Education reformers should bone up on Darwin

When I was in elementary school, we used to have to take those timed math fact tests in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.  Do you remember those?  Cheap paper with dark green printing?  If you tried to erase a wrong answer, the paper ripped.  I don’t even think that the order was randomized from sheet to sheet.  I could be wrong about that part, but I remember those tests. Vividly.

Our school had something called the Charlie Brown Math Facts Contest.  The third, fourth, and fifth grades would compete to see how many perfect tests each class could accumulate over a set period of time.  We took the multiplication tests once a week.  The school prominently placed a bulletin board outside of the library, and each person in each class had her/his name written on a baseball bat.  Then each time that person scored a 100 on the timed test, s/he received a paper baseball with a “100″ on it next to her/his corresponding bat.  We saw that bulletin board every week when we lined up outside of the library to have our weekly session with Mrs. Rue.  I counted those baseballs and tracked how my class was doing.  I also tracked how I was doing compared to my peers.  At the end of the contest, the winning class received an ice cream sundae party.  I think my class won at least once, as I remember eating ice cream at my desk at some point, but I honestly can’t remember.

My how times have changed.

Would this kind of contest even be allowed in a school right now?  Possibly, given the intense focus on test scores as measures of student achievement and teacher effectiveness.  However, I’m more interested in knowing if the public display of individual achievement would be allowed.  Everyone could see everyone else’s name and the number of baseballs accumulated in the contest.  It was a pretty clear indication of who could effectively take those particular kinds of tests.  Sure, someone could have an off week, but with an ice cream sundae contest at stake, the heavy hitters in each class were needed to bring the win home for the team.

I’m writing about this memory because it makes me think about the value of healthy competition in an educational environment.  It also makes me think about how Darwin’s theories of natural selection and the survival of the fittest sometimes tell us more than we want to know or care to acknowledge about the way the world works. Essentially, a variation in a species survives because that variation helps the species to become more fit.  The fitter member survives.  Even with America’s intense focus on science education at this moment, I think that the concept of the survival of the fittest is difficult for Americans to swallow because it flies in the face of our egalitarian attitudes about fairness and equality.  America, the land of opportunity for all.  America, the land where everyone gets a chance at the American Dream.  America, the land where every child should win the ice cream sundae party, etc., etc., etc.

Can we really translate these ideals into practical realities in our public education system?  Should every child get the ice cream sundae party?

The current education system in the United States is perceived as flawed, broken, unfair, etc.  I don’t disagree entirely with that assessment, but I do think that some of these descriptors are assigned because some educational reformers believe that all students should be high achievers.  Every student should be a winner and get an ice cream sundae party.  Only then is the public education system truly equal and fair.  Holding onto that ideal is like saying that Darwin’s work never happened.  Reality tells us that some people are better at timed multiplication tests than others.  Some people are better at repairing automobiles.  Some people are better runners.  Or ice hockey players.  Or lovers.  And the list goes on.

Our public education system guarantees that all young people should have a chance at a free, quality education.  What’s being hotly debated right now is the quality part.  And reformers and academics are studying teacher effectiveness, parental involvement, poverty, and any number of variables that somehow contribute to a child’s experience in the current education system.  It is like peeling an onion and herding cats.  Dizzying.

I’m proposingthat as we continue to look for ways to enhance this “damaged” system, let’s not forget that natural selection exists.  It exists in the real, scientific world, and it exists in the professional world.  The “fittest” person gets hired for the job.  What a prospective employer considers “fit” will be subjective in many cases, but that’s how the world works.  Our education system should not protect young people from that very real dynamic.  Hiding from it, pretending that it doesn’t exist, seems juvenile to me.  If our education system could be more truthful about that, then we could also be more effective at helping young people to find where they are fittest and then cultivating those skill sets.

A lot of valuable time, energy, and money has been invested into trying to “fix the system,” and the results have been unimpressive and/or suspect.  The better use of these resources would be to actually understand how the system works realistically, considering science and what we know about natural selection, and finding ways to work with the laws of nature rather than defying them.

*** Please note that the blogger had big dreams of being an embryologist in 1990.  Those dreams changed when he was “naturally selected” out of that career when he was deemed “unfit” with a “D” in organic chemistry.  The blogger is thankful for the laws of nature, as his true path became clear, and his fitness was cultivated in other areas where positive variations had emerged.

Some local political hope…finally

In a summer when political conversations have been dominated by genital pics, seemingly hearing impaired Congressional leaders, and questionable leadership at the Presidential level, I finally got a positive charge this morning when the New York Times ran an article by David W. Chen about NYC City Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s potential bid for mayor in 2013.  For me, it’s the first glimmer of political hope I’ve had in months.

I haven’t always felt great affection for Christine Quinn.  Whenever I saw her on the news, I felt like she was yelling.  Then I watched her, again on television, during the October 2009 March on Washington for Gay Marriage, and she literally was screaming.  I remember thinking, “This is the leader of the City Council?”  It kind of turned my stomach a bit.  I got this impression that all she did was screamed and yelled and hollered.  Apparently, based on the article, I was not the only one.

My thoughts about Quinn shifted ten months ago, when I had the chance to watch her in action at a round table discussion at NYU.  At the time in October 2010 when youth suicides were dominating the news, Quinn teamed up with other council members and the city’s college and university presidents to host a round table discussion on bullying and how higher education needed to respond.  I received a last-minute invite to observe the proceedings, and it changed my perceptions of Christine Quinn.

First off, there was no passionate, over-the-top yelling.  Lots of compassion instead.  Then I also watched Quinn sit between two very powerful university presidents and run a highly effective meeting that STAYED ON TASK.  At numerous points in the meeting, Quinn gently reminded the group of the time limitations and urged people to move the conversation forward with comments.  Granted, this is like major common sense, but how many times have I sat in meetings with so-called leaders who have no sense of time management or any ability to run an effective meeting?  More than I care to reveal.  So I left that particular gathering feeling real admiration for Christine Quinn.   That may be oversimplified for some people, but it represented a major turning point for me.

Chen’s Times article gives voice to Quinn’s critics, including gay men who seem to take issue with her perceived move towards the “middle.”  To be honest, I don’t even know what “the middle” means anymore, and I’m not sure I really care.  After the national debacle of the last two months, I’m just happy to read about someone who seems to care about and has a record of making legislative changes happen.  If that means compromise, then maybe we need more people like Christine Quinn.  I don’t have to agree with everything she stands for or every piece of legislation that she passes, but I do have to have confidence in her ability to lead and make decisions.  I’m finally excited to watch someone in politics begin a journey to the next step in her career.  Let’s hope that Christine Quinn stays the course.  And let’s hope that as I do more research about her political positions, that my hope stays alive.

US Leaders: Keep the drama on the stage

As a working theatre maker and a teacher of theatre, I’m really tired of people trying to do my job.  The Great Debt Debate is just one more moment in recent American political history where our national leaders are working harder to make this situation dramatic than they’re working to solve the problem.

I teach an introductory theatre course for non-majors at NYU, and in one of the first classes, I define theatre as any live event where A performs B for C.  My graduate professor Harley Erdman used this definition, and he attributed it to Eric Bentley.  Theatre plays out on a daily basis right in front of us if we use this definition.  Endless possibilities emerge, and my students and I often discuss how political rallies and speeches can qualify as theatre under this definition.  I blogged a bit about this before when Obama spoke so eloquently and thoughtfully following the tragedy in Tucson earlier this year.

At this point though, using theatre to think through what’s happening with this debt debate feels really irritating.  I love good theatre, but I don’t like theatre when it’s happening in a situation where it doesn’t belong.  The over-the-top performances that are happening around Washington are embarrassing and wasteful.   The energy that politicians expend thinking about how to up end one another in public appearances and statements released to the media could be energy used to actually solve this problem.  A friend of mine said that he thinks that Boehner and Obama had this whole thing solved back when they played golf together, and I wouldn’t be surprised.  Our national leaders seem to be engaged in the same dramatics as the New York State legislature when they finally voted on marriage equality last month.  The urge to draw all of this out and make it dramatic is not working for the American public.

I wonder what it used to be like when leaders could work without the onslaught of 24-hour news outlets constantly asking them for statements and questions.  I think the media complicates all of this.  I’d venture to say that democracy works the best when the public has less information.  I know that sounds crazy, but we don’t trust our elected officials because we know every move they make, personally and professionally.  We judge, we critique, and we contribute to the dramatics.  Maybe if we stopped feeding the media hype beast, the drama off the stage would die down, and these elected officials could fully focus on their jobs rather than the immediate ramifications of their salad choice at the cafeteria to their approval ratings. Not to mention making clear, thoughtful decisions that could save the country’s financial situation now and in the future.

Let the theatre people make the drama, friends.  Stay off the media stage and do your job.

Our national leaders need to join Wipers Anonymous

So once again the talks surrounding the US fiscal crisis broke down last evening with Obama and Boehner hurling strong phraseology at each other, placing blame, and spinning their wheels.  Media outlets are reporting that the “silent majority” is dissatisfied with the job that our national leaders are doing.  One poll reported 80% of Americans feel this dissatisfaction.  We’re not talking about party lines here.  We’re talking about people feeling like their elected officials don’t deserve to get re-elected.

This debt ceiling-debt reduction thing has gone on entirely too long.  Our “leaders” are digging in their heels, in the name of protecting the American public’s interests, when in fact, I think that most of them are more worried about getting re-elected so they can continue to be “in power.”  Some of this is supposedly democracy at work.  I’m at the point now where I’m losing faith in democracy.

I think that most of these leaders are card carrying members of something I call Wipers Anonymous, or WA for short.  You know that expression, “Shit or get off the pot”?  Well, our leaders are doing neither of those things.  They seem to be paralyzed and wiping continuously. Digging for the proverbial gold, one might say.  Posturing, blaming, criticizing, all with their pants and skirts around their ankles and mummified in Charmin.  God only knows how much TP they’ve gone through on Capitol Hill.  And I think that Obama must have a trail of it following him through the White House, and it’s not just stuck on the bottom of his shoe.

I’m not going to pretend that I understand all of the dynamics of our national debt.  Nor am I going to suggest a solution.  But that’s not my job.  We’ve elected these people to lead the country, and they’re doing a shite job of it.  Both parties have lots of answering to do, and while Obama seems to be trying valiantly to lower the debt and not default, clearly something is keeping him and our congressional leaders from getting on the same page.

Maybe the Gang of Six will come through.  Maybe someone can Roto-Rooter a way through all of the TP stuck in the drains from all of the wiping, and finally something will get done.

Stop wiping, people!  Membership to Wipers Anonymous is officially closed.

Something just clicked…loudly

As New York ramps up to begin marrying gay and lesbian couples on Sunday, July 24, Frank Bruni of The New York Times shared a story of one gay couple and their two children that drove the importance of this new legislation all the way home for me.  Much to my embarrassment, I found myself getting a little choked up as I read it on the subway today.  You can read it by clicking here.

I like Bruni’s writing a lot.  There’s a snappiness to his voice without being bitchy or condescending, and his intelligence and wit come through without ripping others a new one.  Maybe when he wrote as the food critic for The Times it was a different story.  My boyfriend brought him to my attention when we first started dating almost four years ago, and I’ve become a fan of how simply he outlines an argument and then finds a way to drive his viewpoint home.  It’s an elegant style that I enjoy.

Bruni’s description of this family helped me to understand why marriage equality has had so many people jacked up for so long now.  It’s been difficult for me to understand because I’m not so into viewing myself as “less than” other people just because I couldn’t get married.  In general, I think that we Americans of all races, creeds, and orientations spend way too much time thinking up ways to view ourselves as “oppressed” in some way, shape, or form.  I remember watching the march on Washington for marriage equality on television back in October 2009 and seeing someone holding a sign about being a second class citizen because he couldn’t marry.  There I sat, on my comfortable couch in my nice apartment, drinking a glass of chocolate milk after an 18-mile run in preparation to run a marathon, and I thought, “Am I a second class citizen?”  I certainly didn’t feel like one.  And I’ve witnessed countless other examples of people assigning themselves the “second class” or “oppressed” title for reasons that I find trivial.  Granted, I am white, male, and supposedly privileged out the whazoo, and I also recognize that one’s perception is one’s reality.  So if a person thinks that he or she is oppressed, then I guess that’s fair.  However, I do think that there’s a difference between oppression that is self-imposed and/or self-actualized and then accepted as truth versus the oppression that is institutionalized and historical and out of one’s control.  Like the kind of oppression I witnessed on a trip to India, where I got my clock cleaned in terms of thinking that I had anything to feel oppressed about.

But this article by Frank Bruni got me today because he explains how two little girls have found it difficult to understand why their parents–two dads–were not married like their other friends’ parents.  And for some reason that clicked for me.  In my opinion, adults should be able to separate out the differences between institutionalized oppression and self-imposed oppression, and then make some decisions about how to navigate their way through the world with that information.  Children cannot and should not have to make these distinctions, should not have to feel “less than” because their family hasn’t been validated and acknowledged.  It’s these children that helped me to understand why this whole marriage equality argument makes sense and why for many gay and lesbian couples who have children or who want to have children that this legislation levels the playing field.

The “marriage nomenclature” is the only real way that most of our society understands “family.”  It’s unfortunate that our view is so limited, as lots of different family constructions exist.  I know that viewpoints are changing and expanding, but less than 400 years out from our Puritan roots isn’t quite enough time yet.  Change like this is glacial, and we need to be patient.  It’s part of the reason why I’ve stopped expecting “equality.”  Puritans came to the New World to escape religious persecution (read “oppression”), I would imagine with the hopes that they could remain homogeneous and insular on this very large hunk of land.  Clearly, that didn’t happen, and we’ve been trying to figure out how to co-exist with each other ever since.  Americans don’t have a stranglehold on this ditty, as it’s the oldest conflict story in the world.  Yet we Americans keep working for and demanding an egalitarianism that I’m not sure will ever exist.

However, if you read the article by Bruni, you’ll learn that seeing your two dads get married and having the cupcakes and icing to go with it may just help us to stick it out as the glaciers continue to shift and melt.