For the Record

I am so angry right now that my stomach is tied in knots and my fists clench, but I’m doing my best to be, to use a Christian term, graceful. 

After posting a piece about Pastor Sean Harris advocating abusing children, one of my Christian relatives commented on my Facebook page. “When is the last time you have apologized to me for insinuating that christians are feeble minded, racist, hate filled etc etc etc? These are things you believe to your core (or so the many threads you have posted over the years here on facebook would suggest)” This is simply false. I can’t state that any more clearly. As I tried to explain, I have never implied, said, nor do I believe that Christians are feeble minded, racist, or hate filled. The most important people in my life are Christians. My wife, my parents, my siblings, and the vast majority of my friends are all Christians. Could anyone really think it's my core belief that all these people are racist or hate filled or feeble minded? Apparently, someone could, because he reiterated the charge with this qualifier: “I have been on facebook for several years and every post I have seen you make on religion paints believers as somehow less intellectual and capable of free thought as non believers, which is why I did not say those ARE your core beliefs, but rather I said it would seem that way based on the many threads you have posted on facebook.”

This is just wrong. It’s demonstrably wrong. If you were to go to my timeline right now and scroll down to yesterday, May 11^th, you’d see a video posted by my mother. My mother is very smart. She’s the furthest thing from racist (she majored in history with an emphasis in African American history before the term African American existed). Rather than being filled with hate, she’s devoted her life to sharing the love of Jesus Christ with her congregants as a minister, with her clients as a life coach, and is soon headed off to Egypt to share that same love with the people of Cairo, Egypt. Scroll down to May 3^rd, you’d find a post voicing my agreement with a quote from Barack Obama. Barack Obama is a Christian. He’s certainly intelligent. Nothing he’s ever said has ever struck me as hate-filled. Nor is he a racist. Back on April 28^th there’s a video of my son Noah performing with one of my students, named Dean. On April 21^st there’s a link to an article by Edward Norton. On April 19^th there’s a question from my friend Layli. Dean is Mormon. Edward Norton was raised Episcopalian. Layli is not a Christian. She’s a Bahá'í. I include her just to show that I respect people who aren’t Christians, too. (Layli’s not hate-filled, nor racist, and she’s a hell of a lot smarter than I am.)

Christians are tall and short. They are black and white. They are beautiful and ugly, inside and out. They are smart and stupid. The live, as far as I know, in every country in the world, and I’ll bet some of those scientists in Antarctica are Christians, too. There is so much variety among Christians that the only thing they all have in common is the same professed religion, and even that contains a multitude, because being a Christian means very different things to different Christians.

I am under no obligation to note, every time I agree with someone about something, that they are a Christian. “This person makes a good point. Oh, and by the way, she’s a Christian.” “This person said something that is not filled with hate. Oh, and he’s a Christian.” “This guy sure isn’t racist. Oh, and he’s a Christian.” It’s just as ridiculous as it sounds. I rarely write anything about religion on Facebook, but I’m also under no obligation to explain that some Christians are really smart and filled with love and the leaders of the civil rights movement every time I mention the faith. That’s absurd.

I can write about whatever I want. I choose to write about what is important to me. Sometimes that’s NBA basketball. Sometimes it’s politics. Often it’s just a funny thing my son has said. Among the things I write about, I not only feel that I can call out hypocrites, but that that I should. Now, this isn’t a religious imperative. My religion (if agnosticism can be called a religion) does not impose any moral edicts regarding my behavior. I have to choose that for myself. One of my pet-peeves is hypocrisy. I recognize that’s my personal issue. If your religious beliefs excuse hypocrisy, that’s your business. Posts on my blog or Facebook page are only that. Ignore them. But, back when I was a Christian, I was taught that Christianity also frowned on hypocrisy. So, when I see a professed Christian, especially a Christian leader speaking from a position of authority within the church, calling for a war, advocating child abuse, defending torture, or advancing the interests of the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor and powerless, I just can’t keep my mouth shut (or keep my fingers from doin’ the walkin’). 

Maybe that’s wrong. Maybe, since I’m not a Christian, it’s not my place to criticize. But, from where I’m sitting, too few Christians are taking Jesus’ advice to expel unrepentant people from the church. “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” (Matthew 18:15-17, NRSV). To me, it seems that some churches are reasonably faithful about this when it came to some kinds of sexual immorality, fraud, and some other infractions. However, when leaders advocate for violence, hatred, or oppression in other forms, this is accepted as a political difference of opinion, or an alternate interpretation of scripture. Even that is their business. I don’t have a vested interest in who Christians choose to include within their body. But when one of these Christians tries to influence public policy outside the church, using, in part, the authority provided by his or her association with the church, if the church can’t stand up for itself and kick this person out, it falls on people outside the church to say, “This person’s behavior is hurtful to people outside the church. If that alone is not enough to motivate his congregation to act, maybe the hypocrisy of his actions will be enough to motivate them to disassociate themselves from him.” Alternately, the demonstration of that hypocrisy to others outside the church compromises the hypocrite’s claim that their authority comes from that church. It undermines his political capital. I wish pointing out that a Christian is being hurtful to his/her neighbor were enough. It isn’t. Luckily, Jesus told his followers to love their neighbors, so when one is being cruel to his neighbors, or even being dismissive of the needs of the poor, the prisoner, or the oppressed, if he calls himself a follower of Christ, that meets the test for hypocrisy, too. Thanks for that, Jesus. Nicely done.

So, for pointing out the hypocrisy of some Christians (who, I believe, real Christians should expel from their midst), I am accused of “seeming” to express a core belief that all Christians are feeble-minded, racist, and hate-filled. This really has nothing to do with Christianity at all. It has to do with lazy reading. I never wrote such a thing or insinuated it. But here’s the irony that is so galling. My lack-of-religion doesn’t prevent me from making false accusations. If I wanted to read something into someone’s writing, come to a conclusion without being able to support it with any evidence, and then make wild accusations, I could. I’m not sure if there are any gods who exist, let alone care. Then, if someone called me on it, I could double-down and say, “Well, that’s just the way it seemed to me.” I wouldn’t be compelled by any scripture or divinity to offer an apology for the pain I’d caused. I choose not to do that because that’s not the kind of person I’ve chosen to be. In the past I’ve made cracks about conservatives and Republicans that were too broad. (I’ve never made these cracks about Christians, and “conservative” and “Christian” are not interchangeable terms.) When I realized I’d offended people, I went back and apologized. As an agnostic, I don’t have to do that. But this Christian relative of mine has, according to his own religion, sinned against me. He has borne false witness. I reserve the right to call out that kind of hypocrisy. 

That’s not a knock on all Christians. Just this one.

Response to Pastor Sean's Non-Apology

In case you managed to miss the viral video, a pastor in North Carolina named Sean Harris amused his congregation by advocating that they beat their children if they suspect the children of being gay. “Dads, the second you see that son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give them a good punch. OK?" I was one of the folks who sent Sean Harris a letter demanding an apology. To his credit, he responded. He didn’t apologize. Not really. But he replied. He sent me a link to his blogpost on Pastor Sean’s Blog in which he made his non-apology apology. There, he claimed that when he had said, “Can I make it any clearer?” and then proceeded to advocate breaking your child’s wrist and punching him, he was not making it very clear, because, “Clearly, I would like to have been more careful with exactly what I said, but sometimes I say things without enough clarity.” Pastor Sean sure talks a lot about clarity, doesn’t he? He now claims that, immediately after asking if he could make it any clearer, he “misspoke.” He doesn’t want people to do the thing he clearly told them to do. He just “was speaking in a forceful manner to emphasize the degree to which gender distinctions matter to God.” I guess that means these distinctions matter so much to God that He inspires people to misspeak to the degree that, “Parents should not punch babies or children,” becomes “Give them a good punch,” when stated forcefully. It’s so important that God caused Pastor Sean to say the opposite of what he believes? And yet, Pastor Sean continues his apology by writing “Either Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 are true and we should communicate the truth in love for fear of not entering the Kingdom of God or the entire Bible cannot be trusted to be the Word of God.” I would guess that’s pretty important to Pastor Sean. I would think it’s pretty important to his God, too. Is it so important that God might cause Pastor Sean to say the exact opposite when speaking forcefully? Would Pastor Sean misspeak and communicate something other than the truth in love for fear of not entering the Kingdom of God? Would that misspeaking include some hatred instead of love?

Pastor Sean ends his non-apology apology by whining about how he’s been called mean names by the LGTB community, “using ungodly and profane words.” It’s a good thing none of the men of his congregation are around to act on his advice, “Man up,” and whoop Pastor Sean for his whining. It’s also a huge relief to know that, now that his congregation has been made aware that they shouldn’t hit their children, when they abuse their gay kids verbally they will do so using godly and holy words instead of the ungodly and profane ones that have so wounded their pastor. He closes by criticizing the LGTB community for being intolerant. Yeah. Seriously. 

But I’m not in Pastor Sean’s congregation, nor am I a Baptist, nor am I a Christian anymore. When I posted the video, I made some crack about how I refuse to be associated with any religion that included Pastor Sean or his congregation. One of my Christian relatives accused me of dismissing an entire religion because of a “fanatical nut job.” But I hadn’t written that I lost my faith because of people like Pastor Sean. In fact, as a Christian, I tolerated them, even though I resented the association, precisely because I felt it was my obligation as a Christian to look beyond our disagreements and focus on what we agreed upon. I lost my faith for more fundamental, epistemological reasons. This is just a bonus. Now, from the outside, I'm very glad to not be wrestling to justify my belief in any religion which would associate me with people like Pastor Sean.

It’s too easy to point out how obtuse, cowardly, hypocritical, and heartless Pastor Sean is. Plus, it hurts his tender feelings. I'm more upset that his congregation laughed at their pastor telling them to beat their children, and that none of them had the courage to stand up for their own sons and daughters and the sons and daughters of their fellow congregants when he made those “jokes.” I wasn’t raised Baptist, but in our Presbyterian churches, when a child was baptized, we all stood up and made a very solemn promise to that infant and to his parents, saying that we would help raise them in the love of God. As I’m no longer a Christian, I won’t tell those congregants what that should mean to them, but I’ll bet the Baptists, no matter how homophobic, don’t interpret the love of God to include child abuse, and I doubt their rejection of infant baptism is a loophole for allowing it. So if they ever made a similar promise to the children of their congregation, someone (someone more qualified than Pastor Sean) might want to remind them of what that means.

Flash of Insight

I just had a flash of insight. Certain critics of public school teachers (read: Republican politicians) complain that teachers get long vacations in the summers. They also say President Obama shouldn't be re-elected because the unemployment rate is over 8%. During the summer, most teachers want to work but can't, and aren't paid. So, either teachers are not the evil, greedy freeloaders Republicans like to make us out to be, or President Obama has presided over an economy in which more than 8% of the population is spoiled by long vacations.

Which is it, Republicans?

Advice to the Graduating Class of 2012

I've been asked to offer some advice to our grads in our school's newspaper. Teachers usually offer some short quote, but I've never done well with brevity. I asked if I could write something longer, then put out a request for help on Facebook and got some wonderful suggestions from my army of wise friends. Here's my first draft. It should probably be shorter, but let me know what to add, cut, or fix.
 

College, the military, work: They’re all hard work. They’re much harder than high school. Imagine how easy your classes would be if you went back to middle school. That’s how easy high school is compared to the world beyond. Get ready to work a lot harder.

In college, don't worry so much about picking the right major that you avoid taking classes you are curious about. You may miss the thing you'll love to study, and that's more likely to lead to the career you are good at and truly enjoy.

That being said, take money seriously. Tax payers gave you a gift of a public education, and they didn’t expect a thank you card. Sallie Mae will expect your soul. (Your credit card company will be even worse. Avoid those guys.) Whether you get a student loan or a gift from your parents, learn that it’s real money and that you have to pay it back somehow. Hopefully, you’ll even learn that you have to pay society back for that public education, too.

Don't get a tattoo until you're at least 25. Some of you will ignore this advice, and, when you're older, you'll regret it. If you get a tattoo somewhere you can't hide during a job interview... Well, unemployed people have lots of time to think about their bad decisions.

When dating, try to find somebody you would be proud to introduce to your good friends and your parents. Recognize that the thing you will do most with this person, in the long run, is talk. Once you’ve found this person, if you want to keep him/her, keep talking.

Travel. Go to China. Go to Europe. Go camping in eastern Oregon. Go to Ashland, watch some Shakespeare, and travel to ancient Rome or a world filled with magic creatures. Travel by reading a good book. Just go. Traveling doesn't just increase what you know; it expands what you're capable of imagining.

The world can be a very difficult place. In some ways, it's going to get harder during your lifetime. You will have opportunities to make it better, and I hope you take those. But, more than anything, remember that the world is worth it; it’s filled with enough beauty and wonder to justify all the hope you'll need to get through it.

Oh, and keep in touch with your high school teachers. We deserve to hear about your successes, because we’re very proud of you.

Fast End to 2012 Red Wings Hockey Beard

Well, it's that time of year again. Actually, that time of year has come a bit sooner than normal. We have an annual tradition at the high school where I work; guys choose NHL hockey teams to follow and then begin growing our beards at the start of the playoffs. This is a clever ploy by one of my colleagues to trick those of us who are not NHL fans into following his favorite sport. Everyone is prohibited from shaving until his team loses (or wins it all). It does make us pay attention. Because I was born in Michigan, I have always chosen the Detroit Red Wings. This year, I didn't have much of a chance to grow a beard, because they were the first team knocked out of the playoffs.

I guess I was expressing my disappointment in the Red Wings by having my glasses on crooked? Anyway, I already had a goatee before the contest began, so, as you can see, that part is much longer than the rest (and is crooked, too). In the run-up to the games, I decided that growing a beard around a goatee wasn't such a big deal. Instead, I would go a step further and shave the Red Wings logo into the hair on the sides of my head.

Because they got booted so quickly, it's hard to even make it out.

I thought I'd wait until the second round to wear that out in public. Phew! Dodged that bullet. So I shaved it all off.

Then I remembered that there was a reason I'd grown a goatee in the first place. This always happens to me when I shave it. So I decided, What the heck! I'll go all the way and shave off my eyebrows, too!

Too far?

Are NBA Divisions Deciding Who Is #1?

I just noticed something you might find interesting, too. In the NBA, in both conferences, the teams that are in first place are both in the divisions with the least teams making the playoffs. In other words, the teams that look the best are in what seem to be the weakest divisions.

For those of you who don’t follow the NBA enough to worry about the distinction between its conferences and divisions (forgivable, though objectively wrong, since everyone should follow the NBA), the NBA is divided into two conference (the Eastern and Western) and these are each divided into three divisions. Laid out on a map, you see that they are only roughly geographical.

For example, Memphis, TN is in the Western Conference. Similarly ridiculous, Minneapolis, MN is in the Northwest Division. (Oklahoma City is also in the Northwest Conference, but that’s because the team was in Seattle when the conference system was devised.) Geography aside, the number of times teams play one another is determined by their conferences and divisions. To quote NBA.com’s Hoopipedia, “Under this plan, teams play divisional opponents four times each (two home games/two road games), conference opponents outside the division three or four times each and opponents outside the conference two times each (one home game/one road game).” They play more games in their own conference, and even more in their own division. So why, on both the right and left coasts, are the number one teams in the weakest divisions? Is this cause or effect? Are these teams so good that they've driven their division rivals further down in the standings, or are they both weaker than they seem in that they have played weaker competition to earn their record number of wins?


Ultimately, the playoffs are organized to make this irrelevant. Seven game series don’t just show who is better on a single night; they do a good job of showing who is the better team. Teams that win their conferences don’t always win their way to the finals come playoff time. Even if the conference structure produces number one teams who can’t match their records once they are faced with the best opponents from stronger divisions for seven games, that's okay. “The truth will out.” In fact, it’s possible (though unlikely) that a few nights from now Miami may overtake Chicago in the Eastern Conference. Far more possible, San Antonio may overtake Oklahoma City in the Western Conference. Also, Milwaukee or Utah could crawl into the playoffs in the Central or Northwest Divisions, meaning those divisions wouldn't be the weakest in their conferences by that measure. In any of these scenarios, the phenomenon of both the best teams coming from the weakest divisions will come to an end before the playoffs begin. Still, for this brief moment in time, we have a glimpse of a way the conferences could be skewing the standings. It’s how they are skewing them that makes me wonder.

Study the Tiger

Study the tiger

Circling its prey

Every sinew curves

Into a winding path

While it’s burning bright.


There’s comfort in its trajectory;

Lives don’t move in straight lines.

Perhaps I too will come round to where I want to be

Through bends between trees in the darkness.


Or is this just a fantasy I choose,

Solace in my own winding path

Before the weight of the world

Lands on my back?

Lessons of Surgery

I've learned so much today!

Lesson #1: Surgery isn't so bad. Shots of anesthetic? Bad.

Lesson #2: Anesthetic wearing off is also bad.

Lesson #3: "You may feel a little pinch." = BS

Lesson #4: You can reply to a text message during surgery. If you tell the person what is going on as you write, you will creep them out.

Lesson #5: If you try to block out the doctor-nurse banter during surgery with an episode of Jordan, Jesse Go!, you have to turn it up to 9.

Lesson #6: Your doctor may allow you to see what he's doing during surgery. It's best to refuse and close your eyes tightly.

Lesson #7: Cauterization after anesthetic does not hurt. You will smell burning meat, though. It’s not a bad smell ...until you remember that you’re the meat.

Lesson #8: When you sit on frozen peas, they conform to your body wonderfully. When you thaw them and refreeze them, they form big, spiky chunks.

Lesson #9: Writers are MORE productive when they can't get out of their chairs.

Lesson #10: The day you have surgery, your wife will be very sweet. She will allow you to avoid all housework. She will not like your idea of playing poker with the guys the next day.

Lesson #11: Even a dull pain can keep you up until 4:30 in the morning. Make that 5:30.

Short Story: Fea's Tenses

I've written this story for a big-deal writing contest, and I want to get some feedback before I send it off. (That's allowed by the contest, don't worry.) The story is long, but if you have fifteen minutes and would be willing to look it over, please let me know what you think in the comments section below before I send it off. Thanks!

[Update 3/30/12: Thanks to all the folks who've given me feedback, here in the comments, on Facebook, and by email, I've made some significant changes to the story. I want to especially thank Megan Geigner, a PhD candidate at Northwestern (bio here), and Wendy Hart Beckman, owner/president of Beckman Communications, a professional writing service. Both of these friends went above and beyond the call of duty, and I am so grateful for their honesty and thoroughness. I hope they're pleased with the changes. I still have time to make more, so keep those suggestions coming!]

[Update 3/17/13: Though the story didn't win that contest a year ago, I've continued to polish it and get feedback from even more friends and students. The story is now available on Kindle, so I have to remove it from this blog, but if you're so inclined, you can still get a copy (less than a buck!) here:

 
 
http://amzn.to/WthJ3m

 Again, thanks to you all!

Ode to the One-Hit Wonder

Tonight I discovered a song used as the background music on a YouTube video, and I liked it so much, I purchased it on iTunes (the song, not the video). This got me thinking about one-hit wonders. I haven’t listened to the rest of this artist’s catalog. I may end up loving more of it. But this song is sufficient. That fact should make us stop and reexamine our relationship to art.

Pundits, recording artists, and cultural critics have weighed-in to lament the decline of the concept album, and I’m not going to argue that. If the album is the complete work, it is a shame that iTunes may kill that form. But if the album is only a collection of isolated works, what’s wrong with buying songs individually? If someone asked me if I were a “fan” of an artist on my MP3 player who only holds a single slot, I’d shrug and say, “Well, I wouldn’t go that far. I only own one of her songs.” Why am I compelled to distance myself from an artist because I don’t like the majority of her work? Even if I absolutely hated 99% of an artist’s work, if one single piece spoke to me in a profound way, isn’t that enough to create the kind of artist-audience connection every artist and audience seeks? And if the artist sustained that relationship for only three minutes of a single song, during those three minutes, am I not a fan?

Pragmatism dictates that the incalculable mixture of discipline and inborn talent which produce a single work capable of creating a strong artist-audience connection will generally prove repeatable, at least to some degree. Beethoven can write his fifth symphony, and those same skills and talent can also combine to produce the “Ode to Joy.” But I would scream it from the mountaintops: The “Ode to Joy” is enough. It is sufficient. If Beethoven were alive today and only wrote that one song, and you stumbled upon it in iTunes, even if you went through Beethoven’s other listings and found nothing but songs that sounded like amateur covers of songs by Slipknot, you’d be hard-pressed not to admit that, for a brief moment, this Ludwig guy must have been touched by the hand of God himself. The Slipknot fans would hate that weird outlier of a song, but you could listen to it and love it and, despite all the embarrassment caused by the association with his other horrible music, you would be a Beethoven fan.

I find this notion inspiring. I tell my creative writing students that they need to think of their work as art, and that they can compare the process by which they learn the craft to the hours of study that go into learning to compose music, the agony and excitement a painter feels when faced with a stubbornly blank canvas, and the grueling demands embraced eagerly by ballet dancers. Sure, we don’t put on toe-shoes and dance until our feet bleed. Our backache, eye strain, and carpal tunnel may not engender the same sympathy, but if you don’t think the analogy holds, I don’t think you’re writing enough. So this idea of the one-hit wonder should fill us with hope. We don’t have to write the 37 plays of Shakespeare. They weren’t all perfect, anyway. We don’t have to write (and edit) the 500 works of Isaac Asimov. Lots of those were absolute stinkers. We don’t have to write the 49 novels of Stephen King. I think he’d admit he’s not as talented as Shakespeare nor as prolific as Asimov. He’d also admit that not all of his novels are successful. But that’s okay. Because just one is enough. Harper Lee wrote a whopping ONE novel. So far, Arundhati Roy has only written one as well. If you haven’t read To Kill a Mockingbird or The God of Small Things, consider them assigned reading and buy yourself copies immediately. They can each prove that one masterpiece is sufficient.

It doesn’t have to be a novel, of course. Write a short story as good as Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” Write a script as good as Zach Helm’s Stranger Than Fiction. Write a poem as inspiring and heartbreaking as Stephen Crane’s (36 word) “I saw a man pursuing the horizon.” Write lyrics as good as The Indelicates’ “Savages.” Those works were all good enough to make me an instant fan of the artists as soon as I read/watched/listened to their work.

So, whatever it is, just write it. If it’s not good enough, try again. It only takes one.

Conservatives Make a Liberal Argument Against Affirmative Action

I was perplexed by a question after hearing this last week's Slate Political Gabfest.

If you haven't heard, the Supreme Court has decided to hear a case which will challenge affirmative action in college admissions. Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin is a case in which a white student is saying she was unfairly denied admission because she was white. I won't get into my disdain for the "Woe is me, I'm a white person in America" ridiculousness, but there's a really interesting double standard that someone (someone much smarter and more informed than I am) should explore.

The University of Texas at Austin has an admissions policy that begins by admitting the top ten percenters from each high school in Texas. Because of the segregation in schools caused by geographic segregation, this produces some diversity on its own. Then the university takes economics into account, and that will produce some ethnic diversity, too. Ultimately, they have some wiggle room allowed by the Supreme Court's decision on Michigan Law School's admissions policy from a few years ago (Grutter v. Bollinger, 2003). It's this last part that the Supreme Court is revisiting, and which it will probably change, especially since Justice Kagan has had to recuse herself. The young woman filing the case claims that she would have been accepted if not for this last bit of racial preference in admissions.

Regardless of where you stand on admissions (for the record, I'm in favor of some racial preference to encourage diversity, because I see racial diversity, like economic diversity, as a valuable part of an education), this argument will hinge on the notion that the system was unfair to this young woman and the government should fix it. I have no problem with that kind of argument. Why? Because I'm a liberal. I believe that, when there is injustice in our society and the government creates, enables, or has the power to correct that injustice, it should. I don't believe the government can create perfect equality of outcomes or solve all social ills. That's a straw man some of my conservative friends have tried to pin to all liberals, as though being a liberal is the same thing as being a Maoist or Soviet, and that's inaccurate and unfair. However, when the government can make a system, especially a system of its own, more fair, it should do so.

My conservative friends do not believe this. They tell me that they believe in personal responsibility. They tell me they believe equality will best be produced by the free market. They detest systems like Affirmative Action because they see it as government intrusion.

Except in this case, the remedy the complainant is proposing is that government should step in (when conservatives disagree with this form of government intrusion they call this "judicial overreach") and make this system more fair. Personal responsibility, it seems to me, would dictate that Abigail Fisher could have earned her way into the University of Texas at Austen by working her way into the top ten percent of her class. Problem solved. Or she could take advantage of the free market and go to school somewhere else, and if enough disgruntled white students did this and the school took too much of a financial hit, they would adjust their admissions policy. Problem solved. But Ms. Fisher is blaming the system and trying to change it. She wants it to conform to the ideals presented by the conservative right, but the mechanism she's employing theoretically belong to the left.

Of course, it doesn't belong to the left. Conservatives are just as willing to go to court as liberals, just as willing to try to sway government to enforce their vision of a more just America. I have no problem with that. What bothers me is that, when people advocates for a more just tax policy, something that is more firmly in the sphere of government than a public university's admissions policy, they are dismissed as dirty hippies who need to get a job and stop expecting the government to solve their problems.

The practical consequence of this double standard is that when poor people and minorities, or even middle class whites struggling against a rigged economic system, go to the government for a redress of a grievance, they are dismissed by conservatives, but when a white person does the exact same thing at the expense of a poorer minority applicant to the same university, that's peachy, and yet the conservatives bristle at being called plutocrats or racists.

Pay close attention to the way this issue gets reported by the conservative media, and to the way Republican candidates comment on it when it gets a bit more attention. If you hear a noticeable absence of condemnation of Abigail Fisher as a communist, a welfare queen, a nanny-state liberal, or any of the other slurs hurled at those participating in Occupy Wall Street, ask yourself, What should we call people who only compromise their principles when it benefits white people?

Student Wish List, Teacher Heartbreak

I'm in the midst of a marathon essay-grading day, but I have to stop and write about this immediately, because it has to be one of the saddest things I've ever come across.

This year, one of the classes I'm teaching is Language Arts in Spanish. It's not a Spanish class, but a class on reading and writing skills taught in Spanish for students who are learning English in other classes but also need language arts credit. For the semester final, I gave the students a collection of prompts taken directly from the state's example state test writing prompts, just translated. One prompt asked students to imagine they could switch places with anyone in the world and tell the story of what would happen. This student lost track of the prompt during the outlining process and ended up turning in a list of things she wished she could change about herself. It's absolutely heartbreaking.

She starts by saying she'd like to be taller, because she's sick of being called a midget. Then she says she'd like to be prettier, because she's sick of being called ugly. She capitalized Ugly, as though people use this in place of her name. Then she wished she had blue eyes, that her hair weren't so black, and that it weren't so straight. She also wished she could be a bit fatter so people would stop calling her Skinny. She wished she could do well in school so that someday she could become a lawyer. Then she wished she were more intelligent. She wished she could speak English better so she could speak to more people at school. Finally, she wished she could get a job so she could help out her family and contribute more to her household.

I certainly can't reveal this student's identity, but I think I can share this essay because there are a half a dozen girls in that class who could have written this list, and dozens of boys and girls in my other classes who could have written a variation on it in English. Here's what I can't figure out how to say to her, and to all those students, male and female, carrying around all this self-loathing: "These values you aspire to are cultural constructions. You want to be fatter because you get called Skinny, and some of the other girls are risking their health and maybe their lives because they are so afraid of being called Fattie. You want blue eyes because that's the color of the contact lenses the models plop in before the photo shoot. You want curly hair while the girls (and boys) with curly hair want straight hair. And those desires to reach an unattainable standard of beauty (a standard that has been intentionally designed to be unattainable so you will buy lots of expensive and unnecessary beauty products to look any way but the way you were born to look) will eat away at you on the inside until you are filled up with anger and pain. And then you will lose the best thing you had going for you, your kindness. That warm smile you wear when you come into my classroom will fade and be replaced by a sneer. That great, quiet, nervous laugh you have will become a derisive snort. And someday you will see someone who looks just like you, or just the opposite, or anywhere in between, and you will call her Ugly. Please, oh please don't let that happen. Do not accept the behavior of the kind of asshole who would even consider calling you Midget or Skinny or Ugly or anything other than your given name, and don't replicate that behavior yourself. And don't internalize that kind of person's judgement, or you will find yourself in relationships with people who hold just as low an opinion of you as you do. Don't let that happen. Please. I'm begging."

But I can't say that (and only partly because I shouldn't be using the word "asshole" when talking to my students, even when I'm referring to someone that fills me with rage). I'm going to try to get her an appointment with one of our school's counselors, and I'm going to have a talk with one of her other teachers, a smart, successful Spanish speaking female teacher I think this student will more readily accept as a mentor. But I also can't have the conversation because there are two competing voices in my head, and they both make me so angry that I'm in no position to calmly share my fears with this student. I hear these voice coming out of my TV, I read them in the comments sections online, and now I can't get their echoes to stop. Here's what I'd like to say to those two voices.

"Hey, doofy, naive, post-millennial 'liberal' voice, shut up. No, I'm not going to tell her that she'll be a super model one day. No, I'm not even going to tell her that she can be anything she wants to be, and that, if she tries really hard, she can become a lawyer. She can hardly speak any English, and unless she stumbles on a pot of leprechaun's gold, she's going to go to work to help out her family rather than continue her education long enough to make up for the deficiencies in her English skills. Your ridiculous notion that everyone can be exactly what they want to be is well-intentioned, but also hurtful and stupid. I'm not going to tell my kids to settle, but I'm also not going to tell them that they will have it all. Self-esteem like hers is a real problem, but a self-concept that is out of touch with reality is just a gateway to narcissism, or to a crushing disappointment when she finds out that the people who told her she was perfect were liars. She is good and kind. Why isn't that enough? And why do you want me to lie to a good person?"

"And you, callous, privileged "conservative" voice, you can just shove it. I hear what you're muttering under your breath. One minute you're saying poor people need to just pull themselves up by their bootstraps. The next you're whispering about illegal immigration and English-only education. I know nothing about her legal status, and neither do you. The difference is that I don't want to know, because I know that we're all better off if everyone in our country is educated, while you want to pass moral judgements based on an over-simplified view of a deeply flawed system you don't understand. I do know a bit more than you do about teaching people English, and I know that if I'd dropped you into a Chinese or Iranian school when you were a kid you would not have been a big fan of Chinese-only or Persian-only education. Guess what? You probably wouldn't have learned Chinese or Persian as quickly in an immersion model, either, but you would have been so focused on learning Chinese or Persian that you would have fallen years behind in science and math and never caught up to your Chinese or Iranian classmates. So don't tell me my business. Now, as for your pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps BS, here's a perfect example of why that's garbage, and only somebody who starts out with some advantages (white, male, intelligent, or wealthy) can possibly let those words come out of his mouth without sarcasm. She's right in front of you. She's a human being. She has all kinds of disadvantages, and she won't just catch up no matter how hard she yanks on her bootstraps. Don't you look away from her! She's hurting right now, and your entitled disregard for her pain is disgusting."

So you can see why I'm the last person in the world who should try to console this poor kid. There's too much shouting going on in my own head. But she handed this wish list to me. What does that say about the rest of her world?

Disappointed by Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant, and Myself

Yesterday I was scolded on Facebook by a former student, and it’s been bugging me.

Here’s the situation: I tweeted, “Magic Johnson's catchphrase for Kobe: ‘Nothing but special.’ If I could only be one adjective, it wouldn't be a synonym for short-bus rider.”

Her response: “As much as I think you rock, that comment was uncalled for and down right degrading to people who are disabled. Not cool, I'm disappointed. :(”

That stung. Especially the frowny face. So far, I’ve come up with five reasons why that’s bothering me so much.

First of all, when I would mess up as a kid, my dad would sit me down on the couch in the living room, then sit down in a chair on the other side of the coffee table. He didn’t shout at me. He didn’t hit me. He didn’t make grand threats about prolonged grounding schemes. He’d just sit silently for a while, then say, “I’m disappointed.” That worked!

Second, I like this former student. I respect her opinion. We agree on most things, and when we disagree I take her seriously.

Third, I like to be liked. Too much. It particularly hurts me as a writer. I can’t write with the kind of conviction necessary to be successful because I’m too worried that people will be put off by what I write. It makes me a hypocrite when I explain effective advertising to my students and grade them down for targeting the ads I make them write to overly large demographics. “If someone tried to make an ad to sell clothes that both you and your grandma would like, they would fail,” I say. “Neither you nor grandma would buy those clothes.” Then I come home and try to make sure that whatever novel I’m working on won’t offend anyone. Clearly, my tweet failed to amuse as much as it offended.

Fourth, I stand by my criticism of Magic Johnson’s choice of words. I don’t think that insults the mentally disabled. I’m not saying anything derogatory about them in saying I wouldn’t want to be described as “special.” I lament the fact that the word “special” has become a euphemism for mentally handicapped. But it has. Instead of attacking the problem at the root and criticizing those who use mental disability as an insult for those who are not mentally disabled, we just keep coming up with new euphemisms. I’m not even sure “mentally disabled” is the right one anymore. Mentally handicapped? I’m usually not one to knock PC re-labeling. All too often, the root is cultural insensitivity, white men grousing that they are being inconvenienced by having to learn a new term. I do not buy into the “white-guys-have-it-so-rough” argument. My frustration comes from my position as an English teacher. “African American” might be a new thing for everybody to learn, but it’s accurate. “Special,” on the other hand, took one word with a certain definition, gave it a new one, then corrupted that one when people used it as an insult. The same thing happened with “retarded.” Instead of well-intentioned people standing up and saying, “Stop making fun of people who are ___x____” and continuing to use whichever word was most accurate, they just switched and hoped the problem would go away, thus loading up our language with a handful of terms that refer to mental retardation. I’ll bet I’d raise eyebrows if I told some parent that their child’s habit of not turning in his work retards his ability to learn the material in my class. That’s completely accurate, but I have to avoid it because the word has taken on these new connotations due to the association with the mentally handicapped. In the same way, Magic Johnson should be careful with “special.” That’s what I was trying to say. (Furthermore, I hate the “nothing but” part. How is it any kind of compliment to describe anyone as “nothing but” anything? When this student says I rock, I appreciate the compliment. If she’d said I do “nothing but rock” I’d think she was accusing me of something.) Magic Johnson’s attempt at a compliment was catch-phrasy, but dumb. That was my point.

Fifth, I’m a hypocrite, because I then participated in the very behavior I was criticizing! Instead of saying “mentally disabled,” I wrote “short-bus rider.” So I’m picking on his thoughtless use of what has become a euphemism for the mentally handicapped while using a different one. I can’t even blame Twitter, because “mentally disabled” is only two characters longer and I had some room to spare. I still wasn’t mocking the mentally handicapped, but, by using a euphemism carelessly, I was participating in the same behavior I was criticizing in Magic Johnson.

So that makes me mad at myself, but not for the reason this former student was mad at me in the first place. And that makes me mad at her. And at Magic Johnson. And, ultimately, at Kobe Bryant, whose only crime (in this particular case) was dropping 40 points on a mediocre Utah team.

See what you’ve done, Kobe? You’ve caused me to disappoint my former student! You know what I have to say about that?

:(

What Ron Paul's Libertarianism Really Means

Over the next few days, and for too many days afterward, especially if he wins the Iowa caucuses, you may hear a lot about Ron Paul's crazier views. You will probably learn more about the racism in his newsletters (newsletters he now disavows, but used to brag about), his belief that there is a secret U.N. conspiracy to take over the United States, and maybe even his statement that the U.S. shouldn't have intervened to stop the holocaust. What you might not hear about are his most fundamental libertarian views. They are less dramatic, but, in a way, they are far more important, and not just because they clearly disqualify him for the presidency; so do all those other bright-hot-embers of crazy. But start paying attention to his particular breed of libertarianism, known by some within his own movement as paleolibertrianism or paleoconservatism. Here's an example that jumps out at me. Listen to what Ron Paul says about education:



Here's where the rubber meets the road: In one way, he's correct. If we're talking about natural rights, education and healthcare do not qualify. Animals in the wild do not get any public education. The government does not need to provide education in order to be preserving the basic rights of life, liberty, and property that a government must defend in order to be legitimate. But rights should not be limited in that way. Rights can also be conferred upon individuals by a society because the society recognizes these are not only in the best interest of the individual (privileges) but also in the best interest of every other individual in the society. Rights, like language, are social constructs, and we are human beings. We do not need to limit ourselves to the same list of rights protected by chieftains in caves. We can choose to do better.

Paul's example is a perfect illustration of this faulty reasoning by paleolibertarians. I don't want to put words in his mouth, but he seems to be saying one of two things. Either government intervention has driven the inflation in the cost of education which now makes medical school inaccessible for "poor" people (i.e. all but the wealthiest few), and if we just got government out, the price would return to the manageable $300 a semester Paul mentions. Or he recognizes that the cost would still stay out of reach for "poor" people (just about everybody), but that the notion that an IRS agent would take away your hard-earned cash is such an unbearable injustice that it must be done away with, no matter the consequences.

Now, I don't for a minute believe that the cost of medical school would ever return to $300 a semester (or even something similar but adjusted for standard inflation) just because the government stopped giving loans. Sure, medical schools might have to close their doors, but they couldn't prepare people to be real, modern doctors for a few thousand dollars. But even if that were possible in the long run, for a period of indeterminate time (perhaps a generation?) the 99% of us who don't have the quarter million dollars medical school costs on top of the 100k a private undergraduate education costs would simply not be able to become doctors.

So, imagine Ron Paul's America: the (horror of horrors) IRS would not be able to take your tax money and give it to some poor kid who would use it, in the form of subsidized loans, to go through college and medical school and become your doctor. Yea! You've saved some money, and you haven't participated in the historic evil known as taxation. How grand. But then, when you need some surgery, you go to your local hospital and find out that there simply aren't enough doctors to keep up with the workload. Uh-oh. This isn't pleasant. Still, you have all that extra tax money you saved. Go home and enjoy that while the tumor metastasizes. But when you finally get through the waiting list, guess what? The guy who will be performing the surgery on your brain? Well, he's just not as good as you would want him to be. You see, there were ten people who could have been better, but they didn't get the necessary education because there were no federally subsidized loans to get them through school. This guy, on the other hand, had multimillionaire parents who could pay the tuition out of pocket. So you get a neurosurgeon who, in a pre-Ron Paul world, would have been the tenth best in the hospital, and now he's cutting into your brain.

Education is not a natural right, and you don't have a natural right to a decent doctor, either. But if we have the right to self-government, then that means we have the right to make choices about what we want for our own society. And if that should include creating a meritocracy capable of producing the absolute best doctors we can so that when we need them we have access to the best of the best, then we have the right to make that country for ourselves. In Ron Paul's world, a certain kind of liberty was maximized for the man on the slab in the basement. He's dead young and unnecessarily, but he wasn't forced to give money to the IRS. That is not the world you and I want to live in (and die young in).

Ron Paul, despite his most incendiary beliefs, is doing our nation a service by forcing us to have a conversation about the amount of liberty we're willing to give up in order to improve our society. This is a vital debate to have, because there is always the danger that we can go to far, or go in the wrong direction, creating a police state in order to feel safe or a control economy in order to know we'll be provided for. We should talk about how to make the best possible decisions to maximize liberty while not creating a nightmare world; all liberty and no community. But don't let any paleolibertarian or paleoconservative fool you into believing this debate is simple black and white. Don't let them tell you what the government doesn't have the right to do.

This is a democracy, or at least it should be. As long as we still have power to influence our government, we get to decide how much we want it to intrude into our lives, and how much the benefits of that intrusion outweigh the inconvenience. Our government has the rights we give it, and no more. We have the right to choose the nature of our society. All rights, even the natural ones, are rights we've had to earn back from unjust governments. They are our social constructs.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that every child has a right to a free and appropriate education, regardless of their race, disabilities, home language, or citizenship. Ron Paul can disagree with the court. That's his right, too. What Ron Paul can't do is unilaterally decide what your rights are or the government's rights are. He can tell you what he thinks they should be (and I think he should have the right to say so). But remember, when he says something isn't a right, what he's really saying is that he doesn't think our society should have that thing in abundance. So if you, like me, are in the bottom 99%, he's really saying things like education and high quality medical care shouldn't be available to you. Once you know how to read through the veil of political philosophy, he really sounds more like this guy:

No healthcare for YOU!

No education for YOU!

Abraham Lincoln Occupied Wall Street

I'd never seen this before, but this is an excerpt of a speech President Lincoln gave 150 years ago today to a joint session of Congress. Want to know what the Occupy Movement is all about? Abraham Lincoln knew 150 years ago.

"It is not needed, nor fitting here [in discussing the Civil War] that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions; but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effect to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor, in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them, and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded thus far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves. And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life.

“Now, there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless.

“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

Can someone, anyone, who is more concerned with the plight of labor and with promoting the general welfare of We the People please run for President? (And I'm sorry, President Obama, but just because you're more concerned about working people than the Republican train-wreck-of-a-field does not mean you give higher consideration to labor than capital. Not after 7 trillion to the banks.)

Or will I need a time machine so I can vote for someone as progressive as a guy who's been dead for 146 years?

Help me, Doc Brown!

Squirrel!

Petty political attacks aren't a big deal in-and-of themselves. They go both ways, and sometimes they're funny. But this week alone I've come across a couple that just knock my socks off. First, there was the "Obama doesn't mention God on Thanksgiving" hullabaloo on Fox. (*Check out Jon Stewart's reaction to that below.) And then, a conservative friend of mine named Derek called my attention to this one: "Another Gaffe? Obama Calls British Embassy ‘English’ Embassy" Derek actually called me out for not posting it to my status on Facebook, as though I was too ashamed to share it. Quite the opposite. As I told Derek, this is a great illustration of just how petty the Right has become. Now, like I said, the pettiness goes both ways at times, but the context is important here. This is the kind of ridiculous criticism of the President that's coming out of the Right at the exact same time that congressional Republicans are shooting down legislation to create thousands of good jobs for Americans. Moreover, the proposed jobs bills are actually paid for, something the modern Republican party likes to preach but hasn't practiced in my lifetime. So what's their beef? The bills would raise taxes by a couple percentage points on people who earn more than a million dollars a year. Note, this is on their income. It cannot make rich people poor, because it is only calculated on the next MILLION dollars they make. (Oops. I got that wrong. It's actually even less than that. Millionaires would not pay an added two percent on their income, only on their income after the first million dollars. In other words, 1st million at current, historically low rates, 2nd and 3rd million at rates still lower than they were under Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. Oh, and since the jobs bill was broken up, this portion is the part that provides a payroll tax holiday for working people. Historically, Republicans have treated any vote against cutting taxes as a tax hike. If that's the case, then they are refusing to hike taxes on millionaires but, by their logic, are hiking taxes on everybody else. Where does Grover Norquist stand on that?)

Ah, the Republicans tell us, but that will prevent these wealthy people from giving the rest of us jobs. Well, they haven't been doing that when they are making a million dollars. Why is it assumed they would stop doing what they aren't doing because they're miffed about a small tax increase? Isn't it possible that, if the rest of us do better, then buy products from the companies owned by the rich, making them a heck of a lot richer, they'll create more jobs than if they dodge a tiny tax increase?

Republicans love to toss around the word "entitlement" to criticize people who expect to receive benefits like Medicare and Social Security which they have paid for through through their taxes during a lifetime of work. They also like to vilify any attempt by the government to "pick winners and losers." Well guess what, folks: tax breaks for the rich are government handouts just as much as welfare checks, and they cost the rest of us a lot more than keeping a family from starving to death. Choosing to line the pockets of millionaires rather than creating more positions for firefighters and police officers is "picking winners and losers." Anybody who gives this even a few seconds thought can see that.

So the Republicans are trying to make sure you don't give it a couple seconds thought. They'd much rather you count the number of times the President mentions God, or laugh at him for mixing up "British" and "English."

Petty political pot-shots are fun, especially when they are funny. But in this case, they're not only lame, but obvious distractions meant to focus our attention away from what the Republicans are actually trying to do to those of us who don't make a million dollars a-





*Jon Stewart on the "Much Ado About Stuffing" scandal:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Much Ado About Stuffing
www.thedailyshow.com
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Update to Alan Grayson for President

I posted about how much I appreciate a true progressive speaking out. Here's a clip from one of Grayson's recent speeches. Check it out:

A Writer's Quest for Quality

I love the Demotivators from desprair.com. Tonight, while gathering my thoughts before beginning Chapter 9 of my current novel [read: Procrastinating] I came across this one on another writer's blog (Lily White LeFevre's blog, here) and just had to re-post it. Okay, enough procrastinating. Let's get marching!

Run-Away

I ran away from home when I was five years old. I didn’t return for almost thirty years.

Upon the arrival of my little brother, our tiny house seemed to shrink, and my parents started looking for something with a bit more room for the brave little crawler. Once they’d found the new house and boxed up our belongings, they began the move. I have few memories of the day. For some reason, I felt neglected. Maybe they were more focused on getting our furniture situated. Maybe I resented the attention my brother was demanding. Maybe I’d only recently learned that running away was an option. Who knows? Regardless, at some point I decided to strike out on my own, never to return.

I think I walked around the block. I distinctly remember that, when I returned, no one had noticed I’d left. I also remember my mother’s pitying look when I told her I’d run away, a sympathetic smile that hid amusement at my dramatic ploy for attention. I was so wounded that they had forgotten about me. She could see my pain, but couldn’t help but see it in a way I couldn’t. That larger perspective made my pain funny.

We moved away a few years later. Six cities and fifteen residences later, I passed through that town on the way to a friend’s wedding. I found the little house where we’d lived at first, and I tried to find the second. The first house created absolutely no impression on me upon its rediscovery, and the second house was so lost to memory that I couldn’t even find the street.

Twenty-nine years had passed. I was almost exactly as old as my parents had been the day I ran away. They’d never lost me. Not really. But there I was, sitting in a borrowed car, looking at a little house, wondering if there was a German word for the disappointment one feels upon returning to a place after many years to find that it is not as one remembers it. They hadn’t lost me. I’d lost myself.

Now I’m struck by the symmetry. I left that day for perhaps twenty minutes, and no one noticed. Then I left for three decades, and no one noticed. I thought they’d forgotten about me, but during the longer wandering, I forgot about that part of myself. When I returned, my mother was able to see it in a broader way, to see the absurdity of it. That stung when I was five. Now it’s a comfort. Because she could look beyond my perspective; she could see me for what I was: a five-year-old drama queen.

So often, I feel unmoored, place-less, a man who repels belonging. I wonder if I can learn to stand just a few steps away, to look down at my own hackneyed melancholy and wear my mother’s smile.

Meeting with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan

Today I attended a meeting with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, put on at H.B.Lee Middle School in the Reynolds School District outside Portland. The event was organized by the Oregon Education Association. The intention was to share some of our frustrations with the Secretary and hear his plans as they related to those concerns. In that, I’d say we were halfway successful.

300 educators packed one side of the school’s gym while the string orchestra played. There were 25 or so kids playing, and they were quite good. At the time, we didn’t know that was a kind of foreshadowing, because we were in for a virtuoso performance of a different kind, this one in evasion.

When Duncan came into the room, I was immediately struck by his height, and turned to my friend Jason Foltz, our OEA regional rep with whom I’d carpooled, and made a crack about how I expected Duncan was pretty good at basketball, and that was probably what got him the job in Obama’s cabinet.

Steve Novak, a former senatorial candidate and current candidate for a position on the Portland City Council, moderate the event, and gave a very brief introduction, sharing some information about the situation in which Oregon educators find ourselves. One revealing fact: In our 07-09 biennium, education was budgeted $6.3 billion by the legislature (before they cut into that). In the 09-11 biennium, we were budgeted $5.7 (before they cut into that). That’s a pretty dramatic drop-off, especially in the face of all kinds of new requirements coming down from the federal government during that time.

Then Novak introduced Secretary Duncan. He shared that Duncan had worked for seven years as the head of Chicago public schools, and that he’d previously played professional basketball. He then stole my joke, which I’m sure was entirely original when I said it. Novak also politely refrained from mentioning that Duncan has never worked as a classroom teacher.

Duncan then spoke for a moment. He acknowledged that it’s a tough time in education, and that school funding is the lowest it’s been in twenty, forty, sixty years (I suppose it has to do with how you make the calculation). He also said kids have more temptations outside of school. His interest, he told us, was in finding out how the Department of Ed. could best support us. He admitted that NCLB is broken, that it was too punitive, and that Congress was to blame for not fixing it. He promised waivers as a stop-gap since we can’t depend on Congress to fix NCLB. His interest is in working collaboratively with states, then in getting out of their way when they are doing well. I was particularly interested when he mentioned working with states to come up with creative methods to evaluate teacher performance, since I’m very skeptical about reform efforts that start with teacher evaluation and assume they’ll figure out the definition of “better teacher” later on, after they’ve measured it. He didn’t elaborate, though.

He also tied his listening tour in with the President’s push for the Jobs Act, which received applause. He described the effect the act would have here in Oregon, including $351 million for teacher retention which would employ an additional 2000 teachers, and $240 million for capital improvements which would fix dilapidated schools while providing a boost to employment. He was also very pleased with the $500 million the act would give the state in money for Early Childhood Education.

Once Duncan was finished, Novak introduced three storytellers who were chosen to explain the state of education in Oregon as it manifested in their personal experience. The first teacher, Sarah Williams, a math teacher from a community college, talked about the federal emphasis on degree completion, and how it was misaligned with the needs of many community college students. She described students who needed to pick up a few courses for work, those who transferred to four year institutions before completing their AAs, and those who received jobs before completing their AAs and chose to go directly to work in their fields. She asked the Secretary how the feds could penalize the community colleges when these students’ needs were so obviously being met.

The second storyteller, Cindy Johnson, is an Early Intervention Specialist. She works with disabled children who haven’t started kindergarten yet, helping them learn to cope with their disabilities to give them a good start when they begin school. As she explained to the Secretary, when new money is poured into Early Childhood Education programs like Headstart, although that is certainly a good thing, it makes those children eligible for Early Intervention help, even though those programs haven’t been given any new money, creating a crisis in their part of the system. She described kids with needs that were not being met because their teachers were now stretched so thin and have caseloads so large, they can’t provide the vital services they used to be able to provide.

Then an elementary classroom teacher named Joyce (I didn’t catch her last name) talked about how, when she began teaching, she was encouraged to avoid core content for the first month just to create a community of learners, but now she’s run her students through three standardized tests in the first month alone. The students are then color coded and divided into groups right down to the individual question they may get wrong, so they can be given specific instruction preparing them for specific questions. The number of minutes they spend sitting at their desks are measured so there’s no longer time to marry learning to movement. Students used to love independent reading, but now, if they score too low on standardized tests, they are taken out of their independent reading groups and put in remedial reading programs. These students now tell her, “I hate reading.” Joyce told the Secretary, “This is what No Child Left Behind has done to our schools.” The applause was deafening. She explained that we are now punished for things over which we have no control instead of being celebrated for our successes. Not only are students’ rich educations being left behind, but teachers are being left behind as well. “I would ask you, Mr. Duncan, to remove the business model from education and remember we are working with children, not interchangeable parts.”

When the applause died down again, Novak introduced educators who had specific questions for Duncan. The first questioner explained that public school teachers were out in front, supporting the charter school movement, back when we thought those would be models of innovation but would still be accountable to the public for their use of public funds. In light of the fact that 80% of charter schools are no better than their local public schools, and many are worse, she asked him to defend the push to increase for-profit and internet-based charter schools that take resources away from traditional public schools. Duncan said he did not support “drop-out factories.” He talked about some charter schools that have been very effective, but recognized that when there’s no accountability for these schools it’s a “recipe for mediocrity.” He did not talk about any method or interest in putting accountability measures in place.

The next teacher, Colleen Works, didn’t mention that she was our state’s teacher of the year. (I only know because she carpooled with Jason and I, and he bragged about her.) She’s a high school history teacher from Corvallis, and explained that she has 190 kids a day, ranging from those with the most severe learning disabilities to those who are our most advanced. She’d calculated that she’s given 30 seconds per child to prepare her lessons. She asked why, when that time is being filled by so many tasks designed to hold her accountable for her performance, there are no accountability measures being put in place for the people who design accountability measures. Duncan began with a complete non-sequitor about the importance of Pell Grants. Then he said, of accountability measures, that he favors those built around growth rather than raw measurements of student achievement. In this answer, he mentioned the Chalkboard Project, an Oregon-based non-profit school reform organization which is often at odds with teachers. The crowd booed, which seemed to take Duncan by surprise.

The next question, about TIFF and Waivers, was such insider baseball that Duncan told the questioner he’d be happy to talk with him about it afterwards.

A Para-Educator asked about the role of Paras. Duncan talked about how all the adults in a school need to work together, which didn’t seem to address her question at all. He then asked us to guess how much the federal government spends on professional development for teachers. Someone shouted “Zero!” He explained that the Feds spend $3.5 billion a year on professional development, and guessed that, with state and local funds, it’s probably double that, and yet we would guess zero because it’s spent so ineffectively. In my own personal experience, federal money that went to the National Writing Project had a dramatic effect on my teaching, but I only know about the role of the federal government in the program because they then cut that funding. I personally wonder how much of the disconnect is because of ineffective spending, and how much is simply a consequence of not advertising where the dollars come from when programs are valuable.

This brought us to what I thought was the most impressive answer of the whole event. A teacher from Beaverton asked how we could be cutting education while spending so much on the war in Afghanistan. Duncan said this question was a great one, at got at some deeper questions. He described the amount we spend on incarceration in this country, to applause. He described the need to allow immigrant children to enroll in our colleges, to applause. “Our priorities are out of whack,” he told us. He explained that he believes education is an investment, and that other countries are investing while we are cutting. “As a country,” he said, “we’re fighting for our soul.” Wild applause.

Notice what he did there? Incarceration rates are something that are determined by a host of agencies, and by different levels of government. The failure of the Dream Act can be pinned on Congressional Republicans. The rates of investment in other countries are determined by those countries themselves, and our ability to compete financially is largely determined by states, since the Feds only provide around 9% of public school funding. What was the one thing that Duncan’s boss actually has complete control over, and could eliminate almost immediately to show that we are getting our priorities back in order? The war in Afghanistan, the very thing the questioner asked about. Duncan not only dodged her question, but did it so deftly he had to stop for applause three times. That’s some fancy dancing.

The last question was the most direct. The educator asked Duncan how he would be convincing the Oregon Business Association to support us when he attended a gala fundraiser of theirs this evening. He told her that, though he believes “You will never have a great community or city without a great public school system,” we are all too mired in the blame game, that teachers need to look in the mirror, that we need to meet in the middle, and that we need to stop pointing fingers.

At that point I stood up and screamed, “BS!” Then I launched into an eloquent rant about how it was total garbage to demand that teachers meet in the middle with people who, in some cases, are ideologically opposed to public education, and that it’s unfair to tell people not to play the blame game when, in fact, teachers have made all the sacrifices and suffered all the abuse while their critics haven’t done a single positive thing for the children we serve. The crowd went absolutely nuts, and I sat down amidst a standing ovation.

Okay, that last part didn’t happen. Duncan thanked us all for coming out, we clapped politely, and our OEA vice-president, Johanna Vandering, encouraged us to send any other questions to Mr. Duncan through www.oregoned.org\tellarne and to show up at the huge rally at the state capital in February.

Maybe, by February, I will have figured out how to give that eloquent speech. But today I listened to the Secretary of Education avoid every tough question by blaming everyone else for the things that make my day-to-day job harder, then conclude by telling me I shouldn’t play the blame game. I can only hope he heard our discontent and isn’t deluded into believing we were satisfied with his non-answers to our questions.