What Does It Mean to be Educated? an essay by Katrien Vance

Martha note:  It's Civic Soapbox Friday . . .

When a former student of mine was in her first year of college, a professor said: “What does it mean to be educated? Most of you probably know the significance of the date 1492. Some of you can explain the importance of 1776. But only the truly educated among you will know the significance of the date 1066.”

My student smiled, for in her middle school years, among other historical adventures she’d had in my classroom, she helped create a 1066 news broadcast about the Battle of Hastings (when, in case you’ve forgotten, William of Normandy--afterwards known as William the Conqueror--defeated Harold and became King of England). The students researched the battle from an insider’s point of view, preparing themselves to present both sides, living the glory of victory and the agony of defeat for the couple of weeks that it took us to prepare, film, edit, and watch the video together.

So, at least according to that one college professor, my former student is educated, because she can identify 1066’s important event. And yet on the 2007 Standards of Learning Test for World History, given by all public high schools, there is not one question about 1066 or the Battle of Hastings. This means any teacher who goes by that test’s definition of “educated” would probably skip the battle of Hastings altogether. Who is right: the UVA professor or the SOLs?

For me, it’s neither knowing nor not knowing about the Battle of Hastings that makes one educated. To be educated is, instead, to know how much you do not know, and to have the skills to set about finding out what you want to know.

Every single day in my classroom, I say, without shame or hesitation, “I don’t know. But I can look it up.” And I can—because I know how to ask good questions, how to analyze what I read and read the answers critically, how to synthesize those ideas, how to draw my own conclusion, and then how to present that conclusion to another person in a way that adds to their store of knowledge.

And my 13-year-old students can, too—so that, yes, they can tell you about the Battle of Hastings, but more importantly, they can tell you about the lessons one could learn from England and France’s long contentious relationship and about how they might use those lessons to make a difference in today’s world.

My former student, who can both identify the significance of the year 1066 and speak thoughtfully about cause and effect in history, is a UVa political theory major now. Given the chance as a young person to think for herself, pushed to analyze rather than memorize, asked to draw her own conclusions rather than recite others’ achievements, she is now poised to go out into the world and affect it in a real way. She could easily do this without knowing the importance of 1066. But she could not do this without the skills to analyze the world as it is and theorize how to create a better one

Piaget said it, and I agree: the goal of education should be to create people “capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done.” In my opinion, having the ability to ask good questions, analyze the answers critically, and apply that information newly is what it means to be educated.

-- Katrien Vance teaches seventh and eighth graders at North Branch School

Sister Kathleen and the Unwasted Life by Cordelia Regan

Martha note: Cordelia originally posted some quick thoughts about the aid workers slain in Afghanistan on the WMRA Facebook page. I asked her to write at greater length for the blog.  And am so happy that she did.

When I was in sixth grade, our math teacher, Sister Kathleen, told us that she hadn't gone through all the trouble of becoming a nun just so that she could teach middle-class, unappreciative American kids. The hot-tempered Irish woman had been ordered by some bishop or other to the catholic school in our affluent Washington, DC suburb. But she confided in us; she had hoped God would send her to Africa, where there was a need for her, where she could do some good. 

Sister Kathleen, stubborn by nature, quit the convent and married an ex-priest.

No matter what God tells us to do, the great majority of us will die in our beds, having accomplished very little good in this great world. Maybe we gave tithes, educated our children, donated to charity. Those are good things, but it takes all of a minute out of our week to write the check, peel the stamp, and lick the envelope.

By contrast, doctors and nurses of the International Assistance Mission have been helping people on the social fringe of Afghanistan since 1966. Of course it took the mass murder of ten of them (two with ties to Harrisonburg), for most of us to discover that these best and brightest, who could have had anything they wanted here, had been giving away all of themselves for decades.

"What a waste," was my reaction when I heard the news. Why would the murderers waste medical knowledge and skill that might one day save their own lives? Why would educated American and European professionals throw away their lives to help the terminally impoverished, the forever unfortunate? I send money to Doctors Without Borders, which I picture as a similar organization, but I never imagined those doctors trekking for days through dangerous territory to help unreachable people. I pictured them at a refugee camp, protected by UN soldiers. I guess I hadn’t read the materials they’d sent.

And then I realized how wrong I was. Those ten people were doing what they knew God put them here for, donating the gifts he gave them in abundance to people who desperately need them. If everybody gave like they did, nobody would need.

No, wasting life is what I do, watching movies and surfing the internet, sometimes for hours after I get back from my job that, although I enjoy it, has little relevance or meaning to me. The real waste is working to pay off the house in 30 years, just about the time Social Security kicks in.

If God is a woman, she doesn’t want to see any leftovers after the meal. It seems to me, these aid workers, and Brian Carderelli, who was filming their work, would make God proud. They used their lives up to the very last morsel--there was no waste.

I would bet my next paycheck that Mrs. Kathleen Ex-Nun, wherever she is, thinks so, too.

Heath care, again . . .

Ezra Klein, 26, writes a very worthwhile blog for washingtonpost.com that he calls Economic and Domestic Policy and Lots of It. As a woman of a certain age, I like reading what a very smart, educated person at the other end of adulthood has to say about how things are going.

Yesterday he posted news of a new poll on the Affordable Healthcare Act (remember that?) which I found quite interesting.

Most everyone's happy (and trending happier) except those Americans on Medicare. And they are worried (and becoming more worried) that they will lose some of what they already have in the interests of improving the heath care of others.

Yesterday, on the WMRA Facebook page, I posted news of a study which shows that, when it comes to health care, Americans spend more . . .

and get less than everyone else.

The Pew Research Center recently released a report on how the press reported the rowdy and contentious health care reform debate. In its introduction, this reports states:

It was a wild political donnybrook and the defining policy initiative of the Obama presidency to date. A Democratic chief executive was staking the crucial first year of his presidency on health care reform—a legislative achievement that had eluded several of his predecessors. And he was facing off against an equally determined opposition spearheaded by a new groundswell of fear about exploding government intervention.

There was a third major player in the health care debate as well. Much of the battle over health care reform, and much of what the public knew or thought about it, played out through a changing media system.

Prior to the legislative battle, curiously, health care had often flown below the news radar screen. Though the system affects virtually every American and represents about one-sixth of the U.S. economy, it accounted for less than 1% of the overall coverage in 2007 and 2008 according to data from the Pew Research Center’s  Project for Excellence in Journalism.

It also amounted to the first long-running policy debate the press would have to cover in what was in some ways a new media era. It was one in which bloggers were being recognized at White House briefings, cable news and talk radio seemed to play an ever larger role in the media landscape and new technologies such as Twitter and social media had become important components of politics.

Add to the challenge, the health care industry itself, a particularly complex and often confusing topic. And the cacophony of charges and countercharges, commentary and criticism from advocates on both sides further complicated efforts to comprehend the issue. Indeed, as the coverage continued, the public seemed more confused. . .

It is interesting in hindsight to think about how both our politicians and our press treated health care reform more as a political issue than a health issue. Wouldn't it have been more sensible and ethical for them to have made the issues under discussion as accessible and understandable as possible?

Of Tea and Taxes . . .

I am on everyone's e-mail list. I've been made well aware that today is not only tax day, it is also the day of the Richmond Tea Party's 2nd Annual Tax Day Rally.

 

"The day has finally arrived!" the organization's website announces. "We hope you are coming and bringing all your friends, neighbors and co-workers. Please don't miss this amazing event. Don't let Congress think you have given up after 12 months of fighting. Let's show every politician we are committed for the long haul! Come hear what we are about, what we have accomplished, and what we have planned for 2010!"

There is a list of speakers of whom I've never heard, but then I don't live in Richmond. The headliner appears to be Charles Payne, of Fox Business News, who has as unusual a resume for a journalist as I do. If custom prevails, I'm sure by the time those speakers get through, the crowd of Richmond Tea Partiers will be even angrier at the government than they were when they arrived. 

Today is also the Thursday after last weekend's quadrennially held Southern Republican Leadership Conference. As Don Gonyea, NPR's National Political Reporter, put it yesterday on Talk of the Nation . . .

It was a very conservative conference. And it seemed every speaker - save Ron Paul and Rick Perry, the Texas governor - spent a good bit of time talking about President Obama as a socialist. And about - I mean, Newt Gingrich used the phrase over and over and over, that the president is running a secular socialist machine; and Sarah Palin, certainly, goes there. So the rhetoric was very, very much red meat and kind of aimed at keeping the anger up, and doing that to kind of fuel the energy that they see out there. But when you get down to debating health care, if it's going to live in the details, it's harder to portray things that way.

So who are these extremely conservative, extremely angry people? There's a fascinating new poll reported today in the The New York Times that addresses just that question. The front page (as of this moment) article begins this way:

Tea Party supporters are wealthier and more well-educated than the general public, and are no more or less afraid of falling into a lower socioeconomic class, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The 18 percent of Americans who identify themselves as Tea Party supporters tend to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45.

They hold more conservative views on a range of issues than Republicans generally. They are also more likely to describe themselves as “very conservative” and President Obama as “very liberal.”

And while most Republicans say they are “dissatisfied” with Washington, Tea Party supporters are more likely to classify themselves as “angry.”

What, I'd like to know, what does all this anger accomplish? Where are all these angry peoples' ideas for productive policies and solutions to the difficult problems facing us? And I'd really like to know what those speakers who work so hard at keeping  other peoples' anger aroused think they are accomplishing toward the greater good?

I spent yesterday at Longwood University, sitting in on 5 sections of students studying effective ways to participate as citizens of communities, states, and this country. Our conversation focused on how to have productive conversations among people who don't agree. We talked about the difference between civil discourse, where a person wants to engage others' minds; and inflammatory discourse, which aims at provoking an emotional response. And, by golly, those students seemed to really get it!

Perhaps it's a course more of us should look into.

Two Gun Terry, talking . . .

Note: I’m Martha Woodroof, editor of WMRA’s "Civic Soapbox". And since it’s both summertime and very hot, I decided to let someone who’s simply fun to hear talk hop up on the Civic Soapbox and hold forth for our listening pleasure. 

Incidentally, legendary Shenandoah string player, Wilbur Terry, says the name most of us know him by know him comes from the funny papers and was given to him by colleagues years ago. The following is transcript of part of conversation we had one hot, summer afternoon, out in his music shop. 

Even better than reading  this, is listening to Two Gun say it . . .

They call me Two-gun Terry . And I am 68 years old. It comes natural for me since I was 8-9 years old.

I grew up a mile west of Lacey Spring. We had a farm there. Sixty acres. I grew up on farms, you see. We always had guitar and banjo and other instruments around the house when I grew up. Had a lot of people on my Dad’s side of the family who played music. Got a fiddle for Christmas one year when I was about 9 years old. It come natural to me ’cause I had an ability for it. A natural ability for it.

I’ve talked a whole lot about this over the years. Basically right here in the Shenandoah Valley, it was Bluegrass. Now we got what we call Bluegrass and Old-Time music, which is a lot of the same material presented in different ways.

Old-Time music goes back to old-timey playing styles. It’s always has been here. It’s just kind of a closet thing or in somebody’s kitchen. It’s a thing musicians like to do. It’s a sociable kind of thing. Musicians love to sit down and play because they play together. Bluegrass musicians they don’t they got their band and they don’t want to play with anybody else. They just want to do their thing. That’s difference between lot of blue grass bands and old time bands. Old-Time bands, the more the merrier.

I played tuba when I was in high school, also, because we didn’t have strings. So I was educated in tuba a little bit. But I studied 2 years of violin when I was like 30-years old. Over the years you acquire stacks of books, and if you can’t read music there no good to you. So I learned to read music so I could learn what I want to learn. Everything from fiddle tunes to light classical.

I think I read fifty-two books last year. Psychology. Religion. Jewish history, Egyptian history, Greek history, Greek philosophers. All kind of stuff. I think people who don’t read are not very smart. Well, I don’t care to be stupid. There’s plenty of those people walking around. Dead people. The walking dead. The sad thing about it is they don’t know anything and don’t really care that they don’t know anything. Don’t want to know anything and don’t care.

Happy all my life? Well, mostly. Although I grumble a lot about things. . .

Give you advice. How old are you? Sixty-three! Well you shouldn’t need any advice if you’re that old.

Aging and the Presidency: Exercises in Focus

At lunch on Saturday, I met and liked immensely another woman of a certain age who is a nationally recognized artist. Trailing behind her is a body of work that demonstrates both her great talent and her great ability to focus on putting that talent to use.

I'm not sure which I admire more: raw talent or a strong, consistent work ethic. Combine them in one person and you can expect the results to be magical. Which, in my opinion, this woman's results are.

We, as woman of a certain age are wont to do, got to talking about life; or, more specifically, about what's left of ours and what we want to do with it. Both of us agreed that we had specific goals, that accomplishing each of them took time and focus, and that we were acutely aware that our productive years were limited.

"Five years," my talented, lunch-time companion said. "I figure it will take five years to do each undertaking right."

Somehow this all got me thinking about being president of the United States.

It was long ago, in conversation with a friend of mine who studied history at the University of Virginia, that I first heard about a theory that the President of the United States is the only major head of government who is head of state, as well. This means our current president, Barack Obama, not only has to run an administration and any wars we're engaged in, ride herd on Congress, direct our foreign policy, and keep an eye on politics, he must also find time and energy to do such things as honor the NBA Champion Los Angeles Lakers at the White House and host the White House Easter Egg roll.

This in contrast to other systems of government where one person is head of government and another is head of state.  In England, for example, Prime Minister Gordon Brown runs the government, while Queen Elizabeth II handles the egg rolling.

This morning I opened up The Washington Post and read that President Obama is about to propose a three-year freeze on government spending in all areas not related to national security. Oh yes, I reminded myself, not only does the President have two wars going on, a struggling economy, not enough jobs to go around, a health care crisis, and a dysfunctionally partisan Congress yapping at his heels, he has a staggering national debt to deal with, as well. Oh yes, and there are still those Lakers to be honored and those eggs to be rolled.

If I could sit down for fifteen minutes with President Obama (whom I think even his worst detractors would admit is among the brightest, most thoughtful, and well-educated chief executives we've ever had) I would ask him this: How do you maintain your focus? How do you decide what you can get done and what you have to let go? How do you make sure that, at the end of your four years, you will have taken your best shot at accomplishing those projects you most wanted and needed to get done

His day, after all, is the same length as my creative and artistic lunch-time companion.  And she figures on   five-years per project.

Priorities . . .

The above cartoon refers to budget choices Florida is making, but it does seem applicable to the situation in Virginia as well. Educational funding in the Commonwealth is being hit hard at both the state and local levels.

All around us are examples of Incredible Shrinking Education Budgets.

Here, for example, is one Charlottesville's Daily Progress most-commented on articles for last week:

County hears calls for low taxes, better schools

By Brandon Shulleeta
 March 31, 2010 

The crowd was split between residents thanking Albemarle supervisors for lowering taxes and those scorning them for not providing more education funding.

And then there's this Associated Press article posted last month on washingtonexaminer.com.

Virginia higher education faces more budget reductions; schools to raise tuition, cut back

By: ZINIE CHEN SAMPSON

RICHMOND, VA. — As state funding for Virginia's higher-education system continues to shrink, colleges and universities say they'll have to raise tuition again and consider more cutbacks, especially after federal stimulus money disappears.

The budget the General Assembly approved Sunday included across-the-board reductions of $243.5 million in the 2011-12 fiscal years, along with $40.5 million worth of cuts and cost savings.

Many Virginian's are adamant that control of public education remains with the state. Yet we seem to want to avoid making education a fiscal priority; which, could conceivably, in this time of shrinking state and local revenue, mean higher taxes.

What I'd like to know is how important is it to you that the next generation of Virginians be well-educated?  Or, in these hard times, is it more important for you to keep your taxes as low as possible and so keep as much money in your own pocket as possible.

We citizens speak louder with our budgeting priorities than we do with our rhetorical ones. My question is: Are our state and local budgets truly reflecting your priorities when it comes to education?

Hank's Road

Martha note: The following is another vacation story.This particular essay appeared yesterday on the "Lives" page of The New York Times Magazine.

Sharing Demons with Hank Williams

A month or so ago my husband, Charlie, and I left our home in the Shenandoah Valley and headed West on a summer driving trip. Our first stop was just a couple of hours away: a gas-station parking lot in Oak Hill, W.Va., where Hank Williams was found dead in his Cadillac convertible on New Year’s Day in 1953.

As we wound into Oak Hill, it occurred to me that every small town in West Virginia sits wedged between mountains, which makes driving through them something you choose to do, rather than something that just happens. Once you do take the trouble to visit, however, it’s my experience that small-town West Virginians are generally glad to see you. If you need something, all you have to do is ask. So Charlie and I pulled into a convenience store to buy sodas and fried pies and do just that. Could you tell us, please, at which gas station Hank Williams was found dead?

The counter clerk didn’t know, which surprised me. After all, if you Google “Oak Hill Hank Williams,” you get a lot of hits. She asked a man who’d come in to buy cigarettes, but he wasn’t sure, either. A conversation developed. Finally, a woman came in who did know. Down the street, she said. Just across from the church.

She walked outside with us to point out the right direction. “Used to be Burdette’s Pure Oil,” she said. “You can’t miss it. There’s nothing there now. Nothing at all.”

Musically speaking, I was raised on classical and educated on rock ’n’ roll. Then in my 30s, someone gave me an Emmylou Harris album, and I began listening to more country music. At the time, I was doing a lot of driving on America’s highways in a pickup with a camper, so songs about heartache, not enough money and rolling down the road seemed, somehow, more real. Bourbon, small-town fried chicken and Emmylou’s music kept me more cheerful than I had any right to be during those creative, chaotic, self-destructive years.

Back then I was still a bit of a snob, toting around a snob’s attendant limitations. Hank Williams’s music was too raw, too hayseed to have meaning. He sang completely in his head and through his nose. His songs were too simplistic, too plonka-plonka in their production. The same person could not possibly embrace Wallace Stevens and Hank Williams. It was only after I’d had a lot of the pretentiousness knocked out of me by my own addiction struggles that I came to understand all this was beside the point. Hank Williams didn’t write songs for hillbillies; he wrote songs for anybody interested in facing life with a modicum of openness and honesty.

Holly Wales

Charlie and I drove down the street. There was indeed nothing left of Burdette’s Pure Oil except a concrete slab with a couple of grease spots, a few sprouting wires and some building scraps. I had seen pictures of Burdette’s on the Internet, and it looked to have been built in the ’30s: two gas pumps, peaked blue roof, small double-bay garage, outside restrooms, a soda machine.

That’s what it must have been like 57 years ago when a college student named Charles Carr pulled in driving Hank Williams’s Cadillac, the 29-year-old singer slumped in the back seat, dead of too much alcohol, too many drugs, not enough peace. He probably died sometime earlier, somewhere on the road; no one is quite sure where. Not that it matters.

To me, there is no romance in such a death; and not much in the life that leads to it. I get to say this because I, too, once flirted seriously with self-destruction and know that when you’re an addict, the rest of your life is a shadow no matter how many songs you write or places­ you go or people you please. Or how many good times you have, for that matter. There’s no bargaining with alcohol and drugs once you have to have them. You either stop drinking and using or you die. 

guitar pick from Burdette's Pure Oil roof tile. Courtesy of the Charles A. Slott Collection.

Charlie and I stayed around for about an hour, long enough to pick up some chips of Pure Oil’s signature blue roof tile. I plan to keep mine on my desk at work, along with fortune-cookie slips that tell me “curiosity is life” and I am “almost there”; six smooth pebbles from some river somewhere; and my 24-hour 12 Step chip.

After close to two decades of sobriety, I do pray in a kind of haphazard fashion, and I am open to all things being possible, even after death. So, at Burdette’s Pure Oil, I said a quick howdy to old Hank. And a quick thanks for the songs. And then I offered him a cross-dimensional high-five. For me, as for him, life is a road trip. We’d both been on the road through Oak Hill, W.Va., yet for some reason, I got to keep going.

             -- Martha Woodroof is the author of a novel, “Small Blessings.” She reports for WMRA public radio in Virginia.

No True Patriot, a Civic Soapbox Essay by Andrew Bard Schmookler

Many conservatives nowadays have been persuaded that the liberal approach to governance deserves no respect, that it is something alien to the real America and that “No compromise!” is an appropriate stance to take when dealing with liberal proposals.

No true patriot should support this dismissive attitude—not if patriotism requires honoring the vision of our nation’s founders.

Our Founders did not give us a government of ayatollahs, possessing some exclusive truth. Rather, they gave us a democratic process by which we as a people can search together for our best way forward.
They believed that out of that conversation –out of the competition in the marketplace of ideas—we the people, endowed with the capacity for reason, could reach good decisions.

Over generations of that competition of ideas, roughly half the American body politic has embraced the liberal approach to the organization of society—a mixture of market forces and government policy, a belief that government has a necessary role to play in shaping our society.

This has been no fleeting whim. American liberalism has unfolded with great continuity: Obama’s health care reform is of the same cloth as FDR’s Social Security and LBJ’s Medicare.

Liberalism is an enduring part of America’s body of thought and values, just like the persistent principles of American conservatism. To treat either as unworthy of respect, as an alien element suitable only to be fought and defeated, is to betray our Founder’s concept of how the will of the people is to emerge from the democratic process.

To hate liberalism is to hate a part of America’s heart.

It is also to ignore American history. When some conservatives bewail the loss of the America they grew up in, what is that America they’re hankering for? Chances are, the America they long for is one in which the liberal spirit was ascendant.

If it is conservatism that has dominated for the past thirty years, surely it was liberalism that was dominant from the beginnings of the FDR presidency in 1933 onward for some four decades. And that time of liberalism’s ascendancy may also have been the time of America’s greatest glory.

Was there ever an era of greater achievement than after the triumph of World War II, when America led the creation of a wise international order. Never was America more beloved in the world than in the era of the Marshall Plan, which revived war-torn Europe and saved it from communism. Never did America invest more wisely in its people than with the G.I. Bill of rights, building a strong middle class.

It is because of the fruits of American liberalism that the old are not destitute, that the sick are not left untended, that the children of the poor are educated, that whole races are not condemned to second-class citizenship.

That’s why no true patriot should show contempt for the liberal part of America’s political life—not if a patriot is someone who takes pride in the glories of his country.

       --Andy Schmookler lives west of Mount Jackson. His writings can be found at nonesoblind.org

Population Growth and Global Warming by Nancy Stratford

Martha note: It's Civic Soapbox Friday!

A short time ago, I got an e-mail from the Center for Biological Diversity that started off by saying "The National Environmental Policy Act is America’s bedrock environmental law. It recognizes unsustainable population growth is a key factor in almost all the environmental problems we face. In the 40 years since it was passed, though," the e-mailed continued, "the US government has failed to address the population issues the law raises. Today, population pressures are greater than ever-and directly linked to biodiversity loss and species extinction-but the federal government is still doing little to address this critical problem."

The problem with population is that it grows exponentially. So the number of people on the planet has been growing even though the fertility rate has been dropping. In 1965, the world’s population was around three billion. It’s now close to seven billion. We are in danger of running out of necessary resources.

in India

There was a fascinating article on population growth in a recent issue of Mother Jones magazine, focusing on India, which is projected to become the most populous nation on earth by 2050. Writer Julia Whitty writes that, it is in India, where the dynamics of overpopulation and over-consumption are most acute. She shows how lifelines between water, food, fuel, and India’s 1.17 billion people are already stretched dangerously thin.

According to Ms. Whitty, the UN calculates that 36 million people die of hunger and malnutrition every year -- mostly women and children. There is encouraging news, as well, however. Ms. Whitty writes that it has been shown that when women are educated and have ready access to family planning services they have fewer children. Robert Engelman of the World Watch Institute, echoes this by writing  that what women want -- and have always wanted -- is not so much to have more children as to have more for a smaller number of children they can raise reliably raise to healthy adulthood.

Hundreds of millions of women in developing countries lack any family planning services. This does not have to remain the case. A bill has been introduced into the House of Representatives that’s designed to address this issue. The Global Sexual and Reproductive Health Act of 2010 (HR5121) funds such initiatives as universal access to contraception, sexuality education, reproductive health care, education on gender equity and programs to reduce violence against women. So, if you are listening to this Civic Soapbox and asking if there’s anything you can do to prevent reaching a projected population of 9.1 billion by 2050, the answer is yes. You can get in touch with your representative and voice your support for the Global, Sexual, and Reproductive Health Act of 2010.

Giving more women choices in their lives will improve life for all of us. By slowing population growth we will save our resources and slow the loss of species by saving wildlife habitat. In the words of Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, meeting family planning needs may be the most urgent item on the global agenda, because the benefits are enormous and the costs are minimal.

                         -- Nancy Stratford lives in Charlottesville and works part-time at JMU.

Thoughts about comfort and leaders . . .

Our leaders have so many opportunities to not meet our expectations. And it seems to me that the most remembered presidential failures and successes are the ones that, in the grand scheme of things, matter least.

President Bush reading "The Pet Goat"

We Americans all remember President Bush’s decision to keep reading “The Pet Goat” with an elementary class after being informed of the September 11 attacks, and to fly over the wake of destruction left by Hurricane Katrina, instead of wading into it. Those actions, I think it's fair to say, did not bring great comfort to the American People.

But President Bush also walked out alone into the center of a packed Yankee stadium shortly after the September 11th attacks, which was a terrific message to all of us that the American spirit was undaunted. I don't know about you, but I thought it was very brave of our president.

Our American culture is big on ceremony that masks itself as non-ceremonial action. In times of trouble, we expect our leaders to swing into action, throw balls, get down to the business of leading us through whatever Eve of Destruction we've landed in toward whatever brighter days lies ahead.

We expect leaders to go to whatever part of the country is in trouble and take a good look around. And we take great comfort from our president swinging into Head Cheerleader Mode, giving speeches about how, sure, times are tough, but the tough have gotten going, the American Spirit is undimmed and indomitable, and we, the American People, are going to get through this together.

In my lifetime, America has never had to deal with as destructive and desperate a situation as the current one in Japan. The country's death toll is likely to exceed 18,000; radiation has reached the food chain; the World Bank estimates $235 billion in damages. 


To put  these numbers in perspective:

Though estimates vary, Hurricane Katrina caused $81.2 billion in damages in 2005, according to a widely cited study by the National Hurricane Center. Last year, the costs of natural disasters soared to a worldwide total of $109 billion, three times the total in 2009, according to the United Nations. In 2010, the Haiti quake cost $8 billion, floods in Pakistan $9.5 billion and an 8.8-magnitude quake in Chile $30 billion.

The Japanese people have received high praise for their resiliency amidst this mega-crisis; the government, high praise for the effectiveness of its nuclear disaster plan. But its hard to imagine a more comforting action for the Japanese people than that made last week by Emperor Akihito. And it wasn't brave; it wasn't decisive; and there was nothing "can-do" about it.

To put Emperor Akihito's position into perspective, until 1945, the Japanese Emporer was considered a god, but World War II put an end to that way of thinking. Now, according to the Japanese Constitution, Emperor Akihito is a "symbol of the state and the unity of the people, deriving his position from the will of the people with whom resides sovereign power."

Last Wednesday, this symbol spoke publicly to his people about his country's crisis, something he has never done in his entire twenty year reign.

The Guardian reported the news this way:

When the emperor of Japan addresses his nation, you know there is a crisis. On 15 August 1945, a week after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Hirohito's radio address announcing the surrender of Japan was broadcast across the country. Until last week, however, no event in the country's history was considered traumatic enough for his son, Akihito, to perform a similar task. 

Emporer Akihito (AP photo)

All that changed last Wednesday when the consequences of Japan's biggest-ever recorded earthquake spurred the 77-year-old emperor into action with a televised call for concerted national action. For those old enough to remember Hirohito's Gyokuon-hoso ("Jewel Voice Broadcast"), it was a stark reminder of the gravity of Japan's situation. And in contrast to Hirohito's address, which had been couched in language familiar only to the well-educated and notable for a confusing lack of detail about the surrender itself, Akihito was clear in his message of hope. 

Emperor Akihito spoke simply for about five minutes, saying, among other things:

"I truly hope the victims of the disaster never give up hope, take care of themselves, and live strong for tomorrow. Also, I want all citizens of Japan to remember everyone who has been affected by the devastation, not only today but for a long time afterwards -- and help with the recovery" 

"Currently, the entire nation is putting forth its best effort to save all suffering people. However, under the severe cold weather, evacuees are having a very difficult time because they lack food, water, and energy sources. Also, I am deeply concerned that the current nuclear plant situation is critical. I truly hope that with so many people working together to help, the situation will not worsen." 

"I am deeply impressed to see people who have survived, and are suffering from the biggest disaster, encourage themselves to live for tomorrow. This is so courageous."

Emperor Akihito's words perhaps sound a tad uninspiring to us. There's no cheerleading, energizing, loin-girding rhetoric.

We are such a casual, noisy people -- and long may we remain so. A quiet, heart-felt, five minute speech from a "symbol of the state and the unity of the people" might not bring us much comfort in the face of disaster.

But we are not the Japanese. And, given this rather glaring distinction, this one particularly noisy and casual American found something tremendously moving -- and comforting -- in Emperor Akihito's speech.

The Supremes rule on Miranda

In case you weren't following the news in the early 60's, here's Wikipedia's account of Arizona vs. Ernesto Miranda (pictured left), the case from which a suspect's Miranda Rights derive their name.

On March 13, 1963, Ernesto Arturo Miranda was arrested based on circumstantial evidence linking him to the kidnapping and rape of an 18-year-old woman 10 days earlier.^[1] After two hours of interrogation by police officers, Miranda signed a confession to the rape charge on forms that included the typed statement "I do hereby swear that I make this statement voluntarily and of my own free will, with no threats, coercion, or promises of immunity, and with full knowledge of my legal rights, understanding any statement I make may be used against me." However, at no time was Miranda told of his right to counsel, and he was not advised of his right to remain silent or that his statements would be used against him during the trial before being presented with the form on which he was asked to write out the confession he had already given orally.

At trial, when prosecutors offered Miranda's written confession as evidence, his court-appointed lawyer, Alvin Moore, objected that because of these facts, the confession was not truly voluntary and should be excluded. Moore's objection was overruled and based on this confession and other evidence, Miranda was convicted of rape and kidnapping and sentenced to 20 to 30 years imprisonment on each charge, with sentences to run concurrently.

Ernesto Miranda's conviction was appealed up the legal chain until it reached the Supreme Court as Miranda v. State of Arizona; Westover v. United States; Vignera v. State of New York; State of California v. Stewart. The Supremes overturned Miranda's conviction on June 13th, 1966, and a suspect's Miranda Rights became entrenched as a part of police procedure.

Yesterday in a 5-to-4 ruling the Supreme Court gave the police much greater room to question suspects within their Miranda Rights. Here's how Nina Totenberg tells the story of the case involved in that decision:

The ruling came in the case of Van Chester Thompkins, one of three men involved in a Michigan shooting. A year after the crime, Thompkins was arrested and interrogated by two Michigan policemen. They advised him of his right to an attorney and his right to remain silent, made sure he spoke English, and questioned him, though they said it was more a "monologue" by the interrogators. For nearly three hours, Thompkins said nothing, except that his chair seat was hard and that he didn't want a peppermint. Finally, one of the policemen asked him: "Do you pray to God to forgive you for shooting that boy down?" Thompkins answered, "Yes," and that answer was used at his trial to convict him of first-degree murder.

 Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, pointed out that

"Thompkins did not say that he wanted to remain silent or that he did not want to talk to police. Had he made either of these simple, unambiguous statements, he would have invoked his 'right to cut off questioning.' Here he did neither, so he did not invoke his right to remain silent."

 The dissent, written by Justice Sotomayor, was cited this way in The Huffington Post:

For Justice Sotomayor, deciding to make suspects speak to have the right to remain silent was a step too far. Sotomayor, the court's newest member, wrote a strongly worded dissent for the court's liberals, saying the majority's decision "turns Miranda upside down."

"Criminal suspects must now unambiguously invoke their right to remain silent – which counterintuitively requires them to speak," she said. "At the same time, suspects will be legally presumed to have waived their rights even if they have given no clear expression of their intent to do so. Those results, in my view, find no basis in Miranda or our subsequent cases and are inconsistent with the fair-trial principles on which those precedents are grounded."

 Back to Nina Totenberg for some reactions.

"The doctrine makes no sense," says Harvard's professor [William] Stuntz*. "It provides lots of protection to suspects who don't need protecting — to the best educated, and to recidivists who know how to game the system. And it provides no protection to the people who need it most. It's dumb law."

Police officers, though, had a different take on the ruling. Former Newark police Capt. Jon Shane, now a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, sees the decision as helpful. He says the court has told police "in this decision that someone's silence does not mean that they are protected necessarily by the Miranda warning." He says, "That's a good thing" because it not only gives police greater flexibility in questioning, it makes the process simpler and less likely to provoke legal problems once the case gets to court.

 *usually, according to Ms. Totenberg, considered something of a conservative.

Okay, now it's your turn. Any opinion on this decision or on the current Supreme Court in general?

The truth as a votable issue. . .

Reconciliation looms, as we struggle to reform health care. Somewhere in this messy process, political talking points such as "government takeover of health care" have gained the heft of legitimate concerns. The same politicians who passed pretty massive tax cuts and for seven years paid for wars (or rather did not pay for them) through supplemental funding are now railing against deficit spending. Go figure.

What makes a lot of contemporary politicians run? The truth? The greater good? Their own internal ethics? Greed? A hunger for power? A desperate desire to pander their way to re-election? You tell me.  I'm in a rare gloomy mood this morning, it seems, when it comes to issues of governance.

What I do know is that it takes a critical mass of well-educated voters for the American political system to function effectively.  That's why I was alarmed to see on the front page of this morning's New York Times (amidst news of election strife in Iraq, what's happening in health care, and Hollywood's latest payment structure), an article headed Darwin Foes Add Warming to Targets. 

The article goes on to detail how conservative Christian critics of the Theory of Evolution  run up against separation of church and state in their attempts to require schools to teach Christian creationism as a viable alternative theory. So in the last year or so, they have begun to link their issue to the issue of global warming.

According to the article:

The linkage of evolution and global warming is partly a legal strategy: courts have found that singling out evolution for criticism in public schools is a violation of the separation of church and state. By insisting that global warming also be debated, deniers of evolution can argue that they are simply championing academic freedom in general.

Okay, let the debate rage, say I. Academic freedom is a good thing. But then I read this:

Last year, the Texas Board of Education adopted language requiring that teachers present all sides of the evidence on evolution and global warming.

And this:

In South Dakota, a resolution calling for the “balanced teaching of global warming in public schools” passed the Legislature this week.

“Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant,” the resolution said, “but rather a highly beneficial ingredient for all plant life.”

The measure made no mention of evolution, but opponents of efforts to dilute the teaching of evolution noted that the language was similar to that of bills in other states that had included both. The vote split almost entirely along partisan lines in both houses, with Republicans voting for it and Democrats voting against.

And it was brought forcefully home to me that our state legislatures have begun legislating our schools' curricula.

If you believe, as I do, that a good education doth an open-minded person make, do we really want what our kids are taught in school dictated by politicians?

It's a fair question, don't you think?

An opinion post . . .

Listener Katrien Vance took me to task as the editor of WMRA's Civic Soapbox for airing Bob Boucheron's essay last week recounting his experience with Career Switcher, a government-sponsored program for already-educated adults who want to become public school teachers.

In case you missed it, here's a link to the text of that essay. And here's what Ms. Vance, who's a teacher herself, had to say.

"I enjoy Civic Soap Box and think it's a great opportunity for people to speak about issues that concern or delight them.  I was disappointed, though, with a recent program in which a Charlottesville architect used the Soap Box to denigrate the Career Switchers program at Blue Ridge Community College.  I am not associated with that program in any way; I have a colleague that is enrolled in it, but I know very little about it and have no vested interest in it.  As a teacher at a private school, I have taken no education courses myself, and I tend to look at them with suspicion if not my own snobbery.  But Mr. Boucheron's public complaining seemed an inappropriate use of the Soap Box. I agree that aspects of his program sounded frustrating.  But why was he given three minutes to publicly complain about a program he attended?  Will the Career Switchers program have equal time to respond?  Actually, I doubt they have time--they are teachers!

"I could go on to list things Mr. Boucheron said that seemed arrogant, snobbish, and completely closed-minded to the experience of learning to be a teacher, but it isn't really with him I have the argument.  My argument is with your choice to give him air time.  I didn't hear that he had any larger point to make except that he tried this program and it was bad. How does that serve the community?  Why didn't he air his grievances with the program itself, privately?

"I have no problem with your airing essays on things that are controversial or might spark arguments.  But if someone is going to publicly criticize and denigrate a school, a program, or a person--with no attempt to make something good come of it-- I hope you will think twice about having your Soap Box be his or her forum.

"Since I am someone who believes that you shouldn't complain unless you have a solution, I promise you that I am working on a Soap Box essay of my own.  Maybe it's harder than I think it is!"

I think Ms. Vance makes interesting point, one that's well worth discussing by the WMRA community. Which is exactly what this blog is for.

So, you got anything to say about either Mr. Boucheron's essay or Ms. Vance's reaction to it?  If so, I (and probably everyone who participates in this blog) would certainly like to hear it.

Lay on, Macduffs. . .

The retreat of Kilimanjaro snow . . .

It is a glorious mountain rising up out of glorious country.

Jacob Mayiani, currently a student at James Madison University, grew up at  the base of Mount Kilimanjaro. He sent me the following account of what's happening in his homeland of Kenya as, he believes, the combined result of global warming and bad agricultural practice.

I was born and brought up in Loitokitok a small town located in the southwest of Kenya near the border between Kenya and Tanzania. I have watched the shining snow of the world's highest freestanding, snow-covered mountain retreat over the years.

In the last two decades, this region has experienced unusual weather conditions that most can’t explain. I remember when I was about 8 years old, I woke up every morning ready to walk to school (Nkama Primary School) and the first thing I saw as I placed my foot at the doorstep were the clouds as they cleared to reveal a glimpse of the towering peaks of Kilimanjaro, snow-covered and glinting in the sun.

Besides the glacial recession on the peaks of Kilimanjaro, other major ecological changes in the region include drying up of water catchment areas. About 5 streams in Loitokitok area alone, that I personally know by name and that ran down from Kilimanjaro, have dried up over the last 15 years. This has led to people who depended on those streams to think that it’s their Tanzanian neighbors that are over-using the water, leading to increased tension as all scramble for this rare commodity.

Several years ago when weather conditions appeared normal (when local people cultivated and harvested their crops), the change in the glaciers appeared less important to most of them. However, it wasn’t too long until the precipitation pattern took a different course, forcing them to be concerned. The fertile volcanic soil accompanied by high relief rainfall has made the Kilimanjaro environment one of most productive regions in TZ.

The disappearing glaciers of Mt. Kilimanjaro are evident and real and it’s imperative that we talk about this phenomenon as it is damaging the natural world and is of serious concern to people living around it. There is increasing evidence to indicate the grave impact that these changes and conditions will create.

This summer (2009) I went back to Kenya to visit my family. Words fail to explain the situation that I found for my people, both farmers and cattle herders. There was massive crop failure in the region around Mt. Kilimanjaro from the Kenyan side. Herders, who depend primarily on cattle for their food and income, lost up to 90% of their livestock even though they have moved them hundreds of kilometers to seek pasture and water for their cattle. Several studies have indicated that the increase in global temperature is responsible for retreating glaciers of Mt Kilimanjaro.

It’s hard to explain this cause to local people who do not share an understanding of causes of global warming. The irony of this situation is what ecologist refers to as the cost distribution effect: the fact that the people who are mostly affected by global warming and the climate change effect are the ones who least contribute to it.

Another less conspicuous, but significant cause of change of the weather patterns in the region is the increase, frequency and intensity of fires on the slopes of Kilimanjaro. These fires have led to downward shift of the upper forest line by several hundred meters resulting in drier and warmer climate over the last several decades.

While I was growing up, I witnessed multiple times the forest fires on the lower slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro as a result of human activity, and I remember asking my grandfather repeatedly: "Why is the mountain burning?" The answer never changed: “the honey collectors.” Clearing for agriculture, and forest fires often caused by honey collectors as they smoke bees out of their hives, have greatly reduced the surrounding forests.

The loss of foliage results in less moisture in the atmosphere, leading to reduced cloud cover and precipitation, and increased solar radiation and glacial evaporation. If current climate conditions persist, the legendary glaciers icing the peaks of Africa's highest summit could be gone entirely not too long from now.

It’s about time to look for solutions to reverse the process and save the mystical appearance of Kilimanjaro.

Photographs of Kilimanjaro's disappearing snow.

Jacob says some scientist argue that the fires, and the subsequent defoliation of the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro, rival global warming as the strongest human influence on glacial recession. I did some quick web research and couldn't figure this out.

Any scientists out there know anything definitive? Or willing to express an educated opinion?

How does Glenn Beck know what he knows?

Democracy Corps describes itself as "an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to making the government of the United States more responsive to the American people. It was founded in 1999 by James Carville and Stanley Greenberg. Democracy Corps provides free public opinion research and strategic advice to those dedicated to a more responsive Congress and Presidency."

Back in July, Democracy Corps released a truly fascinating analysis of the Tea Party movement that included their well-researched assessment of Tea Partiers' take on Glenn Beck:

Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck is the most highly regarded individual among Tea Party supporters of the people we tested. He scores an extraordinarily high 75 percent warm rating, 57 percent very warm.

This affinity for Beck came through very clearly in the focus groups. The only news source that participants said they could trust was Fox.  Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity were cited as people who “are not afraid to tell it like it is” and support their arguments with solid facts.  Beck was undoubtedly the hero in these groups.  Participants consider him an “educator” (in contrast to the popular Rush Limbaugh who is an “entertainer”) who teaches people history and puts himself at risk because he exposes the truth.  In the words of a woman in Ft. Lauderdale, “I would trust my life in his hands.”

Mr. Beck has started his Beck University to disseminate his political and religious philosophy, along with his own version of American history that is often curiously at odds with most scholars'. So from whose writings does Glenn Beck draw his theories?

W. Cleon Skousen

This week's New Yorker has an article called "Confounding Fathers," in which Princeton historian Sean Wilentz asks and answers this question. Glenn Beck's favorite author, he says, is W. Cleon Skousen.

So, who's W. Cleon Skousen? According to that fine representative of the liberal media, Salon, the late Mr. Skousen was "a right-wing crank whom even conservatives despised." Among many other books, Mr. Skousen published 5,000 Year Leap, which Mr. Beck often waves around at public gatherings.  Salon's Alexander Saitchik has this to say about the book:

"Leap," first published in 1981, is a heavily illustrated and factually challenged attempt to explain American history through an unspoken lens of Mormon theology. As such, it is an early entry in the ongoing attempt by the religious right to rewrite history. Fundamentalists want to define the United States as a Christian nation rather than a secular republic, and recast the Founding Fathers as devout Christians guided by the Bible rather than deists inspired by French and English philosophers.

Here's what Mr. Beck, himself, has to say about the book.

The first thing you could do, please, is get the 5,000 Year Leap. Over my book or anything else, get the 5,000 Year Leap. You can probably find it in the book section of GlennBeck.com, but read that. It is the principle. It is so easy to read. It's the book Ronald Reagan wanted taught in high schools and Ted Kennedy stopped it from happening. That should tell you all you need to know. It is so easy to understand. When you read these principles, your mouth will fall open. You'll read it and you'll be -- the scales will fall off your eyes on who we are. Please, number one thing: Inform yourself about who we are and what the other systems are all about. 5,000 Year Leap is the first part of that. Because it will help you understand American free enterprise. You'll be able to defend it. You'll be able to know what makes it possible for 6% of humanity living under our free economy to produce 1/2 of the Earth's developed wealth every single year....

And here's some of what Dr. Wilenz writes about 5,000 Year Leap in his New Yorker article.

[The book is] a treatise that assembles selective quotations and groundless assertions to claim that the U.S. Constitution is rooted not in the Enlightenment but in the Bible, and that the framers believed in minimal central government. Either proposition would have astounded James Madison, often described as the guiding spirit behind the Constitution, who rejected state-established religions and, like Alexander Hamilton, proposed a central government so strong that it could veto state laws. “The 5,000 Year Leap” is not a fervid book. Instead, it is calmly, ingratiatingly misleading. Skousen quotes various eighteenth-century patriots on the evils of what Samuel Adams, in 1768, called “the Utopian schemes of leveling,” which Skousen equates with redistribution of wealth. But he does not mention the Founders’ endorsement of taxing the rich to support the general welfare. Thomas Jefferson, for example, wrote approvingly in 1811 of having federal taxes (then limited to tariffs) fall solely on the wealthy, which meant that “the farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings.”

Skousen also challenges the separation of church and state, asserting that “the Founders were not indulging in any idle gesture when they adopted the motto ‘In God We Trust.’ ” In reality, the motto that came out of the Constitutional Convention was “E Pluribus Unum”: out of many, one. “In God We Trust” came much later; its use on coins was first permitted in 1864, and only in 1955, at the height of the Cold War, did Congress mandate that it appear on all currency. The following year, President Eisenhower—who Welch [John Birch Society founder Robert Welch] charged was a Communist agent—approved “In God We Trust” as the national motto.

Mr. Skousen, a Mormon who died in 2006, had been largely repudiated by conservatives and Mormons until Beck resurrected his message. Now this message is reaching millions of people a day through Mr. Beck's outreach efforts.

And, speaking of Glenn Beck's information sources, anybody else remember the John Birch Society during its heyday? Back when they were telling us that President Eisenhower was a communist?  Mr. Beck is also quick to say that Robert Welch "makes sense." 

Yesterday, in between bouts of on-air fundraising (1-800-677-9672, call now!), I cruised around on the internet learning a bit about Cleon Skousen's positions and a bit more about Robert Welch's. What intrigues me is the broad play these formerly relatively obscure views of government and history and religion are getting from atop Mr. Beck's New Media and cable (and very bully) pulpits. I'd wager heavily that Mr. Beck reaches many more people than Salon's Alexander Saitchik or the New Yorker's Dr.Wilentz. And that the people listening and reading may not deem it necessary to research Mr. Beck's sources for his revisionist interpretation of our nation's history.

Does the fact that millions of people are hearing Mr. Skousen's and Mr. Welch's theories touted by Mr. Beck lend them more legitimacy in our national conversation than they were afforded their first time around?

And, if so, what does that mean both politically and socially? Has the New Media united the voices of those who used to mutter mostly in isolation?

Martha note:  Terry Gross had Dr. Sean Wilentz as a guest this week on Fresh Air.