors, meet your change engines. It is in the buying, not the legislating. Instead of continuing to buy what we say we do not want, start buying what we say we do want.
It is time to quit just talking about it and making excuses. Stop rewarding those who cannot do, and reward through the marketplace those who will do. It is investment by simply redirecting the spending that you are already doing for things we already need and have to buy anyway. And it provides billions of available dollars. It really is just that simple.
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