Santa Claus, Scrooge, and Wooden-Headed Governments

While I was thinking about the self-reliant culture of the Scots Irish (and of Appalachia), I had three experiences that, together, are influencing my thoughts. First, one of my friends from my years as a bureaucrat made this observation: "Congress is used to being Santa Claus". Second, I reread the section of the Barbara Tuchman book, "The March of Folly", that describes the "wooden-headed" mistakes the British made that caused the Revolutionary War. And, third, I watched a Kentucky mountain grandmother eating lunch (in a Bob Evans restaurant) with her 15-month-old granddaughter.

My friend is correct about Congress and Santa Claus, and his point applies generally to politicians -- politicians like to do things that make people happy (such as giving out money). On the other side of the political/bureaucratic apparatus, when governments have to do non-Santa Claus kinds of things (such as reducing money payments), the politicians turn to the bureaucracies -- the bureaucrats get the job of doing Scrooge kinds of things. Then, what the bureaucrats do is to turn decisions over to systems -- they let the systems take the blame. (I have to confess that, in my own years as a bureaucrat, I have designed many systems that serve little or no purpose except to provide me and my fellow bureaucrats "cover" for our backsides.)

Barbara Tuchman very well understood politicians and bureaucrats; she demonstrated her understanding by, among many other things, citing Plato's argument that government is so complex and important that "philosopher-kings" are necessary if we are to have good government. Then she cited Plato's acknowledgment that, until we succeed in actually having philosopher-kings, " there can be no rest from the troubles of the cities, and I think for the whole human race". And, in Tuchman's words, "So it has been" .

Here's what Barbara Tuchman said about the situation in England just prior to the Revolution: "The all-pervading, all-important problem that absorbed major attention was the game of faction, the obtaining of office, the manipulating of connections, the making and breaking of political alliances -- in sum, the business, more urgent, more vital, more passionate than any other, of who's in, who's out". I think it's accurate to say that Tuchman could have been describing the political and bureaucratic situation in America in 2010.

When I contrast that mountain grandmother and her tiny granddaughter with our wooden-headed political/bureaucratic systems, I believe I see the basic reason why our colonial ancestors won the War: the colonials had a sense of shared purpose but the British were serving themselves-- they were more interested in protecting their right to wear powdered wigs than in serving the public interest.

I cannot adequately describe the relationship between that grandmother and her tiny granddaughter -- the beauty I saw was beyond my ability to put in words. All I'll try to say is that those two people were sharing life as partners. If that sounds insignificant, let's keep in mind that the sense of community partnership is what our colonial ancestors had, and that proved to be quite enough.

Is the love that binds a grandmother with a granddaughter enough to keep the wooden-headed forces at bay? Or, more to the point of the issue before me, can ordinary citizens stop wooden-headed forces from using the public schools for self-serving purposes? Or, to tie the question more directly to Scots Irish and Appalachian culture, will the citizens do battle on behalf of the love and common purpose that is in grandmothers and grandchildren? Merely posing that question clears my head: I don't believe I know even one genuine mountain citizen who would knowingly stand aside and allow the wooden headed crowd to run over the likes of that grandmother and little girl.

What will the wooden-headed bunch do when they see citizens standing with the children (and their grandmothers and granddaddies and neighbors and dedicated schoolteachers and everybody else who is motivated by a sense of shared love)? I don't know for sure, but I can't believe that our political/bureaucratic apparatus is as wooden-headed as were the British. But not to worry: our Founding Fathers gave us a democracy; and, yes, we know how to keep it.

Bob Cornett

Does the Scots Irish Culture Still Matter?

I find myself more and more optimistic that we Americans will locate the strength to pull ourselves out of our political and economic crisis. And I find myself convinced that the biggest part of that strength will come from the communities. That conviction, in turn, raises the question as to where our community strength will come from.

I visited, several weeks ago, the grave of my great, great, great, great grandfather. That ancestor, William ("Billy") Cornett, served in the Revolution and, like many other soldiers in that War, was paid in the form of a grant of land; his land-grant was near where Bull Creek runs into the north fork of the Kentucky River. Billy's grave is on a mountainside looking down at a narrow valley. It's beautiful country, but those mountains are steep. I tried to imagine making a living from that land but I didn't do much good in my imagining; Billy and his family, and his neighbors and their families, had to produce just about everything they used -- there were no Krogers and Wal-Marts.

While in Detroit talking with Grace Boggs I posed the question as to whether some of the Scots Irish culture that Billy Cornett (and thousands like him) took to the Appalachians might still be a source of self-reliant attitudes. Grace encouraged me to think about this and write a brief article for her newsletter. I agreed to try, even though I did not personally experience much of a self-reliant life. (I grew up in town, and we made our living from my dad's paycheck as a railroad man.)

The first thing I did, when I got home from Detroit, was to look for my copy of a book about Scots Irish in America; this book, "Born Fighting", written by James Webb (before he became the United States Senator from Virginia), is superb. But, as is the nature of my books, this one was gone. (I'll have another one shortly.) And I also started reminding myself of stories I have heard -- both dad and mom grew up in self-reliant situations, as did most of their relatives. And I remembered back to my years inside the political/bureaucratic world; those memories reminded me that, in general, mountain people tended not to defer to top-down authority.

I'm not yet ready to do justice to the question as to whether Appalachia independence might still be a source of community strength. But I feel myself getting ready. As an example, I recently saw an animated film that contrasted some of King George III's powdered wig functionaries with such colonists as Paul Revere. I believe a good case can be made that much of our problem now is that we have turned ourselves over to the equivalent of George III’s powdered wig crowd; and I can point to a number of examples in which the equivalent of Paul Revere (and my great great great great grandfather Billy) are managing just fine without becoming lackeys to our present day powdered wig bunch.

I'll have more later.

Bob Cornett

Battle Creek, Detroit, Appalachia, and David Brooks

I've returned home after several days in Battle Creek and Detroit. I saw lots of good things. As a significant example, I observed an experienced teacher and athletic coach working with a group of young people in a "satellite site". The students were essentially responsible for their own learning, with Internet "distance learning" classes being important sources of their lessons. The teacher was functioning mostly as an advisor. These students, who had been doing poorly in regular classroom situations, were doing well, and the teacher was delighted -- he regards what he and the students are doing as being far more productive than are typical classroom situations. I told the teacher about students in a tiny town in the Appalachian region of Alabama who are publishing the town's newspaper and otherwise doing work that is important to their community. The Battle Creek teacher envisions that his students will also be reaching toward the community for projects that matter.

Also in Battle Creek, I saw people who are making effective use of community gardens as tools for building stronger communities; I even heard some discussion about connecting Battle Creek's young gardeners with gardeners in Africa. And I listened to a conversation about whether the top-down standardized tests do mostly good or mostly harm. One line of reasoning said that teachers need to feel pressure from bosses in order to stay focused on the task, and the other line of reasoning was that the real job of teachers is to help students learn to learn -- and that, therefore, teachers should be responding to their students more than to top-down bosses.

In Detroit I was privileged to spend some time with Grace Lee Boggs. Grace has the wisdom that comes from years -- she is 95 -- and her wisdom is linked to incredible vitality. She is, among many other things, participating in discussions to "reimagine work". She and her colleagues, who include some people who have been active in organized labor, know that the monotonous days of assembly lines are ending; and they realize that somebody needs to do some thinking about what the work of the future will be like.

I saw still more good things, including a cadre of highly dedicated teachers in a suburban community west of Detroit. But I also saw reminders of a pervasive bad thing: public schools require money, and that money is controlled by political/bureaucratic systems that, in the nature of the beast, seek to control what goes on at the bottom of the hierarchy. This disconnect between what the system demands and what children need puts teachers in the extremely difficult position of having to balance education with politics.

I saw no silver bullet solutions to this disconnect problem -- I didn't expect to. What I did see, however, were significant numbers of citizens who realize that connecting children with the life of their community is of long-term benefit to everybody. I saw some of those citizens in conversations with each other (in person as well as via Internet kinds of things). One of the key leaders in Battle Creek is even going so far as to help start a new blog, tentatively called "One Community at a Time", to enable communities to share their experiences.

Local citizens working together on behalf of everybody is what built our country. And local citizens working together are what can pull our country back together now. As David Brooks argues, in his New York Times column of November 12, the political movement that was so evident in the recent elections is cause for optimism. In Brooks' words, "I'm optimistic because, while our political system is a mess, the economic and social values of the country remain sound. This optimism is also based on the conviction that serious, vibrant societies don't sit by and do nothing as their governments drive off a cliff".

David Brooks had made the point in an earlier column that "working class" citizens are the key to fixing the political system. What I saw in Battle Creek and Detroit (and what I've seen in the mountains of Kentucky and Alabama and elsewhere) tells me that Brooks is correct: we ought to be optimistic because our citizenry is a good citizenry, with the capacity to subordinate selfish interests for the welfare of the country and the children. That said, it follows that, as the unselfish strength of our citizenry asserts itself, the political/bureaucratic system will defer to the citizens; and that means, among many other good things, that education policies will be transferred from the hierarchies to the communities.

I don't suggest that communities can do a perfect job of balancing education with politics. Communities can, however, do one crucially important thing that political/bureaucratic hierarchies cannot do: communities can see the children as individuals (not as abstract profiles). This difference -- the difference between profiles and individuals -- allows teachers to focus on the students (rather than on the politics of hierarchies).

I don't suggest, either, that it will be easy to convince the political/bureaucratic hierarchies that their proper role is to support public education, not to use schools as political pawns. I do suggest, however -- I know this from many long years of experience-- that when politicians and bureaucrats in capital cities see an unselfish citizenry standing together, those politicians and bureaucrats come down off their pedestals and join the public

David Brooks is optimistic that our good citizens will fix our broken political system (and I agree with him). That fixing will be done largely at the community level, which is where education must be fixed. And that's the core of what I think I've learned: fixing our political system and fixing our schools are part and parcel of the same thing -- they need to be fixed together.

Bob Cornett

Is David Brooks’ Scary Pronouncement for Real?

One of my oldest bureaucrat friends and I -- we go back a full half-century -- have looked again at David Brooks pronouncement (in his New York Times column) that the United States will remain a dominant power only if "... we can figure out how to build a decent future for the working class people in this region". (The region he is referring to runs from central New York and Pennsylvania into the Midwest and South to Arkansas.)

My friend and I have close knowledge of the region that Brooks is talking about. We both grew up in "working class" Kentucky, and we have lots of relatives who migrated to Ohio and Michigan (and other points north) to work in places like automobile plants. Those folks -- "us folks" would be close to accurate -- see evidence all around that Brooks is right -- that things might be badly broken. And because of what they're seeing they want something done; that's the basic message they were attempting to send on election day.

We're convinced -- my friend and I -- that the people Brooks is talking about will stay the course -- they won't back down from demanding that something be done. But my friend and I see no evidence that the political establishment has heard those working-class people. What we hear coming out of Washington is more of the same -- politics as usual, with the Republicans saying that the job ahead is to beat the Democrats and the Democrats saying that the job is to beat the Republicans. In Kentucky, we've just endured the ugliest political campaign I've ever seen.

My friend and I agree, also, that the core unanswered question is where the people will look for solutions. As of now, I'm hearing demands that "they" -- the big people in government and business -- do the fixing. But I'm also hearing some people who are looking far ahead -- they tend to be more worried about their grandchildren than about themselves. I believe I know, from my many years around governments, that the political establishment will continue on the present course -- the course that is manipulating rather than hearing the citizens -- for as long as it is allowed to do so. The political mess can be fixed only if the people -- those people that David Brooks is talking about (and others like them) -- send the message that we're all in this together: "We the People" have to do this fixing job. (It goes almost without saying that people who know each other can collaborate more readily than can strangers—and this means that communities are better able to support collaboration than are political/bureaucratic hierarchies).

Will we citizens do what we need to do? Will we, to use words from David Mathews of the Kettering Foundation, "reclaim our democracy"? I don't know for sure, but I think I do know that we cannot separate our problems into compartments to be "outsourced". We cannot allow professional political handlers to exclude citizens from our democratic processes. And we can't allow professional bureaucrats to exclude communities from children and their learning. We simply cannot, if we care about America's future, look for "up there" to fix either our economy, our democracy, our communities, or our schools. We the People have to look to each other to do this fixing.

My own answer to David Brooks is yes, we can -- we can figure out how to build a decent future for the working-class people in this region. But I'm prejudiced-- and I don't have a coherent strategy as to how to get from here to there.

I’ll be in Battle Creek, Michigan, and in Detroit for a few days. Good things are happening up there.

Bob Cornett 

A Request of Old Friends

I may have learned something, in the past few days, that can help our "cause" of improving public education. I'm asking some of my long-time friends and colleagues to help think about what I believe I have learned.

As points of reference, I remind my friends that I have long been convinced that the top-down mandating now being peddled as a way to improve public education is the wrong way to go; many fine educators have shown me that the children need to be active participants in order for their learning to be effective. As another reference point, I have understood, from my own long experience in and around public bureaucracies, that top-down coercive methods are the stock in trade of government agencies; the thinking is done at the top, with the people at the bottom doing as they're told. Learning to think is the crucial component of effective education but, to the extent that bureaucracies have their way, students (and their teachers) are being told "No Thinking Allowed".

As the most vexing of my reference points, I have been perplexed by the fact that many of our very finest educators (and other highly intelligent people) persist in looking to the political/bureaucratic hierarchies to lead the way to better learning. I know -- or at least I think I know -- that the very fact of asking government agencies to fix education conveys the message that top-down bureaucratic methods are capable of leading the way to good public education -- and that's exactly the wrong message.

Wendell Berry, our renowned Kentucky farmer and philosopher, has long been telling us that many of the things that matter the most to us humans are at the community level. I'm convinced that Berry is correct, and that what he's saying applies to children's learning. David Mathews, in his book "Reclaiming Public Education by Reclaiming Our Democracy", reminds us that we citizens "are not customers of government; we own the store"; and he further tells us that the essence of our citizenship is in the communities. And, as Mathews makes clear, good public schools are dependent upon the democracy that is in good communities.

I tend, in my own mind, to put Wendell Berry and David Mathews together; they are saying, correctly I believe, that community, democracy, and education are interconnected.  But, as I have learned the hard way, it is easy to look to government hierarchies to do our fixing for us but it is not easy to look to each other.

Looking back, I realize that I have been somewhat naïve. I should have known that we humans find it very difficult to turn our backs on our own "special" interests. If we're being paid (in money or status) to be top-down fixers, that's what we're very likely to be. (I have, at times in my own career, been paid to be a top-down fixer, and I managed to convince myself that what I was doing was just what the public needed.)

And that brings me to what I think I've learned in the past few days. One of my friends, a longtime elementary school principal in the eastern Kentucky mountains, said these words to me: "You can't deny people bragging rights". That friend -- she's retired now and she may well be the world champion when it comes to bragging on her grandchildren -- was saying something that I had not really thought about: we very much need people who, like my educator/grandmother friend, are especially proud of their own families.

When I discussed "bragging rights" with one of my elder bureaucrat friends, we reminded each other that our political systems, when they are working at their theoretical best, balance special interests with the public interest. What I've long been saying about the problem with public education policies is that the political/bureaucratic apparatus has itself become a special interest and that, therefore, we need to take away the hierarchies' power over public schools. What I need to do now, I'm thinking, is to acknowledge the need to balance special interests with the public interest: we need for each child to be "special" to the grandmothers and, from a public interest perspective, we also need for all children to be special.

Does what I'm saying about special interests and public interest make any difference? I think so: the distinction can help push down some of the barriers that are now separating people who ought to be together. As an example of a barrier, I have many times found myself saying to dedicated educators that they should look for allies out in the communities rather than in the political/bureaucratic hierarchies. That, in turn, raises the question as to where the money is to come from, and then I find myself saying something like "The politicians and bureaucrats don't own the money -- they work for us"; and that can sound like I'm threatening the people who hold the keys to the smokehouse.

There are other barriers to effective conversation about education. I frequently see, as an example, evidence of the elitist notion that upper-class people have superior knowledge about children's learning than do "ordinary" folk. (The notion that top-down mandates can be more valuable to children than can, let's say, the love of grandmothers is an obviously foolish notion; but it's nevertheless a notion that can be seen in lots of places.) These barriers (and others that I could mention) lead to a pattern of deference to hierarchies that has been going on for so many years that it has become almost cultural. We almost believe that conversation about children's learning is supposed to be restricted to what big people and big hierarchies say and do; and that means, as a political/bureaucratic fact of life, that the conversation is about adult power rather than children's learning.

The basic reason that "bragging rights" can make a significant difference (I believe) is that it is possible for communities but impossible for hierarchies to care about children who are special and, at the same time, care about all children. This means, in turn, that nobody need feel threatened when a community helps all children understand that they matter. Instead of, in effect, telling the hierarchies to take their standardized tests and other mandates and throw them in the river, those tests can continue to be given -- and the grandmothers and others can brag on the kids who make good scores on them. The change is merely that the community, as a matter of public policy, does things to make all children special. (In the interest of transparency, I admit that I believe those top-down standardized tests ought to be thrown in the river, and I think they in fact will eventually lose whatever credibility they now have.)

I know that communities can do things to help children matter. I have, as an example, recently seen a small town in the Appalachian region of northeast Alabama, doing a beautiful job of engaging young people as active contributors to the life in their town (the youngsters, among many other things, produce the town newspaper).

I grant that it is easy to ignore what goes on in such places as that Alabama town, but maybe David Brooks can give us a useful perspective. Brooks, in his column in the New York Times, said that the key to America's future is with the working-class families in the region of America "that starts in central New York and Pennsylvania and then stretches out through Ohio and Indiana before spreading out to include Wisconsin and Arkansas". Brooke's punch line, which is as powerful as any words I've seen for awhile, is this: "If America can figure out how to build a decent future for the working class people in this region, then the U. S. will remain a predominant power. If it can't, it won't".

I don't know that David Brooks is right, but I think I do know that we need -- that we must have -- strong and active communities with strong and active young people (and with lots of grandparents who insist on bragging rights).

Friends, let's do what we can to put "bragging rights" to work.

Bob Cornett