Category Archives: Education

As the Dust Settles

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A twitter summary of what Chris Arnade’s learned about life in working class American cities and towns:

 1.  If you don’t think many liberal & cosmopolitan circles are infused with contempt for uneducated whites, you are living a fantasy.

2. If you don’t think that the contempt is understood and felt by the working class whites you are also living in a fantasy world.

3. It is a contempt more fully realized because many liberals have entirely removed themselves from the working class. White & black!

4. Other than donations to inner city charities. Or panel discussions on the challenges of poverty.

5. Their personal life is entirely removed from realities of working class. They would rather eat bespoke insects than go to Applebee’s.

6. And before I get Yale-splained about visceral racism of working class. Look inward at the destructive racism & classism of the elites.

7. Remember we are a divided country: by race, class, education, geography, and meaning.

More analysis from an Arnade interview in The Atlantic: 

Chandler: Some have talked about the idea of a cultural pulling of the lever for Trump—how media and pop culture that are seen as mainstream have put forth liberal-seeming ideas with a sort of certainty, a style and cachet, that turned support of Trump into something countercultural, a revolutionary act. Does that make any sense to you?

Arnade: Sociologists call that “valid social capital.” The elites control the valid social capital—what’s cool and what’s not cool, the in club and the out club. Oh hell yeah! Part of Trump’s appeal is the fact that he isn’t supposed to be appealing. I met people who were voting for him because it wasn’t acceptable to vote for him. It was insiders versus the outsiders and it made them feel much more like, “Hey, I’m an outsider, [now] I’m part of a group. Now let’s go take this over.”

Chandler: Did you find yourself arguing back, “But Trump’s the ultimate insider! This is a guy who got a $14 million loan from his dad to start his first company.”

Arnade: You can’t do that because Hillary Clinton was also that person. And anything you said to point out that Trump was part of the establishment, they will rightfully point out that Hillary is more so. My God, she was the most insider there is. The only thing that kept her from being a complete insider is she was female, but otherwise, the Clintons have been in power since ’92.

Chandler: If the DNC asked you how to bring people like this back into the fold, what would you tell them?

Arnade: They’ve got to be a party of the working class again. All the working class. They’re a party of the black working class and that’s great. They’ve got to be a party of the working class and not bankers. Clinton’s convention was all about appealing to Republicans, bankers. They’ve got to step away from Wall Street and back to Main Street. I know it’s a cliche. They’ve got to remember their roots. They used to be about helping working-class people fight monopolies, fight corporate interests. Help them build unions, help them get pricing power from employment—that’s gone. I don’t know what Trump stands for, but also the Democrats…they’re the party of bankers and war. Hillary ran on a neoconservative platform that was more aggressive than George W. Bush’s. What do they offer working-class people?

So according to Arnade, a new and improved Democratic Party would:

  1. help working class people fight monopolies
  2. help working class people fight corporate interests
  3. help working class people build unions
  4. help working class people get pricing power from employment
  5. stop being the party of bankers
  6. stop being the party of war

Six is a serious stretch given W’s record versus Obama’s. If 1-5 are correct, it’s reasonable to speculate that Bernie Sanders would’ve done far better in the Rust Belt and carried the day.

Missing from Arnade’s, and nearly everyone’s post-election analysis, is any insight into this grossly overlooked question: Why is female academic achievement so much greater than male?

Pendulums Swing

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Should have seen this coming, but was lulled asleep by Dan Dan the Transpo Man, and Nate Silver, and other number crunchers who kept telling me everything was going to be okay. I forgot the history, how incredibly rare it is for either party to win three elections in a row. National politics is about pendulum swings. Always has been, always will be. And the President-elect (damn, that was painful to type) vanquished 16 challengers in the primary because he understood how to use the media so much better than them. The refreshing fact that a woman made the finals didn’t compensate for the fact that she represented the status quo when the electorate was clamoring for change.

And now America’s fixation with celebrity has reached it’s vertex. And now my Middle Eastern grad student doesn’t know if her work permit will be renewed, whether she’ll be able to finish her degree, and whether her and her family will be okay. And now my daughters have to wait a little longer to elect a female President*.

And now health care will become more convoluted. And now tariffs on imports will mean the undereducated and underemployed white males who voted for the President-elect will have to pay a lot more for consumer products. And now because of the tough talk traditional alliances will be tested and foreign policy challenges will mount. And now terrorism will continue unabated despite the tough talk.

And now I remind myself of the stoic concept “trichotomy of control”, there are some things over which I have no control, some over which I have some control, and some over which I have complete control.” I will focus on the “some” and especially the “complete”. That’s why I got up this morning and ran in the dark. And that’s why I’m blogging again after too long of a break. And that’s why I’ll eat a healthy dinner tonight and cuddle with the sick labradude.

And I’ll do my small part as a writer, educator, and citizen to hasten the pendulum away from the simplistic, nationalist “America First” mania upon which it’s turned.

* my prediction, within 12 years

 

Sentences to Ponder

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Emma Brown in the Washington Post:

A growing number of California teachers have started driving for Uber on weekends and in the evenings, the Nation reported this month. In San Francisco, the average teacher would have to spend two-thirds of her salary to afford the city’s astronomical median rent of $3,500, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The “Secret” to Success

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Apart from my good looks, unusual charm, and cardiovascular health, there’s nothing exceptional about me. I did well in school and I’ve done okay in life for one primary reason. Growing up I had a gaggle of caring adults around me who I didn’t want to disappoint. Teachers, older siblings, coaches, mom and dad, youth pastors, family friends, mom and dad.

Most kids who do poorly in school and/or life are just as capable as I was, they simply lack the network of supportive, caring adults. “If no one gives a shit,” they often end up thinking, “why should I?”

The Answer gets it:

“That’s the only thing that got me here is my teammates. My teammates and my coach. That’s the only reason I’m here. All those guys sacrificed their game and sacrificed different things for me to be honored like this and what I’ve done. Without them, it wouldn’t have happened. Without my coaches putting me in a position to succeed … Larry Brown molded me into an MVP and a Hall of Fame player. Without those guys I wouldn’t be here. Without those guys, man. I didn’t do this by myself, man. It was so many people, so many fans that came in there and cheered for me, night in and night out. So many people supported me and believed in me. They made it so easy for me to believe in myself because I didn’t want to let them down. I wanted my fans and my family and my friends to be proud of me.“

 

 

Wisdom From a Life of Teaching Piano

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Behold my favorite teaching essay of recent vintage from the unlikeliest of publications. Thank you Byron Janis for the perfectly timed reminders about what teaching excellence entails. If you teach, coach, or parent, this is a concise treasure trove of insight. He writes:

“To me, the most important challenge a teacher must confront is keeping an open mind. One must convey knowledge and artistry without overpowering a student’s sense of self. That talented ‘self’ can develop only when he or she is not over-taught. One must know when to teach and when not to teach.”

And when to coach and when not to coach. And when to parent and when not to parent. It’s the very rare teacher, coach, or parent who avoids overpowering their students’, athletes’, or sons’ and daughters’ varied senses of self.

“During the course of my instruction Horowitz also made a very important point. ‘You want to be a first Janis—not a second Horowitz.'”

“. . . talented students must be taught that they are not only pianists but artists, and to create, not imitate. They should be shown that inspiration comes from living, experiencing and observing life, the real as well as the imagined.”

Twenty to thirty years ago, schooling in the United States shifted focus to standardization of curriculum, teaching “best practices”, of most everything. Consequently, we don’t foster creativity very well. Not only do the arts suffer, but our culture. Janis’s radical musings point a way forward.