Students with Potential

I've got another major pet-peeve (have you noticed how opinionated and peevish I am, yet?) - which is when people (teachers, parents, other students) talk about intelligent, but lazy students as having potential. I suppose I have been guilty of the same, but I made a vow several years ago that I was going to refrain from this practice - especially since it seemed like the students with "potential" seemed to enjoy disappointing their erstwhile saviors. It seemed to me that the "potential" students were actually encouraged to fail by people telling them about how great they were. It was like they got the ego-boost of being told how great they were, only to reinforce those positive feelings by a sense of power and self-control. They didn't want to exercise that "potential" because it would mean doing something to make others happy (not themselves). Telling them about their "potential" only served to make them feel less control over their own lives. I am talking about teenagers, after all - masters of self-deception, selfishness and a need for control.

So, I've adopted a different attitude - I don't get disappointed with students with "potential", I get angry. When they say, "I know, I know, you are disappointed because I have so much potential," I disagree - I tell them they don't have potential at all, they are too stupid to have potential - after all, a smart person would figure out how to pass high school.

I realized today that there is another (perhaps less antagonistic) way. I realized this as I was writing a letter of recommendation for a student that truly has potential. This student, if he remains on the same path, will soon make a substantial contribution to society. I was wondering what the difference is between this student and the large numbers of students who have had "potential" and failed. I realized that this student has future potential - he has the intellectual abilities, but also enough of the work ethic to make something happen in his future. When we talk about lazy students with "potential" we are mostly talking about the ability to complete the work being assigned but not doing it. This doesn't give the student potential, it just makes them lazy.

I looked up the etymology of "potential" - it comes from the Latin potent - which means, power. In order to have the power to accomplish something, one needs to have both the knowledge and the will. Lazy students don't have potential, they have Fs. So, all you teachers out there - enough with telling students about their "potential".

(I suppose there is another, more cynical analysis of why teachers do this in the first place - rather than really engaging students and figuring out how to get them motivated, saying a student has potential, but is lazy serves to shift the blame (and onus) for the failure of the teacher in the whole teacher-student relationship, but I think I'll leave this one alone . . .)

Solving the Dropout Problem Part 2

1st - Thank you to Malik, who challenged my depression-inspired, cynical-frustration-laden post on the failure of the school system. Seriously, optimism and idealism seem all too rare out there in a world that seems to have taught us to be cynical, afterall it never fails (if you never try, you never lose). God bless the Maliks of this world - hope is an all too rare commodity, even in our "post-racial", Obama-state America (whatever happened to the "Audacity of Hope"? - seems like we forgot that we were the movement and sorta assumed that electing Obama was all we needed to do to solve all our problems - we must be lazy, scared of real change and/or really stupid).

That said, I think Malik's comment reflects a failure on my part to be clear about the larger picture and my own internal conflict vis-a-vis education, the state, and true freedom. It's not that I don't think street-workers are genuine, I just wonder if what they are really promoting is worth it. I mean, aren't the values that one applies in terms of what constitutes "success" really the values of the state? Life on the street is more tenuous, dangerous, etc. But, I wonder if it isn't a valid choice in its own right. I mean, existentialist philosophy has been challenging the idea of the quiet (conformist) life as a life of real happiness. Maybe security/safety is a trap of pathetic meaninglessness. What are the arguments that the anti-dropout crowd make? From what I hear, it's about not being in jail and not being dead. But from an anti-statist perspective, not being locked-up is hardly a compelling argument: just do what they tell you, or else you'll have to do what they tell you. As a guy who voted for the Green Party candidate in 2004 (sorry, I just couldn't stand John Kerry - plus I was voting in MA: there was no way Kerry was losing MA), the "lesser of two evils" argument is simply unpersuasive. And the idea that one is better off not dead . . . well perhaps, but as has been said: "better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees."

I suppose it is trite and easily said, given the bourgeois life that I lead. But from a philosophical position (that is, supposedly third-party neutral: as an outsider), I can appreciate a certain value in dropping out of school. So, from this perspective, the street-workers are misguided at best, co-conspirators at worst. The system is truly fucked (I don't think this is cynical at all, actually), not that it doesn't ever work (which would be cynical), but rather the contention that the true horror would be if it worked as well as it aspired to.

But, let us assume that Malik's optimistic/idealistic (in the best sense of the term) position is correct. Let us assume that there is hope within the system - that the system doesn't destroy when it works, that the system can make people's lives better without ruining their souls. In which case, the street-workers are to be honored and respected and held up as model citizens (well, the logic of "model citizen" works in both interpretations - only the concept of "model citizen" is negative in the first and positive in the second). The problem isn't getting kids back into the system, but rather creating a better system - thus, my proposal that there be a parallel track that understands what these students need before they are reintegrated into the system and provides it before reintegration occurs. This is what the politicians and liberal do-gooders fail to take into account - after all, for them, the problem isn't the real lives of these kids, but more of a numbers problem - "X" number of kids drop out; "Y" number of kids are convinced to return. The logic of using data analysis (all the rage in education these days - something that makes me want to vomit on a daily basis. When I was in high school, the idea of treating children as numbers was something our teachers explicitly rejected.) teaches us that the relationship between X and Y determines success - not whether "A" student actually received what they need. So then the question becomes how do we reduce "X" and increase "Y", but never - how do we get "A" who dropped out because "A" has undiagnosed dyslexia and is reading at a second-grade level, but is super-uber-intelligent and can run intellectual circles around the teachers that regularly give him (usually) an "F". And those teachers that can't keep up with his intellect berate him and make him feel small so that they can feel better about themselves. And those that understand his intelligence sigh and shake their head, but afterall, what can they do - how do you give a kid a passing grade in 11th grade English when the child reads on a 2nd grade level and can't write a comprehensible sentence to save his life?

After all this, perhaps the larger personal issue I have begins to become clear: I hate the state; but at the same time, as an educator (a position which means I am responsible for replicating the state in the youth) I hate the fact that the system fails students. I want the system to work for them - especially for those that decide to come in from the cold. It's fairly criminal that it doesn't and one reason that it fails these days is that it sees its problems in terms of numbers, not people: MCAS, AYP, The Dropout Rate. Where is the humanity in that? We've become a nation of accountants (ironically, perhaps, my first major in college). We should be a nation of artists.

School Dropouts and the State

Supposedly, the state cares about school dropouts. Especially, the City of Boston. But does our esteemed city really care about the future prospects of said dropouts? About their health and welfare and general happiness? Of course not. One senses that the desire to get dropouts back into school is either 1) so that they can be reincorporated into the discipline of state structures (ie - not on the street) or 2) so the liberals can pat themselves on the back. And yet 9 out of 10 dropouts that have been encouraged (manipulated) back into the school system (and end up in my classroom) lack the basic skills to be successful. After all, there was a reason they dropped out in the first place. Oddly enough, I find many of these students to be some of the most well-adjusted, interesting and thoughtful students - with the most interesting comments and insights. Unfortunately, they do really well in conversation but can barely read or write and ultimately, frustrated with lack of success, they drop out again. It's sad - as in the system is pathetic. If the state was really interested in serving the needs of these students it would not just send "street-workers" (isn't this what we used to call prostitutes?) to coerce students into school, but maybe it would actually try to figure out what the students issues are and provide support and remediation (tutoring?) to give students the skills they need to be successful before dumping them back into a system that failed them the first time.

Admittedly, this would only extend state power by incorporating more of us, but, well, in the end I think my brain is wired to analyze systems, like the state's, which makes me want to make it work, even though in the end I'm an anarchist and wish it would all just go away.

The Left and the Stalinist State

In this article in Dissent (sorry, you'll need to subscribe to read the whole thing) Alan Johnson takes supposed Leftist darling Slavov Zizek to task for Stalinist theorizing. What is wrong with people on the Left that Stalin/Mao can still have any appeal? Millions dead? Any revolution that needs to kill millions in order to sustain itself is, by definition, a failure. Revolutions purport to replace an old regime with a new, better one. But if the new, better one is unsustainable, how exactly is it better?

Johnson's got some great lines - for example:

"[French Maoist philosopher, and major influence on Zizek] Badiou's totalitarian political category/fantasy of "The People" has nothing to do with actual people. They can be ignored, even abused, in the name of "truth." One imposes the truth against the people in the name of "The People.""

But, he also makes a case for social democracy (Dissent is essentially a social-democratic rag) that leaves me feeling rather empty. In essence, the way Johnson puts it, it seems that social democrats want to extend the benefits of capitalistic democracy (bourgeois-life) to the working/lower classes. But as a friend of mine says, somebody has to make my fries. Within the context of the state, there will always be oppressed (and therefore, oppressors). One is either a beneficiary or a subject (and sometimes, both at once), but we can't all be beneficiaries - states exist to get somebody else to do the dirty work so we can spend our time writing/reading blog posts.

I suspect that Zizek's arguments are rooted in a "smash the state" mentality - Mao had a point when he said that a revolution is not a dinner-party. You can't make a really big omelet without breaking a whole lotta eggs. But, then, you can't bitch about the state and want to replace it with a state that is even more oppressive. Perhaps Zizek's frustrations with social democracy (I'm assuming this is true based on my experience as a/with Maoist(s) in a previous life) lie not so much in the bourgeois life, but rather in the state that creates that life (but one ought to prefer the bourgeois life than the life without living that was under Stalin's state). But if your argument is with the state, then one shouldn't follow Mao or Stalin - one must turn to anarchism.

Running away to start an anarchist collective and drop out of the state makes more and more theoretical sense. On the other hand, it also seems rather selfish - if the Left is supposed to be about caring for our fellow men/women, then shouldn't we be doing something more than just dropping out? But, then, maybe people that buy into what the state offers don't want/need the kind of help we (I) can offer.

The State and Human Potential

Ok, ok, so I know that last time we talked I was railing against the state.

But, you know, nothing is simple - it's all so complicatedly complex . . .

For instance, could all of the great art, books, etc. have existed without the state? Why is it that all these random communities in Zomia (Southeast Asia) haven't produced a single great author/singer/etc. Is it really just because the state means media means broadcasting means audience? Or does it have something to do with stability, tradition, symbology that can't exist without a state? Scott points out that these anarchistic communities tend to see literacy as a weapon of control - a threat to freedom. And maybe I'm a snob, or maybe I'm a bourgeois intellectual in my deepest core - but I can't imagine life without Borges, or Chabon, or Silko, or Kafka, or Camus - or, for that matter, my compatriots in the blogosphere - all of which, like it or not, benefit from the state. Especially the last - thank your US military-industrial complex for the Internet.

There's an awesome beauty in the artistic endeavors that are made viable by the state - the pyramids were built by slaves. Bourgeois intellectual pursuits like writing, or painting, or music are made possible by wage-slaves.

So, if we concede this point in favor of the state, then it seems to me that the obvious question is: is it worth it? On a strict ethical/moral level - no. On a more nuanced, reality-based level: is this really some sort of weird, fucked-up "strange loop" that I'm stuck in? Human beings are inherently power-conscious and power-seeking. But we are also social animals that value equality. We love peace and we love war. We negate ourselves. In order for some of us to explore the limits of what it means to be human, some of us must suffer. We want one, but hate the other.

I don't know - I feel like I've pushed this argument to its limit and all I can think it that maybe on an individual level, the state is fucked, but on a social/community level, it is necessary, maybe even endemic. After all, isn't the state just an institutionalized version of the small community that knows everybody's business that the proverbial youngster has to flee because they just can't take it anymore? Doesn't make it right, but kinda makes it unavoidable.

Although, now that I think about it, it kinda validates a thought I've been chewing on - do modern cities create possibilities of eluding state control in the heart of the state itself? What with all those people, it becomes impossible (well, before the Internet - I love blogging, don't you?) for the state to keep effective tabs on everybody. Our proverbial youngster generally flees to the closest urban area or New York, or maybe LA. It is there that they might be able to express their individuality, fly beneath the radar of the state by getting lost in the multitudes, and be free. (The Matrix comes to mind here - probably should watch that one again.) On the other hand, said proverbial youngster also needs to eat, which entails a job (probably), which entails plugging into the state in one way or another 9 times out of 10.

We're fucked, aren't we?

To State or Not to State

I have a long and twisted relationship with the State (capital S).

On the one hand, I'm an anarchist - I hate the state.

On the other hand, US history has some pertinent things to say about the value of the state - women's rights, abolition, civil rights, etc. etc. would not have happened without the power of the state behind it. Without the state, the tyranny of the majority reigns.

So, state power has its benefits.

But I also believe it is inherently bad. The state mainly exists to perpetuate itself and its power - those who defend the power of the state tend to be the beneficiaries of the state.

I'm reading James Scott's The Art of Not Being Governed, subtitled: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. I've loved Scott ever since I was introduced to his work in graduate school. He uses his deep anthropological research and political/historic analysis to comment on broader issues like power-relationships within communities, the arts of resistance, and in this case, how people avoid state power.

His historical analysis, in this case, describes the way states are formed by incorporating people from the surrounding land (ie - it's not so much inspiration as oppression that makes state formation possible). The people who support the state are the people who live the good life on the backs of, usually, slaves.

I keep thinking about our modern era - are there spaces to escape the power of the state? What about squatter communities? Is my unwillingness to drop off the radar of the state really fear of living a free life?

Also, I definitely benefit from the state (I'm a teacher, after all). Does my position as a teacher in an urban school make me complicit in the control the state seeks to assert over my students? After all, the vast majority will be incorporated into state systems of work and control in one manner or another - in low-wage jobs that make money for their corporate owners, or in prison. The few I've inspired may, if the opportunities present themselves, find themselves beneficiaries of the same system that will oppress the rest.

Schools of Quality

I have to admit that I'm a bit of a language purist. I also happen to make plenty of mistakes and errors, but like all good Americans, I like to ignore my own foibles and focus my ire and frustration on others who err.

This would apparently include people who use edu-jargon. That rarified language that is used by those trying to sound sophisticated and expert, but in fact end up just looking like they don't know how to use the English language. It's oxymoronic in a way (heavy on the moron), if you stop to think about it. After all, here is a group of people that presume to be educators, that are responsible for students learning the very language that these so-called educators consistently mangle and abuse.

Latest case in point - a letter written by a superintendent of a school district to the teachers of said district.

To paraphrase 2 examples that stand out:

1) "We are making strides in our efforts to graduate students college ready."

2) "All schools should be schools of quality."

The first one is irritatingly awkward, and in my opinion (could be wrong here) at the very least a hyphen b/w "college" and "ready" would help immensely. However, I find the whole construction to be leaden and would opt to trash it and start over. I hate the phrase, "We are making strides in our efforts to . . ."

The second one is just stupid - it sounds all smart and stuff, but really, what's wrong with "quality schools"? How does the "of" help convey meaning? It doesn't. In fact, it makes the sentence harder to read. This is just stupidity posing as intelligence.

Maybe the problem isn't that the curriculum is being dumbed down, it's that the people in charge are down-right dumb.

Memory

It's funny how memory works in its random fashion.

Like doing laundry.

Which reminded me of a conversation I had with my sister and an old friend of our family, Cassandra, who was visiting as my mother lay dying on the sofa bed in the livingroom. We were gathered together to visit and take care of her and she was flitting in and out of consciousness - sleeping mostly. So we talked. My sister and Cassandra talked about doing laundry - how to keep colors bright. I, in my ignorance and general lack of interest in such things, made an ass of myself by declaring that it was my practice to just throw all my clothes in the machine, add the cup of detergent and press start. I've often thought excessive attention to the niceties of material goods to be a bourgeois trait that a communist such as myself would never deign to emulate.

My parents were good members of the bourgeoisie. My father, an incredibly gifted man, is an architect and his personal life-project has been remodeling the house I grew up in. My parents bought the house shortly after I was born. It's an old Victorian - I remember the day my father told me it had turned 100 (well, it probably wasn't the exact day, but it was the year). It had been remodeled successively probably by every owner since it was built. Structurally, it was sound, but a bit of a mess. My father's life project essentially has involved gutting the house room by room and remodeling each. Problem is, what with maintenance, and the fact that some rooms can't be completed until others have work done to them (running electrial wire and pipes necessitate multiple-room rehabs) . . . well, let us just agree that it is a multiple-life project and admit that there are still rooms that lack ceilings. Dad was particularly proud of the stepped ceiling he designed and installed in the living room that my mother would later spend the last remaining months of her life in. At one point, my mother disparaged that intricate ceiling as "so bourgeois" which was a bit of a shock considering that I had always believed that she aspired to bourgeois-hood, which she did. I think, mostly, she just wanted the fucking house done, which was an impossibility given my father's creative impulse combined with his insistence on flawless execution, combined with the fact that he also has a day job.

When I think about my mother lying in her last days, I think about how brave and strong she was. How she faced the terror of death with stoicism, but a human, tender stoicism. A grace. Like the time I visited her in the hospital, when nobody knew what was going on, not the doctors, not the family, not even her. All we knew was that she was having some sort of weird seizure - and she, herself didn't even know that - which is one of the things that terrify me most about her experience. The doctors finally decided that there was pressure building up around her brain because the cancer cells were preventing the spinal fluid from draining normally. They needed to do a spinal tap, more or less immediately. The doctors explained all the risks and benefits and the family had a quick conference, but what choice did we have really? Of course. Because of various and sundry timing difficulties, I was the only one with my mother when the doctor came to do the procedure. I sat in a chair and held my mother's hand as she lay on the hospital bed on her side. The doctor, behind her, prepared himself and I held my mother's hand and she looked into my eyes as the needle punctured her lumbar region. She didn't speak, but her eyes did - of determination mixed with fear of the unknown of the what-next. Of hope and pain and loss. Of strength and love.

It's funny what a rolled-up dirty white sock and a purple button-down shirt thrown carelessly together into a beat-up old top-loading machine can evoke.

Politicians, Waffles and the Media

I like the media, basically. I think they have their problems, but overall, I defend even corporate media as having its proper place in American society - I just take everything with a grain of salt.

I also am addicted to reading reader commentary, particularly on the Boston Globe website. This is a terrible addiction, it is very much bad for my health. Invariably, I am drawn to the comments on articles I know are going to get the stupidest comments and increase my blood pressure. And so . . . I read this one. It's a boring article, really. And not really very important, but it involves my Congressman, so I thought I'd catch up on what he's been up to. Turns out, he voted for a bill, but said that if that very same bill came before the House again, he would vote against it.

And, of course, the idiots came out of the woodwork. Don't believe me?

Read the comments . . .

Capuano's position is clear, really. He supports the majority of the bill, but he's against the abortion provision. He knows that if he votes against the bill, it will set back the process. If he votes for it, it still needs to go through the Senate and it will change in the meantime and probably (hopefully) lose that abortion provision. People who don't get this, don't get politics and really should have their right to vote rescinded.

He's not waffling. His diatribe against Coakley (which might be similarly flawed, but that's a political maneuver, not ignorance) in essence accused her of being politically naive - always voting your conscience is a good way to never getting anything accomplished - you need to play smart.

So, what do we take from this lesson?

1) People need to hone their critical thinking skills - if something sounds implausible, it probably is. If that little alarm goes off - do a little extra research. Go back to the source.

2) If you aren't doing the thinking, shut up. Your knee-jerk opinion is useless and only makes you look foolish.

3) The Globe is really partially at fault here. I hate to admit it, being the defender of big media (in its proper place) that I am, but the reporting is sloppy. Rather than taking the opportunity to explain the process, the Globe reporter is taking the opportunity to create a story here - the Capuano and Coakley feud. Sound bites win out over reason, even in print media - especially in an age when print media is losing ground to other media sources (of course, they aren't helping themselves by letting me read it for free online). In any case, the story only invites idiocy rather than elevating understanding, which is the putative purpose of the media, or at least I thought.

Be Your Own Hero

To what extent does our celebration of our past heroes get in the way of our being heroes or recognizing the heroes in our own time?

This question was inspired by reading somewhere the theory of ages in history (Age of Gods, Age of Heroes, Age of Men . . . As in: God = Lincoln, Hero = LBJ, Man = Obama - just to give an example that is wide-open to argument, but illustrates the point, I think).

Also, thinking about my own life and sense of impotence relative to my heroes (like my Mom).

Also, this post from Somebody's Daughter.

As a progressive/radical leftist, I might quibble with the yearning for capital and ownership of the means of production by individuals (rather than by the working-classes as a whole), but as far as integration goes, control of capital in the US is absolutely essential. If it is true that African-Americans are nary to be found in the hair-industry, then it is a sad irony that the industry itself was founded, basically, by Madame CJ Walker. I suppose it just goes to show that having heroes in the past doesn't necessarily have much meaning for the present. And I wonder if, under certain circumstances, worrying too much about celebrating past heroes (a la Black History Month) gets in the way of dealing with current issues. Is Black History Month a bourgeois scam to distract the proletariat from demanding change in their own time?

The Boston Book Festival

Ahh, books. And the authors that write them. And the ideas they have.

At the inaugural Boston Book Festival, I got a chance to hear Ken Burns (Documenting History), Cornel West (Matters of Faith) and Robert Pinskey (Poetry as Music). Crazy.

Some ideas that came up:

1) Our culture suffers from (is instrumental in creating) ADD - according to Burns, it is because we are overwhelmed by choice. According to Harvey Cox, it's technology. Mary Gordon describes a major theme of our society as: distraction. I've been thinking myself about the connection of this ADD to the glorification, commodification and capitalization of youth - children and, maybe more significantly, teens. Which is funny, because I'm also reading Chabon's Manhood for Amateurs, and just finished his essay on crap - which suggests that the crap of today is more damaging to kids than the crap of yesteryear. That today's crap suffers from the professionalized way that it is marketed to kids and the way that the adults who create the crap are stuck in their own childhood and how it prevents children from imagination and creativity because all the imagination and creativity of the crap has been placed in the crap by the adults who have created it.

2) Gordon had an interesting way of connecting two other themes in contemporary society: consumerism and fundamentalism. She described them as both "flattening" - by which she means that they replace/limit/constrict thinking. Consumerism means chasing after material goods uncritically and fundamentalism means that thought and reflection is replaced by dogmatic acceptance and obedience. I would also argue that there is a more explicit connection in that the consumer/capitalistic impulse makes a claim to fill a spiritual void that remains empty because of the inherent emptiness of material. Thus, spiritually empty, people turn to religion to fill that void. Fundamentalism appeals to a certain sector of that searching population because of its claims to legitimacy, simplicity, exclusivity, no matter how troubling and tenuous those claims may be.

3) Cornel West is freaking brilliant. Really. It's kind of pathetic, I suppose. But it kinda felt like being in the room with him you could feel the warmth from his brain, like a sun warming it's solar system. It was awe-inspiring really. It's not everyday that you can watch somebody so animated, pulling together ideas from all over the intellectual universe to make his points. Who else could/would reference Weber, Durkheim, Marx, Toni Morrison, David Hume, B. B. King, the Bible, slave spirituals, Sondheim, and Samuel Beckett, all in the space of about 25 minutes of talking (he shared the hour with two other panelists and a moderator) and not just referencing them, but quoting them (as in: "from the 25th chapter of Matthew" or "from the B-side of B. B. King's single "The Thrill is Gone"). And pulling all these ideas together to make a larger point about love and justice and religion and human nature. Favorite quote from the session: "Failing better is a major accomplishment." (I.e. - we're human so we're going to fail, but at least we can fail better . . .)

4) Finally, the Documenting History speakers made me think about the idea of documentary and really of history writing in general as exploring a moment but putting it into a context of a larger narrative (like - who are we?). Makes sense, and I'd thought about it before, but it seemed even clearer, for some reason. Also, Burns talked about the Obama election as being the beginning of Act III of the American drama. This got a lot of nods from the intellectual, bourgeois and mostly white crowd. (Act I: Declaration of Independence - Civil War; Act II: Gettysburg Address to 2009) That, combined with the other speaker (Scout Tufankjian, who photographed Obama from his days as a Senator through the inauguration) captured the hope of the campaign. But that hope seems to have largely dissipated. Obama's election was a moment of possibility, but it seems like we've mostly squandered that by assuming that all it took was one election to make things right.

On the Road in 12 hours or less

My darling wife is crazy, but in a good way.

We just finished a marathon reading of On the Road by Jack Kerouac that she organized at our humble abode. She got the idea from another crazy woman, an ex-colleague of mine in Los Angeles who organized an annual reading marathon. I still have a momento of one we attended in LA - the 13th event she had organized, in 2001, when we read 1984 by George Orwell, though the really committed nuts picked up Animal Farm as soon as they closed the cover of the first book.

The way a reading marathon works: one person begins with the first word and reads aloud for a while - a page or 2, or a sentence, or a paragraph or a chapter or whatever. Then they stop and somebody else starts reading aloud. There's no particular order, just whoever feels like reading, reads. People get up to get drinks, use the bathroom, have a cigarette. And you make your way through the entire book. We started around 5 pm, took a couple of breaks for dinner and stretching and so forth. We finished this morning at 5am, having read the whole book.

My wife made this happen. It's one of the things that I most love about her. She gets an idea to do something and she just does it, makes it happen. And so, she did. And despite my skepticism, it turned out really well. Admittedly, we only had one hardcore reader who stayed up with us, but 5 other people came in and out over the course of the night. It was cool to meet people and hang out and read together. It was even cooler to be there at the end having accomplished the goal.

On the Road was probably the perfect book for a marathon reading. It's written in a really poetic, lyrical style. I had never read it before, but found reading it aloud brought it alive in ways I wouldn't have caught otherwise. It's got a rhythm to it. Of course, given that it is a product of the Beat generation, jazz is the primary inspiration. It was funny though, we had a mix of jazz CDs playing all night in the background and so often the rhythm of the writing matched the rhythms of what we were listening to. It was a beautiful thing.

On the Road is also a book about crazy, counter-cultural, non-conformists who criss-cross the country looking for, well, God, maybe? Direction? Life? Love? Anyway, there was something of that realness in the people who participated in the marathon. People open to this crazy idea, who love literature enough to want to experience it in a different way, who see great art as a means for human connection.

I'm going to bed.

Treasure?

What is up with commentators and the more respectable newscasters (NPR, and, I think I've even heard Amy Goodman) using the term "treasure" when talking about war. It's bizarre, really. No, wait, I find it really disrespectful of the people who are actually killing and getting killed that people "above the fray" talk about the war in such euphemistic terms.

"Blood and treasure."

Like it's some kind of game.

It totally obscures the true nature of the war by invoking a knights and dragons scenario.

Why not talk about the fact that the war is doing irreparable harm to actual human beings on both sides of the conflict? Why not talk about the fact that war costs actual dollars, that American tax money is being expended in the pursuit of death and destruction?

This is such a sanitized war. It reminds me of how Americans must have perceived, say, the Spanish-American, or Mexican-American War. Except, now, the methods of sanitization are more sophisticated and the modes of communication give us the illusion of reality.

Granted, I don't watch television, so my news is coming via radio and magazine (Time), but the most powerful and real-seeming account of the current war I've come across is in book form: Dexter Filkins, The Forever War. If I recall correctly, he doesn't use the words Blood or Treasure (well, maybe blood, but certainly not in the capital-B sense of the word, and definitely not treasure, regardless of capitalization) once. But, then again, he actually went to Iraq and Afghanistan and spent time getting shot at and talking to all sorts of people. The war is a war to him, and not merely an abstraction where the US expends Blood and Treasure in the pursuit of Democracy, or Peace, or an End to Terrorism, but never has to face the fact that real human beings are being killed and maimed and scarred using real weapons that we, American taxpayers, using our collective economic strength, are paying for. (Remind me again why we can afford this war, but can't afford healthcare, education, better infrastructure, fighting climate change, etc.?)

A brief note on the economics of death in the war: In reality, the US is involved in both sides of the war. Clearly, American troops are paid and supplied using American tax money. But the insurgency in Iraq/Afghanistan is also supported by the US. Consider - American-made (buy USA!) weapons are finding their way into the hands of the insurgents. Also, because of the bribes that contractors (who receive their money from the US gov't) must pay in order to build infrastructure and basically operate in these countries, the insurgents are being paid by US dollars.

K'Naan - Wavin' Flag

Find more music like this on The Official K'NAAN Website

Check out the second song on the player above. It's my new favorite song of the moment. Perhaps I am biased by the fact that it has been selected as the official song of World Cup 2010. It reminds me of Bob Marley in tone and feel and message. K'Naan is apparently getting quite an intellectual following (recently featured on NPR), but I heard him first on Democracy Now. Really, the more I think about it, the more I think it might be the best radio/tv broadcast out there.

Manhood for Amateurs

Michael Chabon's newest book, Manhood for Amateurs just came out. He's my favorite contemporary American writer. He's just got an amazing way with words. His style is so smooth and seems so effortless, but is so perfect. It's like watching professional sports at their finest.

I got my hands on the book ASAP and read 50 pages on the train-ride home. Admittedly, I've only read 1/6th of it, but I can tell, already, that it is a-freaking-mazing. In those 50 pages I laughed out-loud 25 times (and got disturbed/disturbing looks from my fellow train-riders) and got tears in my eyes 10 times. Admittedly, there was some overlap there, but there had to have been 30 emotionally satisfying moments.

Manhood is a collection of non-fiction essays about life, society, and human nature through the eyes of Chabon as a father. My favorite moment so far:

"Every day is like a kid's drawing, offered to you with a strange mixture of ceremoniousness and offhand disregard, yours for the keeping. Some of the days are rich and complicated, others inscrutable, others little more than a stray gray mark on a ragged page. Some you manage to hang on to, though your reasons for doing so are often hard to fathom. But most of them you just ball up and throw away."

America, Thy Name is Hope

I met Larry today as I was walking out of the South Boston Education Complex.

He was standing in front of the building (for clarity's sake: the ex-South Boston High School) with tears in his eyes.

His story was that when he was 10-years old, (39 years ago) his sister attended Southie. Did I mention that this currently 49-year old was Black?

Apparently, his older brother and his friends had to fight there way into the school to rescue the sister and then fight their way out.

Larry had come to the top of Telegraph Hill, where the physical building is still located, and was staring in awe. It was a testament to the power of history. We talked briefly (mostly him, with me affirming), about how things are different now; how the school is diverse, and peacefully so. How most people in America seem to have accepted the fact that people can have different colored skin and still be human. (Although there are always those few assholes that will use any excuse to hate.) And we (he) concluded that slowly, but surely, America is becoming a better nation, a nation we might claim with true pride.

An Education Suggestion

Here's a lonely cry to the heavens . . .

I just wrote up my notes from interviewing one of my Vietnamese students about her experience in the US v. Vietnam. (Had to do if for the bullshit workshop I'm forced to take. So far, this was by far (and by far I mean lightyears) the most informative, helpful and interesting part - I'm rather grumpy over the fact that this workshop is eating up 2 of my Saturdays, more or less, in their entirety. Anyways, the point is that I, well, we, really - I'm not sure I've met a teacher who hasn't - have noticed that our immigrant (as in fresh off the plane) students tend to do better, despite the language barriers, than our homegrown. I think it's a testament to the educational systems in other countries, which, if the students have access (ie - money, which if they made it to America, they probably had something) are pretty rigorous and demanding and they, like learn stuff way earlier than we teach our students.

But, my student pointed out, here her classes push her to think deeper and more creatively. And to discuss stuff. Whereas back home, it was all pretty much rote.

And I got to thinking - maybe our problem is that we think that what is good for adolescents and adults is also good for elementary age kids. Maybe we're trying to be too creative with the young uns so that by the time they get to me (high school) they don't know their ass from their elbow, academically speaking, and trying to get them to discuss the merits of the French Revolution and political philosophy is an exercise in futility (okay - even that might be a little heavy for your average adolescent, just, like, period, but, you know what I mean).

So, maybe I'm just another high school teacher frustrated that so many of my students show up as 11th graders barely reading. And maybe it's easy to blame their teachers/schools in the lower grades. And I know that parents and a broader society that portrays schools as boring and people who like school as nerds, both play their roles, but I can't help but feeling that something is missing in those lower grades. Heck, even my parents were aghast at the education I was getting at (ahem - with snobby, elitist nose in the air) Newton Public Schools. They couldn't understand why I hadn't diagrammed a sentence until I was a Junior in high school. (I seem to remember my mum saying that she had done it in 6th grade or something.) I'm just saying that maybe we should be a little less creative when kids, for the most part, already love school, or at least aren't the jaded, apathetic, sarcastic, sophomoric specimens that they become in high school. That way, when I get them, actually getting a chance to discuss something will seem fun, or at least different, from what they've done all their lives. And, they might actually know something.

Ladies Night

". . . and, and, I, I, I was like . . . ladies get free drinks? Oooooooooooooooh, shoot . . ." - a lady

Ah, the wonderful world of cell phones. It's like you get treated to the intimate personal details of all the random people you never wanted to know more about. Is this sounding misanthropic, yet?

But it got me thinking all the way home. What struck me is that the lady's tone was as if this was the greatest thing that ever happened to her. Like she never had heard of ladies' night at the club. Imagine the eyes-wide, glassy look of the child on Xmas.

And while I fully admit my own naifishness and ignorance when it comes to the club-scene (extended digression: my understanding is that it is generally where people sometimes go to get their "freak on" and while I understand the basic nature of this term, I assuredly am oblivious to its full nuance. To extend the digression - the same goes for the related concept of the "booty call"), it seems pretty obvious to me that the object of said free drinks is not the pleasure of the ladies that imbibe said drinks.

And thus the club becomes, as far as I can tell, an object lesson in sexual exploitation.

After all, there is a reason that ladies get free drinks and gentlemen do not. The club is a business and clearly, if the ladies are getting free drinks, the club is only profiting on male-money. Why are the men there, spending money? One suspects that it is due to the ladies that are there. Why are men looking to meet (drunk) women? I would venture to say that it isn't for intellectually stimulating conversation about dialectical materialism over a cup of steaming coffee, with a warm handshake at the end. No - fearless reader - I'm guessing the guys are looking to have sex. As for the ladies . . . are they looking to score? Well, if so, why does it take "free drinks" to get them in the door?

My interpretation is that, basically, the club hopes that enough ladies will get so hammered they will end up waking up in the morning with regrets. That is what the alcohol is for, and what keeps the men coming back. Which makes this free drinks night just on this side of the line from rape.

Just something to think about on this lovely fall Friday afternoon.

The Power of Fiction

I just finished reading David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. I always get depressed when I finish reading a really good novel. Even when they end happy, I always want to know what else happened - what about the lives of the secondary characters? Or the tertiary characters? When I get to the last page, and close the cover, it's like I am closing a world. Like it's the end of an existence that I will never get to know more about.

I happened to be reading this 981 page (plus 50 or so pages of endnotes) tome as part of Infinite Summer. I've been keeping up with the posts at infinitesummer.org and mostly been kinda disappointed. Except for one that explored the idea of childhood and happiness. Or, conversely, adulthood and sadness. The argument was that children have an unbounded capacity for joy, whereas adults seem to have to work hard to find joy. I wonder why that is. I suppose that perhaps it has to do with the familiar axiom that ignorance is bliss. As a teacher, it also explains a lot about my students. And makes me wonder if teaching (at least as part of the institution that is public school) is really an exercise in pounding joy out of children.

Second reflection on fiction: Ralph Nader was plugging his new book on Democracy Now the other day. Now, although I voted for Nader in 2000 (relax - I didn't live in FL, my vote didn't hurt Gore) I can't say I'm a fan. But he said something that struck me: fiction allows for creative imagination. Now, this isn't an earth-shattering statement, I realize. But I've been making the argument for years that history is more important than fiction, because it is real. But, to be honest, it isn't all that hopeful. I think I'm coming around to fiction . . .

The Coming Civil War

Michael Tomasky has written a cogent, even-handed appraisal of the "Tea Party" activists. I think it is downright scary. The ideological nature of this movement is so closed-minded and self-contained and self-referential it seems impossible to break through. That is, you can't have a rational discussion with any of these people because they refuse to listen to anything that doesn't prove their point of view. After all, in their mind, the media lies, the president lies, the scientists lie, the liberal academic establishment lies . . .

I blame it, in part, on the left and the moral relativists who would argue that there is no Truth (with a capital T). Opinion is fact. Actually, scratch that, because opinion implies that there are some facts about which one has a different interpretation. One can have an opinion about whether Obama's plan will actually help or hurt you. But these aren't opinions, they are beliefs - people who believe things to be true that simply are not. You cannot correct people who believe, as opposed to think, that Obama's healthcare plan will take away Medicare benefits.

Tomasky's scariest point, in my opinion (it's something I think, not believe to be true) is that we are about to witness a "Nullification Crisis". Those of you who have no idea of the historical import of this, please wikipedia, or google, the term. It's a states' rights argument that was used by South Carolina to "nullify" tariffs during Andrew Jackson's administration. He had to threaten to use the military to enforce federal law before the states backed down. And guess what - Lincoln and Kennedy/Johnson faced the same arguments.

Welcome to American Civil War II . . .

Sad News at PIH

Dear Fearless Reader,

As you may have noticed, I haven't blogged in awhile. To be honest, I had given up. I started missing days, then weeks, of posts and then tried to get back into it, but it just wasn't the same. That, and I got a little disillusioned with the whole blogging thing. Self-doubt and a general feeling that I'd said everything I'd ever wanted to say crept in.

Lately, though, I've felt the need to express myself, so perhaps I'm back on the wagon. We shall see. Today I was inspired to break back into blogging by some very sad news. Apparently a surgeon working with my favorite organization in the world, PIH, was the victim of a homicide.

I've read about this guy, and he, like pretty much everybody associated with PIH, was just absolutely amazing. A beautiful soul doing the kind of work I wish I had the guts/smarts/general wherewithall to do. The fact that he was murdered is so just wrong on so many levels. It is what is so very wrong with this world.

I'm in mourning. I'd be depressed and despondent, I suppose, if I wasn't so angry. Anger is a gift.

Rest In Peace Josue Augustin. Here's praying that the rest of us get it together and create a world where this doesn't happen.

Right-wing Populists and Fascism

I heard a clip of Rush Limbaugh describing the health insurance reform being debated in Congress as Nazi-lite.  The argument: 1) it's a national plan, 2) it's socialistic; ergo: national socialism; ergo: Nazi.  But in reality, Rush and his cronies are the ones participating in a Goebbel's like propaganda attack that presents truth as lies and lies as truth.  It is most Orwellian.  I hate to draw the comparison to 1930s Germany, but the parallels are just glaringly obvious.  Right-wing ideologues using propaganda to appeal to emotions, to replace thoughtful debate with screaming rhetoric, to spread lies and rumors as if they were scientific truths, to spread hate, ultimately, to gain power.

Given the Right's supposed distaste for Big Government, I suppose we aren't in danger of a true Nationalist-Socialist (right wing) take over (although, I suppose I should be less sure of myself after the previous 8 years), but what I am more disturbed by are the possibilities of Russian-style pogroms led by right-wing, Christian fundamentalist terrorists.  Quite frankly, I don't think we are all that far from genocide, given the rhetoric.

The political climate now is a major crisis in the development of American democracy, though it is somewhat reassuring that we've seen similar crises over the course of our history and we tend to emerge okay, if not better than we were before.  The problem is that the Democratic Party, and more generally, the left, is not reacting more strongly to the hijacking of the national debate.  We need Obama to pull a Nixon, of sorts: give voice to the Silent Majority.  Why isn't there a major campaign to put a stop to the lies?  To organize the masses that were polling strongly for single-payer, but have now been drowned out?  Why isn't the left mobilizing?  Why have we become complacent?  

I heard Ralph Nader on Democracy Now! recently, and he was comparing today to the days of the Civil Rights Movement.  He was castigating the politicians for not providing the leadership, but in reality, the history of the CRM shows that politicians are reactionaries - it is a part of the representative system.  They have always responded to the political pressures that exist in the broader society.  Kennedy, Johnson, Congress didn't make the CRM successful; the CRM was successful because of the people on the ground, in the towns and cities of America, that created a social-political culture.  In the same way, we on the left cannot be complacent and expect that now that we've elected Obama our work is done.  As he himself pointed out, our work has just begun - we need to create the conditions that will allow him/force him to do what we want.  As I've made clear, my sense of how this is done is to be advocates for our causes against the proposals of the Right, rather than critics: to build, rather than to tear down.

Healthcare and the Right-wing

I was having a conversation with a family member today and, unsurprising given the participants it went to politics and, specifically, to the healthcare debate.  Now, normally, I try to avoid talking too much to said person, because our political perspectives are quite opposite and I always feel like I am wasting my time and it gets me all emotional and flustered and angry.  And, I suppose, he's done it again, 'cause it's 1am and I can't sleep.

Contention: Rahm Emmanuel's brother said that old people are less valuable to society - he's advocating healthcare decisions based on people's value to society.

My response: I haven't heard that, but that sounds super fishey - I'm skeptical.

Counter-argument: well, he said it - you can read his words.

So, I wrestled with this the rest of the night.  It's certainly not something I would agree with, and certainly not something that anybody on the "loony-left" I've ever met would agree with.  I remain skeptical: it must be out of context, it has to be twisted around to misrepresent what he meant.  But then I feel compelled to figure it out: what is going on here?

So I hit the web (just now).  First I found this article in the Chicago Sun Times.  Okay - Emanuel defends himself; he's never advocated death panels; okay - but what got twisted?  So I searched some more . . .

And I found this message board with a link to his actual article that appears to have gotten everybody all up in arms.  If you read the posts to the message board, it is clear that either 1) the people claim to have read this article clearly, but have not; or 2) they have read the article carefully and still don't get it; or 3) they are just insane.

In the article, Emanuel is clearly dealing with very scarce medical interventions; organs, or vaccines in situations where there are way more people that need the intervention than organs or vaccines available.  It's kinda like the thought experiment we played in high school: You are in a boat with your mother, your significant other and your child.  The boat capsizes, all are knocked unconscious except for you.  You can swim to shore, but can only save one person, the others will drown.  Who do you save?  Emanuel is trying to do the same thing here.  The fact that we are saving some, means that others are going to be condemned to death.  What is the most ethical way of doing it?  Do you really propose condemning a thirty-year old person to death by refusing to give them an organ so that a 95 year-old can squeeze out another year?  Maybe I am cold-hearted.  Maybe it's because I am young.  But I'm sorry - I find Emanuel's argument compelling.

Okay - let's put aside the craziness of what is really an ad hominem attack on Rahm Emanuel's brother.  Let's say the argument is that people are not comfortable with letting the federal government make these decisions.  That it is too statist, too reminiscent of Joe Stalin's USSR.  What I notice is that Emanuel is presenting a nuanced, multi-faceted approach that is not one-size fits all, but that incorporates a number of different factors to increase the fairness of the system.  

Perhaps the biggest argument against the status quo in my book is that the decisions are still going to be made.  Somehow, someone is going to decide who lives and who dies, in this situation.  (And let's remember, it is a narrowly defined situation.)  Absent a methodical triage system, it is left up to money.  If you have the bucks, nothing else matters.  Of course, maybe that is the real fear of the radical right: perhaps they are afraid that under a different system it won't matter how much money they have, they'll actually get treated like everybody else.

Latest Read: Gulf Music

Pinsky, Robert.  Gulf Music.  New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2007.

Robert Pinsky, previously the poet-laureate of the US, has written a grand collection of poems centered on the here and now.  These poems are reflections on contemporary American life.  The title reminds one immediately of Hurricane Katrina, which is contemplated specifically in the title poem, but it also reminds one of the war in Iraq - the Persian Gulf.  And as such, Pinsky covers both domestic and foreign policy, but also, he considers the more mundane and the more personal.  Altogether, although some poems stick out more than others, this collection is a somewhat of a snapshot of life of all sorts in America in the first decade of the third millennium Anno Domini.

I'm also partial to Pinsky's voice.  The way he connects stanzas such that they have disparate ideas but transition so fluidly.  For instance, in "Gulf Music" the poem, which recalls the earlier hurricanes of the Gulf area, but forces one to think about the more recent and uses a sing-song, rhythmic chanting to conjure up thoughts of Cajun culture and voodoo magic - the hurricanes seem to be part of a spiritual unity:

New Orleans style borrowing this and that, ah wail-ah-way la-la,

They probably got "714" from Joe Friday's badge number

On Dragnet.  Jack Webb chose the number in memory 

Of Babe Ruth's 714 home runs, the old record.

As living memory of the great hurricanes of the thirties

And the fifties dissolved, Civil Defense Forces 714

Also dissolved, washed away for well or ill - yet nothing

Ever entirely abandoned though generations forget, and ah

Well the partial forgetting embellishes everything all the more:

Alla-mallah, mi-Mizraim, try my tra-la, hotesy-totesy.

Another of my favorite poems is "Poem of Disconnected Parts," which strings together ideas that only obliquely refer to each other.  It begins:

At Robben Island the political prisoners studied.

They coined the motto Each one Teach one.

In Argentina the torturers demanded the prisoners

Address them always as "Profesor."

And continues from there.  Pinsky is clearly indicating/indicting the torture of prisoners under the Bush administration, but also raising questions about education.  Is it revolutionary or reactionary?  Well, it depends on the context.  For the ANC education was revolutionary.  For the powerful, education is a means of control.  Is it a matter of what is being studied?  Or is it a matter of the context in which things are studied?  As a member of the teaching establishment, I'd like to think the former.   The post-modern in me thinks there might be something to the latter.  Pinsky (incidently - also a member of the establishment, at BU) raises the question and it is one to grapple with.  It is to his credit and our benefit, that he raises that and many more in this enjoyable book.

The Problem with X

I've been reading about the Chicano movement and it occurs to me that cultural nationalism, while important and helpful in some respects, continues to distract.  At heart, I am an internationalist in my communistic leanings and as such, anti-nationalist of any sort.  Nationalism seems to distract and ultimately to become a rationale for maintaining capitalistic social structures within the nation.  

Ultimately, while nationalism can be a force for liberation, it also is a force for maintaining class-based oppression, especially within the nationalist group.  In college, it was a distinction between Risorgimento nationalism in 19th century Italy (a nationalism of liberation) and say, the fascism of Mussolini's brand (a nationalism of domination).  But, really, these are not distinct phenomena; they are two faces of the same coin.  Nationalism really is a distraction from true liberating revolution because it tends towards elitism and a weak critique of power structures.  Instead, the suggestion is that if only "we" had sovereignty, things would be better.  It is an appeal to clan rather than an appeal to humanity.

So, this is my problem with the Chicanos - many of the so-called revolutionaries who eventually became accepted into the bourgeoisie and lost the vitality of their argument.  It then, also, is a problem with the most popularized of cultural nationalists: Malcolm X.  And, ultimately, with a whole slew of totalitarian communist-nationalists like Stalin, or Mao.  Power, and ultimately wealth, continue to be allocated in unjust ways under nationalist systems and ideologies.

An Obama Critique

Ok, after all this gushing, perhaps a bit of perspective?  A more realistic approach?

Whatever it is, I think it needs to be prefaced by an acknowledgement that Obama was never, never claimed to be, the leftist-radical candidate.  He's essentially a Democrat, which means centrist.

Second preface: As much as people are upset with him for the following critiques, for the most part they are issues that really should be harder pressed by the American people.  As he said in the beginning: this isn't about him, it's about us.  He's going to (have to) govern more or less from the center.  Where that center is will determine what is feasible for him to do.  Some 90% of Americans want some kinda "single-payer" healthcare system, but do you think 90% of Americans have called up their Senator/Rep and told them that if we don't have single-payer in the next four months then their Senator/Rep should start looking for another line of employment?  Somehow I don't think so.

Okay, so what are my critiques (besides the larger affirmation of capitalistic means of production and social structuring which I can hardly fault him for as he's been pretty much up front about that since day 1 and is a non-starter in America these days, but yet, ironically, is at the root of many of the following critiques, even if most Americans don't recognize it as such).

In no particular order . . .

1) healthcare . . . we need single-payer, we need it now and it looks like we'll probably get enough "reform" that everybody can go home to their constituents, but not nearly enough to fix the fundamental problems.

2) Honduras.  It's not being played completely wrong, but I worry . . . the rhetoric doesn't seem forceful enough (though that's not really his thing)

3) "Terrorism" Detainees . . . it seems like political expediency is trumping justice here.  Not particularly surprising, but disappointing, and well, really a major moral failing.

Over all though, I still think he's worth supporting and on some level we need to support him because he's "our guy" at the moment.  He's not perfect, and we should tell him when he's not living up to our expectations, but we also need to remember that it isn't just about him.  It's also about us.  And we shouldn't mistake our own rhetoric and opinions for real organizing and action.  A lot of yelling and righteous indignation don't make change.

Obama's Alright by Me

Why does everybody (this goes particularly to the left) wanna criticize Obama?  I can understand it from the right (even if it's frustrating to hear the same old crap).  But Obama is doing a really good job - he just has certain calculations.  

For starters: he's the President of the United States.  As in: the whole enchilada.  He's not the President of the Democrats.  He's not the President of the Progressives.  He's not the President of the Single Payer Healthcare Advocates.  He's not the President of Black People (despite the scary shit you might hear out of the mouths of the neo-Nazis).  He's the President of the United States of America.  It's like everybody who thought his 2004 DNC speech was freakin' amazing just missed the whole point.

My point, anyway, is that he gets it, Bush did not.  That's what makes Obama good - at least in my eyes.  He's not a partisan, he listens to all sides, and makes the best decision.  You can tell that he's sensitive to Republican concerns - he takes them seriously, unlike GWBush who felt that he was the decider and that he had a mandate to do whatever he wanted.  He was the President of the Republican Party, Obama is the President of the US.

To all lefties out there - don't let the perfect get in the way of the good!

On the other hand, I wish he would be a bit more forceful towards those on the right.  One thing that he hasn't used (and as far as I can tell, nobody has since maybe Reagan), is the bully pulpit.  The good ol' technique of Theodore Roosevelt - if Congress isn't doing what you know the American people want done, you go directly to their constituents.  Why hasn't there been a direct and public call for citizens to call their representatives and tell them to get busy on healthcare reform (I think if he really wanted to put all of his political capital in one basket, he could even push single-payer through)?  Well, there has been a quiet organization happening through the same networks that got him elected, and perhaps he's wary of making too much noise and pissing people off.  On the other hand, he has to know that politics is and always will be a game of power and that if he doesn't assert his, somebody else will.  

In any case, we on the left need to criticize where it matters: we should be continuing the critique of the Republican ridiculousness.  RNC Chair Steele's attack on the Obama healthcare plan was just plain stupid.  He brought out the same, old, sorry excuses that they've been using for years - it's socialistic.  A bureaucrat is going to control your health, not a doctor.  It's too expensive.  Taxes are going to go up.  I suppose it just goes to show that the GOP is grasping at straws now that they're in the minority.  They must resort to obvious empty rhetoric, lies and scare tactics, as they have nothing cogent to bring to the table.

On a side note - am I just being cynical, or is it just like the 'publicans to run a woman for President (2012) and have a black RNC chair during a period where they are in the political hinterland.   Somehow, when the Dems drop the ball and the Reps are back in the White House, I just don't think the President is going to be all that different looking than the vast majority of the party: old, white and male.

What's the Plan?

What do we want?  What are we fighting for?  Are we even fighting?  Or are we merely criticizing?

It seems, somewhere in the last 30 years, we've lost our revolutionary traditions.  I'm tempted to point to the success of the Civil Rights, Women's Rights, Chicano, etc. movements at changing bourgeois culture.  The problem is that all of those organizations left behind and/or forgot about the working-classes.  Additionally, socially, we've fallen into some bad habits.

1st) The 60's movements' bourgeois rhetoric that emphasized the rights of the individual rather than collective rights (or used the a rhetoric of collective rights to win individual rights) has us today focusing on similar battles for justice instead of critiquing deeper, capitalistic injustice that runs across race, gender, ethnicity.  As long as we keep fighting for a piece of the pie we will never develop a praxis that rejects the pie altogether.

2nd) We have privileged voice, articulation and argumentation over straight-up organizing.  I think it has to do with the way that our education system has taught morals and/or the way that democracy is supposed to work.  As long as you are speaking out against injustice then people will see the righteousness of your communication and then join you.  Real organizing is door-to-door and face-to-face (see 3 below for another argument for why this isn't happening).  When was the last time somebody knocked on your door to talk to you about the revolution?  (Though I did have a couple of volunteers from the mayoral campaigns stop by . . .)  We don't know how to organize anymore - the success of SNCC and the UFW (to name merely two organizations) came from organizing communities door-to-door.

3rd) We don't really talk to people anymore.  I blame it on television and/or the internet and/or the DVD.  We've lost human connection and so we don't know how or we're too scared (or maybe I'm just talking about myself) to knock on doors and introduce ourselves.

4th) So what should we be fighting for?  Better wages, more (and better) opportunities, more local, community control.  How should we do it?  By organizing.  1st step personal goal: get involved in a pre-existing local neighborhood organization; maybe I'll meet my neighbors and learn some things about organizing . . .

A Good Teacher

I've had many conversations about this one, and despite being in a faculty meeting and being told that it is an inappropriate topic of conversation, it still interests me.  And I've never understood what makes teachers so scared of this question.  I mean, I get it - believe me, I get it: there are administrators out there that are incompetent, conniving, power-crazed, just plain crazy, etc., etc., etc.

But, on the other hand, good teaching is good teaching and I've always lived by the credo: come get my job.  I'm going to do the damnedest I can to teach the best way I know how and be the most professional I can be, and if I'm that bad, then if some nut-job goes after me, and nobody stands up and calls bullshit, no students, no colleagues, nobody . . . well, perhaps I didn't deserve to be in the classroom anyway.

So, that out of the way, what makes a good teacher?  Of course, most of my conversations on this topic have been with other teachers I consider to be outstanding, and given the respect that teachers get in this society, maybe this is all for nought, but the latest conversation made me think.  I, hardly surprisingly, had/have an opinion: what separates the good teachers from the mediocre/bad/ones that should go get another job: the ones that are always thinking about their practice and thinking about how to improve it.  A friend of mine put it better: adaptability - which covers a much broader range of skills.  I tend to think about how to improve after the fact - adaptability is about adjusting in the moment (not my strength - which maybe explains my frustrations and self-doubt).  Anyway, the overall point here is that good teachers don't tend to be static or stuck in their ways.

The MAT program at Duke U.'s mantra is "A.L.E.R.T.": "A Liberally Educated, Reflective Teacher".  (It's kinda amazing I still remember that after all these years, especially as it was first introduced to me on the, like, last day of classes when we were told that accreditation people would be popping by and if we didn't say anything else we should at least repeat the mantra.)  The point, of course, is to always be thinking about what you are doing so that you can make adjustments if things aren't working well, or could work better.  In that sense, good teachers are born, not made.  I'm not sure you can really teach that, which is why it is so hard to figure out who is a good teacher and who isn't until they get up in front of the class and teach a couple of years.

Power Corrupts and Blinds

Everybody knows that power corrupts.  It's become cliché.  But it also blinds - how else can the powerful proclaim that although power corrupts, they, themselves, have not been corrupted.  With power comes the sense that one is so powerful that one is incorruptible.  It's so easy to criticize others, and so difficult to recognize one's own fault, even when one looks.

I knew a man who had a position of power and actually verbalized his own understanding of the "power corrupts" cliché as meaning that his power corrupted the way that other people saw him.  That is, that people just didn't understand what he was doing or why he was doing it.  That his actions and intentions were pure, but the fact that he was doing them with power backing him, meant that people misperceived him.  Of course, in reality, he was corrupted and blinded to his corruption, for really that is the corruption - one always thinks that what one is doing is "right" or "justified" or at the very least "not wrong".  Otherwise, one wouldn't do it - human beings generally don't go out of their way to consciously do evil, or at least psychologically protect themselves by convincing themselves that they aren't evil, or that the ends justify the means.

The other day I met a lobbyist who refused to admit, despite persistent questions from an otherwise sympathetic audience, that lobbying was at minimum problematic; that there was something anti-democratic about people with lots of money hiring other people because of their contacts to use those contacts to push legislation.  I've met other lobbyists who at least admitted that it sucked but that it was the way the system worked.  This one, though, kept defending her job because she was promoting "good" legislation - her power had corrupted her and blinded her to the fact that she had an inordinate amount of power compared to, say, the average citizen, because of her contacts.

I know that in my own case I have used the power of being a teacher expeditiously, rather than cautiously, sometimes frankly, coercively.  I'm not particularly proud of this fact, more like disappointed in myself.  One can only try, I suppose, but one needs to at least acknowledge the fact that it's a difficult path and that occasionally one strays.

Latest Read: Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Friere, Paulo.  Pedagogy of the Oppressed.  New York: Continuum Publishing, 1970.

This is a classic in progressive/radical education and I suppose I should feel ashamed that it's taken me this long to read it.  However, it's one of those things, like Das Kapital that I've read so much about, that I always sort of thought I knew what it was about, so I didn't need to read it.  Turns out, this time, I was right - and, I was disappointed.

Which isn't to say that the book isn't worth reading or isn't valid.  Only that after 10 years of practical experience, it made me wonder about the applicability of the theory to my classroom.  I suppose, my dissatisfaction is also a sign of how conservative I've become in my old(er) age.

Friere's thesis is that 1) education for the oppressed should be helpful to their revolution, and 2) the education should be student-centered; students should decide on the curriculum, fitting it to their needs.  As he puts it, "the distinction [is] between systematic education, which can only be changed by political power, and educational projects, which should be carried out with the oppressed in the process of organizing them."  I like this in theory: the pedagogy's focus is on revolutionary praxis on the outside (purpose) and on the inside (practice).  And Friere's really talking about adult education.  In fact, his own experience is with adult literacy programs in rural Latin America in the 1960s.

Does the same theory apply for high school students in 21st century urban America?  Here are the problems, as I see them: 1) teenagers, being teenagers, lack impulse control.  2) American teen-agers, brought up on American media, consumed by American consumer culture, are extraordinarily self-centered.  3) I'm sure this is revolutionary heresy but, I've come to believe that we need some sort of standard education - what you learn cannot just be what you are interested in, there has to be a (heavy) component of - this is what we, as a community, need to learn.  Education is a tool of socialization and I think this is a positive, not a negative, thing.  Or at least, can be.  It's not socialization, so much, that's the problem, it's the society that one is being socialized into that is either good or bad.  So, then, it's not about whether students should be "forced" to learn things, but rather, what things they are learning.

Class as the Root Problem

Ok - so, back in the day (God, I'm getting old, this has to have been over 10 years ago now) I tried to make the case that class issues (read: warfare) should be the main direction of leftist action moving forward.  The person I was talking to, shot me down and argued that class was only one mode of oppression, and that all modes of oppression should be equally targeted.  How can you prioritize?  I was won over intellectually, although in my heart of hearts, I always thought I was right, though couldn't really articulate it.  Here we try again. 

My thoughts lie in what I'll call the hierarchy of oppression in America today.  I want to situate this in space and time; there may be other times and places where this theory won't work.

The first hierarchy of oppression is based on the concept of the nation: who's in and who's out.  It is the most basic form of Othering - powerful folks will side with powerless folks against other powerful folks when there is a national threat.  This actually might be lessening somewhat, especially if you believe Hardt and Negri (see their book: Empire).  Anyways, I still it is useful and appropriate, and it is the most basic form of Othering.

The second most basic form is class.  Rich folks will side with other rich folks of whichever race or gender or whatever against poor folks.

Next is race.  Race, of course, is all sorts of wrapped up with class in the US, but I still think rich white folks see more in common with rich black folks than they do with poor white folks.  (Of course, if you look at it from the bottom up, it might not look the same, but I'll argue that we need to focus on the powerful, not the folks that are fighting each other at the bottom.)  That said, I think it is telling that blacks who make it into the bourgeoisie are often described as acting or being white.  This is a class-based attack couched in racial terms.

Gender and sexual orientation and all the rest of it comes afterward.  These are largely fights that take place within the context of a culture.  Nation, Class and Race all imply inter-cultural conflicts.

Ultimately, I think we need to focus as high up the hierarchy as possible.  I'd like to see an anti-national movement, and in part I think there is one developing in a pro-immigration sense.  But on the other hand, I think it is an awfully hard sell, and ultimately, I think citizenship is a valuable construct for fighting a lot of the other battles farther down the hierarchy.  Instead, I think we should be fighting the class war.  Everything else is a distraction that ultimately only reinforces the class-based system.  To the extent that the women's rights movement, or the civil rights movement or the gay rights movement have succeeded, it's all been about gaining access to the middle class, not about making fundamental changes in the economic structure that leaves millions of people oppressed.

Oppositional Culture

How does a culture of opposition develop?  According to James C. Scott (whose book Weapons of the Weak not only is a favorite, but is one that I will be reviewing in a few weeks) opposition culture develops out of the grievances that the oppressed express to each other.  But my take, anyway, is that a revolutionary oppositional culture needs to be directed at specific individuals that can then be said to violate a norm that is proposed by the revolutionary culture.

The problem is that the dominant, hegemonic culture defines the values and behaviors that earn power.  People without power have two choices for gaining power: adopt the values and behaviors that the hegemon teaches lead to power (it has been pointed out that drug dealers are good capitalists, for instance), or develop a new culture that may or may not change the power relationships that currently exist.  Scott also points out that so-called revolutionary movements created in the name of the peasants have often merely replaced the power elite with a new power elite, and sometimes (usually) even made things worse.  See Communism (big C), more or less.

One can hardly blame the oppressed for deciding that it makes more sense to dream of one day being powerful than to dream of one day ending powerlessness.  But, the revolutionary dreams differently, I suppose.  The question is whether or not there is a strong enough culture of opposition.  It seems like in America today, there are few people to blame specifically - there's Madoff, but he's behind bars, and is an isolated (yeah, right) case.  In Boston, I can't understand why more people aren't furious at Mayor Menino, and all I can think is that he's a good Democrat, so the citizens that associate with the Party think he's looking out for them.  And he says a lot of the right things, and even gets the city to do some good things for the citizens of Boston.  

The real movers and shakers in Boston, hell in the nation, are in the Fortune 500.  They are the ones that are creating the world we live in.  They are the ones that make millions while the rest of us, well, don't.  But we don't know who they are.  It's not like we can point to so-and-so and the policy decisions that s/he is responsible for and say: that person is oppressing us.  Our experience has become so bureaucratized - in our lived experience with government, with our employers - that we don't know who to blame anymore, except "the system".  Hard, really, to build a revolutionary culture in opposition to that - it's not concrete enough.  A person, an individual who you know and can see and ultimately judge based on the values of your revolutionary culture, that's what's needed.

On Class

So, the typical understanding of class is connected to economic, or social status.  That there are three classes: Upper, Middle, Working.  If you dig a little deeper, these are then divided into subclasses (Upper-working, Lower-middle, etc.).  Are these categorizations still useful?  Well, sort of.

First of all, the history of the development of the notion of class is tied more-or-less directly to the Industrial Era.  Pre-capitalist societies tended to be caste systems: aristocracy, kings, peasants.  With the rise of a true middle-class along with capitalism and industrialization, the rigid divisions began to fall away and classes developed.

But this was also a time when one understood class and associated with others based on class divisions.  Being working-class meant something in terms of identity, and that doesn't appear to be the case, at least not in the same way as it used to.  So, I wonder if class is a useful term anymore, at least in America.  There definitely is a sense of haves, have mores and have nots, but there isn't the same sense of identity.

So, then, as a revolutionary, what is one to do?  Should one (or the better question is, can one) encourage the development of a "working-class culture"?  How does one do that if people don't identify as working class?  Is there another identity structure that can be used to encourage the development of a revolutionary culture? 

Politics of Indirect Embarrassment

Thesis: Only members of oppressed, dispossessed, disenfranchised, and otherwise Other groups feel second-hand embarrassment.  That is, when one of their members does something that meets the negative stereotypes of the dominant culture, there is a sense of embarrassment among others in the group that are fighting the negative stereotype.

I see myself as a member of several groups, most of which are Othered in one way or another.  Punks, Communists, Latinos (sorta), Men (I'll make the argument more fully below), I see myself in solidarity with the working classes, although I wouldn't call myself a member, I'm definitely bourgeoisie in terms of social and economic class, I'm also pretty definitely White.

I feel embarrassment for others when: punks fulfill the worst stereotypes of obnoxious, selfish, drugged up and stupid.  Communists are either paranoid, stupid or "moon bats".  Latinos are lazy and smoke a lot of dope.  Working people are ignorant, conservative, and hawkish.

With men, since most of my friends/liberal East Coast American social group have cultural standards that demean macho men, macho men are definitely Othered in my social context as men.  Sincerely sexist commentary is embarrassing to me.

As far as bourgeois people and White people acting according to their worst negative stereotypes, it doesn't embarrass me, as much as make me angry (since their worst negative stereotypes are connected to their abuse of power).  Since acting stupid is not a part of the stereotype of the White bourgeoisie (since they have power), it isn't something that causes second-hand embarrassment.

Shame, Where art thou?

Like many a conservative, I blame a lot of our problems on the 60s.  Only difference is, the conservatives think the 60s radicals screwed things up by bringing change.  My take is that they screwed things up by changing the wrong things.  Certainly, some of those changes were necessary - the Civil Rights movement being the most obvious.  But, the CRM was important in as much as it was a class war - a war of oppressed, poor Black folk against the wealthy powers that were.

Unfortunately, most of the rest of the 60s were culture wars, and as such, were wars for individual freedom, not collective freedom.  And, as this got translated to the bourgeois hipster youth, and the New Left, any real understanding of the American working class was lost.  In its place, the way for bourgeoisie youth to strike out against the bourgeoisie culture of their parents was by essentially doing away with the cultural restrictions that were in place - that is, to be shameless.  Being "yourself," whatever the hell that means, became the new cultural standard.  In short, fuck society, the individual is more important - pretty much the same hegemonic cultural values and ideology, but now stripped bare of any social constraints.

As a result, shame, a powerful, and important aspect of cultural, and therefore, community stability, has been lost on all levels.  The individual and shamelessness is the true American hegemony.  The following is from a footnote in James C. Scott's Weapons of the Weak:

Erving Goffman has captured the strange power that those without shame can exercise.  "Too little perceptiveness, too little savoir-faire, too little pride and considerateness, and the person ceases to be someone who can be trusted to take a hint about himself or give a hint that will save others embarrassment. . . . Such a person comes to be a real threat to society; there is nothing much that can be done with him, and often he gets his way."

What Torture Debate?

Dear NPR,

I heard an interview with your ombudsperson, Alicia Shepard, on the radio program, On the Media.  It was the kind of hard hitting interview I wish there was more of in the American press.  I think it says something about you that 1) it was so challenging, maybe even hostile.  Probably the most of any story in any medium from any source (okay, this might be a little hyperbolic) of the year (this is a good thing) but also 2) it was challenging to . . . yourself, NPR.  How messed up is it that you are so critical of yourself and not so critical of, say, Dick Cheney?

The interview came down to whether or not NPR should call water-boarding torture, or "enhanced interrogation techniques".  Your ombudsperson claimed that NPR should "present the facts and let the listeners decide."  But in trying to have some level of objectivity you are allowing Cheney, et al. to perpetuate a rhetorical strategy that uses untruths as political perspective.  It's like the climate change debate - they yelled and screamed and found "scientists" willing to compromise their integrity, and they manufactured a debate.

Actually, I think this is ten times more cut and dried.  This is really a case of apples and oranges.  Or really, oranges.  There are those of us who want to call torture, torture; and oranges, oranges.  There are those of us who prefer to call torture, "enhanced interrogation techniques"; and prefer to call oranges, apples.  And then there is your ombudsperson who seems to prefer that NPR describe the fruit - it's orange, it's got a thick, pithy peel, it's got a sweet fruit that many people ingest as juice in the morning - and let the listeners figure out that it is an orange.  This seems overly convoluted since there is a perfectly good word that we can use to describe what happened - it's torture.

I hope that NPR thinks about their journalistic standards in a way that is more complex.  Coming down on the side of Truth is never a political decision, although it may have political repercussions.   Using euphemism or avoiding words merely because they are made politically controversial by one party or another is not objectivity, or fairness, but is rather a disservice to your listeners and to your greater mission, which is to provide information and understanding of the world around us.  In other words, don't worry about being so damn politically correct, call things what they are, and hit the politicians as hard as you hit yourself.

Sincerely,

DJO

Latest Read: Black Hawk Down

Bowden, Mark.  Black Hawk Down.  New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1999.

Generally, I'm not a huge fan of this sort of war story - it's all on the ground action, profiles of the soldiers involved, blood, guts, gore and action.  The problem is usually that there isn't enough analysis and context to put it all in perspective.  Bowden, on the other hand, really makes it work - most of his book is still bloody and gutsy enough to be the basis of both a Hollywood movie and a 1st person shooter video game; but it's also got enough macro analysis to make it worth reading from a foreign policy perspective.

Black Hawk Down is the story of Somalia during the Clinton years.  That's the bigger context anyway, really it's about two days or so in Mogadishu when a US Army Delta force and Ranger operation went really, really wrong.  The book is meticulously researched; while most of it is from the perspective of the US forces, there are also some Somali perspectives included - this helps create that bigger picture, too.

The action itself is lucidly written - the gore is particularly gory.  At one point I thought I wouldn't be able to finish due to the queasiness that was induced by a particularly bloody scene: One of the US soldiers was wounded in the leg and his femoral artery (or whatever the major one is) is severed.  The medic on hand (who was a good friend of the soldier) had to reach into the soldier's wound to try to grab the artery and close it off and he can't find it, so he has to basically dig up into the dude's body looking for it and eventually makes another incision to make another fruitless search.  It was really disturbing.

Anyways, the book presents the soldiers honorably, but also shows their problems - over confidence, naivité, too much information at times, too little information at times, and missteps, sometimes literally.  The Somalis are presented mostly from the US soldiers perspective, so it tends to be somewhat less than charitable, but in the end certain positive characteristics are evident - courage, resilience, street-smarts and, perhaps above all, inventiveness.  The US figured that the Black Hawk helicopters would be the source of overwhelming force, but the Somalis figured out how to counterattack and were able to bring down 2 of them and seriously damage another.

The book raises issues about US foreign policy - the lesson isn't so much that the US shouldn't have gotten involved in Somalia, but rather the nature of US involvement is questioned.  The policy that led to the disaster was an attempt to take out the most powerful warlord - the one that most Somali's supported.  The US has had a history of pushing our agenda, regardless of political realities in other nations.  This simply doesn't work.  Unfortunately, the lesson seems to have been lost in two terrible ways - on the one hand, the US does not get involved in conflicts it should (see Rwanda, or Darfur) to prevent humanitarian crises, but does get involved in conflicts to impose our imperium (see Iraq).  One day, hopefully, we'll learn.