I was initially prepared to attack the SOTU address, but let's face it, that's too easy. I had even taken some time away from grading papers to write down some of the lines that particularly irked me, but I've thrown the notes away. The rest of the world has taken care of that. Finally.
Bush's approval ratings tell the story. Worse than Carter during the hostage standoff. Worse than Nixon just before he resigned. Why it took this long for so many Americans to see in Bush what half of us saw in 2000 I'll never know. Why that half couldn't pick up a few more percentage points in 2004 absolutely baffles me, but, finally, here we are. I'm not sure why the change has come now. Nothing's really different since 2004 for sure, and I'd argue that nothing's changed significantly since 2000. Still, here we are, finally.
So rather than attack the address itself, I'd like to try to explain why I still bother voicing my opinion about what I think this administration has done for the country. Based on what the Republicans applauded, and what the President has claimed among his priorities, a few themes, common to Republicans, but specific to Bush keep popping up in my frightening vision of the future of our nation. They can all be summed up under the heading Social Programming.
That's right, that evil trend usually attributed to Democrats is appearing more and more to be the goal of the Bush administration. The only difference is, Dems achieve social programming by including social programs in the budget and then fighting for their approval in congress, the way our constitution lays out. Bush, however, is implementing his social programming vision through the tax code and through other changes primarily loosening our laws on corporations. For instance, Enron hides behind it's status as a corporation in order to, over a period of years, suck cash out of their shareholders' pockets, and only when the immensity of their crimes becomes painfully obvious, does our government finally enforce any form of accountability on the CEOs who paid themselves billions as a result of their illegal activity and the corporation under which those individuals hid. Or when oil companies, who also continue to post record profits, still don't pay the royalties to American citizens for drilling on public lands AND continue to receive tax credits during their most profitable years. Or countless other tax breaks and federal protections only available to big business and the CEOs who suck record amounts and record proportions of cash out of them while ignoring the pleas of the labor force whose efforts make it possible for those profits to continue, and whose own pay has been reduced to an embarassing fraction of their CEOs pay.
What I really don't get is why Bush seems to think that holding middle class agents accountable, as in the NCLB act, makes so much sense, but holding huge corporations to the same degree of accountability as most citizens isn't important? Are the CEOs of GM and Ford held as accountable as a first year teacher making $25,000.00 per year? Have they paid a proportionate amount of their income in taxes? But back to the idea of social programming and why this particular program frightens me so.
At the rate we're going, America's middle class will disappear in another decade or so. The 90% of us who represent the household income bracket that built the nation are rapidly finding ourselves in a tougher and tougher spot. I consider myself pretty comfortable, but like most of the people in my income bracket, which is to say, like the vast majority of Americans, one major medical emergency involving my kids, me, or my parents would be enough to do me in financially. Instead of eking out a meager (albeit by my standards, a comfortable) living, one brief lapse in the routine would drop me from functioning middle class Joe Six Pack to Homeless Joe Six Pack. Between the mortgage and the insurance premiums, I don't have enough to spare to put back more than a very temporary buffer or safety account, let alone anything approaching a safe retirement account, or educational account for my kids. (and did you notice which corporations I HAVE to make my priority?) So, like the vast majority of Americans, I hold my breath each pay period and struggle to maintain the delicate balance that keeps me out of bankruptcy and foreclosure.
Like the vast majority of Americans, the Bush tax cuts have done nothing to improve this situation. Same for the effects those cuts have had on the overall economy. In fact, I'm closer to breaking that balance now than I've ever been. As more and more Americans, many of whom began this millennium at the upper end of the middle class, falsely believing that they were more insulated from losing the balance, slowly but surely join me at the lower end of that spectrum, the problem becomes more and more apparent.
Still, that hope that one day we too will be the benefactor of those tax cuts that favor the top 10% pushes us to believe that we should keep on keeping on. We somehow believe that that top 10% will expand to let us in and we'll finally be on the receiving end, rather than the losing end of tax policy that bows to corporate America instead of the citizenship of America. But that's just it, Bush tax policy never does extend that 10%. Sure we get some scraps thrown our way, but they do little more than keep the futile dream alive and keep us throwing our money at the corporations who then throw enough of it to Washington to keep the law and tax code just the way it is.
So let's play out this scenario... this trickle down theory. As we in the middle class slip closer and closer to losing that desperate balance and more and more of us fall to bankruptcy, medical emergencies, foreclosures, etc,... as the gap between the rich and the poor in this nation continues to approach that of Apartheid South Africa (only with inferior health care), when will it finally end and what will America look like at that point?
Never mind that it was on the backs of the middle class that this nation was built. Never mind that it was their blood spilled in wars where they were the ones who couldn't buy their way out of the draft. Never mind that they are the police and fire and military and garbage collectors who toil daily to protect and maintain our way of life. Never mind that it is by their labor, their time away from their families, their wrongful deaths in dangerous work places that the rich get richer. Forget all of that. The real question is what happens to America when the middle class drops down into the poverty level where we're headed today? What happens when we disappear financially?
Once people like me finally fail to maintain the delicate balance, (and at the rate we're going, it is just a matter of time) who will be left to pay rising insurance premiums in exchange for less and less coverage? Who will be left to pay interest to finance companies who own all of our property? Who will pay for a drug company's research costs in the FIRST year of a new drug's sales? (can you imagine if the neighborhood bakery tried to get the cost of their new ovens out of the first year's doughnut sales? Only unlike doughnuts, we can't go without life-saving drugs) Who will buy gas? Who will pay taxes? Whose money will make the rich richer then?
If we extend this scenario, it looks more and more like Bush's vision of the future for America is one of corporate communism wherein the federal government functions as little more than keeper of "the company store," skimming their share off the top and passing the rest on to "the company" as we, the labor pool become "another day older and deeper in debt." So what happens when we're all indentured servants of the company and we've finally turned over all of our cash to them? Do we then adopt China's policy of importing everything and exporting only slave labor, keeping the economy alive only by falsely valuing our currency? Our current rate of deficit spending seems to indicate that it's part of the plan. Is that the vision of America we have for our grandchildren? Where the storekeeper doles out what we need, equally to all?
I always thought that communism, like social programming, was something only extreme lefties believed in. I guess it just depends on which side of the take you're on. I never studied economics beyond the required intro class and though I had a college roomie who was a graduate student in economics, our discussions did little to help me understand where else Bush policy seems to be leading us. I'd like to find out how wrong I am... how I've been interpreting all the observations from my own circumstances, and the similar circumstances of most of my friends, neighbors and co-workers so wrongly. I'd like to have that magic wand waved over my worries and be granted the understanding that my feeble little mind requires in order to embrace a better vision of the future with Bush at the helm, but I just don't see it. Enlighten me.
Later dudes,
Luth
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Sunday, January 14, 2007
20,000 new troops = 20,000 new targets
That last post was pretty clearly a spleen vent even though I didn't label it as such. I hope no one was terribly disappointed when they realized that. One issue I didn't find a way to work in there was this whole troop surge idea. I've made mention of my thoughts on this before, but since it's the latest major national issue, I figured it was worth its own post. And since the president often refers to the redemption that history will afford him, I'll start with this summation of my opinion of the surge:
History will show it to be the most noticeable example of lip service to date in this war.
Back when Colin Powell was still part of the Bush administration, there was a lot of talk about this nation's recent success, when necessary, in using the doctrine of overwhelming force Powell advocated. Powell used it under Bush 41's command to successfully, and justly remove the Saddam-led Iraqis from Kuwait. Mission accomplished, quickly, neatly, with minimal loss of American life. With minimal American investment in any form, relatively speaking. Desert Storm was basically an exercise for our forces thanks to the overwhelming force mentality used in its execution. A slightly modified version of it was used successfully early on in Afghanistan, although it later had to be watered down even further to facilitate the invasion of Iraq.
That kind of overwhelming force may have worked to "stabilize" Iraq. (I'm done arguing over the need to stabilize Iraq). Powell recommended the use of such force. However, Bush and Rumsfeld knew better. Since we'd be greeted as liberators, we'd only need a handful of special forces troops to prime the pump, and then a hundred thousand or so follow up troops, no so much to maintain order, but just to monitor the flow once the statues were torn down.
OK, that didn't work out so well. Powell and a handful of others who were good enough for several previous administrations found that their opinions didn't matter and jumped ship, and no more silly talk of overwhelming force was ever mentioned again. Nope, only when things in Iraq continued their downward, objectiveless spiral, did we even admit that there might be a few flaws in the plan. Well, at least we've come that far. And the solution? 20,000 more troops?!
Throwing 20,000 more troops into the violent chaotic mess that Iraq was 2 years ago would barely have been noticeable anywhere except in the payroll records. My fear is that throwing them in there today will only be noticed by the increase in the number of troops becoming targets. A surge of 20,000 troops falls so far short of what anyone outside the White House would consider an overwhelming force, I can't help but wonder if it's anything more than a stubborn display of commitment to a cause fewer and fewer believe in anymore. (Especially since the "cause" has never really been delineated in any measurable, objective way.)
As long as we're committed to saving anything in Iraq, it should be the butts of our troops there. In order to do that we need to establish authoritative control. In order to even come close to establishing authoritative control, we'll need DOUBLE the number of troops on the ground there and in surrounding areas. If we're going to be there, we need overwhelming force.
I don't want to go back there at all. Before going, having been there, and since I've been home, I still haven't seen or heard a clear enough objective in order to justify any Americans being there, let alone ME being there, but as long as we're there we should really consider committing to whatever the latest cause is by committing some real power. Overwhelming power. The dems in Congress who oppose the 20k surge are opposing it for all the wrong reasons. The repubs who support it are just as wrong. Congress lost their clout when they shirked their responsibility to declare war and handed it over to the president in the first place.
We need to go big or get home and right now, it's not even safe enough to start getting our people home. I picture people climbing embassy walls in Saigon and I hear an updated version of John Kerry's question: "Who wants to be the last American soldier to die in Baghdad?" (not me) If we tried to leave amid the current level of violence and disorder, our troops would become instant targets and we, clearly, don't have the force on the ground there right now, or even 20,000 troops from now, to offer up any kind of guarantee of changing that.
Now, my plan for after we have established control is simple: orchestrate the biggest and fastest mass exodus of U.S. troops anyone has ever seen. That's right, I advocate doubling the number of troops in order to provide a brief window of order and then an immediate and complete withdrawal. Once we have a thousand troops on the ground for every hotspot in the country, the bad guys realize we are in fact serious, and things settle down, we begin an exit plan that makes the Berlin Airlift look like airplane rides at the county airport's open house. Logistics is the key to success in any international operation. Let's demonstrate our military superiority via a logistics display.
Once the doubled force has quieted the streets somewhat, we fly, drive and march every single U.S. troop out of Iraq with a target timeframe of 30 days or less. That way it's over before anyone even realizes something's going on. Troops can hang out in Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, UAE. Others can be flown to Spain, Germany, The Azores, England, Italy, anywhere there's a landing strip that will take us until phase two of the traveling begins. Leave your gear for the Iraqis to use in defending themselves. If every troop leaves the amount of gear I had to haul over there, there could be three or four airplane seats for every single soldier and gear that flew in.
Pulling out entirely does a number of things to increase Iraq's chances of survival. First, Americans back home will stop thinking we're at war WITH Iraq just because we're in Iraq. (I wore an Iraq Olympic Soccer jersey for Halloween last year and was amazed by the number of people who said, "why would you wear the enemy's jersey") and we could all go back to laughing at/feeling sorry for them instead of thinking we're fighting them. Second, once the "infidels/devils" are gone, the "terrorists" will have no reason to camp there in order to help purify the holy land. Third, our military budget could be used for military readiness and if Iraq really needed our help (like they did under Bush 41) we could do it quickly and decisively (like we did under Bush 41). I'm sure there are more reasons, but I don't even care about them... I just care about getting our troops out of there and back to work on matters of national interest. (like blowjobs, gay marriage and abortion) What kind of threat can we pose to Iran, Syria or North Korea given our success rate and overworking of troops in Iraq? The sooner we call that chapter closed, the quicker we can go back to believing in our superiority.
So write your congressmen (or -women) and tell them to add another zero to the number of troops we need in Iraq. It's the only way to be pro-American these days and it might even make a difference in some meaningful way. Or better yet, if you still think this war is a good idea, grab some buddies and head down to the local recruiting office. Tell them you'll sign up if they'll guarantee you'll be in Iraq by this summer.
Later dudes.
History will show it to be the most noticeable example of lip service to date in this war.
Back when Colin Powell was still part of the Bush administration, there was a lot of talk about this nation's recent success, when necessary, in using the doctrine of overwhelming force Powell advocated. Powell used it under Bush 41's command to successfully, and justly remove the Saddam-led Iraqis from Kuwait. Mission accomplished, quickly, neatly, with minimal loss of American life. With minimal American investment in any form, relatively speaking. Desert Storm was basically an exercise for our forces thanks to the overwhelming force mentality used in its execution. A slightly modified version of it was used successfully early on in Afghanistan, although it later had to be watered down even further to facilitate the invasion of Iraq.
That kind of overwhelming force may have worked to "stabilize" Iraq. (I'm done arguing over the need to stabilize Iraq). Powell recommended the use of such force. However, Bush and Rumsfeld knew better. Since we'd be greeted as liberators, we'd only need a handful of special forces troops to prime the pump, and then a hundred thousand or so follow up troops, no so much to maintain order, but just to monitor the flow once the statues were torn down.
OK, that didn't work out so well. Powell and a handful of others who were good enough for several previous administrations found that their opinions didn't matter and jumped ship, and no more silly talk of overwhelming force was ever mentioned again. Nope, only when things in Iraq continued their downward, objectiveless spiral, did we even admit that there might be a few flaws in the plan. Well, at least we've come that far. And the solution? 20,000 more troops?!
Throwing 20,000 more troops into the violent chaotic mess that Iraq was 2 years ago would barely have been noticeable anywhere except in the payroll records. My fear is that throwing them in there today will only be noticed by the increase in the number of troops becoming targets. A surge of 20,000 troops falls so far short of what anyone outside the White House would consider an overwhelming force, I can't help but wonder if it's anything more than a stubborn display of commitment to a cause fewer and fewer believe in anymore. (Especially since the "cause" has never really been delineated in any measurable, objective way.)
As long as we're committed to saving anything in Iraq, it should be the butts of our troops there. In order to do that we need to establish authoritative control. In order to even come close to establishing authoritative control, we'll need DOUBLE the number of troops on the ground there and in surrounding areas. If we're going to be there, we need overwhelming force.
I don't want to go back there at all. Before going, having been there, and since I've been home, I still haven't seen or heard a clear enough objective in order to justify any Americans being there, let alone ME being there, but as long as we're there we should really consider committing to whatever the latest cause is by committing some real power. Overwhelming power. The dems in Congress who oppose the 20k surge are opposing it for all the wrong reasons. The repubs who support it are just as wrong. Congress lost their clout when they shirked their responsibility to declare war and handed it over to the president in the first place.
We need to go big or get home and right now, it's not even safe enough to start getting our people home. I picture people climbing embassy walls in Saigon and I hear an updated version of John Kerry's question: "Who wants to be the last American soldier to die in Baghdad?" (not me) If we tried to leave amid the current level of violence and disorder, our troops would become instant targets and we, clearly, don't have the force on the ground there right now, or even 20,000 troops from now, to offer up any kind of guarantee of changing that.
Now, my plan for after we have established control is simple: orchestrate the biggest and fastest mass exodus of U.S. troops anyone has ever seen. That's right, I advocate doubling the number of troops in order to provide a brief window of order and then an immediate and complete withdrawal. Once we have a thousand troops on the ground for every hotspot in the country, the bad guys realize we are in fact serious, and things settle down, we begin an exit plan that makes the Berlin Airlift look like airplane rides at the county airport's open house. Logistics is the key to success in any international operation. Let's demonstrate our military superiority via a logistics display.
Once the doubled force has quieted the streets somewhat, we fly, drive and march every single U.S. troop out of Iraq with a target timeframe of 30 days or less. That way it's over before anyone even realizes something's going on. Troops can hang out in Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, UAE. Others can be flown to Spain, Germany, The Azores, England, Italy, anywhere there's a landing strip that will take us until phase two of the traveling begins. Leave your gear for the Iraqis to use in defending themselves. If every troop leaves the amount of gear I had to haul over there, there could be three or four airplane seats for every single soldier and gear that flew in.
Pulling out entirely does a number of things to increase Iraq's chances of survival. First, Americans back home will stop thinking we're at war WITH Iraq just because we're in Iraq. (I wore an Iraq Olympic Soccer jersey for Halloween last year and was amazed by the number of people who said, "why would you wear the enemy's jersey") and we could all go back to laughing at/feeling sorry for them instead of thinking we're fighting them. Second, once the "infidels/devils" are gone, the "terrorists" will have no reason to camp there in order to help purify the holy land. Third, our military budget could be used for military readiness and if Iraq really needed our help (like they did under Bush 41) we could do it quickly and decisively (like we did under Bush 41). I'm sure there are more reasons, but I don't even care about them... I just care about getting our troops out of there and back to work on matters of national interest. (like blowjobs, gay marriage and abortion) What kind of threat can we pose to Iran, Syria or North Korea given our success rate and overworking of troops in Iraq? The sooner we call that chapter closed, the quicker we can go back to believing in our superiority.
So write your congressmen (or -women) and tell them to add another zero to the number of troops we need in Iraq. It's the only way to be pro-American these days and it might even make a difference in some meaningful way. Or better yet, if you still think this war is a good idea, grab some buddies and head down to the local recruiting office. Tell them you'll sign up if they'll guarantee you'll be in Iraq by this summer.
Later dudes.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Bullshit, Education, Athena, Philosophy and Dump Trucks
Howdy fans,
I’ll warn you from the start...this post follows an extremely meandering and occasionally adult path although it is largely the story of a day at work followed by a family outing. Think LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE (R-rated even though it’s about a little girl)
Yeah, I know that’s not a very well constructed sentence grammatically speaking, but it’s a fair enough, and accurate enough and inclusive enough warning. AND I believe it will increase the “hit-ability” of my tired old ‘blog.
I should also mention that while standing in line at Barnes and Noble after an evening of family entertainment, I couldn’t help but notice the cover of THE ATLANTIC Magazine boasting it’s feature article, “When Presidents Lie.” Guess whose picture was on the cover? To be fair, the teaser for the article notes that all presidents do it, then promises to explain how the current Prez is different. Seems like he oughta be able to sue for that. Then again, Clinton got impeached for lying (in a situation roughly equivalent to being pulled over for having a taillight out then being asked, under oath of course, if he’d ever touched himself) so I guess as long as The Atlantic says they all do it, having President Bush’s face on the cover next to that headline isn’t really so out of line.
Hence the “bullshit” connection. During our family night out so the daughters could spend their B&N and Starbucks gift cards and Mr. and Mrs. Horsepoup could peruse the latest self-help, kama sutra, child rearing, inner peace aisle selections, I ran across the cute little copy of Dr. H. G. Frankfurt’s ON BULLSHIT. No really. According to the book, he’s a Princeton professor emeritus of Philosophy who, apparently in a tongue and cheek stab at the old “publish or perish” requirement of his profession, published this 50+-page pocket book that spent more than a few weeks on the NYT’s best-seller list. It sets out to analyze the meaning and prevalence of BS in modern society and starts with the word’s entry in the Oxford English Dictionary (ok, a supplemental volume of the OED). There’s a follow up out now by the famous authors of the _____ & Philosophy series... I think one of their names is Reisch or something, and maybe the other’s is Ubiquitous, but I can’t be bothered to look it up right now. (It’s the dawn of the millennium, Google it yourself, dammit)
Anyway, one of the many interesting facets of bullshit that this essay notes is that bullshit (an art form proven such by the term “bullshit artist”) requires none of the constraints of a lie. It goes on to point out that a liar respects the truth to the point that he at least believes he’s telling the opposite of it whereas a bullshit artist freely gallops outside of that corral.
So that got me thinking about a meeting at work this morning wherein my team members and I participated in a “game” packaged, marketed, and billed as the facilitator of a discussion on where teaching is going and where it used to be. As we looked over the game board and began “playing” per our instructions, read verbatim by the “coach,” we discovered that the teachers who taught us (and, presumably, those who capitalize on the creation of this game and modern society’s swallowing of the bullshit that encouraged its purchase) were ignorant, self-serving egotists who knew nothing about standards, assessment, or even any sort of integrity, let alone educational psychology or any actual method of instruction.
After a few moments, I began to feel a sort of embarrassment for anyone at the table older than me. I’ve been teaching for 9 years now, but obtained my license 15 years ago. I guess I should have been ashamed of myself as well, but I really felt bad for the people in the room who had been teaching for 20, or even 30 years. According to the cards in the game, and the information printed on the board, those teachers and I were some of the most worthless people to have ever stepped into a classroom.
Based on the information in this game, the teachers of anyone reading this (and the teachers of the game’s creators!!) relied strictly on tests as measures of student achievement, dominated the classroom with their voices, taught only what they liked or felt comfortable with, adhered to NO course of study, state or local guidelines or standards, kept track of no scores, spoke with no other teachers, assigned grades purely based on who they liked or didn’t but made sure it fit a perfect bell curve, shunned ALL forms of media or technology, refused to speak to parents, taught all courses to one level not accounting for varied abilities, assumed that any student who didn’t get it just wasn’t trying hard enough and thus never varied anything that they did and basically didn’t give a rat’s behind about anything but their paychecks and their summers “off.”
As I sat there reading along with my fellow players, I began to wonder how we were capable of spelling our own names given that our teachers were so incompetent. How did Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or Dean Kamen or Alfred Nobel ever make it past their first job interview? How did America’s “Greatest Generation” feed and dress themselves, let alone become the Greatest Generation given that their teachers failed them so miserably? How did our parents survive on their own? What’s worse, back then, where were all the high performing voucher-funded private schools or charter schools to bail them out when their public education left them so high and dry? How did they ever leave high school and not murder everyone on the street without being told that evolution is just a theory?
And that’s when my thoughts turned to driving a dump truck hauling 4 tons of stone. (sorry ol’ buddy Greg, I didn’t think the loader operator would dump that much in there, but the old girl hauled the load home and dumped her!) Anyhoo, the meeting broke up, a parent who had scheduled an appointment failed to show, a bunch of us unloaded a truck full of band storage equipment, the incompetent members of my team finished up the rough draft of a new inter-disciplinary research project, and it was time for this day off from students to be over. If I didn’t get my butt and Greg’s dump truck to the quarry in 15 minutes, I wouldn’t be able to get back in time to pick up a second, and with luck, final load. So I’m cruising down a county road inhaling the rich (as in: more fuel than air) exhaust, winter rain and manure smell that fortunately overpowered the distinct smell of cat piss that somehow attached itself to this dump truck and I’m trying to figure out how I was able to wire up the lights on the front end after the harness had fallen into the fan the night I picked the truck up in order to begin hauling the stone for my mom’s driveway.
Not only that, but it’s only by the right combination of transmission manipulation, pto engagement and transfer case fidgeting that one is able to dump whatever load one is hauling. Not to mention the weight calculation for the county road bridges one must cross, the conversion from cubic yardage to tonnage in order to figure out how much stone to haul, guesstimating the angles of the dump body in relation to the house so as not to open up a hole for new window where no window was planned... sure, they’re all simple tasks in the hands of a trained professional who attended the best schools, but I’m a reject from one of the worst educational systems in the world! At least that seems to be the premise of the No Child Left Behind Act and the commercial products and public opinion it has spawned.
Having spent enough time in a classroom as a teacher to realize how good I had it as a student, even if I didn’t necessarily enjoy every moment as a student, it’s that public opinion part that really pisses me off. That and the bullshit that created it. I began questioning my desire to remain a teacher all over again as I eased the groaning truck over some railroad tracks and up to a stoplight. I daydreamed about running off with the truck to become a freelance hauler taking cash or hard goods under the table in exchange for hauling and dumping anything anybody could pay for. Cash or goods only... no questions... gas money, food and an occasional beer. How could life get any better.
When the light turned green it snapped me back to reality. As I cleared the intersection and once again had the road to myself, I remembered a question a girl had asked earlier in the week during a mythology slideshow we’d watched to introduce a reading unit on Greek Myths. After watching a couple of slides on Athena/Minerva and hearing that she was the goddess of Just and Righteous Wars, I asked students what that meant. I was afraid that some of the folks dozing off might have heard she was the goddess of just war... as in “and nothing else.” But they got it, in their own ways, giving examples like “she wouldn’t like countries who just started wars all the time for no good reason.” And that’s when one of those model, but grossly cheated students that every teacher dreams of having in class raised her hand. I couldn’t wait to call on her because she was the kind of student whose questions were the ones that lesser students were afraid to ask but that they all had. She said:
“So Athena probably wouldn’t be on our side right now over the War in Iraq?”
There it was, the hanging curveball, waiting to be LAUNCHED over the left field wall into the bright blue horizon.
A lesser me, back before I realized what an underserved student and incompetent teacher I was would have said something like, “well, since you brought it up, yeah, that’s what I’d guess too,” but now that I’d been educated in my failings, I said, “well, some people think that, others would disagree. It’s really not my place as your reading teacher to say, although you are correct in assuming that that’s the kind of question she would face.”
Because, after all, if teachers have opinions that aren’t backed by standards and data analysis and don’t increase students’ proficiency test scores (even though tests are evil) then they mustn’t ever state those opinions even if asked.
I backed the truck into the driveway to dump the last load and heard on the radio that Athena’s patron city had been bombed. As I climbed out of the truck and walked behind it to make sure the sticky tailgate had released before I raised up those 4 tons of stone (a trick I’d learned after watching a loaded dump flip onto its backside when the full bed was raised up with a latched gate – a useful connection I’d made in spite of my poor education) I wondered if the student who had asked that question heard the same story and wondered at the coincidence. Was Greece with us or against us? Could the student possibly connect this obscure and abstract lesson from reading class to a real world event?
I doubted it though. After all, her teachers were people who couldn’t do anything else, sought no standards, enforced no discipline, assigned grades arbitrarily, etc. and so on. Those teachers really need to be held accountable. Thank (whomever you thank) for No Child Left Behind and its insight about the evils of testing... and the mandatory but unfunded tests that measure its effectiveness everywhere except Texas. Again my thoughts drifted toward driving the borrowed truck off into the night. But what would Greg think? What of the unspoken contract between us that I’d return his truck when I was done with it? Surely he knew that since I was only a teacher, trained 15 years ago before accountability was federally mandated, I had no integrity. He’d get over it.
Then I remembered that my wife and I agreed to take the girls to the bookstore tonight so they could spend their book and coffee gift cards. So I ran the truck uptown to fuel it up. I came back home and parked it in the driveway, then went in to change while it cooled off a little. Once I’d checked on homework and confirmed the bookstore plans, I went back to air up the leaky tires and top off fluids. The beast had consumed a quart of oil but the coolant hadn’t dropped a bit, which by now cleared up our suspicions about that heater core. The two lazy tires only lost about 5 pounds each so I had completed my inspection and preventive maintenance in just a few minutes. I ran the truck around back and parked it under the big maple tree then went into the house to clean up. That’s when Mrs. Horsepoup called from work and confirmed the bookstore plan and said she’d be home in a half hour.
I checked with the girls and all was still a go. I finished up some soup Mom had made and was suddenly alerted to a distress call that my lower gastro-intestinal tract issued. I didn’t think much of it since the band director had repaid those of us who hauled in his new equipment with pizza and Cokes. I was used to a much healthier lunch so I figured I was just paying the price for giving in to taste buds rather than dietary conscience. What else could be expected from a student of such a failed educational system? After a visit to the WC, I was convinced I was ready to mobilize my squad to recon the bookstore, target the coffee bar, and reassemble back at base rounding out the Friday night mission with a debrief in the mission room.
Mrs. Horsepoup arrived on schedule, the troops loaded up and the mission began as planned. Once on-site, the team leader ran point to the children’s section on the second level. The escalator was cleared and all players hit their positions on cue. But just as I, the tail, took up my position in the religion and Christianity section, I became aware of just how much warmer the second floor of the target location had grown. I got another call from the lower GI tract. I was to rendezvous IMMEDIATELY at the water closet and download all recently acquired intel.
I didn’t have time to alert the other team members, but I did confirm that they were already at about 28% MC (mission complete) having scoped out the children’s section and selected a few possible samples for acquisition.
So there I was, alone, isolated from my team, facing the blank wall of my cell and the embarrassment of having publicly failed my mission. I knew the Geneva Convention required only that I provide name, rank and serial number, but I also knew that those rules didn’t apply in this situation. I would be asked for a lot more. As my defenses kicked in, pushing me further and further into self-preservation mode, I remembered Lao Tzu’s simple advice on perspective. Suddenly it occurred to me that I’d been faced with far worse odds than those that this particular moment provided. I’d been in almost the same position in any number of exotic places with even less to look forward to than what tonight’s mission promised to deliver if successful. If I could, in spite of my substandard education, somehow overcome this immediate crisis, I had a lot to live for.
I quickly focused on some basic instinctive preservation techniques bore down and cleared my mind of the day’s distractions. The next thing I knew, I was reading a passage from Dr. Frankfurt’s philosophical treatise on bullshit up on the second floor again. It was as though the interlude were just a nightmare. My daughter, D2, upon completing her mission, had circled around to offer me any needed support. I signaled to her by holding up the book I was reading. She read the title and signaled back by scrunching up her face as if to say, “you can’t say that word on the cover of a book.”
By then, the other two team members (Mrs. Horsepoup and D1) had acquired and destroyed their targets and we all made for the rendezvous point.
I cracked open a hot brew of the day while Mrs. stirred her cream and sugar. D2 and D1 argued jovially over the merits of molten chocolate bundt vs. decadent chocolate silk cheesecake. We took turns replaying each of our successful target acquisitions, exaggerating the details even though we’d all witnessed each other’s efforts. A local kid, approximately 4 years of age, was arguing with his dad in the checkout line, screaming that he wanted a book, HE WANTED A BOOK. The entire place turned in their direction. Kid’s dad must have been a teacher or some other, equally incompetent adult to have lost control like that on a mission. Either that, or he’d been educated here in the states.
Somehow, in spite of the lack of preparation our horrible educations had provided us, we made it home and rested up for the next impossible mission. So much bullshit, so few shovelers*, and so little time.
*it’s a word, see “decider”
I’ll warn you from the start...this post follows an extremely meandering and occasionally adult path although it is largely the story of a day at work followed by a family outing. Think LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE (R-rated even though it’s about a little girl)
Yeah, I know that’s not a very well constructed sentence grammatically speaking, but it’s a fair enough, and accurate enough and inclusive enough warning. AND I believe it will increase the “hit-ability” of my tired old ‘blog.
I should also mention that while standing in line at Barnes and Noble after an evening of family entertainment, I couldn’t help but notice the cover of THE ATLANTIC Magazine boasting it’s feature article, “When Presidents Lie.” Guess whose picture was on the cover? To be fair, the teaser for the article notes that all presidents do it, then promises to explain how the current Prez is different. Seems like he oughta be able to sue for that. Then again, Clinton got impeached for lying (in a situation roughly equivalent to being pulled over for having a taillight out then being asked, under oath of course, if he’d ever touched himself) so I guess as long as The Atlantic says they all do it, having President Bush’s face on the cover next to that headline isn’t really so out of line.
Hence the “bullshit” connection. During our family night out so the daughters could spend their B&N and Starbucks gift cards and Mr. and Mrs. Horsepoup could peruse the latest self-help, kama sutra, child rearing, inner peace aisle selections, I ran across the cute little copy of Dr. H. G. Frankfurt’s ON BULLSHIT. No really. According to the book, he’s a Princeton professor emeritus of Philosophy who, apparently in a tongue and cheek stab at the old “publish or perish” requirement of his profession, published this 50+-page pocket book that spent more than a few weeks on the NYT’s best-seller list. It sets out to analyze the meaning and prevalence of BS in modern society and starts with the word’s entry in the Oxford English Dictionary (ok, a supplemental volume of the OED). There’s a follow up out now by the famous authors of the _____ & Philosophy series... I think one of their names is Reisch or something, and maybe the other’s is Ubiquitous, but I can’t be bothered to look it up right now. (It’s the dawn of the millennium, Google it yourself, dammit)
Anyway, one of the many interesting facets of bullshit that this essay notes is that bullshit (an art form proven such by the term “bullshit artist”) requires none of the constraints of a lie. It goes on to point out that a liar respects the truth to the point that he at least believes he’s telling the opposite of it whereas a bullshit artist freely gallops outside of that corral.
So that got me thinking about a meeting at work this morning wherein my team members and I participated in a “game” packaged, marketed, and billed as the facilitator of a discussion on where teaching is going and where it used to be. As we looked over the game board and began “playing” per our instructions, read verbatim by the “coach,” we discovered that the teachers who taught us (and, presumably, those who capitalize on the creation of this game and modern society’s swallowing of the bullshit that encouraged its purchase) were ignorant, self-serving egotists who knew nothing about standards, assessment, or even any sort of integrity, let alone educational psychology or any actual method of instruction.
After a few moments, I began to feel a sort of embarrassment for anyone at the table older than me. I’ve been teaching for 9 years now, but obtained my license 15 years ago. I guess I should have been ashamed of myself as well, but I really felt bad for the people in the room who had been teaching for 20, or even 30 years. According to the cards in the game, and the information printed on the board, those teachers and I were some of the most worthless people to have ever stepped into a classroom.
Based on the information in this game, the teachers of anyone reading this (and the teachers of the game’s creators!!) relied strictly on tests as measures of student achievement, dominated the classroom with their voices, taught only what they liked or felt comfortable with, adhered to NO course of study, state or local guidelines or standards, kept track of no scores, spoke with no other teachers, assigned grades purely based on who they liked or didn’t but made sure it fit a perfect bell curve, shunned ALL forms of media or technology, refused to speak to parents, taught all courses to one level not accounting for varied abilities, assumed that any student who didn’t get it just wasn’t trying hard enough and thus never varied anything that they did and basically didn’t give a rat’s behind about anything but their paychecks and their summers “off.”
As I sat there reading along with my fellow players, I began to wonder how we were capable of spelling our own names given that our teachers were so incompetent. How did Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or Dean Kamen or Alfred Nobel ever make it past their first job interview? How did America’s “Greatest Generation” feed and dress themselves, let alone become the Greatest Generation given that their teachers failed them so miserably? How did our parents survive on their own? What’s worse, back then, where were all the high performing voucher-funded private schools or charter schools to bail them out when their public education left them so high and dry? How did they ever leave high school and not murder everyone on the street without being told that evolution is just a theory?
And that’s when my thoughts turned to driving a dump truck hauling 4 tons of stone. (sorry ol’ buddy Greg, I didn’t think the loader operator would dump that much in there, but the old girl hauled the load home and dumped her!) Anyhoo, the meeting broke up, a parent who had scheduled an appointment failed to show, a bunch of us unloaded a truck full of band storage equipment, the incompetent members of my team finished up the rough draft of a new inter-disciplinary research project, and it was time for this day off from students to be over. If I didn’t get my butt and Greg’s dump truck to the quarry in 15 minutes, I wouldn’t be able to get back in time to pick up a second, and with luck, final load. So I’m cruising down a county road inhaling the rich (as in: more fuel than air) exhaust, winter rain and manure smell that fortunately overpowered the distinct smell of cat piss that somehow attached itself to this dump truck and I’m trying to figure out how I was able to wire up the lights on the front end after the harness had fallen into the fan the night I picked the truck up in order to begin hauling the stone for my mom’s driveway.
Not only that, but it’s only by the right combination of transmission manipulation, pto engagement and transfer case fidgeting that one is able to dump whatever load one is hauling. Not to mention the weight calculation for the county road bridges one must cross, the conversion from cubic yardage to tonnage in order to figure out how much stone to haul, guesstimating the angles of the dump body in relation to the house so as not to open up a hole for new window where no window was planned... sure, they’re all simple tasks in the hands of a trained professional who attended the best schools, but I’m a reject from one of the worst educational systems in the world! At least that seems to be the premise of the No Child Left Behind Act and the commercial products and public opinion it has spawned.
Having spent enough time in a classroom as a teacher to realize how good I had it as a student, even if I didn’t necessarily enjoy every moment as a student, it’s that public opinion part that really pisses me off. That and the bullshit that created it. I began questioning my desire to remain a teacher all over again as I eased the groaning truck over some railroad tracks and up to a stoplight. I daydreamed about running off with the truck to become a freelance hauler taking cash or hard goods under the table in exchange for hauling and dumping anything anybody could pay for. Cash or goods only... no questions... gas money, food and an occasional beer. How could life get any better.
When the light turned green it snapped me back to reality. As I cleared the intersection and once again had the road to myself, I remembered a question a girl had asked earlier in the week during a mythology slideshow we’d watched to introduce a reading unit on Greek Myths. After watching a couple of slides on Athena/Minerva and hearing that she was the goddess of Just and Righteous Wars, I asked students what that meant. I was afraid that some of the folks dozing off might have heard she was the goddess of just war... as in “and nothing else.” But they got it, in their own ways, giving examples like “she wouldn’t like countries who just started wars all the time for no good reason.” And that’s when one of those model, but grossly cheated students that every teacher dreams of having in class raised her hand. I couldn’t wait to call on her because she was the kind of student whose questions were the ones that lesser students were afraid to ask but that they all had. She said:
“So Athena probably wouldn’t be on our side right now over the War in Iraq?”
There it was, the hanging curveball, waiting to be LAUNCHED over the left field wall into the bright blue horizon.
A lesser me, back before I realized what an underserved student and incompetent teacher I was would have said something like, “well, since you brought it up, yeah, that’s what I’d guess too,” but now that I’d been educated in my failings, I said, “well, some people think that, others would disagree. It’s really not my place as your reading teacher to say, although you are correct in assuming that that’s the kind of question she would face.”
Because, after all, if teachers have opinions that aren’t backed by standards and data analysis and don’t increase students’ proficiency test scores (even though tests are evil) then they mustn’t ever state those opinions even if asked.
I backed the truck into the driveway to dump the last load and heard on the radio that Athena’s patron city had been bombed. As I climbed out of the truck and walked behind it to make sure the sticky tailgate had released before I raised up those 4 tons of stone (a trick I’d learned after watching a loaded dump flip onto its backside when the full bed was raised up with a latched gate – a useful connection I’d made in spite of my poor education) I wondered if the student who had asked that question heard the same story and wondered at the coincidence. Was Greece with us or against us? Could the student possibly connect this obscure and abstract lesson from reading class to a real world event?
I doubted it though. After all, her teachers were people who couldn’t do anything else, sought no standards, enforced no discipline, assigned grades arbitrarily, etc. and so on. Those teachers really need to be held accountable. Thank (whomever you thank) for No Child Left Behind and its insight about the evils of testing... and the mandatory but unfunded tests that measure its effectiveness everywhere except Texas. Again my thoughts drifted toward driving the borrowed truck off into the night. But what would Greg think? What of the unspoken contract between us that I’d return his truck when I was done with it? Surely he knew that since I was only a teacher, trained 15 years ago before accountability was federally mandated, I had no integrity. He’d get over it.
Then I remembered that my wife and I agreed to take the girls to the bookstore tonight so they could spend their book and coffee gift cards. So I ran the truck uptown to fuel it up. I came back home and parked it in the driveway, then went in to change while it cooled off a little. Once I’d checked on homework and confirmed the bookstore plans, I went back to air up the leaky tires and top off fluids. The beast had consumed a quart of oil but the coolant hadn’t dropped a bit, which by now cleared up our suspicions about that heater core. The two lazy tires only lost about 5 pounds each so I had completed my inspection and preventive maintenance in just a few minutes. I ran the truck around back and parked it under the big maple tree then went into the house to clean up. That’s when Mrs. Horsepoup called from work and confirmed the bookstore plan and said she’d be home in a half hour.
I checked with the girls and all was still a go. I finished up some soup Mom had made and was suddenly alerted to a distress call that my lower gastro-intestinal tract issued. I didn’t think much of it since the band director had repaid those of us who hauled in his new equipment with pizza and Cokes. I was used to a much healthier lunch so I figured I was just paying the price for giving in to taste buds rather than dietary conscience. What else could be expected from a student of such a failed educational system? After a visit to the WC, I was convinced I was ready to mobilize my squad to recon the bookstore, target the coffee bar, and reassemble back at base rounding out the Friday night mission with a debrief in the mission room.
Mrs. Horsepoup arrived on schedule, the troops loaded up and the mission began as planned. Once on-site, the team leader ran point to the children’s section on the second level. The escalator was cleared and all players hit their positions on cue. But just as I, the tail, took up my position in the religion and Christianity section, I became aware of just how much warmer the second floor of the target location had grown. I got another call from the lower GI tract. I was to rendezvous IMMEDIATELY at the water closet and download all recently acquired intel.
I didn’t have time to alert the other team members, but I did confirm that they were already at about 28% MC (mission complete) having scoped out the children’s section and selected a few possible samples for acquisition.
So there I was, alone, isolated from my team, facing the blank wall of my cell and the embarrassment of having publicly failed my mission. I knew the Geneva Convention required only that I provide name, rank and serial number, but I also knew that those rules didn’t apply in this situation. I would be asked for a lot more. As my defenses kicked in, pushing me further and further into self-preservation mode, I remembered Lao Tzu’s simple advice on perspective. Suddenly it occurred to me that I’d been faced with far worse odds than those that this particular moment provided. I’d been in almost the same position in any number of exotic places with even less to look forward to than what tonight’s mission promised to deliver if successful. If I could, in spite of my substandard education, somehow overcome this immediate crisis, I had a lot to live for.
I quickly focused on some basic instinctive preservation techniques bore down and cleared my mind of the day’s distractions. The next thing I knew, I was reading a passage from Dr. Frankfurt’s philosophical treatise on bullshit up on the second floor again. It was as though the interlude were just a nightmare. My daughter, D2, upon completing her mission, had circled around to offer me any needed support. I signaled to her by holding up the book I was reading. She read the title and signaled back by scrunching up her face as if to say, “you can’t say that word on the cover of a book.”
By then, the other two team members (Mrs. Horsepoup and D1) had acquired and destroyed their targets and we all made for the rendezvous point.
I cracked open a hot brew of the day while Mrs. stirred her cream and sugar. D2 and D1 argued jovially over the merits of molten chocolate bundt vs. decadent chocolate silk cheesecake. We took turns replaying each of our successful target acquisitions, exaggerating the details even though we’d all witnessed each other’s efforts. A local kid, approximately 4 years of age, was arguing with his dad in the checkout line, screaming that he wanted a book, HE WANTED A BOOK. The entire place turned in their direction. Kid’s dad must have been a teacher or some other, equally incompetent adult to have lost control like that on a mission. Either that, or he’d been educated here in the states.
Somehow, in spite of the lack of preparation our horrible educations had provided us, we made it home and rested up for the next impossible mission. So much bullshit, so few shovelers*, and so little time.
*it’s a word, see “decider”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)