Where Is Our Democracy?

The election is upon us, and we're all getting bombarded with television ads that tell us how bad the opponent is. And the pundits frequently are not much better.

One of my wise old friends puts it this way: "The election is good for the media people -- they make a lot of money without having to think. And we citizens are being given a choice as to which of the two candidates is to be our dictator." My friend is exaggerating -- we don't have a dictatorship (at least, not yet). But his basic point is valid: the election is more about manipulating us citizens than serving us.

I can say, from the vantage point of a long lifetime of watching our governments from close up, that the transition from service to manipulation has been gradual-- so gradual as to be barely noticeable. We've been "outsourcing" our democracy and, in the process, we've been outsourcing children's educations.

Thoughtful educators have been telling us for years that children's learning cannot be outsourced -- not effectively: when we outsource education policies to government hierarchies we are subordinating the children (and their teachers) to systems that have been moving more and more toward manipulation.

I heard just yesterday (on C-SPAN) a speech by an intelligent politician calling for more standardization -- and more of the manipulation that goes with treating the children as if they are all alike. And that intelligent politician seemed to actually believe that treating children as cogs on an assembly line is just what the children need.

I saw, early in the week, a school that is totally committed to connecting students with the real life in the community; the students, to cite but one example of the kinds of real-life projects that they do, write and publish the town newspaper (with the support of a retired journalist in the community.) This school, a small school in the Appalachian corner of Northeast Alabama, is the best example I've seen of students being full-fledged members of their community. The school made me feel good: it gave me proof positive that we can have excellent schools. But the scarcity of such schools makes me sad.

When educators first started telling me about the damage being done by top-down manipulation, I believed that the solution to the problem was conceptually pretty simple: we citizens needed to join with the dedicated educators and explain the situation to public officials. I was naïve, to say the least. As of now, our public schools are so intertwined with our political systems that putting learning back where it belongs -- in the communities where the children live and where the professional educators and the citizens are partners with the students -- requires delicate surgery. Public schools cannot operate without money, and much of the money must come from governments; separating children's learning from top-down manipulation, and doing so without endangering government financial support, is at best a huge challenge. And times are not the best.

I've made it a point to compare notes with some of my elder friends from the world of politics and bureaucracy. (And I have also done lots of reading from people who know about governments.) The fact is that we don't know where our democracy is headed. The public is unhappy with governments -- lots of people realize that they're being manipulated and they don't like it. But this unhappiness is not necessarily taking us away from manipulation -- it could, in fact, go the other way.

My core conclusion here is that, although governmental manipulation is causing most of the problems in public education, there is not now a strategy for correcting that governmental problem. Those of us who are supposed to know something about government need to get ourselves a supply of humble pie. But that doesn't mean we need to give up: we citizens -- We the People -- have been, are now, and will be the source of our democracy's strength. And thanks to people such as those I've talked about in the mountains of Kentucky and Alabama (and such young people as Erica Goldson), we know the difference between learning by manipulation and learning by partnership.

Bob Cornett

From Chesnuts to Blues and Bluegrass

My friends at Linefork tell me that planning for next year's Chestnut Festival has already started, with several new features already assured. (There will be, as one example, a sorghum "stir-off"). Many of the new features are intertwined with year-round activities at the community center. One of those year-round activities is, in my mind, of enormous importance; and I need to give some background.

A remarkable bluegrass music teacher had came up with a general plan, a few weeks ago, to have youngsters interview older adults in their communities about the "old days" and then, after discussion, to write songs that highlight lessons from the interviews that are relevant to the young peoples' lives today. In communities where bluegrass music is part of the culture, the songs would be bluegrass style; and in communities where blues are part of the culture, the songs would be blues style. And, then, as a final step the bluegrass people and the blues people would get together for some joint songwriting and performing.

When some of the bluegrass musicians at the Chestnut Festival heard this idea about combining bluegrass and blues, they became highly enthusiastic. And they became even more enthusiastic when somebody mentioned the sizable community across the mountain from Linefork where blues music is very much alive and well. The bluegrassers have already contacted the blues people, and the two communities are at work. I don't think there's any way to stop this music initiative -- too many people are too excited.

What does the music project have to do with the Chestnut trees? Plenty. Some seven or eight years ago two elementary school principals learned about the Chestnut restoration initiative, and they agreed that this offered an excellent opportunity to connect young people with the real life in their communities. Those two principals -- both of them were highly respected women nearing retirement age, and one of them was principal of the Kingdom Come school -- visited the local volunteer fire department to enlist the support of the firemen. The firemen were happy to participate and, as one result, firemen escorted Kingdom Come students, in groups of three or four, to interview adults who were old enough to remember the Chestnut trees before the blight came. (Videos of those interviews are now treasured parts of the community's archives.)

As a result of the firemen's becoming involved with the school, a Chestnut Festival was started, jointly sponsored by the school and the fire department. The Festival went well, growing each year, but misfortune hit and the school was closed. (I need not elaborate about the school closing -- the closing was unrelated to the Chestnut project.) The community was saddened, but after a few weeks some citizens, led by members of the fire department, became determined to pull itself together. And the community has, indeed,pulled itself together.

The school property is now in the hands of the community. The building is in a good state of repair (thanks largely to volunteers). There's lots of music and lots of other happy things. And, beyond being happy, the people in that little community are demonstrating, for all the world to see, what can happen when people come together in a spirit of love and trust for each other. The community will soon have the first major planting in Kentucky of blight resistant Chestnut seedlings. And the community will, I'm willing to bet, have a bluegrass-blues music project that connects races in a beautiful and powerful way. And those are just some of the things that will be happening at Linefork.

I think I've said enough, at least for now, about the importance of young people being connected with active adult mentors in their communities. Other people have long been saying essentially what I'm saying, and they say it far better than I can. Just a while ago, as an example, I got an e-mail from a friend that quoted a professor named Nel Noddings. The quotation, which is eloquent, ended with this sentence: "In direct opposition to the current emphasis on academic standards, a national curriculum, and national assessment, I have argued that our main educational aim should be to encourage the growth of competent, caring, loving and lovable people".

Let's take a bit of liberty with what the professor is saying: let's assume that she believes that the children matter. The people at Linefork agree fully -- they, too, believe the children matter. But there is a crucially important difference: the people at Linefork are motivated by the children mattering-- it is this fact that the children matter that is responsible for the things that are happening at Linefork. In the case of Dr. Noddings, however, her words about children mattering are likely to be processed through the top-down world of political bureaucracies. And that processing does what George Orwell's pigs did when they added the words "but some animals are more equal than others" to their original sign that said "All animals are equal".

When government hierarchies issue their mandates -- one of my friends says we ought to call them "fiats" -- those mandates have the effect of saying that children matter but that hierarchies matter more. At Linefork there is the absence of hierarchies and their fiats. I believe it is that absence, above all, that makes Linefork special.

Our blog can and should (I believe) call attention to situations where children genuinely do matter (situations such as Linefork). But we also have the job of finding and shining lights on people and organizations that treat children as if they don't matter day and this is the toughest job. We need everybody, teachers and communities. And we need to find ways to liberate expert scholars from having their work distorted by hierarchies -- we need such people asNel Noddings working with such communities as Linefork.

I'll be out of pocket for a few days.

Bob Cornett

Let's take stock.

 On Saturday, October 16, I attended the Chestnut Festival at the Linefork-Kingdom Come Community Center, located on Linefork Creek in Letcher County, Kentucky. This is near where Kentucky borders with southwestern Virginia.

I saw what I expected to see -- people in the community came together on behalf of each other. All ages were there, including lots of grandparents proudly sharing their heritage with children. Political officeholders and candidates for office were there, but the politicking was all in the context of what is best for the community; there was not even the slightest hint of special-interest politics.

As I sat down to write this posting I read an article that a friend e-mailed me about the American Chestnut tree from this morning's Washington Post. The article said, in essence, that the American Chestnut tree is on the way back, but that this is a very long-term endeavor -- more than a person's lifetime. The article observed that some people might be intimidated by such a long-term commitment; that is no doubt correct in the case of people who measure success in terms of quarterly profits or political polls (or high grades on tests).  But the people at the Linefork Festival were not even slightly intimidated.

I believe there is a powerful lesson here: it is the humanity in communities, not governmenthierarchies, that have staying power. Those people in that little mountain community of Linefork, Kentucky, motivated as they are by love for each other, have staying power that hierarchies can never have. Nature made it that way.

I've had some discussions with friends, and we think it's time to take stock of our terminology. Here's a start.

First, young people need to absorb one message above all others: they need to understand that they matter.

Second, when adults help young people understand that they matter, the adults matter to the young people.

Third, when young people and adults matter to each other, beautiful things can and do happen.

Fourth, young people do not matter to government hierarchies (or, at best, young people matter less than do the self interests of the hierarchies.) And, when hierarchies are in charge, adults don't much matter either.

Fifth, when citizens don't matter, the political system is broken. And when the political system is broken, the hierarchies tend to become both ignorant and arrogant -- ignorant because they don't understand what is going on at the level of real life in the communities and arrogant because they believe they outrank citizens.

Sixth, when government hierarchies become ignorant and arrogant, they seek (in the words of a wise elder), to put rings in the noses of citizens.

And that's where we are: the hierarchies are promising prettier nose rings. It's up to us, We the People, to instruct the hierarchies to get rid of nose rings, not make them prettier.

Bob Cornett

Lessons From Chile

The whole world was very much touched by the rescue of the copper miners in Chile. I've asked several friends why -- what made this such a compelling drama? The answers I got used differing words (of course), but I think they boil down to the distinction between "giving" and "getting". (I referred to that distinction in my first posting to this blog here.) One of my friends, as a case in point, was deeply moved by the Chilean President: he was there at the mine site to share that community's giving humanity.

The contrast between what we saw at that mine and what we've seen in some of our own disasters -- Katrina, as an example -- is a stark contrast. One of our former emergency management officials -- I won't use his name because he has been picked on enough -- has recently talked about the bureaucratic infighting that hampered relief efforts during and after Katrina -- the bureaucratic interests of the agencies often were more important than the mission.

This contrast, I believe, is squarely relevant to what Erica Goldson has told us about our education systems. Erica and her fellow students have been under the control of self-serving bureaucratic systems, while the controlling force in Chile is the love that those workers and citizens have for each other.

We all agree, surely, that what we saw in Chile is what we need and want and that what we saw with Katrina is what we don't need and don't want. And, surely, nearly all of us agree that we want students who can think creatively, not students who passively serve the interests of bureaucratic systems.

But we also disagree: we often want somebody else to take us from where we are to where we want to go and we have differing opinions as to who that somebody ought to be. Our political system, when it works well, serves to reconcile our differences; but our political system is more dysfunctional than it has been in my adult lifetime. (I've been in position to see that system close up for a lot of years.) The basic root of the dysfunction (I'm convinced) is that large numbers of citizens believe that they are being ignored or manipulated.

I don't know when we will manage to fix our dysfunctional political system. David Brooks of the "New York Times", in his October 15  column, puts it this way: "Nobody who walks into the valley of our political system emerges unscathed. Today's political environment encourages narcissism and inflames insecurity. Pols must continually brag about themselves....."

Brooks is correct (but he is dead wrong when, in other columns, he advocates such top-down techniques as standardized testing). When we look to the political system to reform public education we are turning the children over to a system that cares more about itself than about children's learning.

Erica Goldson told us, in compelling language, that what we're doing is wrong. The Chileans have showed us, also in a compelling way, how to do things the right way. As I personally view the situation, Erica has, on behalf of herself and all the grandchildren in the country, asked us to take on the fixing job; and the Chileans have reminded us that we (We the People, not we the manipulators) are capable of doing this kind of fixing job.

I believe that, certainly in the case of us grandparents and other elders, we have no ethical choice: we have to accept responsibility for putting communities back in charge of public education (and, also, of public policies). Let's thank the Chileans for reminding us that we citizens not only are obligated to each other but that we together have the ability to do what needs to be done.

I expect to get another reminder of the strength that is in communities when I attend the Chestnut Festival in eastern Kentucky. I'll have a report on that in a couple of days. As we add community-building initiatives to our inventory of successes, we can be more and more confident that we can and will do what needs to be done.

Bob Cornett

"We have met the enemy and he is us." Pogo

I just saw, on the same day, clear evidence of what we need to do and what we need to not do.

As to what we need to do, I visited the Kentucky mountain community that I described in my first posting here. I will not now elaborate much about my recent visit -- I'll have a full report later. Suffice it to say that the Linefork community has come together -- youngsters and elders -- in a community-based initiative to restore the American Chestnut tree to the forests. If all goes as well, as I'm confident will be the case, the community will plant some 800 blight-resistant Chestnut seedlings on county owned land adjacent to the Linefork-Kingdom Come Community Center. Community volunteers, with technical support from volunteer foresters representing the American Chestnut foundation, will nurture the seedlings for a decade or more -- until they are large enough to survive without special care. The nuts from this "orchard" will be scattered, mostly by squirrels and other animals, over a wide area. This will be the first large-scale planting of blight-resistant Chestnuts in Kentucky, and the planting will, I'm confident, be an inspiration to lots of other mountain communities. And someday -- long after most of the adult volunteers have passed on -- there will be large numbers of healthy Chestnut trees throughout the Appalachian range.

It is my opinion (I admit I'm biased) that the biggest value of the Chestnut restoration initiative is the community building that is going on; the Linefork people are working together on behalf of everybody. Narrow special interests are absent and, I predict, will stay absent. This is a labor of love. The strengthened community already has  developed community improvements that have little direct relationship to the Chestnut trees; there are bluegrass music events, quilting parties, health and wellness discussions, and more. And young people are active participants in all the initiatives.

When I returned home from my visit to Linefork, I noted three articles about education in the op-ed section of the newspaper. Each article was written by a respected observer, and each writer demonstrated an understanding that students need to be treated as humans rather than as cogs in a robotic system (to borrow from Erica Goldson.) But each article called for changes that require top-down power; and the effect of implementing the changes would be lots of robotics and little humanity.

My purpose in mentioning those articles is not to criticize the writers but is to point out that the culture can cause even the best of us to tend to seek quick and easy solutions. When we ask for quick and easy solutions to problems in education, we are effectively asking for continuing more of the same old top-down mandates; and we are ruling out the kind of community partnerships that I saw at Linefork. And yes, we have met the enemy and he is us.

Just as I was finishing with this posting, I noted on the news that the Mayor of New York is proposing to deny poor people the right to use food stamps to buy soda pop. This proposal, at first glance, might seem to be a good way to combat obesity. But I recall a transaction I once observed in a small grocery store. An elderly man wanted to buy some chewing tobacco but his food stamps could not be used for tobacco. A woman in the store was ready to pay cash for a package of hamburger meat. A deal was struck: the man used his food stamps to buy hamburger meat, the woman used cash to buy chewing tobacco, and the meat was exchanged for the tobacco. This transaction occurred in Kentucky, but New Yorkers surely must be creative enough to end up with soda pop if that's what they want.

The Mayor evidently believes that food stamp bureaucrats are smarter than are citizens who receive food stamps; and his belief on this issue is fundamentally the same belief that is giving us top-down mandates in education. Pogo would agree, I feel sure, that when politicians and bureaucrats think they are smarter than citizens, "They have met the enemy and he is them.”

I'll be attending the fall Chestnut Festival at the Linefork-Kingdom Come Community Center -- Saturday, October 16. I'll have a report for the blog, and it will say (I'm confident) that when a community comes together in the equivalent of an old-fashioned barn raising, good things happen, including treating children as humans.

Bob Cornett

Grace Boggs: "Our School Kids Can revive our dying cities

LIVING FOR CHANGE

Schoolkids can revive our dying cities

By Grace Lee Boggs

Michigan Citizen, May 30-June 5, 2010

"Bobb's arrogance is exceeded only by his ignorance." That is how I described Governor Granholm's appointee as Detroit Public Schools Emergency Finance Manager in a recent column.

The same applies to former President George W. Bush, to current President Obama's Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and to supporters of NCLB and RTTP, the Bush/Obama topdown, punitive solutions to the schools crisis.

Sadly, none of these individuals in positions of power seems to know or care that since the urban rebellions began erupting in the1960s, thoughtful citizens have recognized that we cannot separate the schools crisis from the urban crisis. Until the imaginations and creative energies of our kids are engaged in rebuilding and respiriting our cities, the violence and drug use of young people will increase and our cities will keep dying.

This was the consensus of the distinguished educators who met at Stanford University from July 10-14, 1967 on the eve of the huge uprisings in Newark and Detroit.

Participants included superintendents of big city schools, deans and professors of education at prestigious universities, and African American public intellectuals Kenneth Clark, Preston Wilcox and Bayard Rustin. Conference participants are listed and their papers published in The Schoolhouse in the City, edited with an introduction by futurist Alvin Toffler, Praeger Publishers, 1968.

"The high dropout rate and city violence stem in large part from the inability of many students to see any connection between their studies and their lives," explained Harold Howe, former U.S. Commissioner of Education.

"If the schoolhouse is to produce to the maximum, it must also perform the less commonly-recognized but nonetheless vital function of leading the city toward a better and higher plane of living," said Harold Gores, president of the Ford Foundation-funded Educational Facilities Laboratories and past President of the Harvard Teachers Association. "By entering into partnership with community enterprises," Gores suggested, "schools can help to create neighborhoods."

By contrast, the educational policies of Bush, Duncan and Bobb ignore the role empowered young people can play in reviving our dying cities.

As I learned years ago from my own experience and from studying John Dewey (1859-1952), one of this country's best known and most representative philosophers, "Our present educational system, is highly specialized, one-sided and narrow. It is an education dominated almost entirely by the medieval conception of learning. It is something which appeals for the most part simply to the intellectual aspects of our natures, our desire to learn, to accumulate information, and to get control of the symbols of learning; not to our impulses and tendencies to make, to do, to create, to produce whether in the form of utility or of art. It also reflects the individualistic and materialistic values of the dominant class."

Because our schools neither utilize the everyday experiences of children or nurture their creative and productive impulses, kids turn to drugs, and murderous drug cartels mushroom world-wide from Latin America to Afghanistan to supply the insatiable U.S. market.

During Mississippi Freedom Summer SNCC activists created Freedom Schools because they recognized that public schools in the South were organized to encourage passivity and inferiority in young people.

After living in the Chicago ghetto in 1966, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. concluded that young people in our dying cities need direct action projects that transform their surroundings and themselves at the same time.

In the spirit of Mississippi Summer and MLK, we founded Detroit Summer in 1992 to involve young Detroiters in rebuilding, redefining and respiriting Detroit from the ground up.

Currently this is becoming the common sense response to the arrogant/ignorant schemes of Bing and Bobb to downsize Detroit by closing down neighborhood schools. ****

For the goals, convention, curriculum of Freedom Schools, see Lessons of Freedom Summer: Ordinary People Build Extraordinary Movements. 456 pp. Common Courage Press, 2008.

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Wise Words from Wendell Berry

Words From Wendell Berry

The complexity of our present trouble suggests
as never before that we need to change
our present concept of education.

Education is not properly an industry,
and its proper use is not to serve industries,
either by job-training or by industry-subsidized research.

It's proper use is to enable citizens to live lives
that are economically, politically, socially, and culturally responsible.

This cannot be done by gathering
or "accessing" what we now call "information" -
which is to say facts without context
and therefore without priority.

A proper education enables young people
to put their lives in order,
which means knowing what things are
more important than other things;
it means putting first things first." — Wendell Berry