engaged intellectuals

This article was first printed in the Atlantic Monthly in June and then reprinted in the Atlanta Journal Constitution (where I first read it) on Sunday June 15, 2008. There’s already a bit of discussion about the article on blogs including Education and Class and Mike Rose’s blog so I have to add some here myself.

As you read the article and various comments related to it, think about social class, opportunity, privilege, and marginalization. And don’t forget Power. The anonymous writer who describes himself as an adjunct working two jobs claims he doesn’t want to seem “classist” like the Brits or “sexist” but yet continues to paint a picture of his first-year-college-students (and perhaps first-generation college students) as uneducated, disengaged, and unable to absorb even the most simple concepts from his course. Never once does he consider that it might be his own “deficits” (a word he claims to like) about teaching and learning and his own underpreparedness and miseducation that might have led him to this impasse with the students sitting in his class.

Isn’t it just like the archetype “teacher” in our society to fail at teaching and then blame the students?

Get a grip pal. The second job you took on to pay your bills is one that comes with much privilege and power and it seems you are failing miserably at using yours in the best interest of hopeful, faithful, tuition-paying students who are looking to you for some leadership, guidance, and education. When did teaching stop being inspirational? Motivational? Energizing?

If you just needed a second job, go get one where you’re not messing with people’s lives.

Truth is, you are classist, just like most folks in the U.S., and it sounds like you are doing much more damage than good to the students, their experiences with institutions, and to the institution itself.

Do us all a favor: learn to teach or get out.

And don’t write anonymous articles that only further inscribe society’s classist perceptions of success, failure, and the value of human beings.

This post on Glenn Sacks’ blog supporting father-child relationships led me to Vanity Fair’s story Men Evolving Badly, a weak feminist attempt (by a man) to reassert and deconstruct the power of the penis among the super rich. Sadly, however, the writer generalizes this power to all men and does not engage with the class hierarchies in the U.S. My letter to the editor:

James Wolcott might claim to be a feminist given his perspective in “Men Evolving Badly” but he would be well-advised to step back and take a lesson or two in radical feminism. Just as he writes “The primary threat to the psychological well-being of most men (and women) isn’t sexual or pop-cultural but economic…” he reveals the limitations of his own class privileges when focusing his attention on the super rich. It may be true that the “odds still favor the penis-bearer” in the wealthy class, but take another look at the working-class and poor ranks in the U.S. and you might find another story altogether. Keep in mind the millions of men behind bars who were largely (90% or better) arrested during a time when they were living below the federal poverty level, and many because they had fallen behind in child support payments while struggling to keep a roof over their own heads. The “roof entry to the helicopter pad” is foreign territory within a context of deindustrialization and the feminization of working-class jobs where many men are lucky to find minimum wage jobs or day labor. Instead of focusing on the devolution of the narcissistic, power elite, take a walk through neighborhoods annihilated by the greed of corporations and financial institutions where fathers are playing soccer with their children in the street or crying behind closed doors because their wives left them, took the kids, and now they can’t afford child support payments. Radical feminism aims to end oppression of all kinds – you can’t look at privileged men in one class without recognizing the sufferings of men in another.

This movie sounds fab!

If I get a chance to see it I’ll post my own tidbit…

Policies that “mandate” a particular action are on my mind today, perhaps because I’ve crawled out of my conference-induced fog and I’m turning my attention back to the presidential campaign a bit. John Edwards (just love him) and Hilary Clinton both recommend “mandating” health insurance coverage for every American citizen - Barack Obama “mandates” health insurance for every child but not ever citizen.

What do mandates get us? What is the underbelly of mandates that might punish the very people who always need a little extra financial wiggle room? Let’s think about “child support.”

Picture this: A mom and dad argue a lot and finally one of them hits their breaking point. The mom decides to move out of the house with the child, and though the dad wants desperately to have custody of the child, the mother is awarded custody. Now the father and child are separated, but allowed “visitation” as long as child support is paid.

I didn’t tell you that both parents were working for minimum wage - but that’s a very important part of the story.

So now you have two separate single-headed households trying to make ends meet on minimum wage earnings (about $240.00/week take home). Out of approximately $1,000/month, each has to pay rent, buy food, provide clothes and food for the child when the child is with them, pay for gas, gas and electric in the homes, etc.

The court orders the dad to pay $480.00 a month in child support. That’s approximately 1/2 his income and moves the dad from poverty level living to well below poverty level living. He can’t pay his bills any more when he takes his weekly child support payment to the courthouse.

He falls behind in child support.

Goes to court.

His license is suspended (YES - this is one of the punishments for not paying your child support).

Visitation is suspended (YES - so now he loses his son too).

He tries to find alternative ways to get to work, but arrangements fall through.

He loses his job.

Gets further and further behind in child support (only 3 months can quickly be more than 1300.00 - a very heavy debt for this father).

He experiences depression.

Goes back to court because he is now 6 months behind in child support.

Goes to jail (YES - this is another punishment for not paying child support).

Dad is wrecked. Child is wrecked. And mother still doesn’t have any additional financial support that she so desperately needs for her son.

He didn’t want her to leave in the first place and cried on the phone almost daily trying to get the family back together, but she insisted it would never work. He wanted custody, but the courts would not seriously consider that.

Who does this “mandatory child support” policy help? Hurt? Destroy? Advantage?

Who are the dads (I say dads here because we rarely hear of “Deadbeat Mothers” but instead “Deadbeat Dads” - the derogatory way of referring to dads who don’t pay child support) who didn’t want to lose their families in the first place, tried to get custody of the child, then experience a rapid spiraling out of control of their life because they fall behind in child support payments?

Who are the dads who never feel the financial pinch of the hundreds or thousands paid for child support each month?

These “mandates” always seem to hurt the ones who have persistently been hurt by the economic structures in our society. In many working-poor families everyone loses when child support payments are mandated and policed by the state.

What will happen if health insurance is mandated? The same folks will be punished for their inability to pay the price of coverage and still maintain a roof over their heads.

La Misma Luna/Under the Same Moon This fabulous new film in independent theaters portrays the life of a young boy in Mexico living without his mother who has illegally immigrated to the U.S. I won’t give away any details, but bring your tissues and rally signs. It could make even the most conservative anti-immigration person reconsider dehumanizing laws that break the hearts and spirits of tenacious, driven, hard-working Mexicans. I haven’t yet used it with any of my courses but I will - and I will ask students to pay close attention to issues of language, literacies, and power within the intricate complexities of U.S.-Mexico relations. I will also ask students to consider the broader context of contemporary immigration around the globe and how capitalist economies and globalism is impacting social class relations beyond national borders.

Sunday evening’s 60 Minutes (CBS) reported on the “happiest people” on earth. The Danes have, again, been reported as the “happiest.” Reporters wondered why given that a neighbor, Norway, is richer and another neighbor, Sweden, is healthier.

This story  tells of some unthinkable (at least in the U.S.) social services in place in Denmark that may (?) promote persistent happiness:

1. Average work week of 37 hours with 6 weeks vacation a year

2. State-paid paternity leave for 6 months

3. State-paid education through college degree (students take as long as they want/need to complete their college education)

4. “Security” from birth until death (financial, education, social)

What’s the catch?

Perhaps the taxes paid…around 50% earnings.

Would we, in the U.S. be willing to contribute 50% of our earnings to ensure the well-being of all our citizens?

I would.

The story also reported that some of the most unhappy people live in the wealthiest zip codes in the U.S. (Upper Eastside of Manhattan was one example). What might this tell us?

“Stuff” won’t make us happy. Stop the compulsive consumerism and judgments based on possessions.

What advice did the interviewed students give to U.S. folks looking for “happiness”? Don’t depend too much on the American Dream.

Denmark Ministry of Social Welfare 

Spanglish This popular film set in California offers a great deal in terms of issues around social class, language, public/private education, and ethnicity. As you watch, consider who wields power, how, and to what end. Consider how class, gender, ethnicity, and language intersect in constructing characters who are better positioned to wield power and characters positioned to wield less power. Think about how complexities around social class and language come together to construct tensions between a mother and daughter. And consider all of these issues as they relate to contemporary contexts of schooling across the United States. Who is acting as the “Savior” in the movie, and what are some of the complicated results of that action? Who, in contemporary educational contexts (particularly primary, elementary, middle, and secondary schools) act in similar “Savior” roles and is it possible that complicated results of such actions are taking place without the Savior noticing? There is an infinite number of ways to think about this film - these are just a few…have fun!

Jane Van Galen has a great post about a book she recently read regarding replacing the income tax system with a retail/consumption tax system in the U.S. Lots of folks have been talking about this, and Jane has received an interesting comment from “Ian” about how a “Fair Tax” would work.

I agree with Jane about the refreshing feeling of imagining a concrete, economic way to work toward equity rather than always working more abstractly around issues of morality and other things that are extremely important (access to schools, technology, entry-level positions, housing, etc.) but always already within an existing inequitable system. Completely redefining the very system of taxation seems like something that may make a real difference and something that is actually possible to accomplish in the near future - if, that is, it would truly make a positive qualitative (and quantitative) difference in the lives of working-class and poor people.

Obviously there is a lot of bantering around about this already - check out some of these sites:

Americans for a Fair Tax

Fact Check

Fair Tax Calculator

Fair Tax Blog

With all this going on…how is one supposed to know what to think?

If you haven’t been following the story of Genarlow Wilson, the young man who was sentenced to ten years in prison for having presumably consensual oral sex with a fifteen year old girl when he was seventeen, check out these pieces: CNN , NPR , Think Outside the Cage. He was released from a Georgia prison last week after the Georgia Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that his sentence constituted “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Justices Hines, Melton, and Carley opposed the ruling and substantiated their opinion in the final pages of the Court’s Ruling, a very interesting document, particularly if you have never read a Supreme Court Ruling until now.

FYI - check out the Justices’ biographies

Great critical inquiry for teens, teachers, and families…

What laws are on the books in your state that could change the lives of teens engaging in various kinds of sexual acts if they were to be convicted? What other crimes are teens serving time for?

How many teens are in state and federal prisons (yes, juveniles are sometimes incarcerated in adult prisons)?

Are there differences in incarceration rates related to geography (north vs. south vs. west U.S.), race, gender, social class?
Do you find anything wrong with the picture of justice for teens in the U.S.? If so, what can you do?

Who benefits from incarcerating teens (and, if you want to extend it, people in general)?

What are the differences between state funding for education and state funding for jails and prisons?

Interesting websites for inquiring into issues of incarceration and probation:

International Centre for Prison Studies

Mother Jones 

Prison Sucks 

Bureau of Justice Statistics

Dumber kids? Dumber schools? Dumber parents? Dumber policies?

Where does this all end? And when does one generation NOT look out at the younger generation and drop their jaws at the lack of enlightenment of the kids growing into adults? I would love to know what lmv over at adolescent literacies thinks about this.

Mark Morford, SFGate columnist writes this about today’s dumb kids. Toward the end he makes some good points that I might chisel down to “social class stratification folks!” but there are so many other issues I have with the assumptions in the piece that I couldn’t stop there.

TV is bad for us? Really? And bad for kids too? And video games? And smut journalism? And the Internet?

Come on, we can’t seriously be continuing to have these debates can we? Young people across the country and the globe are engaged in revolutions right now - starting them, leading them, pushing them. Check out Youtube and search for ‘justice’ or ’social change’ or any other phrase that interests you.

Perhaps if teachers were not under the thumb of NCLB mandates they could encourage revolutions inside their classrooms! Perhaps this Oakland teacher that Mark writes about could have put video cameras in the hands of his students who wouldn’t “awaken” and tell them to film something that is meaningful, something they would fight for, something they dream of, something they want to change, dammit. And then connect them to the Internet to do research, to create their own version of moveon.org, to find a larger community that cares about the same issues, to read widely and deeply on the topic, and to find some purpose inside the four institutional walls other than to sleep or rebel.

But ah, some of the comments about Mark’s piece raise real challenges: How can government-funded public schooling ever encourage a revolution? If working-class and poor kids really get a rich, deep education in K-12 that leads to class mobility and even the challenging of the whole class structure, how will future generations be able to stratify themselves?

Please don’t be duped by the “dumber kids” mantra…

Even when they appear to be less engaged in classrooms, that’s more likely a reflection of the level of relevance, interest, and motivation inspired in the classroom than the kids themselves.

And when they don’t know how to form a sentence in high school? Well, that’s pure proof that whatever one-size-fits-all (most likely skills-based drill and kill) curriculum a particular district adopted is simply not working.

And when they don’t know how to hold and use a ruler to draw straight lines? Well, that’s when we better reconsider a paper-and-pencil math curriculum as well as the funding necessary to ensure all kids have access to and use a diverse range of tools and materials in their learning.

It’s about class folks, yes, but it’s not about the “parents” feeding kids too many Doritos or keeping the TV on too long or that steady diet of video games. It’s about the sickening way that states and districts make decisions about what will and won’t be taught in schools and to what teachers and students will and won’t have access.

One of the comments made about Mark’s piece notes that horrible decisions are sometimes also made in wealthy public school districts and even in private schools. I hear you - and that’s true. But then who suffers? Even if wealthy and poor districts have equally distributed oppressive curriculum policies, the status quo will be maintained. Rich kids have rich social networks and safety nets…you know where I’m going with this.
Are kids dumber today, or are education policymakers too dumb to realize that reductionist policies reduce everything - and everyone.

Kids today aren’t dumb, they seem to know precisely when an education offered to them is worth engaging or not.