Steve Nelson2013-05-19T03:28:38-04:00Steve Nelsonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=steve-nelsonCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Steve NelsonGood old fashioned elbow grease.Opening the Cradle to Prison Pipeline -- The Newest Jim Crowtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.30632902013-04-12T10:49:10-04:002013-04-12T10:47:48-04:00Steve Nelsonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-nelson/The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander makes a compelling argument that young men of color in America are the victims of systemic and systematic racism, resulting in mass incarceration: the de facto 21st century version of the Jim Crow laws in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The most recent education news provides alarming indications that the "pipeline" from early childhood neglect to young adult incarceration is disappearing.
I don't suggest that the problem is going away. Quite to the contrary. We're simply skipping the intermediate steps of school segregation, racial profiling, economic injustice and neglected neighborhoods and sending young black children directly into the penal system. This may be slightly hyperbolic, but the latest manifestations of so-called "educational reform" are schools that might as well be prisons. It is a national shame.
An April 3 New York Times article described the aggressive program to "reform" the allegedly underperforming schools in Memphis, Tennessee. This "Achievement School District" is, according to the Times, among a growing number of "... state-run districts intended to rejuvenate chronically struggling schools." Similar strategies are in place in Virginia and Michigan and are on drawing boards in dozens of other states. 97 percent of the students in the Memphis "Achievement" district are black and similar programs across the country serve a predominantly black, poor population.
The schools in these districts are being turned over to a variety of charter operators, including the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) and Aspire Public Schools (APS), a California-based national takeover organization. These charter operators, some non-profit, some for-profit, are supported by big money, much from the Gates Foundation, the conservative Broad Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation and others. This business-driven movement focuses on data, metrics, more testing, long hours, uniforms and high levels of regimentation and standardization. It is as though Henry Ford himself had designed an assembly process through which children can be conveyed, drilling and hammering pieces of content into them as they move along the line.
The schools are staffed, to a great extent, by young, inexperienced teachers who come out of the dismal Teach for America program or its equivalent. When teachers are merely expected to "deliver" assembly line exercises by script, I suppose this cheap form of labor is sufficient.
In one Memphis "Achievement" school, Cornerstone Prep (pre-kindergarten through 3rd grade), children are reportedly wetting their pants because of the acute anxiety created by the "strict new disciplinary policies." Parents are outraged because children caught "fiddling with their shoes" have shoes taken away, leaving them barefoot and humiliated.
A member of the Memphis school board, Sara L. Lewis, said, "They don't understand black folk. They don't understand our values or events in our history." She went on to point out that masters punished slaves by taking away their shoes. The historical parallel is not insignificant. These children are "the other," and the policies and practices in these schools suggest that their architects believe the children need to be trained and civilized, not loved and educated. This is the kind of school arising in the name of educational reform in America.
The same morning the Times reported that the NRA and its Congressional lapdogs issued a 225 page report recommending guns in public and charter schools across the nation. I'm not claiming that the recommendation is to arm teachers and administrators to keep the 7 year olds in line, but I wonder if the effect is the same.
I have visited charter schools in some rough areas of Manhattan and the Bronx. In one school I watched armed police officers intimidate kids, essentially daring them to step out of line, itching to assert their authority. I visited another charter school, like the ones described in Memphis, where the children appeared tentative in every movement and utterance, fearful that they might invite the displeasure of an adult. Imagine how heightened the anxiety might be if these children knew the teacher was armed, even if the teacher had no intent to further intimidate. This is the kind of school arising in the name of educational reform in America.
Any educator in her right mind knows that fear and humiliation suppress learning, yet we are designing schools with armed adults and stress-inducing policies. And we expect the children to flourish?
The most tragic big lie in the KIPP, APS and other charter schools, is the false hope they represent. In Cornerstone Prep, the classrooms are named for colleges: "Wake Forest One, Columbia Two." Therein, small children in neat uniforms are told to sit silently, hands folded nervously on the desk, eyes carefully tracking the teacher. When, and only when, allowed, they can thrust their little hands eagerly into the air to provide a rapid-fire answer in the rote drill of the day. They will then march in a silent procession (if they have been good, with their shoes on) to the next step on the assembly line.
This scene, which violates nearly every principle of good early childhood education practice, virtually guarantees that this joyless classroom is the closest they will ever get to Columbia University. At least they'll have an early taste of what prison might be like.
This column appeared in the Valley News]]>Essay Grading Software is Insultingtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.30390592013-04-08T14:56:39-04:002013-04-08T18:23:33-04:00Steve Nelsonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-nelson/New York Times article reported the exciting new development of essay-grading software. This innovation, coming courtesy of the EdX people from Harvard and MIT, may have finally closed the diminishing gap between "educational reform" and parody. The only possible response is, "Are you kidding me?"
Comments following the article and several blog posts, Huffington and elsewhere, cited the many disturbing aspects of this latest technological nonsense. Many folks have properly recognized the near certainty that essay-grading software would find some of the world's greatest essays to be inadequate. One can only imagine what the machine might say about David Foster Wallace, James Joyce or other notable and eccentric writers.
Others have observed that art is not mechanical -- that no software can or will ever be able to discern the stuff that rests between the lines of poetry and prose. Anyone who loves language, particularly the craft of written language, knows that beauty and meaning are created through both commission and omission. The things left unsaid, or the ambiguous, evocative clues, are as or more important than what is committed to paper. It is analogous to music, where the most profound moments might be found in the silence at the end of a phrase, or the dominant chord that refuses to yield to the expected tonic. Wonderful language and wonderful music require the active engagement of the listener or reader. Leaving room for us to make what we will of it is what makes either form of expression interesting.
Years ago, at a reading on a lovely autumn evening in Chelsea, VT, the late great writer Grace Paley was asked by an eager student, "What does your poem mean?" Grace responded by saying, "I don't know. What do you think?" She also offered the best advice to writers that I've ever heard: A particularly earnest young woman asked, "What advice can you offer to an aspiring poet?" Grace responded dryly, "Keep a low overhead." I digress.
There is also the political dimension of this development. The EdX people (are they really people, or machines coming up with these ideas?) are the tip of a larger iceberg that threatens to dehumanize and digitize a significant part of education, from pre-school to post-graduate. In this era of slavish devotion to technology, online education is a boom industry. Billions of dollars are at stake. Everything is assessed on its "scalability" and we are all supposed to believe that the digital representation of life is actually the same thing as life. The essay-grading software idea is taking this to a "whole new level," to borrow a phrase from those who have nothing else to say about anything. Anyone who designs a "program" to replace real human engagement should be forced to go out to dinner with their computer and see how things go after a few glasses of good wine.
But here's what I've not read or heard in the chorus of boos arising from thoughtful educators and sentient humans of all kinds: Essay-grading software is a horrifying affront to the students whose work is thusly judged.
While my primary responsibilities are "administrative," I teach at least once a year. I also regard my relationships with students as the primary motivation for returning to work every morning. The rest of the work is necessary, but anyone who works in a school should do so primarily because of the deep privilege to know and love kids -- of all ages. This should be equally true of everyone, professor or administrator, who is lucky enough to work at a college or university.
I love the students in my school -- every one of them, no matter how much they may try on occasion to be unlovable. Being invited into their lives is a gift. When a student writes an essay, or a piece of fiction, or a poem, it must be honored with the attention our love and respect demands. It is only by reading and listening to our students that we can know what they care about, how they're thinking about things, what experiences we can design for them. The least important aspects of their work are the things that software can analyze. Grammar, spelling, punctuation, syntax, the extent to which their writing conforms to "standard" essay structure . . . Yawn. Who cares? I want to know their ideas, their spirits, their hearts, their doubts and their fears. I want to know what they saw that I didn't. I want to learn from them just as I hope they will learn from me.
It is a deep, damaging insult to dismiss a student's work by sending it to a machine for a response. Ordinarily, a good teacher's response to student work takes only a small fraction of the time that it took the student to create the work. Are we so devoid of consideration that we see that as just too much trouble? But I also don't care if a student has dashed off a quick, last minute piece of work in response to an assignment. It still deserves the dignity of my full attention, especially if I ever hope the student might offer more.
Any teacher who resorts to this nonsense should find a new profession.]]>The College Board Fails the Testtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.28018842013-03-03T18:31:00-05:002013-05-03T05:12:01-04:00Steve Nelsonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-nelson/wrath of Washington Post columnist Jay Mathews, who called the Dartmouth position "arrogant."
Well, then call me arrogant when I declare "a pox" on Advanced Placement courses and the entire College Board. The organization long ago outlived any useful purpose (if it had one) and has done far more harm than good in education.
The College Board was founded in 1900, supposedly to expand access to college and simplify the admission process. It was and continues to be, at least in name, a non-profit organization, serving a public purpose supposedly justifying its tax-exempt status. While its initial purpose may or may not have been salutary, its current impact is corrosive.
As to its public purpose, it has been de-facto privatized for decades. It has built a virtual monopoly on testing, profiting from the creation and execution of the testing program and its copyrighted materials. Its executives are paid very high salaries. According to a CNN report, recently retired President Gaston Caperton was paid more than $1 million per year. The College Board has grown into a nearly $700 million per year corporation that exerts undeserved and harmful influence on secondary and post-secondary education. It has used aggressive business practices to make its goods and services indispensible to education, profiting from nearly every college bound child in America with each transaction.
The SAT entrance exam is a plague on education. SAT used to mean "Scholastic Aptitude Test" but now means, well, just plain SAT. Many critics aptly noted that success on the test demonstrated an aptitude for doing well on the Scholastic Aptitude Test and little else, so the College Board dropped the name and kept the meaningless acronym. For many years, research has indicated that a student's SAT scores are not a particularly good predictor of college success. The scores are an even worse predictor of life success. The test has also been rightly criticized for racial and/or cultural bias, although its self-interested executives deny that criticism.
Even if the test is not biased per se, the process is biased by the burgeoning test-prep industry. It is inarguably true that wealthier students can "buy" test points through expensive test prep courses. If the College Board ever intended to create equity in college admission, its effect has been the opposite. It advantages the already advantaged. The disproportionate weight given to SAT scores in admission further magnifies the many advantages already enjoyed by privileged kids.
The Advanced Placement scheme is equally skewed. Until recently, AP courses were more readily available in wealthier communities, by a wildly disproportionate margin. The frenzy to make education "more rigorous" has indeed democratized the AP program by visiting this test-taking nonsense on more and more students in public schools around the nation. But this (highly profitable) democratization has had the collateral effect of rendering the credential more and more useless. As more students take the courses and tests, it has become less an elite badge of honor, accelerating its well-deserved decline in importance. Thus the Dartmouth decision. It's not a good idea to give away college credits to a lot of students. It was never a good educational idea, but now it's bad business too.
The most negative influence of the College Board has been in turning learning into a blood sport. Students obsess over SAT prep at the expense of far more interesting and valuable ways they might spend time. Most AP courses are canned, formulaic and uninspired. Students take them at a high cost, financially and emotionally. They accumulate AP credits like little badges of honor, surrendering curiosity, imagination and critical thinking skills to the building of a glittery transcript.
Calhoun abolished AP courses years ago because we can and do design courses of greater intellectual depth and interest. It has not affected our students' college prospects at all. In fact there is substantial evidence that colleges are regretting the monster they helped create. Students with many AP courses and well-coached SAT scores are often incurious, highly stressed and see college as another system to game, not a life to love.
So Dartmouth took a good step, whatever the reason. If they wish to further enhance their integrity, they might join the growing list of colleges and universities which are SAT optional or don't consider test scores at all. If fewer colleges considered SAT scores and didn't give credit for AP courses (or consider them in admissions), the College Board could be gradually starved to death. That would be a lovely thing.
A version of this column appeared in the Valley News]]>Yahoo for Yahoo!tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.27813512013-03-01T12:37:50-05:002013-05-01T05:12:01-04:00Steve Nelsonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-nelson/
Before justifying my enthusiasm, I offer an important acknowledgment: Yahoo's work-from-home policy was a great benefit for parents, especially women who have long suffered inequity in the workplace. Policies that give flexibility for parenting and help folks lead balanced, healthy lives are praiseworthy. It is unfortunate that stopping this practice may create upheaval in family life, for women in particular.
That disclaimer aside, Yahoo's highly publicized (and criticized) move strikes a blow for rationality, particularly regarding education.
Among the emerging trends in education -- from pre-school to post graduate -- is the genuflection at the altar of technology. Much of this is pure hype, manufactured and distributed by the tech companies who stand to profit immensely from efforts to digitize education. The actual benefits of technology are questionable, despite the hype. Living and learning are organic experiences, not digital ones, and we confuse the two things at significant peril. The digital representation of something is not the same as "the something," whatever that may be. This is not merely a romantic concern, although I am an unrepentant romantic. It is also a neurobiological problem. Brain development benefits from active, multi-sensory experience. Learning is the process of understanding the physical, not the digital universe. Learning is about understanding human experience, not its likeness arrayed in 0's and 1's. Both of these dimensions of learning benefit from touch, smell, sound, three-dimensional perspective... even taste.
This distinction alone should make us wary of technological hype.
But the greater risk posed by digital education, particularly online courses, is the loss of community and the power of relationships within a community. Here the Yahoo decision directly responds to concerns that many educators have about online education.
"Yahoo, touting the importance of 'physically being together,' asked that all employees who have work-from-home arrangements begin working in the office starting in June. 'To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side,' the note said. 'That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices.' The memo went on to note that some of the company's best decisions and insights come from hallways and cafeteria discussions, meeting new coworkers and impromptu in-person team meetings."
A hearty "BRAVA" to Ms. Mayer, particularly for the last sentence in the above report.
It is useful to consider the differences between bland production and interesting innovation and between routine procedures and problem solving. In the Fox piece, a critic of her decision cited a Stanford study, which showed increased production (up 13 percent) by folks working from home for a Chinese travel agency. Travel agency work, which is arguably bland production and/or routine procedure, is not the work of Yahoo or any other dynamic industry. This and other examples used by critics simply miss the point.
The Yahoo case is a precise analog for considering the efficacy, or lack thereof, of online education.
Consider a key distinction: that between training and education. If a school's or school system's highest aspiration is training, online courses are probably adequate. Sadly, given the excesses of rote learning and constant testing, this may be an accurate assessment of our national aspirations. It sometimes seems that all schools are trying to do is train children with a minimal threshold of skills to be cogs in the national economy (or Chinese travel agents!).
But while this is what we do, it's not what we say. All the teeth gnashing about the alleged crisis in American education uses language like "entrepreneurial, innovative, problem solving, creative, dynamic, collaborative..." to describe the outcomes we desire. Politicians and bureaucrats talk this talk and they walk the path of rote instruction, destruction of arts programs, suppression of imagination and -- by way of online instruction -- isolation instead of collaboration. It is as though we claim the desire to develop a generation of great athletes and then we buy them television sets to watch lots of sports.
In schools, as in Yahoo, communication and collaboration are critically important. Students and teachers must work side-by-side -- and not on Skype. As at Yahoo, some of the best learning will happen in hallways and cafeteria discussions, impromptu encounters and team projects.
I really don't care much about Yahoo, and I'm rather enjoying the implicit irony in using the decisions made by a technology company as an argument for using less technology in education.
I wonder what Ms. Mayer would make of that?]]>Shall We Drug Test Our Pre-schoolers?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.27183682013-02-20T15:39:19-05:002013-04-22T05:12:01-04:00Steve Nelsonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-nelson/
The New Hampshire initiative, while probably unconstitutional on its face, would require welfare recipients to undergo semi-annual drug tests in order to continue eligibility. Those darned poor people - taking drugs, eating junk food and generally living large on the public dole! This characterization is an untrue as it is offensive. The GOP's punitive, stereotyping view of poverty is enough to make rational people everywhere want to alter their moods or sedate themselves with comfort food!
But I digress. My concerns about Obama's proposal arise from an oddly parallel concern: That our policy-makers feel compelled to design strict accountability only into programs which deal with "the other" in our society.
Please don't infer that I don't support a national commitment to the well being of children (and all others). I am an unabashed political progressive. We need more progressive taxation, more regulation of big corporations, and more commitment to social justice through our local, state and federal legislatures. We especially need a greater national commitment to education. But we shouldn't bind our commitment to education with federal policy that undermines good education. And that's what we appear to be poised to do . . . again.
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has been an unmitigated disaster. The evidence is unambiguous. Most children have been left behind. (Although the educational publishing companies have sprinted briskly ahead.) Even on the mindless metrics that claim to measure achievement, the policy has been a disaster. These policies have not enhanced anything other than the incidence of cheating by students, teachers and administrators. Nearly all reported claims of educational "gains" are the result of gaming the system, changing the scoring matrix or outright fraud. On a deeper level - the extent to which education enlivens the spirit, stimulates curiosity, enhances imagination, and develops critical capacities - the last decade has been catastrophic.
Race to the Top is worse. (If such a thing is possible) It kicks the measurement can down the road to states and local jurisdictions, while simultaneously rewarding the wholesale looting of public education by way of enabling charter operators and voucher programs that divert public funds to the private trough.
It is in this sad context that I worry about the latest Obama "fix" for education. The words on the Teleprompter had hardly faded before the calls from both sides of the aisle came loud and clear: "Yes, but we need to hold them accountable!" "Align the curriculum with the Common Core State Standards!" "As long as they're learning to read and write to compete with the _______________ (fill in the blank)."
The value of pre-school rests in its lack of highly structured intentions. 3 and 4 year old children have such widely varied developmental timelines, that a "curriculum" is nonsensical. The evidence for the importance of play is unambiguous, but the play should be imaginative and open-ended, not teacher-directed and "pre-academic."
The bitter irony is that the children who least need pre-school in America are the ones for whom it is readily available. Privileged children have the luxury of play-based, developmentally flexible pre-schools like the one at my school. I'm not suggesting that it has no value, but most of our pre-school students would do just fine without. Many, not all, of our pre-school parents also have time to arrange play dates, play groups, or other social activities. These families also have homes rich in print and oral language and engaging toys for their toddlers to freely explore. For these folks, pre-school is a lovely extension of a set of advantages that accompany privilege. It is also a way for kids to have these experiences while parents pursue satisfying work.
But in less-privileged communities, families don't have these advantages. For them, the need for pre-school is inarguably greater. Without pre-school, these children are too likely to remain in environments where oral and print language is less abundant, where resources don't allow for creative toys and parents are too overwhelmed making ends meet. It's hard to object to a proposal for universal pre-school, as the intent is laudatory. But as is the case with highly regimented charter schools and "accountable" public schools, the design is for "the other," not for the children of the programs' architects.
And the last thing we need is for the geniuses that brought us NCLB and RTTT to design a pre-school program. I can only imagine that Pearson is already designing materials for the new pre-school market and other entrepreneurs are drooling over the possibility of online pre-school. Play groups on Skype!! Imagine the scalability!
Back to my original, attention-getting analogy. . .
When we grant subsidies to large corporations, or bail out the financial leaders who led our economy to the brink, we don't ask the recipients of social largess to take semi-annual drug tests. We only mistrust the poor folks who are the victims of an increasingly inequitable society.
When we look at all the wonderful opportunities available to young children of privilege, we don't insist on accountability or alignment with some wrong-headed standards. But we always insist that the least advantaged among us provide proof that our precious dollars are being spent with measurable efficacy.
Can we not be unconditionally generous and understanding?]]>Teaching: The Most Noble Professiontag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.24718942013-01-15T15:11:13-05:002013-03-17T05:12:01-04:00Steve Nelsonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-nelson/The New York Times, no outpouring of national or local grief or admiration for a life lived with nobility... only a small death notice in tiny type, buried deep in the paper.
This same week The New York Times more fully eulogized a technology activist, an Italian actress, a hokey television personality, a "trading card innovator," a former McDonald's executive, a football coach and the man who named the Kindle.
Teachers have always been taken for granted, despite doing the most important work in the world. In recent years it has gotten worse, as teachers have been absorbing the misplaced blame for the state of education in America.
There are many problems in public and private education, but teachers are not one of them. Any dispassionate view of the alleged decline of achievement in American schools would conclude that among the complex variables -- cultural shifts, economic and social inequity, inadequate funding, poor public policy, lousy parenting -- the only thing that has not changed is the dedication and skill of teachers.
A more apt characterization of teachers might be found in the tribute I wrote nine years ago on the occasion of Lil's retirement. I offer it again as a tribute to Lil and to all great teachers, then and now.
Dear Lil,
Thirty five years, 15 kids -- give or take -- to a class. That makes 525 kids you have loved and taught. You've spent about 50,400 hours teaching during those 35 years. That's enough time to visit Pluto and return, yet you have stayed in one place. Remarkable.
During this, your final year of teaching, rock stars have been idolized, athletes have signed multi-million dollar contracts before they are old enough to vote and business leaders have been convicted because of shabby ethics and practices. They have been in The New York Times and you have not. You have stayed in one place, teaching children while controversy swirled over the war in Vietnam, while the Hubble Telescope captured breathtaking pictures of the infant universe, and while the Dow Jones Industrial average went from 750 to 12,000. You have stayed in one place, teaching children, while Elvis died and reappeared in small towns everywhere, while the Berlin Wall fell, and while the nation enjoyed unprecedented prosperity and endured unspeakable terror.
A lot happened while you were just sitting around in one place teaching children!
There is no profession as important as teaching children and you have done it with rare grace, skill, good humor and abundant love. You should be the Times Magazine Woman of the Year. You should win multiple Oscars, Tonys and Emmys. You should be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Niceness and the Nobel Prize for Dedication. But you won't. Teachers don't become household names unless they do something really awful and all you have done are really wonderful things.
Yes, you have taught long enough to visit Pluto and return, yet you have stayed in one place. Some people travel to far galaxies and other people prepare them for the trip. For 35 years you have been Calhoun's NASA. You have inspired and cajoled, taught and hugged. You have given your hundreds of kids a confident and unconditionally affirming start and sewn their flight jackets with threads of wisdom and joy. You've laughed at their 5-year old jokes and been gob-smacked by their insights. You've wiped their noses (and behinds) and put smiles back on their faces just when they needed it. And because of you, 525 kids believed they could travel to the stars or accomplish anything they wished. And they have. And they will.
There can be no life achievement greater than to have affected the lives of 525 humans in a profound and irreversible way. In any other context this statement might be trite, but in your case it is irrefutably true: You have changed the world for the better.
]]>After Sandy Hook: Love Is the Best Securitytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.23758202012-12-28T18:25:01-05:002013-02-27T05:12:02-05:00Steve Nelsonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-nelson/
The natural exuberance is contagious. Every now and then a child or adult unaffiliated with the school will get a quick walk-by high five.
Contrast "Eddie Spaghetti" with the absurd proposals to have armed guards in every school across America. Which children are safer? Violence in schools -- violence in society for that matter -- will not be solved by more guns. Love is the most effective security.
The impulse to arm schools is irrational. The chances of being shot in a school are significantly less than the chances of dying in a horrific plane crash. As is true in armed homes, the presence of guns in schools poses more risks to children and adults than all the mass school shootings in history. Shall we stop taking children out for recess or on exciting field trips or have them accompanied by armed guards? Are we so delusional and paranoid (or bullied by the NRA) that we must all be armed? Is that the social climate you want your child to grow up in?
The gun rights crowd claims that shooters go there because they know the school to be a gun-free zone. That is just plain crazy. The school shooters in recent history were prepared -- eager -- to die. Did these deeply alienated shooters experience their school as a warm and loving place? The evidence suggests otherwise.
America's schools can be alienating places for far too many children. Increasing class sizes, the depersonalizing effects of technology, the persistent stresses of testing, the lack of counseling services and the insidious effects of bullying have all served to marginalize sensitive and awkward girls and boys. They are often silent and invisible. We really don't know much about Adam Lanza, but every report suggests painful isolation. And who cared? He apparently lived in the cracks of the school, avoiding group pictures, escaping close scrutiny and living without relationships. Did anyone notice this little boy at all? Do you think boys like Adam Lanza don't hurt deeply every day?
There has been entirely too much speculation about the role of mental illness in the murders in Sandy Hook. The aspersions cast toward children assessed with Asperger's syndrome are particularly offensive. This neurodevelopmental condition is not associated with sociopathic behavior or violence. The children I've known with this diagnosis are sweet and gentle. But if there is a common quality found in Adam Lanza and the other recent agents of mayhem, it is deep alienation and loneliness. How many times have so-called "deranged" gunmen been described as "loners?"
I'm certainly not blaming Sandy Hook Elementary or Newtown High School for bringing on their own unthinkable tragedy. Perhaps they did everything they could to invite Adam into the life of the schools. I just don't know. But however that boy experienced his schools do you believe it would have been better with armed teachers or security guards? Would guns in schools make alienated children feel more loved? Would guns in schools make any children feel more loved? Or do guns in schools suggest to all children, lonely or gregarious, that life is so threatening that we must arm ourselves and be on hair trigger alert.
I recently revisited several iconic images from another time: One of a small girl with a flower at the site of the killing of 4 Kent State students in 1970, another of a Vietnam war protester putting a flower in the rifle of a soldier during a 1967 march on the Pentagon.
This was at a time when our nation had lost its bearings. We've lost our way again. We don't need guns in schools. We need more flowers. We need more Eddie Spaghetti's greeting every child with a booming "Dame esos cinco" and a wide grin.]]>Stand Your Ground: The New National Anthemtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.22314882012-12-04T16:17:12-05:002013-02-03T05:12:01-05:00Steve Nelsonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-nelson/
In all the chatter about public education in America, I've never heard or read a suggestion that we should make the prevention of gun violence part of the curriculum. As it stands now, America's children spend more time dodging bullets in school than discussing the increasingly violent, entitled culture they are inheriting.
Last summer's tragedy at a movie theater in Aurora became another opportunity for gun folks to deny reality and invoke the Second Amendment. "Guns don't kill people. People kill people." If only some other movie patron had been packing heat, many gun owners claimed, perhaps James Holmes would have been "taken out" before he completed his gruesome mission, despite overwhelming evidence and expert testimony from police officers that armed settings, whether homes or movie theaters, are more, not less, dangerous.
The day after the Aurora massacre, I received a robo-call from Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Rifle Association (NRA). The call invited me to join the organization and help them fight back against the imaginary campaign to disarm patriotic Americans. The NRA is a despicable organization. Their lobbying has been instrumental in turning back nearly every effort to stop the insanity of an increasingly armed nation. The call was infuriating and reminded me of the surreal sight of Charlton Heston hefting a rifle at a NRA rally in Colorado shortly after children were slaughtered at Columbine. Have they no shame?
Their work has created a legal and social climate where a disturbed man like Holmes could legally and easily buy a semi-automatic AR-15 and a 100 round rifle drum that, according to experts, could fire 40-60 deadly rounds in one minute. But, the NRA and others insist, outlawing such weapons wouldn't help. Bad (or sick) guys like Holmes would get the firepower somewhere else anyway. Or he could have made a bomb, one particularly smug pundit sneered.
After the Aurora shootings, gun sales skyrocketed as citizens raced to flex their Constitutional muscles, just as they did after Columbine, Tucson and Virginia Tech. The only thing better for the gun industry than mass murder was Obama's 2008 election. The FBI reports that from November 3-8, 2008, gun permits were up 49 percent. And guess what? It happened again in 2012. I guess a black man in the White House still threatens a lot of folks' manhood.
We are now the most armed nation on the planet. According to a report issued several years ago by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies, there are about 90 guns in America for every 100 citizens. Americans buy more than half of all the guns manufactured in the world. Second on the list of most armed nations is Yemen. This is the kind of company we keep.
While I disagree with the current Supreme Court's view of the Second Amendment, why is it only this particular right that Americans are so insistent on exercising and cowardly legislators are so eager to protect?
The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures. In New York and other major cities, black men and boys are stopped and frisked every day for no justifiable reason. Where's the outrage?
The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits states from making or enforcing laws that abridge the privileges of United States citizens. Ask gay and lesbian folks how vigorously that prohibition is being enforced. The odious Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is still the law of the land, despite some encouraging actions at the state level.
The Fifteenth Amendment guarantees the right of every American to vote. Why was there such little public concern over discriminatory voter ID laws in Pennsylvania and other states that sought to systematically disenfranchise the old, the poor and folks of color?
It seems the only part of the Bill of Rights worth protecting in America is the Second Amendment.
But this issue is not primarily about the right to bear arms. The NRA and its lapdogs in the legislature have created a culture where men and boys (yes, mostly males) are conditioned to believe they have the right to use arms. It's not about hunting, target shooting or the Second Amendment. It's about entitlement, arrogance and incivility. "Stand Your Ground!" we're told.
Just two of many recent events indicate what happens when "Stand Your Ground" becomes the national athem.
In Minnesota, a proud gun-owner slaughtered two unarmed teenagers. who broke into his house - instant capital punishment for a break-in. The teens were apparently seeking prescription drugs. He described his final shot under the chin and up to the cranium of an already near-dead teenage girl as "a good clean finishing shot."
In Florida a man with a concealed weapon permit shot and killed a teenager outside a convenience store. The dispute began because the boy and his friends were playing loud music in their car. The gunman claims the boys had a shotgun. No such gun was found at the site or elsewhere.
The next tragedy is, unfortunately, just around the bend.]]>Affirmative Action Headed for the Dustbin of Historytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.19648332012-10-17T18:48:49-04:002012-12-17T05:12:02-05:00Steve Nelsonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-nelson/
Fisher is the plaintiff in the affirmative action case considered by the Court on Wednesday. The young white woman, a recent graduate of Louisiana State University, filed the lawsuit now being considered because, she claims, she was unfairly denied admission to the University of Texas. One might argue whether the distinction between these two institutions is so great that Fisher had standing to bring the case at all. She claims that this allegedly diminished pedigree has done her grievous harm. Whatever. Lots of kids don't get into the colleges they most desire. Did Fisher, or those who advised her to sue, choose to complain that some other white student of "lesser qualification" won the spot she so dearly coveted? No, it was only the allegedly "inferior" black applicants whom she apparently resents.
There is a great deal at stake in this case, perhaps more than most analysis suggests. The University of Texas has a modest approach to affirmative action, one clearly within the boundaries established by existing precedent -- the 2003 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger. That case, decided by a thin 5-4 margin, permitted the consideration of race among myriad other variables, as long as specific quotas were not in place. Because of the modesty of the Texas practices, one might legitimately question why the Court agreed to hear the case at all, unless of course the conservative majority was looking for an opportunity to shut the door on opportunity once and for all.
If Grutter v. Bollinger is overturned, which seems likely given the current composition of the Court and the tenor of the arguments on Wednesday, once again folks of color will be in a position of structural disadvantage in America. It won't be news to them, as institutional racism was never eradicated and is freshly pungent in the mythological post-racism era in America.
In many folks' minds, the question is whether there is, or ever was, an obligation to redress the legacy of segregation and racism by providing an affirmative opportunity to students of color in the admission process. The answer is unambiguously "yes," and the obligation persists despite several decades of slow progress (and a decade or two of backsliding). And there is the secondary, yet equally powerful, argument that a diverse educational environment is a better educational environment for everyone, regardless of race or ethnicity. One would hope these two arguments would be compelling enough to convince any reasonable person that modest efforts to achieve and maintain diversity, like those at the University of Texas, would be embraced on ethical, educational and constitutional grounds. But "reasonable person" may only describe a minority of current Justices.
But what most people don't recognize is that overturning Grutter v. Bollinger will usher in an era of affirmative disadvantage.
Conventional wisdom suggests that admissions criteria are clear and objective; that grade point average and SAT scores are, taken together, an accurate gauge of merit and potential. They aren't, and those who work with young women and men know it. First of all, there is abundantevidence that standardized tests and much curriculum, are riddled with cultural bias. Standardized test scores correlate precisely with wealth, not much else. And wealth is concentrated in white communities.
Second, and more important, these measures, even if they were valid, only capture a limited dimension of any person. Neither GPA nor SAT scores reflect imagination, creativity, compassion, originality, perception or capacity to recognize or create something of beauty. This is increasingly and sadly true in today's educational environment, where these qualities are neglected or repressed in service of mindless testing and competition. This is ironic in that the politicians, pundits and philanthropists who inform educational policy have driven these things out of the learning process while simultaneously arguing that they are the very qualities we need to be competitive in the global economy.
Schools need dreamers, procrastinators, eccentrics, artists, musicians and critical thinkers who, if they are indeed thinking critically, reject the "chase" for impeccable grades or the test prep that buys a few more SAT points. Any good school is properly wary about selecting only those students whose "metrics" sit at the top of the heap. They are often highly stressed, uninteresting and risk-averse. Those three qualities do not enliven a class, a campus or a society. An acquaintance of mine, who served a few years ago on the Board of Overseers for a very selective university, reported that their unpublished admissions policy was to admit a substantial portion of the entering freshman class from the pool of applicants whose SAT scores were conspicuously lower than the median. The motivation was to make them look harder for all the other qualities that would enhance the college community, in and out of the classroom.
The likely Court ruling may be constitutionally defensible, but it is socially indefensible. It's infuriating that the Court will likely rule that race can't be considered in admissions. Those who argue that we are in a post-racist era claim to be color blind. Try telling that to any person of color. Race is negatively weighted in nearly every other experience for folks of color, from profiling on the highways, to stop-and-frisk practices in New York City, to inequity in employment opportunity. But we can't consider it when it might be properly seen as a desirable asset that a student brings to a school or college. In a post-Grutter v. Bollinger world the most vibrant educational environments will continue to be crafted to include dreamers, eccentrics, artists and iconoclasts, but the only quality that will be excluded for consideration will be race. It is certain that this exclusion will lead to less diverse student bodies, less interesting campuses and less opportunity for students of color.
Ironically, one positive side effect of the probable Court decision is that students of color will not be subjected to direct accusations of having been admitted solely because of their race. But that small mitigating factor won't entirely remove the unfounded stigma that already affects people of color, whether in college admission or employment.
With or without direct consideration of race in the admissions process, any student of color who isn't in the top tier of grades and test scores will be viewed with skepticism. I've seen it over and over again. At Calhoun, the school I lead, I've watched students of color break down in tears because a few classmates smugly assumed that their acceptance at an Ivy League college was related to their race.
Kids of color already know this. Their parents tell them that they simply have to be better and work harder than their peers. A brilliant black poet with mediocre test scores will always be suspect. A white artist will never be challenged for having been admitted on the basis of her race, regardless of her SAT scores. Either way this ruling goes, black students will have to prove their merit in ways that white students don't.
Prohibiting consideration of race in admissions will ensure that young women and men of color continue to operate in a society that places them in a position of affirmative disadvantage. It will feel quite familiar.
(This piece appeared first in the Valley News)]]>Who Works Hard in America?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.19292302012-10-01T17:09:34-04:002012-12-01T05:12:01-05:00Steve Nelsonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-nelson/
Romney's recent comment about how he and Ann gave up their inheritances was yet another pathetic effort to distance himself from his aristocratic roots. He seems unaware of the immense social, political and economic capital he enjoyed as a white male from a wealthy, influential family.
Perhaps the most glaring manifestation of this blindness is found in his now-famous denigration of the 47 percent who pay no income taxes and, in Romney's view, feel entitled to government support for their comfortable lives. He paints a caricature of people in poverty or near poverty, portraying them as shiftless and dependent.
Of course there is no monolithic 47 percent. Those to whom Romney sneeringly referred include active duty soldiers, disabled veterans, lifelong Republicans struggling to get by on Social Security and, most ironically, surprising numbers of millionaires who take advantage of the system they created to avoid contributing to the commonweal. And, of course, nearly all of the folks lumped in this 47 percent group pay other taxes, most of which are sharply regressive, thereby further disadvantaging the poor.
But here's what really gets my dander up: Romney and his fellow class warriors insult the integrity and courage of the poor and near poor Americans who work hard every day of their lives just to survive. This includes millions of people who are unemployed and underemployed. Romney knows nothing about this kind of work.
You see, privilege has its privileges. Mitt Romney has never had to take an overcrowded bus for 90 minutes each day to work. He has never ridden in a dirty, loud, subway car with an infant and toddler, carrying heavy grocery bags. Romney has never had to take a bus to drop two small children at daycare so he could travel another hour to his minimum wage job. He's never had to sit in the lobby of a crowded, frightening emergency room for hours, pleading for a sick child to be seen by overwhelmed staff. He's never suffered the humiliation of having the electricity shut off. He's never had to ride a bus for an hour to get to the utility's office, take a number, wait another hour or more and then endure the scornful haughtiness of an underpaid clerk who has had a similarly miserable week.
Romney evidently believes these "shiftless" folks have it easy. He and running mate Paul Ryan not only seek to reduce the meager "entitlements" poor and unemployed folks receive. They would also eviscerate the already understaffed agencies and departments that provide this bare subsistence support, leaving fewer social workers, fewer case managers and fewer places to get assistance.
Romney never lost a job because of missing a few days caring for a disabled relative living in his home. He has someone else register his car and make his appointments. He doesn't have to stand in line at a predatory check cashing facility to get enough money to pay for dinner. He doesn't have to endure the humiliation that accompanies all the simple things you can't do if you don't have a credit card.
I doubt that he's ever changed his own oil or a flat tire. He's never suffered that utter panic that comes when your old car breaks down in the middle of nowhere and you can't notify work that you'll be late. He's never had to look his children in the eye and explain why there isn't enough money for new school clothes or a simple toy.
I watch the poor and near poor in Manhattan every day, including the women who work as nannies or cleaning women in my neighborhood. They are on the buses, subways and dark streets long before hired cars pick up their employers. They have often -- too often -- already dressed and made breakfast for their own children, dropping them off at schools or care facilities that neither Mitt Romney nor most of my neighbors will ever see. I see men in their 60's or older who deliver food on bicycles for less than minimum wage, then go home to small apartments in Queens and the Bronx occupied by several generations of their striving, immigrant families.
These people are invisible to Romney, Ryan and the conservatives who believe they live in a meritocracy, where they deserve everything they've gotten. I'm disgusted by loud, rich white men complaining about the meager "entitlements" received by the silent poor. Who exactly is "entitled" here?
The truth, Mr. Romney, is that the Jamaican nanny from Harlem, who works 12-14 hour days caring for children in affluent families, doing their dirty diapers and a bit of house cleaning on the side, is probably working a lot harder than you ever worked in your life. She has remarkable dignity, compassion and wisdom. She quietly endures life circumstances that you, in your smug privilege, can't even see. She's in your 47 percent.
The Central American immigrant who works in my building has more drive, ambition and talent than many of your prep school classmates. (And I'm sure he speaks better English than you do Spanish) All he wants is a life of simple dignity and opportunity for his small family. He's in your 47 percent too.
You should try walking a mile or two in these shoes, particularly through the increasingly inhospitable environment that your political party has created.]]>Cheating Because the Stakes Are So Lowtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.18775162012-09-12T20:51:20-04:002012-11-12T05:12:01-05:00Steve Nelsonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-nelson/
That may be conventional wisdom, but I think it's more conventional than wise. Perhaps the cheating is really because the stakes are so low. (And, of course, the cheating, lying culture in which today's teenagers are immersed has an insidious effect.)
As to this parenthetical point, teenagers have built-in hypocrisy radar. They listen to adults talk about academic honesty and ethics with one ear while tuned into contemporary political discourse with the other. For goodness sake, the GOP vice presidential nominee lied through his teeth from the podium in Tampa with utter impunity! It was (is) outrageous, but we've accepted this as a way of political life.
Candidates on both sides (but most egregiously on the political right) distort the truth, quote out of context or simply prevaricate. This behavior would not be acceptable from middle school students in my school. This 2012 political campaign is like a spin-off to the silly quiz show, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? This year's version: Are You as Honest as a Fifth Grader? Both parties fail the test.
We have become a culture where bending the truth is accepted as a way of doing business. Just think of the Wall Street scandals. This is not a new phenomenon, but it's a whole lot worse than a generation ago. And we wonder why our most advantaged young folks (Harvard, Stuyvesant et al.) have cloudy ethical compasses?
Statistics show that the incidence of cheating is higher when economic disparity is greater. There are also indications that wealth and ethics have an inverse correlation. As reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: "...at least some wealthier people perceive greed as positive and beneficial." America today is a place where the crude, rugged individualism espoused by Ayn Rand is celebrated.
By contrast, the incidence of cheating is lowest when students or citizens perceive that they are members of an interdependent community, but that's not, sadly, today's America. We are blind to our interdependence. Inequality and dishonesty are two rents in a frayed national fabric.
While these social and economic issues are complex, calling the striving of privileged students "high stakes" is inaccurate in any era. High stakes are when children are homeless, parents are unemployed, families are deeply stressed and schools for poor children (particularly of color) are punitive and joyless. High stakes are not privileged kids having to choose between Harvard and Haverford.
When confronted with cheating we too easily accept the notion that the stakes are high and kids cheat out of desperation. Nonsense. The take-home test at Harvard was of little consequence, as was also true in the Stuyvesant affair. But if, as research contends, academic dishonesty is on the rise around the nation, there is another reason that is seldom expressed: A great many young folks in America cheat because the stakes are so dismally low.
Like the Harvard and Stuyvesant students who have been "gaming" the system for much of their school lives, many high-achieving students are not invested in or connected to the kinds of hoops they're expected to leap through. High stakes are when you take intellectual risks, posit a controversial idea, expose your vulnerabilities in a poem, or question authority. In today's educational climate those things are either irrelevant or punished.
So-called high-stakes tests are meaningless, except as a sterile means to an end. And when the "end" -- admission to a supposedly top-tier college or graduate school -- is pretentious and superficial, the "means" become "by any means necessary."
When a textbook or teacher's "facts" are the primary or only consideration, students are engaged only in succeeding in the game. The rote process of filling heads with information and testing it out has little relevance to student's passions, values, imagination or critical capacities. Cheating in this context violates very little of what really matters to young men and women. Neither the process nor the product represents much of who they really are.
By contrast, meaningful assessments are intimately connected to students' learning. In every discipline, good pedagogy invites students to invest themselves in the process and, as a corollary, in the product. When a student's unique point of view or creation is invited and appreciated, cheating is neither necessary nor possible.
Cheating, in any realm, is less likely if the individual is in love. In today's "high stakes" classrooms few students would say that they love school. Cheating in school is less likely if students have deep, affectionate relationships with their teachers and peers. In today's drill and kill environment kids are disconnected and cynical.
Until we have educational practices that really matter to our kids we'll be unable to address the question, "What's the matter with our kids?"]]>School Choice Is the Tip of a Titanic Icebergtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.18182622012-08-21T18:22:57-04:002012-10-21T05:12:12-04:00Steve Nelsonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-nelson/
Even at age 16, when I waded through Atlas Shrugged out of curiosity, I experienced her worldview as cartoonish, filled with absurd caricatures, and about as philosophically sophisticated as a Batman episode. Complex human issues cannot be effectively addressed by seeing the world in heroes and villains, black and white, absolute right and wrong.
The anti-intellectual climate in America, particularly as seen in the Romney/Ryan candidacy, poses a grave threat to the future of our democratic republic.
Romney draws inspiration from his Mormon faith. Mormonism is, among other things, grounded in opportunistic myth. Joseph Smith discovered the Golden tablets after being directed to them by an angel named "Moroni." Moroni told him he couldn't show them to anyone else. What a name -- Moroni! You can't make this stuff up. Romney demonstrates his faith in part by following Moroni's advice when it comes to his tax returns. Like Joseph Smith, Romney just says, "Trust me."
Paul Ryan derives his worldview from Catholicism and Ayn Rand, the Odd Couple of philosophical guideposts. This inconsistency alone should raise grave doubts about Ryan's capacity for critical thought.
I digress.
The direst threat to our national well-being is posed by the Romney/Ryan highly selective embrace of Ayn Rand's so-called philosophy. While avoiding her atheism and other inconvenient dimensions of her amateurish objectivism, the GOP ticket embodies the Randian notion of rugged individualism. This election may present the most profound political choice of our lifetime.
Nowhere is this threat more acutely realized than in education. Vouchers are proposed as a means to provide choice and "equal opportunity" to all American families. The language used by the GOP is disingenuous and manipulative. Counseled by pollster and image consultant Frank Luntz, the phrase "opportunity scholarship" replaces "voucher." But this is a big lie. Every voucher program currently in place (or proposed) provides a level of funding that is insufficient for enrollment at the schools attended by the children of the politicians and policy wonks who foist the programs on a gullible public. School vouchers will provide a bare subsistence education at poorer schools, while those of greater means can buy a "better" education in the free market, particularly the rapidly expanding market of for-profit schools. This is a natural and pleasing outcome in a society committed to rugged individualism.
The current kerfuffle over Medicare contains the same radioactive seeds. The essence of the Romney/Ryan approach is identical to that of education: vouchers. Perhaps these will soon be rebranded as "health opportunity scholarships." Rational analysis of a voucher program yields the conclusion that an individual's access to health care would vary according to wealth. As with education, vouchers would provide a bare subsistence level of health care with supplementary benefits accruing only to those who could afford them. In a society committed to rugged individualism this outcome is desirable too.
Privatizing Social Security, regressive tax plans, reduced regulation, smaller government, systematic attacks on labor unions, reduced support of public secondary and post-secondary education -- all of these things are intended to move from America's historic social contract to bare knuckles individualism. Though the Romney/Ryan Randian lens, collectivism is weakness -- nanny state, welfare dependence, affirmative action, wealth redistribution -- that throttles the great engine of prosperity, which is driven by noble individual effort and pure merit.
For several hundred years our nation has refined an elegant balance between the promise of individual opportunity and our obligation to one another. But if the GOP prevails, this will change. Don't be hoodwinked. The triumph of Republican rhetoric is that they have convinced millions of Americans to vote against their own interests. The social fabric of America was knit through several centuries of progress. Now it may be unraveled by the persistent Republican pull on this thread.
This is the choice offered by Romney/Ryan. It's a real choice, and I wish they'd just be honest about it. I'd fare rather well in their world, being a privileged white man with good income and a relatively secure retirement on the horizon. But I've never mistaken my good fortune for merit alone. I was born with privileges (not into great wealth -- my father was a college professor) that the majority of Americans don't enjoy.
But when Romney/Ryan et al. mouth platitudes about the well-being of all Americans, they are fundamentally dishonest. They intend to recalibrate this balance and further reshape America to a place where you sink or swim on your own supposed merit. We shouldn't be surprised. Both of these wealthy white men are doing swimmingly well and apparently have no awareness of the raft of privileges they inherited.
Those who support school choice initiatives are wittingly or unwittingly complicit in the disintegration of the great American experiment.]]>Where's the Answer Bubble for 'It Depends'?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.17441502012-08-06T12:34:14-04:002012-10-06T05:12:17-04:00Steve Nelsonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-nelson/
Most of the apt criticisms of educational practice and policy these days are limited to empirical assessment of its measurable efficacy. There is scant evidence that testing and accountability have achieved even this sterile goal. Much more grave is the collateral damage done by classroom practices that present and test everything in stark contrasts of right and wrong. Children are being systematically denied the opportunity to develop independent minds. Our society will suffer the consequences.
In school and life things are seldom black and white, right and wrong. I suppose this is why the word "certain" is sometimes paired with the word "dead." It is at great peril that we allow our understanding of life's complexities to develop in a stark, binary way. That leads to trouble.
In every discipline, the most powerful learning comes when students are invited to inhabit someone else's perspective as a means to deeper understanding. This is the stuff of really important education. Curriculum should be built around learning for understanding, which requires and develops the human capacity for empathy and critical thought.
Although the concept can be stretched too far (see: Bill Clinton and the meaning of "is"), one of my favorite phrases is, "It depends." Nearly every assertion, whether historical, political, artistic, emotional or scientific, requires context in order to have meaning. Ask too simplistic a question and the proper answer may be, "It depends."
Seeing the world in black and white is the source of much human misery, injustice and ignorance.
Take (please!) the current state of partisan political rhetoric. It's black and white (too literally) and deeply dysfunctional. Complex humans and ideas are rendered in black and white caricatures that distract and detract from social progress. Barack Obama is a Socialist who wasn't born here! Mitt Romney is a Mormon fundamentalist and evil Capitalist! Neither characterization is accurate, and this deep black and bright white nonsense puts Americans at such great poles that social progress is blocked at every juncture. The media and political campaigns are to blame, of course, but Americans' lack of perspective and critical thinking capacity makes the citizenry guilty too.
In all realms of human life, learning to see shades of gray advances civilization.
Great scientists don't selectively choose the observations and information that support their theses. They work mightily to disprove their own hypotheses and discover their own biases. Perhaps peace would break out all over the Middle East if Palestians tried hard to understand the painful history of the Jewish experience and Israeli politicians walked a few miles in the shoes of the opposition. The best political and pragmatic compromises come when people of good will listen and learn from those who experience the issue from a different perspective.
And all of us know, sometimes through painful experience, that our personal relationships sometimes require swallowing hard, letting go our of our own stubborn emotions, and considering that our life partners or colleagues may see, feel or know something that is out of our reach. That's the only way to live, love and work together effectively.
Of course students should learn "facts" and develop skills. But as they gain knowledge and ability, they also learn that "it depends" -- that seeing things through a different lens might change everything you thought you knew, and that "dead certainty" can be fatal.]]>More Atrocities in Afghanistan - Why Are We Surprised?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14744992012-05-03T11:46:32-04:002012-07-03T05:12:03-04:00Steve Nelsonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-nelson/showed U.S. soldiers displaying the corpses and body parts of alleged Afghan insurgents. The images can only be characterized as grotesque. U.S. officials and NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen immediately characterized the pictured events as anomalous. A military investigation is underway.
Last year a U.S. soldier pled guilty to the 2010 murder of three unarmed Afghan civilians. The sense when that story broke was that these criminal offenses were just the tip of the iceberg of a rogue military culture. Similar incidents occurred in 2009.
This is old news in Iraq. Atrocities were frequent, including the disgusting treatment of captives at Abu Ghraib. In a 2007 article, journalist Chris Hedges wrote: "After four years of war, American Marines and soldiers have become socialized to atrocity. The war in Iraq is now primarily about murder. There is very little killing."
Why are we surprised?
From September 1966 through August 1967 I was in U.S. Army training. Basic training was followed by Advanced Infantry Training and six months of brutal Officers Candidate School (OCS). I am neither proud nor ashamed of these experiences. I had very personal engagement with the well-calculated process that turns ordinary young men from all walks of life into soldiers who are prepared to give their own lives and take others. It is a ruthlessly efficient system.
First is depersonalization. As you lose your identity (shaved head, olive green fatigues), you are expected to develop a new allegiance to comrade and mission. Obedience is necessary and it is not a subtle expectation. The "enemy" is dehumanized even more clearly. I recall, with surprising clarity, being ordered to (and complying) scream "gook" as we savagely thrust our bayonet blades into straw mannequins wearing Asian-themed hats and clothes. If you expected to complete training, your hostility had to have a ring of authenticity.
This training was accompanied by newscasts which showed the horrors of war in the rice paddies and jungles. I and all of my fellow soldiers were one set of orders and a plane trip away from being in those rice paddies. I was lucky. The closest I came to combat was 30,000 feet, while flying over Vietnam on the way to and from Thailand.
But I had anticipatory nightmares. Those dark nights of fitful sleep were filled with the "enemy" and I would awake in a sweat from the too visceral experience of being on hair trigger alert. I remember that it seemed perfectly sensible to shoot first and ask questions thereafter, as was one of the military mottos. This conversion happened to me, and I was a boy who avoided even mild confrontations on the playground. To this day it makes me nauseous to watch a fistfight or any other violence, but in 1967 I may have been ready to kill men, women, boys and girls I never met. I'll never know, but I don't like to think about it.
From what I've read in the many years since then, military training has become a little less brutal and the dehumanization of the enemy is not quite so explicitly vile. But don't be fooled into thinking it has fully changed, because it is inherently impossible to train men and women to kill others without dehumanizing the objects of their violence. It is not in our nature to kill people who are like us -- mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, friends and neighbors. If soldiers were not trained to see the enemy as "the other," military missions would be too unbearably painful. So in Vietnam they were "gooks," in Iraq and Afghanistan they are "towelheads." Their religion is false and their values are less noble than ours. We are the great nation, exceptional in all ways. By simple deduction all others are of somewhat lesser value.
I'm not denying the reality of terrorism or the complex reasons that war might be necessary. But even in the most justified or necessary war, the act of killing another human requires a particular and peculiar state of mind that is achieved through military training. It may be subtler today than in 1967, but it is still powerful and intentional.
At that moment of decision, whether by virtue of military mission or self-preservation, the pulling of the trigger or thrust of the blade is possible only because you have been conditioned to believe it is necessary and right. Whether in Vietnam 50 years ago or Afghanistan this week, the soldiers who have been conditioned in this way are placed in thankless situations where rationality is already overridden by constant fear -- road mines, snipers, folks with automatic weapons beneath their civilian robes, dark shadows in the midnight rainforest.
We should not be surprised when the fear and conditioning spill over into what we see as atrocities. The soldier with the hand of an Afghan corpse resting on his shoulder never saw that man as a real human. To the rest of us sentient beings, the horror is unthinkable. To the soldier in the picture it was evidently just another day at the office.
This moral tension is awful. You can't have an effective military if the soldiers are unable to execute the mission. And if they are trained to see the enemy as "the other," the killing cannot be perfectly confined. This is why we must pick our battles with great, great care. But we haven't done that. Whether in Iraq, Afghanistan or Vietnam, these atrocities are not the tragic collateral damage of just wars.
They are a national shame.]]>What If Trayvon Martin Had the Gun?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14108762012-04-10T12:12:49-04:002012-06-10T05:12:01-04:00Steve Nelsonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-nelson/
Some aspects of the tragic events on that rainy Sunday night remain unclear. It is clear that George Zimmerman was carrying a loaded 9mm handgun. It is clear that Trayvon Martin was unarmed. It is crystal clear that Trayvon Martin is dead from a chest wound delivered by George Zimmerman. What transpired between them is largely a matter of speculation. They had an altercation to be sure, but only the two men know who initiated it. Only Zimmerman lived to tell his story. Only the two men know what was in their minds and hearts. Martin's heart stopped beating, so we will never know his side of the story.
Let us stipulate that we don't know these things. How then can we conclude anything about the case? By acknowledging that we don't know what was in their minds and hearts we may, counter-intuitively, come to a valuable perspective. Bear with a set of hypotheticals.
Think for a moment if all the facts as we know them remain intact except that George Zimmerman is unarmed and Trayvon Martin is 18, not 17, and carrying a loaded 9mm handgun. Zimmerman, in his self-appointed neighborhood watch role, is following Martin because he looks suspicious. Skip beyond the opaque time period when it is unclear who initiated a confrontation. In this hypothetical, Zimmerman is dead of a chest wound. Martin, who had a permit to carry the 9mm gun (which he bought, legally, at a gun shop), claims self-defense under Florida's Stand Your Ground law.
Wouldn't Martin's claim of self-defense have arguably greater merit than does Zimmerman's claim? Martin was the one being followed. Martin was the one with a legitimate reason to be walking in the community. He had a destination in his sights. Zimmerman was cruising slowly in a car and apparently had Martin in his sights for some reason. Martin had reason to be frightened. Neither man had any knowledge as to the other's purpose. Yet would anyone claim, with a straight face, that Trayvon Martin would be walking free as the State Attorney and Justice Department investigated the matter?
Or try this: Trayvon Martin is the self-appointed neighborhood watch volunteer, legally carrying a 9mm handgun. He's wearing a hoodie because of the rain and chill in the air. He thinks George Zimmerman looks "suspicious" and follows him. Zimmerman keeps walking, moving away from the sidewalk, hoping the hooded stranger loses sight of him. What happens next is unclear, except that Zimmerman and Martin apparently have an altercation and Zimmerman lies dead from a chest wound. Martin claims self-defense, arguing that Zimmerman turned around and began to brutally beat him, despite having no visible signs of having been beaten severely. Martin, like Zimmerman, has every right (in Florida) to carry a loaded weapon and appoint himself to a neighborhood watch, yet would anyone claim, with a straight face, that Trayvon Martin would be walking free as the State Attorney and Justice Department investigated the matter?
All you have to do is change their roles or put a legally purchased, permitted handgun in the other man's hands. In every scenario I can imagine with George Zimmerman dead, Trayvon Martin would be in jail. Martin was young, black and wearing the wrong clothing. Zimmerman is walking free.
These hypotheticals say nothing about Zimmerman's guilt or innocence, but they speak volumes about racism in society.]]>