Technopaideia

A Humanist Manifesto for Our Times

2026-02-05T08:38:44.814-06:00

Liberals don't *necessarily* hate Donald Trump.* Rather, we hate what he stands for.

So, what does Donald Trump stand for?

Nothing! Literally, nothing.

Trump has no principles. He has no core beliefs. He doesn't believe in science, or religion, or philosophy, or art, or evolution, or climate change, or rationality, or progress, or diversity, or law, or human rights.

Nothing.

Notice that these things that he doesn't believe in are the very things that form the fundamental core(s) of the Enlightenment. They represent what liberals/progressives see as the pathways to peace, equality, justice, and progress.

In tossing these fundamental values aside, Trump attacks the very center of liberals' self-identities. We see ourselves as not just creatures--animals--but as *humans*--aspirants to the divine. Through self-cultivation (character) and education, we aspire to achieve a world *on earth* of everlasting love and beauty: poetically, a "kingdom of heaven on Earth."

The Trumpian alternative to Enlightenment values and aspirations is a life of mutual strife, where power and self-interest prevail: a war of all against all, in which those with resources hoard those resources for themselves and their allies, building walls to keep out those they see as "other" or "less than." In this way, those who reject the Enlightenment, like Trump, are nothing more than creatures, allying themselves with other creatures only to protect themselves and their own interests, competing against other creatures, to the death. Their relationships are all transactional ("What’s in it for me and mine"). They are nothing but linguistic animals.

In accepting Trump, MAGA followers and others who voted for their own perceived interests, have rejected the alleged superiority of liberals' social compact. Most poignantly, they have rejected the alleged superiority of education, culture, ethics, democracy, personal restraint, respect for others, and the post-WWII world order. The have rejected the idea that *any* human can achieve personal salvation on Earth through study, devotion, or personal transformation.

In short, followers of Trump reject *us* as liberals, as embodiments of everything they hate about the modern world.

Thus, the current battle for the soul of our nation is a battle for the future of democracy, as an ideal in which the potentials of each human being are valued equally, as holy and immeasurably worthy, and the best direction for society and the world is the realization of *every person's* unique potential in collaboration with all other persons. This ideal is equivalent to the "heaven on earth" ideal of progressive Christianity, reform Judaism, and the ideals of other peace-loving believers around the world.

The fight for the soul of America *is* the fight for the soul of humanity itself.

We must join the (non-violent!) fight in this spirit.

--------------------------

*Many liberals *do* hate Donald Trump. Others of us feel very sorry for him for being psychologically damaged beyond repair.

What does America want in a president?

2024-10-23T12:38:00.001-05:00

It's unbelievable to me that this election is actually close. (At least, it is close according to many polls.)

I do understand that for many people, Kamala is a relatively unknown public figure. She hasn't been out there on the national stage for decades like, say, Joe Biden. And she's not a naturally charismatic figure like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.

But her values are clear: she favors abortion rights, equal protection of the law, democracy as a governing approach, and dignity and opportunity for all people, regardless of race, gender, religion, national origin, or sexual orientation. She favors continuity in the norms and traditions that continue to make America a great country.

Kamala's values aren't hidden. They aren't secret. She's lived them consistently her entire life. Plus she's happy and is honest about who she is.

What's more, Kamala's values offer a direct contrast to the "values" that Trump holds, as seen in his words and actions. His movement, "Make America Great Again," is a call to return to a previous time in which America was great--a time, apparently, which isn't now.

Trump says America is a failing nation. He denigrates American government, military veterans, immigrants, independent-thinking women, major cities, our nation's allies, experts of all sorts including scientists, judges and the courts, journalists and honest journalism, and literally any person who thinks differently from him.

So, granting that Kamala is relatively unknown and she's actually kind of boring, why would someone support Trump? He's not unknown. Nor is he boring (although he *is* a bore).

Maybe people support him because he's a Republican? But his record represents a dramatic turn away from Republican values such as the rule of law, limited government, deficit reduction, and investments in infrastructure and basic research.

Maybe people support him because he's a conservative? But his personal behavior and profligate lifestyle suggest he is not a conservative. He allied himself with those opposed to abortion rights, but every indication is that this was an alliance of convenience, not shared values.

Maybe people support him because he represents a sharp departure from the past? But he *was* president, and even before his heinous actions on January 6th, Americans overwhelmingly voted him out of office after just one turn.

So, why do people support him now?

I think the true answer is that many Americans are tired of politics as traditionally practiced in America with fairly minor readjustments every few years when a new party is elected to the White House, maintaining our historic and widely-shared set of core values with a few disagreements at the fringes.

But what attracts people to Trump is not values, or beliefs, or character, or continuity with the approaches of the past.

What attracts people to Trump is his outrageousness: his flippant disregard for traditions and norms that have kept our country stable and united for generations. Trump is a disruptive disruptor, offering to come in and turn over the table, ending the game as it's been traditionally played and flinging ketchup at the wall for good measure.

This is what Trump did during his first term. And, it seems, there are many people who didn't get enough disruption, who want more.

People also want someone who gives voice to their own grievances, about the world not being as they think they were promised it would be. These people want someone who stokes their anger and points his finger at "Other people" who can be blamed for everything, and incites the fear of this Other as a psychological drug that temporarily hides every personal pain or personal failure. These people want the drug that Trump promises them.

Well, if these people get what they want, they'll get their disruption beginning in January. And I'm going to bet that his supporters will gradually abandon him, as he once again demonstrates that he might be an entertaining candidate, offering a daily carnival show complete with hyperbole and innuendo and downright gross behavior and the promise of Soma to soothe their souls, but he's a terrible public servant.

He won't be a good president.

You think people would remember this from Trump's first term. But, apparently, their memories are short and their desire to be entertained and anesthesized is much stronger than their commitment to American values.

So, America, which do we want: a fairly boring, competent, joyful public servant? Or a loud, outlandish, and predictably unpredictable fool?

The Very Real Fear of Communism in Today's America

2024-09-16T09:37:00.001-05:00

Saturday evening, I went to a bar in downtown Sarasota. As soon as I sat down, the guy sitting next to me saw my Kamala hat. He immediately launched into a diatribe:

"She's a COMMUNIST! She HATES OUR COUNTRY!! *YOU* must HATE our country!!!"

I just smiled and nodded, saying "Oh, really?!" and looking plaintively at the bartender, who looked on somewhat alarmed.

The guy finished his spiel, got up, and walked out. The bartender (who was new) came over and said "I'm sorry!" I said, "Thank you, but it's not your fault. I guess it's my fault for wearing this hat in public."

--‐‐-----------------------------

But Kamala Harris is not a communist.

A communist believes that the state (or the people) should own the means of production. Communist countries typically nationalize businesses and limit the ability of individuals or groups to engage in private activities or to choose their own ways of life.

As part of the typically-forcible take-over of countries by communist groups, often involving coups by segments of the military, individuals are often driven from their homes, exiled, imprisoned, or killed, all in the name of a vision of collective cooperation for the greater good. (Of course, not all authoritarian governments are communist, but that's another matter.)

Americans have been afraid of socialism (and its cousin, communism) since at least the 1840s, when a series of labor strikes and armed rebellions wracked the countries of Europe, fueled by both the remants of feudalism and the excesses of capitalism. Fears of these movements--as well as the action of labor movements across the country--caused the U.S. to severely limit immigration and, eventually, to regulate industries and build a social safety net (including Social Security and Medicaid).

But fears of communism have continued, spiked by fears of the Soviet Union, mainland China, and, more recently, Norh Korea, North Vietnam, Cuba, and Venezuela. American children are taught to fear (and to hate) communism as a direct challenge to our commitment to "free enterprise."

During the 1940s and 1950s, fear of communism (as part of the so-called "Red Scare") led some Americans to call for public investigations of communist party activity, including public pledges of fealty to the United States. The excesses of these anti-communist activities caused many Americans to call for the public shaming of the most vocal anti-communists, of whom the most famous was Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. (See https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/mccarthy-hearings/have-you-no-sense-of-decency.htm.)

More recently, Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union the "Evil Empire," not only because of its communist ideology, but because of its attempts to spread this ideology around the world. Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, has signed legislation specifically mandating K-12 curriculums describing "the evils of communism" and preparing "students to withstand indoctrination on Communism at colleges and universities." These actions can be seen as tactics in an ongoing culture war in which the "good guys" (American supporters of "free enterprise") must vanquish the enemies of America (the communists).

The fear of communism among Americans has waxed and waned over the past 185 years. But it never subsides for long. Communism continually re-emerges as a boogeyman, especially useful to politicians on the right who seek to scare Americans away from more liberal or left-leaning candidates.

But it's actually extremely rare in the United States to have politicians run for higher office who proclaim allegiance to communism as an ideology. Even Bernie Sanders--one of the most liberal U.S. Senators of all times--specifically disavows communism, saying that any transfer of wealth or power from the rich to the poor should proceed by "political revolution," not violent overthrow.

But because Sanders advocates for "Medicare for All," which amounts to a nationalized health-care system, and because he has said that important sectors of the US economy (like energy) should be creating profits "for the people," and because in his younger days he had praise for the communist governments of Cuba and Nicaragua, it is fairly easy to suggest that Sanders is secretly a communist. (https://www.hoover.org/research/how-socialist-bernie-sanders)

To those who oppose the presidential bid of Kamala Harris, it is similarly easy to conflate her liberal views with communism. Like Sanders, Harris has also expressed support for Medicare for All. But Kamala is not nearly as liberal as Sanders. She has not praised communist countries and has never called for the nationalization of other industries besides health care.

But never mind these subtle differences. In today's America, "communist" has become short-hand for "liberal." The claim that Kamala is a communist isn't intended as a factual or historical statement. It's pure rhetoric, designed to inflame partisanship in a certain type of American.

Because the fear of communism has been an undercurrent of anti-liberalism in the US for generations, the word itself is inflammatory: used specifically because it is a trigger for many. The soil among some is quite fertile: plant the seed, and it will grow, resulting (they hope) in anger directed at Democrats or so-called RINOs that motivates people to support self-styled anti-communists: not rationally, but reflexively, like the angry man at the bar who has been programmed to believe that anyone who supports a more liberal person for higher office is, ergo, a communist.

On Expertise vs. Ignorance in American Culture: A "Shift-y Example

2024-09-14T08:27:00.002-05:00

A long-ago schoolmate of mine posted this recently on Facebook:

"The Sahara going green is a 'weather shift' but not 'climate change'? Lol. Trust the media, they're on your side. Lol."

My guess is that this was prompted by a recent article on this topic that was picked up by CNN (and other media outlets). https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/13/weather/sahara-desert-green-climate/index.html

My schoolmate's Facebook post seemed designed to appeal to a certain "skeptical" type of Facebooker who likes to denigrate the media because, well, "the media" is a good whipping boy, especially the so-called "mainstream media" which is a favorite whipping boy of people with certain political leanings.

I'm sure the post was also designed to goad people like me, who tend to trust mainstream media and to distrust some more right-leaning media outlets. In this goal, the post succeeded: I was goaded.

So I wrote a long comment, which I've decided to share. It's been slightly edited.

There's this thing--maybe you've heard of it--called expertise. One of the things experts do is differentiate among different types of events. This may seem to be about obfuscation--and it's one of the reasons that respect for experts has declined in our anti-intellectual culture--but differentiation between similar (but not exactly the same) concepts allows for more granular and sophisticated descriptions of facts, which results in more understanding of complexity. Understanding complexity is what science and philosophy are all about.

I'm no expert on meteorology, but because I understand the complexity of complexity (!), I tend to believe that if experts in meteorology (or geophysics) use different words or phrases to describe (even slightly) different things, maybe there's some complexity there. And if I don't understand the complexity, I don't automatically assume that the scientists are trying to stake out a political claim. (They *might* be, but making that determination might require some further inquiry.)

Take your example here. Even on the face of it, "weather shift" and "climate change" seem (to me) to describe different things. Let's see what experts say about them.

A simple Google search for "weather shift vs climate change" results in a generative a.i. response that says:

"A 'weather shift' refers to a short-term change in atmospheric conditions like temperature, rain, or wind, happening over a day or few days, while 'climate change' describes a long-term alteration in average weather patterns over a significant period, typically decades or centuries, often attributed to human activities impacting the planet's temperature and weather systems; essentially, weather is the day-to-day condition, while climate is the long-term trend."

Now, as I mentioned, this is a generative a.i. response, and while it's technically correct (in terms of how these phrases are typically used [remember, generative a.i. only "knows" what others have written]), it's not directly on point with regard to the Sahara. So let's look a little further by adding "Sahara desert" to our prompt. The prompt no longer generates an a.i. response, because the complexity of the prompt has increased. Instead, we get links to a bunch of web sites. Scanning through the first few briefly, we can choose CNN, Quora, or maybe the web site of the American Meteorological Society (because, well, they're the experts). We find at the A.M.S. site a peer-reviewed journal article called "Northward Shifts of the Sahara Desert in Response to Twenty-First-Century Climate Change." https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-22-0169.1

Look at that! Even the *title* differentiates between a [weather] shift and climate change!!

If we were actually interested in understanding how the distinction is utilized by the meteorologists who wrote the article, we could read it to learn more. Why would we do that? Maybe because *we know that we don't know as much as they do* about this topic, and that we could learn something from their expertise.

Or, we might immediately dismiss this--or, more likely, never even engage in this inquiry--because according to our non-expertise, "weather shift" and "climate change" are exactly the same! Therefore, these meteorologists and all the other scientists who participated in the peer review process must be full of crap! Right?

Schoolmate, I know you're not an expert on meteorology. Neither am I. But some people are. Are those experts useful to us? Do we care to learn from them, or are we somehow all-knowing about meteorology without ever taking a course in that topic?

Sneering about the distinctions that experts make is both a sign of, and a facilitator of, ignorance (i.e., "not knowing"). Ignorance is what drives our culture to denigrate expertise. Ignorance is what allows non-experts to claim (falsely) that the release of massive amounts of greenhouse gasses since the 18th century is having no effect on the Earth's climate. Ignorance is what leads humans to (sometimes) engage in self-destructive behaviors. Why would you want to encourage (or display) such ignorance?

Perhaps your reason is political?

Facebook posts about prehistoric archeology

2024-09-05T11:59:00.000-05:00

Lately, I've heard of several people who are fascinated by some Facebook posts related to what might have happened on Earth before recorded history.

Our knowledge of prehistory is intrinsically indirect, because we don't have contemporaneous accounts. We can only *infer* what happened using a careful analysis of the (often circumstantial) evidence we do have. This kind of analysis sometimes requires deep expertise to *do* but also to understand. (For example, I recently read a discussion of the supposed lengths of the reigns of kings in Sumaria that argued that the numbers were actually intended as a lesson in quadratic equations rather than an attempt to offer a realistic chronology. I had trouble following the details.)

The stuff posted on Facebook about what "really" happened before recorded history often only mentions the "evidence" that supports a particular viewpoint. It also often ignores any scholarly analysis that might contradict the intended inference. (For example, a piece about the Easter Island statues makes it seem like it's *new* that we've learned through excavation that the "heads" actually have bodies that go many meters under the ground. It's *not* new. Plus, there are very natural explanations of how the statues were buried over time.)

An analogy I want to make is to discussions about climate change. Many scientists have concluded from the evidence (*not* actual thermometers from 1000s of years ago!) that recent warming is unprecedented in the past 100,000 years. This case is pretty solid; few reputable scientists say these data and conclusions aren't pretty reliable. (Not perfect, but very good.) And yet many climate-change skeptics argue that we don't really *know* much about temperatures on earth before about 1800.

This is very much like those Facebook posts that say we don't *know* that the Earth *wasn't* visited by gods or extraterrestrials who seeded human civilization.

In a very limited way, the posts are right that we don't *know*. We weren't there, and neither was anyone who wrote anything down. (The cave paintings are also subject to many different interpretations.)

But direct personal experience isn't the only way to *know* anything. In trials, for example, where evidence is often circumstantial, jurors are instructed to *use their common sense* in drawing reasonable inferences.

Similarly, I think we have to use our common sense in responding to Facebook posts about prehistoric archeology. Do we have *any* actual evidence that gods or extraterrestrials have ever visited the Earth? Do we notice gods or extraterrestrials interfering in today's world? Do we wonder whether it was possible to get to the moon or build the Chunnel without divine intervention?

But wouldn't it be *totally cool* if we discovered that aliens taught early humans mathematics or philosophy or how to move enormous stones? Sure! But the possibility of something that might be *totally cool* isn't reason to think it might be true.

Occam's Razor tells us the simplest explanation for an observation is most likely to be true. What is the *simplest explanation* of those supposedly lengthy reigns of kings chronicled in ancient Sumerian tablets? Isn't it more likely that the numbers were made up as part of propaganda by people working for other rulers thousands of years later to justify their current boss's rule? Or that the tablets were intended to provide a lesson in quadratic equations in a society worried about losing that almost sacred knowledge?

You decide. ☺️

Kamala Harris for President

2024-08-24T11:53:00.001-05:00

I lost some long-time friends in 2016 because I called them out on what I saw as gross distortions of the choices in that election. I regret losing the friends, but I don't regret speaking out.

Lemme push back a bit on some of the comments Ive seen from Trump supporters on the 2024 election. (I'm guessing I don't have any friends left who will unfriend me for *these* comments.)

1. Kamala Harris is a smart woman. She has an undergraduate degree from one of the best universities in the U.S. and a law degree from a top-rated law school. She worked as a prosecutor for most of her life, getting elected both in San Francisco and in California. She was a senator for four years and has served as vice-president for four years. She's highly qualified to be president.

2. The idea that she's personally responsible for everything that's wrong with America today is just crazy. The Vice President has about as much authority as a "warm bucket of spit," especially when the Congress is split between two parties. Kamala did what she could, as a loyal second to Biden, and she doesn't disown his record, but she is her own person with her own ideas, who deserves a chance to lead the country. (Serving as Vice President has been a great addition to her life-long learning, by the way.)

3. The idea that she's "incompetent" is about as clueless/brainless as one can get in 2024 America. Someone who is saying that clearly gets their news from Fox/Newsmax/OAN, and has really no basis for that opinion but...um... their American right to a foolish, untethered opinion. These people need to get out more.

4. Kamala is progressive; she believes in opportunity for ALL (immigrants, women, the disabled, LGBTQ+, Palestinians). You could call her a "liberal," but you have to remember that she believes in the rule of law and the greatness of the American story. She's no "communist" or even "socialist." (These labels are tired and should be REtired forever from political discourse.) If you want to call her something, call her a "Democrat."

5. Trump has shown us what he'll do with a second term. Should we hold him responsible for the pandemic, economic collapse, and crime wave of his years as President? Should we hold him accountable for the crimes he's been charged with and even convicted of? Should we expect him to stop name-calling and red-baiting and dog-whistling and start seriously discussing the actual job before us? Or does he get a pass for all these things because he forefronts white grievance and Christian Nationalism (not to mention the effort to turn back a woman's right to choose)?

6. Despite the MAGA claim that Kamala will destroy America if she's elected, we have to look back on the actual history of the U.S. and the actual effects of presidential actions and beliefs (even from liberal presidents) on that history. The president's powers are quite limited (Thank Goodness!), but who we choose does represent our aspirations for the future and who we choose can help shape the evolution of those aspirations.

7. There's NO doubt in my mind that Trump will win 44-47% of the popular vote in 2024. This is baked in. (The fact that America is so divided today is a lamentable thing, but that's a topic for another day.) If he's extremely lucky, he'll win the Electoral College. This election will be decided by the "UNdecideds." It's now a 74 day sprint to convince the undecideds to go with hope, optimism, and joy rather than fear, blather, and "American Carnage."

May the best candidate win. 🙏

Groupthink on the Political Right; Or, What Brings All These Wackos to SouthWest Florida?

2024-07-23T08:55:00.004-05:00

In 2019, after 30 years living in Chicago, where the Democrats have an iron grip on the electorate, I moved to SouthWest Florida, where MAGA runs wild and the Democrats can't even field a real Democrat to run against Ron DeSantis for governor (cf. Charlie Crist).

This shift in my immediate political environment has been jarring, honestly, and I'm actually surprised I'm still here despite strong instincts to head back North. (That's another story for another time.)

But moving here has had the unintended (and initially unwelcome) effect of exposing me to the overwhelmingly White, and overwhelmingly Male, base of the GOP, and this exposure has allowed me to get a much better sense of what motivates these people to villify Democrats and to actually venerate a convicted cretin like Donald Trump.

One of the things I do pretty often here in Sarasota is I have become a regular at a couple downtown bars' Happy Hours. Fortunately, I can walk downtown, where there's a quite respectable group of restaurants and bars--much better than you'd expect from a small city like Sarasota, which has not only an interesting, financially successful citizenry (mostly from away, as they say in Maine), but also a lot of passers-through.

So I get to meet these financially successful citizens and their passing-through ilk regularly. And even though almost every bartender has banned political conversations at their bars, you can get a pretty good sense of someone's beliefs and values from a more general chat about life, work, and aspirations in general.

And what I've learned is quite interesting, especially in light of the current political environment in the US and in Florida.

Almost without exception, the White Males I chat with in Sarasota *hate* Democrats, *despise* the Democratically-led cities and states of the North, and *love* DeSantis and this income-tax-free "paradise." These strong beliefs motivate many of these men to move here from wherever they are from, bringing with them their hard-earned wealth and their extremely dystopian ideas about the "Hell Holes" up North like Chicago.

When I tell them I miss Chicago, I get the most interesting and vehement reactions, such as the nearly universal view that Chicago is (still!) the murder capital of the world and that the Democratic Machine is absolutely evil and completely un-democratic.

Facts be damned in these conversations: the beliefs I encounter are totally baked in, even--especially!-among people who actually lived at one time in Chicago or in similar cities North and West of the Mason-Dixon line. These beliefs provide almost certain proof that most of these men are consumers/products of FoxNews and are not-so-secret believers in tired old racial and gender stereotypes, not to mention Trump's "American Carnage" storyline.

What I hear from these men about Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Gavin Newsom, Chuck Schumer, and many others, is a true caricature: a classic projection of every fear and every disgust that they were raised on, or acquired sometime during their mostly very financially-successful lives.

A sample: Joe Biden is the worst form of "bought-and-paid-for politician" in the history of the world. Kamala Harris got where she is by sleeping with every powerful man she could, and can't utter a coherent thought. Immigrants are mostly criminals and terrorists, or are lazy shifters in search of government handouts. People like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are communists or fascists (or both?) who hate America and want to create a nanny state that eliminates free enterprise and independent thought. Northern governors like J.B. Pritzker and Gretchen Whitmer want legalized marijuana so their states' populations become addicted and easily manipulated. Academics are all elitist Marxists who think their book learning trumps common sense and everyday experience. (Okay, maybe that last one has some truth to it.)

While many of the men I talk to are truly experts in their respective occupations and seem to truly love their families, the analytical or empathetic approach they take to their work or personal lives seems to go out the window once the conversation edges toward the political.

What's going on?

I really don't know the answer. I'm baffled by all of this. Is it the fluorine in the water? Is it COVID vaccines? Is it the result of Bill Gates' devious design of Microsoft Windows? Is it the work of the Trilateral Commission or the attendees at Davos? Is it creeping federal control of schooling in the U.S.?

Seriously, what explains the apparent takeover of (a large sector of) the political world by right-wing groupthink?

I welcome your thoughts.

Israel's Right to Exist and to Use Public Schooling to Maintain Separate Cultural Identies for Jews and Israeli Arabs: Does This Argument Justify Similar School Segregation in the United States?

2023-10-26T11:24:00.001-05:00

I looked for this article to better understand why many reasonable people have reacted with horror to the student positions at American universities regarding Israel's right to exist and whether the frame of "colonialism" is a justified view of the current conflict between Israel and Palestinians.

It's worth a close read.

One aspect of it gives me some pause: the justification it tries to give for ongoing segregation of Jews and Israeli Arabs in the public schools. This segregation is necessary, the author says, to preserve both groups' right to maintain their respective cultural identities.

If someone tried to justify ongoing segregation of American public schooling according to religion or race, I believe most Americans who believe in democracy would strongly resist that. (Such resistance wouldn't, of course, remove the obvious fact that such segregation is, in fact, becoming more widespread in the U.S.)

I realize that the Jewish/Arab cultural divide in Israel is historically very different than that between, say, Blacks and Whites, or Christian Nationalists and secularists in the U.S. But I wonder if this author's justification of ongoing segregation in Israeli public schooling could be applied to the issue of segregation of American public schools. Certainly the White, Christian Nationalist perspective in the U.S. is that the argument clearly applies to current conditions in the U.S.

Can a clear position be laid out that accepts this author's argument for the ongoing segregation of Israeli public schooling while also firmly rejecting the efforts of American Christian Nationalists to further segregate (or to allow the ongoing further segregation of) American public schools? I'm not sure.

https://tikvahfund.org/uncategorized/the-jews-right-to-statehood/

(One of) COVID's effects on schooling

2023-04-21T09:37:00.000-05:00

One central result of the pandemic was a huge increase in both teacher and student abilities in educational technology. In a way, COVID was the killer app for EdTech.

But COVID, of course, did a lot more than get a whole bunch of people used to using Zoom. One of the most important thing that happened was that parents, all of a sudden, were able to see into the teaching/learning process going on in their public schools. For some parents, this might have been happy-making. What great teachers!!! What a great curriculum!!! What a great school system!!!

Yeah. But.

For some OTHER parents, what they saw on Zoom was not only NOT inspiring (I mean, a lot of teachers and students really had no idea what they were doing at first), but truly troubling.

There are a WHOLE lot of reasons for this. First: teachers aren't perfect. They're human; they make mistakes; and (let's be honest) some of them aren't really very good at what they do.

Second: "curriculum" is one of those things (like colonoscopy?!) that most people really know little about and really DON'T want to know much about. COVID allowed (forced?) parents to see the curriculum in action, or at least see something that gave them clues about what the curriculum is in a given school. (Curriculum and instruction are very different things, as you know. But parents didn't always make this distinction.)

Third: take two people (say a random teacher and a random parent) and they will have a different set of skills, experiences, and values. Now add a third person: a young person, a child, a student. The parent is watching the teacher (try to) teach their kid. While some parents were like "yeah, it's not great, but during the pandemic this is better than nothing" and some others were like "I LOVE my child's teacher" while a few others were really outraged like "This teacher thinks transgenderism (or the idea of structural racism or whatever) is OKAY/True/Age Appropriate?!?!?"

The combination of these three situations lead SOME parents to start to get more involved. Many talked to their friends (through masks at the local park, maybe) and realized that parental dissatisfaction wasn't just something THEY felt. Indeed, in some places it wasn't rare, but it was shared (sometimes widely among certain parent groups). This realization of shared grievance (sound familiar?) has resulted in all KINDS of parent groups and parent action and even some major political action (Glenn Youngkin, Ron DeSantis?).

One example here in Florida is the turning over of the Sarasota School Board to a group of people who were allegedly non-partisan but were funded by Moms for Liberty and Ron DeSantis. The three had a somewhat vague agenda (Students First! Transparency! Facts, not belief!) that kind of hid a fairly radical (right-wing?) view about the relationship between schools and society. (In Sarasota, the county is the school district. The city itself is lovely and pretty liberal. The county is...different.) Once elected in 2020, the board has done a whole lot of things, including firing the superintendent, banning certain books, and in general raising the idea among many Sarasotans that the schools they THOUGHT were really pretty good were, rather, being run by a bunch of radical left-wing cultural marxists. The rest, some day, will be history.

I could say more, but I might stick my foot (further) in my mouth.

Low-quality schools perpetuate poverty? Poverty perpetuates low-quality schools.

2023-03-10T08:21:00.002-06:00

The question of whether poverty *causes* the problem of low-quality schools in the US or low-quality schools *cause* (or perpetuate) poverty is certainly relevant to the connection between economic inequality in the US and the huge disparity in the quality of public schools.

A new essay in the New York Times Magazine looks at why poverty in the US persists despite ongoing spending on anti-poverty programs at the federal level. The essay barely mentions schooling (and, I think, therefore ignores one of the causal factors relevant to the discussion), but because of that it offers an interesting context for the discussions we've been having (and will continue to have) about the relationship between US public schools and other aspects of our political economy.

The essay points the finger at "exploitation" of the poor by landlords, vendors, employers, and pretty much everyone in the US. Not only do many "anti-poverty" programs end up supplementing the revenue taken in by providers of services to the poor, but it also subsidizes the costs of some services (such as banking) for the rest of society. This emphasizes that MANY people in our society actually *benefit* from the persistence of poverty, and, because of this, the political will to *change* the system in ways that could decrease economic inequality is absent in national and many state policy environments.

Middle-class people, for example, are able to get "free checking" accounts and to take out short-term loans (including from their credit cards) at affordable interest rates because poor people are paying exorbitant bank fees and "payday loan" interest rates that are more than 300% per *week*. (To add to this, middle and upper class parents believe that the schools that their children attend are of good quality, while believing that the *overall* quality of US schools is low, and yet rarely want to pay extra taxes so that the poor people in their states can have better schools.)

In a system where those with political power (and there's no question that wealthier people in the US have more political power) don't have an incentive to make the system more fair and equitable, the system will continue to be UNfair and UNequitable, and those who are victimized ("exploited" according the the essay) will continue to be victimized/exploited in the future.

Some other countries in the world have been able to keep their own economic inequality well below that of the US, although typically Americans believe that these countries have fallen into "socialism" and therefore have less "freedom," "rights," and "choice" than do people in the US.

(This directly relates to the surge "right to work" rules in many American states, which reduces the influence of labor unions, which have historically helped lower-income people by increasing their wages. Certainly some middle-class people, like public school teachers, benefit very much from having strong labor unions, but so do workers at places like McDonald's and Amazon. Who LOSES money when unions are strong? Corporations and the people who invest in them.)

Why Poverty Persists in America https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/magazine/poverty-by-america-matthew-desmond.html?unlocked_article_code=TgTi2FUIdlesoZ3PfhF3FlpYZ9BVgrqix3AzZ5KykWHKxq1eIt9wx2tGIlXTTZ34vhV8ov0LRm4Q8GAWjBpyHBHANYxVd-4oSdkwkrkALHxQNkg2pUoF0aMsQlBz9-fUHzgFCqprDjyQPai6ZxWrGo-QwC6QE1m0GYxVMmJaZ16IwCqx9PeIHsz3h9JKlH22mfdl1a6aGishw2MyIU6oqlGHE6Sr62GYMWIzzqIHq7NZCAYHrL-Z_YLlIanewOSBQLF0ffF3EzZR2SEeFLEHdSnu6wYBubkAk8UuWvGnJdGZJpVT7J-rE-2QhDxRKu5z4n9Xd9vBeHUS5ioi13y9IehwRdWIj5JhO2hTr3I

Proposed voucher program for Florida schools may increase school segregation and decrease public school quality

2023-03-10T08:19:00.004-06:00

If legislators in the State of Florida have their way, many families in the US will be able to redirect educational dollars away from the public schools to a variety of private schools, including religious schools.

The problems with the legislation, according to critics, are:

1. The vouchers are not enough to pay for most Florida private schools. So very low income parents won't have the resources to take advantage of the vouchers, meaning that their children will remain in the public schools.

2. Private schools in Florida are not required to reveal certain information that might be helpful to parents in choosing high-quality private schools. Private schools don't have to disclose things such as how many of their teachers are certified, what percentage of students graduate, what extra costs there are for extracurricular programs, or what programs and resources are available for children with special needs.

3. Lower-income parents are less likely to KNOW about alternative schooling for their children, and therefore less likely to participate or benefit from school choice programs.

4. Companion legislation aims to REDUCE the number of state mandates for public schools, supposedly so that public schools are "more free" to do what is necessary to compete with private schools. It's important to look carefully at WHICH state mandates will be eliminated. Will those be mandates that often benefit lower income families or people in marginalized groups?

See:

https://www.news-press.com/story/news/politics/2023/03/08/florida-lawmakers-tee-up-universal-school-voucher-plans-amid-cost-concerns/69984609007/

What is Going on in Florida Right Now?: DeSantis, public schools, New College, and the Educational Culture Wars

2023-03-02T12:11:00.002-06:00

As a fairly recent transplant to Florida from the north, I am continually appalled by some of what is going on in the state regarding schooling and educational policy.

Last spring, the legislature passed, and Governor Ron DeSantis signed, two bills that directly affect what teachers can say in classrooms in the state. The "Parental Rights in Education Act," dubbed "Don't Say Gay" by its critics, bans any discussion of gender or sexual orientation in K-3 classrooms, and also bans any discussions in higher grades that are not "age appropriate." Who knows what "age appropriate" means? Isn't what is "age appropriate" a contextual question that depends on a particular teacher's relationship with the students that they teach, the mores and norms of a particular community, and the actual needs of the students? (The State Department of Education is developing more specific regulations about what is "age appropriate." Given that departments' recent actions with regard to teachers, curriculum, and even higher education in the state (see more, below), it isn't really clear that the regulations that will be issued by the department will comport with generally accepted notions of what is age appropriate or socially desirable.

What's more, as Frank Bruni of the New York Times pointed out in an opinion essay last April (subscriber firewall), "Parents Aren't The Only Ones With Rights." He goes on:

[Public] schools ... exist for all of us, to reflect and inculcate democratic values and ecumenical virtues that have nothing to do with any one parent’s ideology, religion or lack thereof.... None of us get from public schools the precise instruction and exact social dynamics that we’d prescribe. That’s because they don’t exist to validate our individual worldviews. They’re public schools, and I and most of the other people I know, whether we have children or not, are happy to fund them, because we believe in education and we believe in democracy. What we don’t believe — what I don’t — is that “parental rights” take precedence over civic ideals.

Parents don't own their kids in the same way that they might own a piece of property or a food processor. As the saying goes, KIDS belong to the future; they have independent minds, hearts, and bodies, which parents may control to a limited extent or for a limited period of time but which are able to move beyond the skills or knowledge or values of their parents. The public schools, in fact, were designed to take children beyond their parents' abilities.

Before the 1800s, it was generally okay for the progress of society if children didn't learn to read or write, and it was also therefore okay to allow parents to be the primary (or sole) teacher of their children. But with the changes in society wrought by the industrial revolution, and with new expectations for citizens in a democratic society, it was thought that parents should send their children to school (even if those parents didn't want to do so). School attendance became compulsory in most of the United States by 1920, and although parents do have options (including private schools and, later, state-regulated home schooling), they don't really have the right to deny their kids schooling that may--and in fact must, in a rapidly changing world--go beyond the parents' own experiences.

Literacy (reading and writing) and numeracy (math) are very important purposes of the public schools. The purposes, however, go beyond these basic skills. Public schools teach other things like history and science, and general skills like critical thinking and how to participate respectfully in debates where there may be differences of opinion or even different assessments of facts. They have also been charged with teaching things like tolerance, overcoming stereotypes and prejudice, and healthy habits including safe sex.

To be sure, some parents at any given point in US history have objected to the expansion of the school curriculum beyond basic literacy. The teaching of evolution in biology class, for example, is still opposed by some members of society who choose to believe alternative theories such as the creation of the earth by an intelligent Creator. Likewise, the teaching of the history of race relations in the US (a history which must include the Civil War and its aftermath, as well as the Civil Rights movement) is controversial in some quarters.

Should the Creationists or the apologists for the Confederacy be given veto power over including topics such as evolution and the history of race relations in the school curriculum? Some people believe that yes, any controversial topics should be avoided in public schools, even if the people objecting are a small minority and even if the people objecting are actually demonstrating racist, sexist, ableist beliefs.

It is true that after children turn 18 and perhaps are either attending college or university or are no longer involved in schooling, they can learn things that their parents might not accept. But the formative years in school set the foundation for people's lifelong educational trajectories, and people who grow up having never been exposed to some of the perhaps controversial topics in science, history, or health education may therefore develop habits of mind or behavior that are potentially destructive of a democratic society's commitments to truth, social harmony, or public and individual health.

The prospect of our children maybe expanding beyond their parents' limited experience through the attendance at colleges or universities is, perhaps, a comforting thought to those of us who value an informed and tolerant society. Colleges and universities (even public ones) have always been somewhat less subject to state regulations with regard to curriculum and instruction than are public K-12 schools. In the past, only a very few students were able to afford or get admitted to college, and those were people headed for elite professions like medicine, law, theology, scientific research, or policy analysis.

But since the 1960s, the United States has greatly expanded access to higher education, through such means as scholarships, loans, and the establishment of many additional institutions including trade schools and junior colleges, many with "open" admissions policies. If you graduate from high school, you can attend some public institutions without having to submit specific credentials like standardized test scores. I am currently teaching a couple of courses at Florida SouthWestern State College (FSW) here in Fort Myers. The courses I teach--which are introductory in the teacher preparation program--are open to almost anyone who has completed high schools (and even some who have not yet finished high school, through dual enrollment programs). I'm also currently teaching a somewhat similar course--also on a part-time basis--at a more elite public college, SUNY Geneseo, where the students have much more polished academic records and not everyone is welcome to attend. The students in my classes at FSW and the students in my class at Geneseo are about the same age (18-21), but the students at Geneseo seem to be much more knowledgeable about school subjects and generally have noticeably higher skills in reading, writing, and research.

Public colleges are, like K-12 public schools, a significant resource for the advancement of society and for the maintenance and cultivation of a democratic citizenry. Almost all the students I'm currently teaching want to be teachers in public schools, and so the topics that we are discussing are essential to their understanding of themselves, their future roles, and their future students. The curriculum in these classes is historical, philosophical, sociological, and aimed at developing a critical approach to the topics and practices of public schools in the US. Among the topics are the influence of race and gender in the outcomes of public schools, how funding disparities in schooling sometimes seem to keep lower income kids from entering the more elite professions in society, and how public schools should gradually expose students to potentially controversial debates going on in the larger society.

To be honest, as a professor for the past 35 years at a variety of public and private colleges and universities, I've gotten used to little intervention in the curriculum or instruction that I utilize in my classes. Typically, the subject-matter and methods are, to some extent, under the supervision of the faculty, and of course the students in my classes provide course evaluations that go into decisions that (largely faculty) make about the progress of my own career. Faculty governance and peer evaluation are essentially important for curriculum coherence and for establishing the mission and purpose of the institution and ensuring that individual faculty conform (to some extent, within the broad outlines of academic freedom) with these larger purposes.

But the Parental Rights in Education Act isn't the only thing that the Florida legislature, Department of Education, and governor are trying to do to influence teaching and learning in the public schools of the state. DeSantis' Department of Education recently banned the public schools from implementing a proposed advanced placement course in African American Studies. Another piece of legislation signed by the governor last spring was the Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (WOKE) Act. This act, according to the governor's own press release, "Codifies the Florida Department of Education’s prohibition on teaching critical race theory in K-12 schools; Provides employees, parents and students a private right of action; Strengthens enforcement authority of the Florida Department of Education; [and] Prohibits school districts, colleges and universities from hiring woke CRT consultants." In December of 2022, the Department issued a rule that all state colleges and universities must produce a report that lists "their spending related to critical race theory and diversity, equity, and inclusion." (I've been rold that one of the courses I teach at FSW, "Introduction to Diversity for Educators," was included in FSW's report to the state, and that, due to ongoing pressure, FSW is very likely to drop the course from its course catalog and requirements for pre-service teaching candidates.)

The Stop Woke Act specifically prohibits colleges, universities, and even employers in the state from doing anything that makes anyone uncomfortable due to their race. For example, anyone who feels uncomfortably singled out because of how white people have acted in the past to oppress or subjugate black people (through slavery or discrimination, for example) is given a private right of action to sue any institution that has sponsored such courses or workshops.

There's no doubt that, like the Parental Rights in Education Act, the Stop Woke Act is designed to dissuade teachers or professors from talking about certain topics in class. The very vagueness of the legislation is intentional, to put all teachers and professors in the state's public schools on notice that they could be sued by parents or adult students at any time, and to push state schools, districts, colleges, and universities to take proactive measures to prevent certain topics from being discussed.

Florida's governor has indicated in recent weeks that he intends to actually ban "critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion programs, known as DEI" from public institutions, saying that such programs would get “no funding, and that [they] will wither on the vine”.

These general efforts to limit discussions in the public schools and colleges in Florida have recently been put into an even brighter light by DeSantis's efforts to remake New College, the so-called "residential liberal arts college" in Florida. In the past couple of months, the governor fired the college president and replaced him with a political ally (Richard Corcoran) and also replaced six (later, also a seventh) members of the institutions Board of Trustees. One of the new members, Christopher Rufo, has explicitly stated that his goal is to "lay siege to our institutions," including public universities, that have become "a patronage system for left-wing activists." This goal was turned into specific action yesterday, when New College's newly constituted board eliminated New College's Office of Outreach and Inclusive Excellence (despite evidence presented that the office had many functions that go beyond diversity, equity, and inclusion), and prohibited

Any effort to promote as the official position of the administration, the college, or any administrative unit thereof, a particular, widely contested opinion referencing unconscious or implicit bias, cultural appropriation, allyship, transgender ideology, microaggressions, group marginalization, anti-racism, systemic oppression, social justice, intersectionality, neo-pronouns, heteronormativity, disparate impact, gender theory, racial or sexual privilege, or any related formulation of these concepts.

Whoa!

I had to reread this numerous times to try to understand what, exactly, is being banned: "Any effort to promote" a "particular, widely contested opinion." Yes, folks, the New College Board of Trustees is banning a particular opinion (rather broadly defined here) from influencing any administrative policy. Specifically banned are any efforts to promote the diversity of the faculty or administration.

Can you imagine how candidates for the faculty or administration at New College are trying to scrub their resumes of any mention of the topics listed in the Board's decision? In my experience, most of the people around the country who have been working in higher education in the past few decades has done many things to portray themselves as friendly to, and promoting of, diversity, equity, and inclusion in their teaching, consulting, publishing, and administrative work.The new policy at New College will likely have ripple effects beyond New College, and indeed beyond Florida, in terms of the work of those in higher education.

What is this really about?

According to an recent article in the New Yorker what's happening at New College right now is "characteristic of DeSantisism...." The article continues:

The process underway in Florida and at New College is less about ideology than about power. DeSantis’s culture war has teeth because he is the governor of a large and growing state with unified political control and...he understands and can make use of his bureaucratic powers. What makes DeSantis both distinct and formidable is that his campaigns are about not ends but means."

What does that mean? It means that DeSantis is trying to exert control because he can, and because doing so solidifies and consolidates his political base in Florida and around the country. Conservatives (and some others who appear open to cheering on DeSantis in his efforts at bothering people like me who identify as "woke" liberals) love the red meat that DeSantis is throwing to the people. That maybe this red meat will cause some people to shut up, change career goals away from teaching, or move out of Florida is, for DeSantis and his allies, all of a piece with making society less open, less tolerant, less democratic (both with a small and a big D). DeSantis aims to control the United States the same way he's trying to control Florida. And those of us who value civil debate in schools and in the larger society should be very worried that our freedoms to think differently or to speaking confidently about liberal (both small and big L) values are going to be severely curtailed.

This is fascism (small F, maybe), pure and simple. It is trying to use state apparatus to shut people up and to make them conform to a particular world view. To my knowledge there are no concentration camps or mass purges in DeSantis' plans for the future. But who needs a concentration camp or a mass purge if you can get people to shut up about their disagreements with the man or the party in power.

It's much better (in the United States, anyway) to clear the public square of controversy by such means than it is to clear the public square by the explicit use of force.

In Memoriam: the Popeyes Chicken Po'Boy Sandwich

2023-01-17T17:59:00.004-06:00

Before Popeyes introduced their iconic (and notorious) Classic Chicken Sandwich, there was another iteration on the menu, known as the Chicken Po'Boy Sandwich.

The Popeyes Chicken Po'Boy was itself iconic. It was a french bread roll with shredded lettuce, mayonnaise, and pickles, with two Popeyes Handcrafted Chicken Tenders. The bread melted in your mouth, and the chicken was completely complemented by the wrappings and fillings of the roll.

Unfortunately, before the Classic Chicken Sandwich was introduced, the Chicken Po'Boy was removed from the menu. This was a terrible development. Popeyes kept the Shrimp Po'Boy, which was similar but made with Popeyes Popcorn Shrimp, and was a really sad example of a Shrimp Po'Boy, relatively. The Chicken Po'Boy was so much better!

The Classic Chicken Sandwich is really good, and has re-established Popeyes as the premier source for fast-food chicken in the country (even surpassing Chic-fil-a's offering). It's distinctive and tasty, putting the fried chicken to the forfront.

The Chicken Po'Boy didn't forward the chicken. Rather, it absorbed the chicken into a whole that was easily eaten without actually realizing that it was centered around fried chicken.

I loved the Chicken Po'Boy. (I wasn't the only person who did.)

As a side-note to my investigation into whether I could find a better Chicken Tender than Popeyes, I prepared a somewhat similar replica of the Chicken Po'Boy. This wasn't completely successful.

To start, I fired up the toaster oven, and put two tenders on a piece of aluminum foil and cooked them at 425F for 20 minutes. For this experiment, I used Publix Premium Whole Wheat Breaded Chicken Tenders.

Then, I put some garlic butter on a Publix Hoagie Roll. (The roll was more bstantial--chewy--than the French Bread that had been used by Popeyes. It added more taste than the roll that Popeyes had used.) I briefly toasted the roll, and then applied some pickles, some mayonnaise, and some shredded romaine lettuce.

When the tenders were done, I put them on the bed of lettuce and then sprinkled on some French's Louisiana Hot Sauce. I used a knife to press the contents and folded the roll around it, then cut the whole in half.

The thing that became immediately clear upon biting into this concoction was that the Publix Premium Tenders are much more flavorful (in terms of overbearing taste) than what Popeyes tenders are, or do. The taste of the tenders on my attempted duplication was way too much, relative to the taste of the roll of the taste of the other contents. (I mentioned in a previous post how the Public Premium tenders had a bit of a "patina" of taste similar to an Angel Food Cake. Plus, there's quite a bit of taste in the breading, which seems more dominant in the sandwich than Popeyes tenders are.)

This was a really good sandwich, one that I would make and eat again. But it wasn't duplicative of Popeyes Chicken Po'Boy. To achieve a better duplication, I probably have to follow some of the online recipes I found, including:

Basically, there's too much extra flavor from the breading and presentation in the Publix Premium Tender. I need to find a tender with less flavor if I wish to recreate the Popeyes Chicken Po'Boy.

In Search of a Better Chicken Tender

2023-01-17T15:19:00.003-06:00

"I Love That Chicken."

Every once in a while, I get a craving for some chicken from Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen. I prefer the Handcrafted Tenders, because they are less messy than actual chicken pieces (lending themselves to perhaps be eaten in the car), and because they are very easily dip-able in one of Popeyes sauces. (I particularly like the Bayou Buffalo sauce, although some of the other sauce flavors are pretty good, too.)

(Some of my readers will not be surprised to hear that my favorite Popeyes chicken a few years ago wasn't the tenders, but the Chicken Po'Boy Sandwich. It was easy to eat with one hand, and the combination of french roll, mayonnaise, pickles, and lettuce was to die for. I've written an appendage blog about trying to recreate that.)

The closest Popeyes to me, here in Fort Myers, is just about a mile away. But I've had some terrible experiences there, including messed up orders, extremely long waits, and even one time where they had "misplaced" my online order, causing me to hold up a line trying to help them to recreate it (since I had already paid). and causing some of the people in that line to get downright nasty. (I posted one of the only 1-star reviews I've ever written after that miserable event.) That was the last time I went to the relatively close Popeyes.

Fortunately, there is another Popeyes across the Caloosahatchee River, in Cape Coral. It's about four and a half miles away, and my experience there has been better (although it's clear that fast food restaurants are having a hard time hiring and keeping good workers). It's also close to the Lowe's that I often go to, and there's the added bonus of a great view of the river and the Fort Myers waterfront (such as it is) coming and going across the bridge.

A five-piece Handcrafted Chicken Tenders Combo at the Cape Coral Popeyes is currently $11.29 plus tax. It includes five tenders, a biscuit, a side (the Cajun fries are a winner!), and a medium drink (It doesn't appear possible from the online menu to order the tenders themselves without the combo.) It's more than enough food for a meal, and I often save two tenders for later, along with the side and the biscuit. (Why DOES Popeyes include a biscuit with their meal, anyway? The only time I really like having the biscuit is when I order the mashed potatoes side, since it's great for sopping up gravy. It's also pretty good as a snack heated up with a little honey.) A three-piece tenders combo is certainly a sufficient amount of food, but when I'm anticipating the amazing taste and mouth feel of a crunchy, moist, tasty piece of the best chicken on the planet, it's hard to keep myself to ordering just three. (Plus, a three-piece combo is $10.19; and who wouldn't want two additional chicken tenders for only $1.10 more?!)

(As an aside, it's not REALLY the best chicken on the planet, although it's pretty close, and here in Florida I haven't found a good source of really good fried chicken, the best of which comes from Harold's The Fried Chicken King in Chicago.

Without access to Harold's, Popeyes is about the best there is. [This article rates a bunch of available fast food chicken tenders and concludes that Popeyes is far and away the best. This somewhat older article rates Popeyes second best behind Raising Cane's, also from Louisiana, although I haven't had the pleasure of trying them.)

(You don't like fried chicken?! Don't @ me.)

$11.29 for a five-piece tender combo is not really all that expensive, although it has certainly gone up in the last couple of years. But when I paid for my most recent combo, I thought to myself: "I bet I could make a pretty decent chicken tender at home for a lot less money!" Certainly there is the option of cooking from scratch, with chicken tenderloins, a nice batter, and some good oil. But who really wants used frying oil to have to deal with? (I do plan to check out a couple of recipes, and will let you know how that turns out.) I know that in the supermarket, there are many different types of prepared chicken tenders available--most frozen, although some fresh ones are available. Much easier to take a few out of the freezer and heat them up in the toaster oven to satisfy a craving, right?

A Taste Test Comparison

So I decided to do a little comparison: Popeyes tenders vs. a few of the available options at my local Publix supermarket. I didn't really expect the supermarket tenders to be better than Popeyes, or even close to equivalent. But maybe something is "good enough." (Given that the tenders are typically dipped in a flavorful sauce, maybe the quality of the tenders themselves isn't all that important?)

As I mentioned, there are a lot of options available. Many of them seem marketed at parents of hungry kids. (Dinosaur shapes? I know at least a few youngsters who won't eat anything BUT chicken strips!) Also, some of the brands seem to have multiple "flavors" available. Not surprisingly, Tyson has many different kinds of frozen chicken pieces (including their Any'tizer brand). I found an online article that suggested that the Tyson's Southern Style Breast Tenderloins was the best, so that was the first candidate I chose.

There were a number of Perdue branded options, but the one that caught my eye was the Chicken Breast Strips, which come fresh ("never frozen"). These aren't exactly tenderloins, and in fact really weren't comparable to the others, as you'll see below.

The other option that was the closest to what I was looking for ("tenderloins") was Publix's own Premium Whole Grain Breaded Chicken Tenderloins. To round out the comparison, of course I had to include Popeyes, which is what I was craving in any case.

So we had our contenders (for what might just be the first round of comparison):

Popeyes Handcrafted Tenders, $11.29 for five pieces (purchased cooked, then refrigerated overnight and reheated in the oven)
Tyson's Southern Style Breast Tenderloins, $12.89 for 25 oz, frozen, then cooked in the oven
Publix Whole Grain Breaded, $12.49 for 24 oz, frozen, then cooked in the oven
Perdue Chicken Breast Strips, $4.99 for 12 oz, fresh, then frozen overnight, then cooked in the oven

The Popeyes tenders were left over from a five-piece that I had purchased the day before. As always, the tenders just home from the store were incredibly good while fresh and hot. Refrigerating a couple overnight certainly hurt their overall appeal a bit (see below).

The reason I froze the Perdue Strips is because I wanted a fair comparison with the other frozen options, and also because I know I wasn't going to eat all of them in the next few days. This might have been much better if I had cooked it from fresh (and for that reason I might have to include them in a future comparison).

One question that arose was how to account for the slightly different cooking directions. Both the Tyson's and the Publix called for a 425F oven for 18-20 minutes. Perdue wanted a 400F oven for 10-12 minutes (or two more minutes if frozen). Popeyes, of course, didn't come with directions for how to reheat.I decided to use a 425F oven for 20 minutes, and to slightly compensate for the temperature by withholding the Perdue strips until 9 minutes had passed, and then putting in the Popeyes with five minutes left. This way they'd all be done at the same time.

Ingredients?

The contenders differed from each other in a number of respects, and I was curious whether their lists of ingredients might account for some of those differences.

The photos aren't perfect, but you can see the following significant differences:

Tyson's lists "buttermilk powder" while the other two don't.
All three have sugar, although Tyson's lists "dextrose."
Both Perdue and Publix include "yeast," while Tyson's does not.
Perdue and Tyson have some corn meal or corn flour, while Publix does not.
Publix lists "whole wheat flour" (not surprising given its name) while Tyson's only lists "wheat flour," and Perdue lists both regular and whole wheat flour.
Publix and Tyson say their breading is "set in vegetable oil" (which I guess means they've been fried?) while Perdue doesn't say that.
Publix doesn't have water as an ingredient, but it does list "chicken broth" (which I assume has water in it).
Both Perdue and Tyson list garlic, black pepper, and paprika explicitly, while Publix only lists "natural flavors."
All have salt. Perdue (oddly) adds vinegar.
Popeyes, of course, doesn't list ingredients on their packaging at all. A brief search of Google finds a lot of guesses as to what they put into their tenders. Some people say they are marinated in buttermilk before being breaded and fried. Most assessments include garlic, some cayenne pepper, . Everyone assumes there's some hot sauce (maybe even in the "mild" version), and most suggest some corn flour or cornstarch.. Many think there's probably some egg (used to "set" the breading?). (If you search for ingredients online, you can download a PDF purportedly from Popeyes that lists the very long list of ingredients. Also, this article recounts one person's attempt to recreate the recipe as close as possible, with some interesting details!) What's pretty clear is that the tenders arrive at each Popeye's location having been already prepared, and already fried once.

"Unboxing"

At around 17 minutes or so, I could smell the tenders cooking, and by 20 minutes when I took them out of the oven, they were all pretty hot.

(The Biscuit was leftover Popeyes.)

The first thing I did was cut each in half for a photo.

First was the Tyson's, which definitely looked most yummy out of the oven:

Next, the Publix, which had a slightly darker shade that suggested its "whole wheat" designation (or perhaps reflected the presence of chicken broth?):

Third, the Perdue, which, as you can see, just didn't compare in terms of how substantial the breading is, and which presented a less appealing piece of chicken:

And finally, the Popeyes, which of course looked awesome (although not quite as good as the previous day):

The second thing I did was cut off a big piece of each to eat without any sauce. The third thing was to dip each in some leftover Buffalo Bayou sauce. Finally, I finished them all, using repeated tastings to refine my judgment.

My Findings

Let me start with the bottom line. Popeyes, even though the tenders were slightly less delicious and a little more dry than when they were freshly cooked the day before, were certainly the best. Popeyes is especially good at "holding" the Buffalo Bayou sauce in the folds of its coating.

Both the Tyson's and the Publix tenders were quite good: crunchy coating, with moist and flavorful chicken. They differed very slightly in their taste: the Tyson's had a very slight and pleasant tang to it, while the Publix had a somewhat odd accompaniment to the primary taste: a bit of sweet dough taste that was reminiscent of angel food cake(?)! This extra Publix patina wasn't really objectionable, and was certainly too subtle to taste when doused in sauce. Plus, while the Publix Premium tender was slightly moister than the Tyson's, I'd definitely choose the Tyson's Southern Style for its slightly better taste.

The Perdue strip just couldn't compete with this crowd. While it was purchased fresh, I froze it so it was like the others, possibly removing its one advantage. Perdue makes no claim to actually be a "tender," from a chicken tenderloin. It very much was just a chicken strip. Its breading was not crunchy, just a little chewy, and the chicken had no where near the flavor that the true tenders did. Plus, there was a slight institutional taste, reminding me of the chicken patties that we used to be served in the cafeteria a school. I simply don't see a situation in which I would choose Perdue Chicken Breast Strips as my option: better to buy my own strips and slice them and bread them.

This comparison certainly room to include some additional options next time: perhaps the house brand of another supermarket such as Whole Foods?, and some of the alternative options available, including organic tenders and "tenders" made from cauliflower. It's quite possible that one of those other options would be good enough to surpass the Tyson tenders. (We'll see.)

The real question that I'm left with after concluding my tasting here is whether the Popeyes tenders are sufficiently better than the other options to choose them every time. There is the issue of convenience: if I don't have anything in my freezer and find myself craving tenders, do I drive 15 minutes to Popeyes and be almost immediately gratified, or do I go and get some frozen ones in the supermarket and head home to cook them in the oven? The prospect of immediate gratification with a better option than the others means that Popeyes will continue to win out in these circumstances.

However, I now have about 25 tenders in my freezer, including some that aren't very good but some that certainly are passable. If I keep my freezer well stocked, maybe I'll never drive over the Caloosahatchee to Popeyes again. Or maybe not.

The Last Days of Barbara Jane Gamble

2021-09-04T19:10:00.001-05:00

This is the last photo I have of my mother Barbara looking relatively healthy. It's from August 8.

Here she is with her sister Joyce.😘 We had a very nice lunch along with my visiting daughter, Rowan. (Mom was much more...distractable...that day.)

On August 14, Mom fell (probably her eighth serious fall since early 2019) and badly hurt her elbow and the side of her head. When I took her back to the memory care from the emergency room, I had to practically carry her from the car. 😓

She never really recovered. She started sleeping all day and being up all night.

A week later, at the recommendation of Michelle, the memory care nursing director, and Laura, her nurse practitioner, Mom went on hospice.

Hope Hospice is a wonderful organization, and they swarmed my mom (and me) with love and attention. 💖

On the 23rd, I removed Mom's bed so a hospital bed could go in her room. She was barely conscious of being put into a wheelchair while we waited for the delivery of her bed. The hospice doctor, Matt, was there. He promised to keep Mom comfortable.

On the 28th, Heather, the hospice nurse, called to say my mom wasn't doing well but was stable.

On the 30th, a different Michelle, the nurse on duty. called to update me again. She said I should definitely come see Mom. (This Michelle has a beautiful Jamaican accent. 🇯🇲)

That day was hard. I spent about 90 minutes with Mom. I brought her my teddy bear, Merriweather (given to me when I was in the hospital for two weeks when I was 15), to hold. (I have a photo of her clutching the Bear, but she doesn't look too good in that photo.)

Mom was unresponsive, with shallow breathing and an irregular heartbeat.

Heather came by and confirmed that Mom was transitioning, and we decided to order some morphine and some Ativan. She also said I should tell my Mom it was okay if she wanted to let go. The hospice chaplain, David, also came by, and, at my request, he said a prayer for Mom. 🙏

When I left, I gave Mom a kiss 😚 and told her I'd be back tomorrow.

I never had the chance.

At 1 a.m. on the 31st, Jackie from the hospice called and said that my mom had passed, peacefully, at 11:50 p.m. on the 30th. I waited until the morning to tell Joyce, my brothers, my Dad, Ed, my cousins, and some of my closest friends.

Today, my cousin Tim and his wife Courtney helped me empty out my Mom's room. We took the furniture and the clothes to Goodwill and the rest, including an Afghan crocheted by Mom's mother, Myrtle, and Merriweather the Bear, I brought home.

----‐---------

So ended my Mom's time here on earth. I believe she chose to check out when her quality of life was no longer worth the effort.

While I was able to prepare for this day, especially during the 34 months since Frank Gilbert died and my Mom became my primary responsibility, I'm feeling an incredible heaviness right now.

Barbara was the *best* Mom a man could want. 💝 She had a very good, rich, adventurous life. I'll write more about that later.

Among my more self-centered thoughts: Now that she's gone, what do I do?

Big up to the staff at Cypress Point Memory Care. They loved my Mom dearly (one aide called her "My Barbie Doll") and greatly appreciated her spunk and humor. Also thanks to the first responders and everyone at Gulf Coast Medical Center.

Special shout-out to Joyce ❤ for being there for my Mom and me throughout. She's the best Aunt and sister in the whole world.

And I'm sending another check to the Alzheimer's Association. We need to defeat this scourge ASAP.

I don't hate Trump; I hate Trumpism

2020-09-29T14:57:00.004-05:00

I have been having an extended one-on-one conversation with a Trump supporter about what's at stake in this election. Our discussions are sometimes rich and enlightening. However, my interlocutor is a reluctant participant: he often grabs onto excuses to stop discussing substance, sometimes trying to de-legitimize my "facts" because of their source.

(You know: "fake news" and all that.)

But the other day it wasn't about my sources. Rather, it was about me as an impartial or even rational observer.

We were discussing Jordan Peterson's distinction between "collectivist" thinking and focusing on the "sovereign individual." Peterson seems to favor "sovereign individual" perspective. I get the impression that Peterson (and my interlocutor) believe that conservatives (the GOP?) are more attuned to the sovereign individual than are "leftist liberals" who tend toward "collectivist" thinking. (However, Peterson does admit in at least one context that both ways of thinking belong in the conservative mindset and in a well-functioning society.)

(In my view, Peterson here is trying to distance himself from explicitly racist white nationalism, in part by painting his point of view in moderate terms to make it more palatable to a wider audience. Actually, this is not a bad strategy for a scholar to take!)

I wrote to my interlocutor that I have problems with Peterson's implication that Republicans today are superior to "left-liberals" because of their explicit devotion to individualism:

The GOP today, or should I say the “Trump party” today, isn’t as devoted to the individualistic principle as people in the GOP seem to think. I despise the present-day GOP in the ways that it deviates so violently from longstanding conservative principles. The GOP today is a tribal party, which seeks to exclude (to "other", to distance itself from) people who don’t adhere to certain dogmas, not least of which is the dogma that Trump is a “true conservative.” The tribal GOP especially excoriates left-liberal people who identify themselves with a particular identity, such as “feminist,” or “queer,” or “BLM,” claiming that they are, by their allegiance to a "political identity," declaring themselves as “collectivist” in their thinking. (Trump even labels some of these identity groups as "haters, in a classic example of his tendency to project his own beliefs on to others.)

A less fraught way to describe liberals' identification with certain political identity groups might be "intersectional social justice"

I continued:

A lot of Trump’s rhetoric is truly hateful: for example, his reference in a September 2020 speach to the “good genes” of his supporters in Minnesota, especially when juxtaposed to his disdain for refugees of color (South Asian and African), has echoes of eugenics.

Here, as elsewhere, Trump is *using* the (often racist) hatred of his supporters towards others as a political lever to increase or at least shore-up support for him. This, to me, is truly anti-American.

I see additional “collectivist/tribal” thinking in the “America First” rhetoric of today’s Trump party. If the US is, as it has long tried to be, a “beacon of light” in a world of darkness, or a “shining city upon a hill,” then the USA has a duty to work for the betterment of all of humanity. (Forgive me for actually believing in humanity as a collective. I admit this is speciesism, but if I were to focus on all of life or The Earth as a whole, this discussion would become a discussion of environmentalism rather than of Trumpism.) US humanitarianism should apply to a wide variety of world issues and problems, ranging from climate change to supporting democracy, to providing financial and food assistance, and to offering a “refuge” for “refugees” who are fleeing political and economic persecution. These used to be US ideals, not limited to a particular party.

Trump's admitted "nationalism" is tribal in that it sees "Americans" as a special group requiring special protection from the "barbarians" (my word) at the gate. Some say that Trump's nationalism is "white nationalism," but even if it's not exactly that, it does target black and brown people--especially those who are poor--for special "othering."

At first, my interlocutor was more interested in disagreeing with me about my characterizations of Jordan Peterson than my characterizations of the GOP and of Trump. After some prompting, my interlocutor responded to what I wrote:

The first “problem” I see in what you said about the GOP is that it’s become the “Trump party.” Trump did not run on the GOP platform. He ran against their platform. He ran against the establishment with include the GOP and the Democrats. He ran against the Washington thought process and he won against the GOP before winning the Presidency.

Okay...then let's just dispense with the label "GOP" and call it the "Trump Party," i.e. those politicians--in fact, almost entirely from the GOP--who support Trump again and again and again.

My interlocutor continued:

As to your digression into tribalism, I can’t really comment on that because it is itself so divisive. You seem to be demonizing conservatives because you hate Trump so much and I just can’t equate the two that way because of the reasons I already stated.

Now I'm not sure where I "demonized" conservatives. Those who adhere consistently to conservative principles deserve praise. Many of them are principled Never-Trumpers. But so-called "conservatives" who support Trump are, in my mind, abandoning their conservative principles. Trump is no conservative. (On this, apparently, my interlocutor agrees.)

(An aside: if a conservative is very clear that they are ONLY supporting Trump to fill the court with conservative judges, we might cut them a little slack for choosing Trump as the "lesser of two evils" to attain something that they could absolutely never get with a Democratic administration. But if they are using Trump to get judges and also ignoring the many problems facing Americans today (Hello, GOP-controlled Senate and especially Mitch McConnell!), they're just venal opportunists and should be condemned as such.}

Now, what about my interlocutor's claim that I "hate Trump so much" that it causes me to "demonize" conservatives, among other alleged failures of seeing and knowing? The argument here seems to be (and is supported passim elsewhere in the conversation) that I am "blinded" by hate to the point that I can't see that good of conservatism, or the GOP, or Trump.

This accusation is different from the "Fake News" claim. It is no longer about my sources, my values, or my political positions. It makes the argument about hiding behind my negative emotions to hurl unfounded accusations at Trump while refusing to look critically as Democrats and Never-Trumpers.

I find "hate" a dirty word and an ugly reality. Yes, I used it in the conversation. I said that Trump uses the word "haters" to describe members of certain identity groups, including BLM. (This is a fact, not a personal emotion on my part.) I also decried "a lot of Trump's rhetoric" as "truly hateful." I also said that Trump is using the hatred towards others of some of his supporters (and intended supporters) as a political ploy. In speaking their negative emotions out loud, he has become an almost God-like hero. He "tells it like it is," according to some who admire him.

But I NEVER said "I hate Trump," at least not in the conversation that I've been describing. I can't say I've never EVER said "I hate Trump," because I know I have, in fits of anger and agitation.

But I don't hate Trump. That is, I don't hate Trump personally. I don't KNOW him personally, for one thing. I only know the persona that he exhibits on TV and the analysis of that persona by journalists and critics. I also have no need to hate Trump as a person. I can hate the way Trump attempts to fulfill his role as President without hating him.

I do "hate" a good number of the things Trump has done, especially his apparent willingness to lie repeatedly, but also the crass (seemingly disingenuous) ways that he conforms to the expectations of his (potential) supporters, including white evangelical Christians. I hate the ways that Trump has alienated America's traditional allies. I hate the ways that he has cozied up to dictators. I hate his tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations. I hate his efforts to undermine the public schools, the ways he demonizes "democrat" governors and mayors and even cities and states, and his administration's intention to void the Affordable Care Act. I hate his efforts to cut environmental regulations. I hate his withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord. I hate his failure to consistently ask Americans to wear masks and to socially distance. I hate his treatment of experts like Anthony Fauci and Robert Redfield.

In short, I hate Trumpism with as much political passion as I've ever had regarding anything.

There may be some Trump supporters who say that a lot of what I hate in Trump's words is, well, just an words. Instead, look at what he does, they say. They say that Trump isn't really anti-science; that he actually does understand climate change and forest management; that we shouldn't take his anti-refugee rhetoric literally (or even seriously) because he's actually pro-immigrant; that he actually values women and people of color; that he brings financial resources to veterans, non-profits, and poor people. Trump supporters find all sorts of examples of Trump doing honorable things.

I think a lot of this is cherry picking and ignoring the forest for a tree or two. In general, I think the effects of Trump's policies have been terrible for a lot of people. And, like I said, I don't know Trump "behind the scenes." I don't know how he acts when the cameras aren't on him. I don't know what he truly believes. (After all, he was a Republican before he was a Democrat before he was a Republican--or whatever he was when he ran for President.)

Perhaps the writers who claim to know The Donald well and who have been exposing him in recent publications are themselves ignoring the good things he's doing or misstating their experiences for political expediency. Perhaps he's actually kind and generous, humorous, charming, a lover of children and dogs, devoted to the Constitution and democracy, committed to the proposition that all people are created equal, caring about the needs of the poor and of disabled people, and working for wanting quality public education (through choice and vouchers) for all.

Perhaps everything I think I know about Trump and Trumpism is wrong; perhaps I truly am blinded by hatred, and just don't know it. Perhaps I would support Trump if only I could see him as he really is.

How would I know that I'm biased to my core, not seeing the reality of this President? How can I remove the scales from my eyes to see him clearly? What should I watch or read or contemplate to repair my heart and mind?

What do you think?

Leftist liberals seek to destroy society and your way of life; conservatives seek to preserve them. Or so says right-wing-darling Jordan Peterson.

2020-09-27T15:16:00.002-05:00

I've been having a discussion on the distinction between "tribal" collectivism and the "sovereignty of the individual," as raised in a video featuring Jordan Peterson.

Peterson claims to be a "right wing psychologist." What this means exactly is unclear, but it is crystal clear that Peterson credits conservatives (especially British so-called "Liberal" philosophers) who formally articulated the theory of the "sovereign individual" in the 18th and 19th centuries. Peterson seems to suggest that "leftist liberals" are more "tribal" in their orientation while conservatives are more devoted to the sovereign individual.

In the discussion with my interlocutor, I pressed back on Peterson a bit. I wrote:

Another interesting tidbit in the talk is the difference between what [Peterson] calls “collectivist” vs. “individualistic” thumbnail views of social relationships. I agree with the idea that the “individualistic” view was articulated relatively late in history (e.g. John Stuart Mill), and I also agree with the notion that a collectivistic view is similar to what we see among chimpanzees: it’s both ancient and tribal.

But I think this is muddled in [Peterson's] view, because he holds that the “individualistic” view is morally superior to the collectivist view AND in his mind, more associated with a conservative mindset.

I know that conservatives claim to be devoted to the sovereign individual, but in today's GOP, that devotion is less clear:

Because the GOP defines its “true” members by who they are not (i.e. they are *not* supporters of a “politics of identity”), the GOP has become more collectivist than the Democratic Party. (Just look at the differences in racial makeup of the two parties and their representatives.) So for conservatives (especially those affiliated with the GOP) to declare that they are somehow superior (morally; intellectually) to "leftist liberals" (especially those affiliated with the Democratic Party) because of the GOP's alleged allegiance to “individualistic” principles is, in my view, a joke.

I also see the “collectivistic” thinking of today’s Trump party in the “America First” rhetoric. If the US is, as it has pretended to be, a “beacon of light” in a world of darkness, or a “shining city upon a hill,” then the USA has a duty to work for the betterment of all of humanity. (Forgive me for actually believing in humanity as a whole.) This should apply to a variety of world issues and problems, ranging from climate change to supporting democracy, to providing humanitarian assistance to offering a “refuge” for “refugees” who are fleeing political and economic persecution. These used to be US ideals, not limited to a particular party.

"America First" is a tribal as it gets.

My interlocutor responded that he didn't think Peterson was saying that an emphasis on the "sovereign individual" over the collective was superior. He said that Peterson talks about collectivist values and individual values as being in a "conversation" that has vitality in a democracy. I think that's right to some extent, as in this passage:

Who's right? It depends on the situation. That's why liberals and conservatives have to talk to each other, because one of them isn't right and the other is wrong. Sometimes the liberals are right, because the environment is unpredictable and constantly changing, so that's why you have to communicate. That's what a democracy does. It allows people of different temperamental types to communicate and to calibrate their societies.

But in other situations, Peterson's discussion of individualism suggest he thinks its a superior view. Here's Peterson in another context:

The notion that every single human being – regardless of their peculiarities and their strangenesses and sins and crimes and all of that – has something divine in them that needs to be regarded with respect, plays an integral role, at least an analogous role, in the creation of habitable order out of chaos. It's a magnificent, remarkable and crazy idea. Yet we developed it.

And I do firmly believe that it sits at the base of our legal system. I think it is the cornerstone of our legal system. That's the notion that everyone is equal before God. That's such a strange idea...But if you look way that the idea of individual sovereignty developed, it is clear that it unfolded over thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of years, where it became something that was fixed in the imagination that each individual had something of transcendent value about them. And, man, I can tell you – we dispense with that idea at our serious peril. And if you're going to take that idea seriously – and you do because you act it out, because otherwise you wouldn't be law-abiding citizens. It's shared by anyone who acts in a civilized manner.

This response was typical for Peterson. In the video, when he describes the "collectivist" view, his example is chimpanzees, which Jane Goodall described as "tribal" in that they patrol the borders of their territory and "tear apart" any chimpanzees who aren't from their tribe. He also claims that liberalism tends toward an "atomized society." This seems to be a contradiction between his association of liberalism with collectivism and conservatism with individualism. According to many critiques, an "atomized society" comes more directly from the concept of "atomic individualism" than leftist liberalism.

Again, as he criticizes liberalism but never speaks negatively of conservatism, it doesn't seem like Peterson is trying to balance collective and individualistic views.

Peterson does denounce the "extreme right," but doesn't see that as conservatism. In his efforts to "balance," he never offers any actual critique of individualism/conservatism (or of capitalism for that matter). Here he is on the relationship between identity politics and individualism:

Here he is again, discussing the "liberal type" of personality:

The liberal types, especially the Social Justice types, are way higher in Compassion. It's actually their fundamental characteristic. You might think, 'well, compassion is a virtue.' Yes, it's a virtue, but any uni-dimensional virtue immediately becomes a vice, because real virtue is the intermingling of a number of virtues and their integration into a functional identity that can be expressed socially. Compassion can be great if you happen to be the entity towards which it is directed. But compassion tends to divide the world into crying children and predatory snakes. So if you're a crying child, hey great. But if you happen to be identified as one of the predatory snakes, you better look the hell out. Compassion is what the mother grizzly bear feels for her cubs while she eats you because you got in the way.

As far as I can tell, you need conscientiousness, which is a much colder virtue. It's also a virtue that is much more concerned with larger structures over the longer period of time. And you can think about conscientiousness as a form of compassion too. It's like: 'straighten the hell out, and work hard and your life will go well. I don't care how you feel about that right now.' Someone who's cold, that is, low in agreeableness and high in conscientiousness, will tell you every time. 'Don't come whining to me. I don't care about your hurt feelings. Do your goddamn job or you're going to be out on the street.' One might think, 'Oh that person is being really hard on me.' Not necessarily. They might have your long term best interest in mind. You're fortunate if you come across someone who is disagreeable. Not tyrannically disagreeable, but moderately disagreeable and high in conscientiousness because they will whip you into shape. And that's really helpful. You'll admire people like that. You won't be able to help it.

Just to re-emphasize Peterson's preference for the individualistic (or "conservative") personality, he accuses certain liberals of a kind of totalitarianism.

That's the compassion issue. You can't just transform that into a political stance.

I think part of what we're seeing is actually the rise of a form of female totalitarianism, because we have no idea what totalitarianism would be like if women ran it, because that's never happened before in the history of the planet.

(See also his video encounter with a feminist.)

So perhaps what Peterson is actually doing in his emphasis on "balance" is arguing with liberals who don't adequately value conservative values.

This is like Fox News claiming it is "Fair and Balanced."

But because Peterson styles himself as an objective intellectual, he is sometimes hard to pin down. Some have tried.

As Dorian Lynskey in The Guardian writes: [Peterson's] "arguments are riddled with ‘pseudo-facts’ and conspiracy theories." Again, despite his claims to want "balance," he has become a darling of conservatives.

No wonder every scourge of political correctness, from the Spectator to InfoWars, is aflutter over the 55-year-old professor who appears to bring heavyweight intellectual armature to standard complaints about 'social-justice warriors' and 'snowflakes.' They think he could be the culture war’s Weapon X.

Peterson continually decries "post-modernism" and the "radical left" but always describes them in quite general and vague terms. His interview with Helen Lewis shows a kind of aggressive and bullying affect that appeals to many conservative men. Indeed, an argument could be made that men are his primary audience. For example, he claims that these trends have meant that our culture hasn't "discussed responsibility in over 50 years." This phrase "our culture" is also used bluntly to make his case: "Our culture confuses men's desire for achievement and competence with the patriarchal desire for tyrannical power. That's a big mistake." He also talks about "the modern idea of patriarchy" and "this whole patriarchy thing" as if that idea is both unitary and also dominated by a radical leftist critique of men. He derides the "modern" emphasis on "power" rather than "competence." He critiques "modern universities" (especially the social sciences) as allegedly dens of radical leftism that are being abandoned by men. He also makes very strong claims about the ways that "institutionally powerful radicals" in universities seek to replace "natural" hierarchies of competence with a "totalitarian" goal of "equality of outcome" in an effort to "remake society in their multi-gendered image."

At the core of his position, though, seems to be the view that any claim of "oppression"--whether systemic or individual--are illegitimate and (according to him) a form of "neo-Marxism."

Despite his stringent derogation of "neo-Marxism" and also "cultural Marxism," Peterson is also strongly and slyly Marxist (certainly a believer in historical materialism) in his orientation, with his commonly expressed view that "technological change" is more important to history than political action by certain identity groups. "In doing so Peterson loses track of the absolutely critical roles that both ideology and, ironically, individual human psychology play in turning some people against their fellow human beings." [source] In other contexts, Peterson seems quite confused about the relationship between Marxist communism and Nazi fascism.

[As an aside, Peterson's claim that "one of the things [he's] strived to do is not to become resentful" is belied by his affect when he says that and (as mentioned by Helen Lewis) the obvious resentment he seems to express on his Twitter feed when responding to critiques of his positions. Peterson's recent struggle to overcome physical dependence on anti-anxiety drugs could be additional evidence of deep resentment, or at least of his admitted anger at the world. Peterson's own resentment is also strongly implied by his use of German "resentment" as an excuse for Nazi atrocities. This attempt to explain Nazism psychologically is an example why Peterson has become a darling of the alt-right (or at least the alt-light, which doesn't necessarily advocate explicitly for fascism.]

In an article in Maclean's, Tabatha Southey attempts to understand Peterson's "darling" status among certain groups.

There is no polite way to put this, but since Peterson claims that “If you worry about hurting people’s feelings and disturbing the social structure, you’re not going to put your ideas forward,” I’m just going to say it: Spend half an hour on his website, sit through a few of his interminable videos, and you realize that what he has going for him, the niche he has found—he never seems to say “know” where he could instead say “cognizant of”—is that Jordan Peterson is the stupid man’s smart person.

While one could counter that only an academic would critique Peterson for appealing to "stupid men," his fame among certain resentful men is obvious. Southey continues:

It’s easy to assume Peterson is deserving of respect. A lot of what he says sounds, on the surface, like serious thought. It’s easy to laugh at him: after all, most of what he says is, after fifteen seconds’ consideration, completely inane. But in between his long rambling pseudo-academic takes on common self-help advice and his weird fixation on Disney movies, is a dreadfully serious message.

What he’s telling you is that certain people—most of them women and minorities—are trying to destroy not only our freedom to spite nonbinary university students for kicks, but all of Western civilization and the idea of objective truth itself. He’s telling you that when someone tells you racism is still a problem and that something should be done about it, they are, at best, a dupe and, at worst, part of a Marxist conspiracy to destroy your way of life.

Unless you yourself are a "leftist liberal," in which case Peterson just seems like an apologist for those who want to go back to a time when anyone who claims to be oppressed is just "waaaa."

Next topic: Donald Trump hates democracy.

Why four more years of President Trump could destroy our democracy

2020-09-14T15:39:00.000-05:00

(Note: I wrote most of this in response to a question from a Trump supporter who seemed honestly interested in what I had to say. But then, the person dismissed what I wrote as "CNN and MSNBC talking points." I don't think that's all this is, and would be interested in hearing from others. I've edited my original responses, and added links where helpful.)

My interlocutor wrote: "I want to understand why and what you think in regards to why you think Trump is destroying our democracy and why do you think he is incompetent to run the country."

So I responded:

The most obvious thing is the way that he is dividing the country: fanning flames of distrust for the media, for the cities, for leaders of the other party, for our intelligence community, for the courts, the Justice department, the Post Office, etc. etc. He doesn't care if people lose trust in him or in government or even in the truth itself. He WANTS people to trust only him. (He's said as much.) A true leader would be a uniter and would be building trust among the people for democratic institutions (of which the media is most important).

Secondly, he's so committed to tax cuts (as you are, it seems) that he's willing to bankrupt the country to give his wealthy friends more money in their pockets. The very rich are getting very richer while the rest of America suffers, and he's passing even more debt on to younger generations. This is the first year in history that the debt is projected to exceed annual GDP. What galls me about this is that the GOP has for decades decried deficits as terrible for the country, and yet, under Trump, the GOP has been totally willing to extend more tax cuts. (Tax cuts, by the way, almost ALWAYS benefit the wealthy most. The oft-repeated theory is that the wealthy will invest their tax savings and boost the economy. What's confusing to many people is that while the wealthy DO "invest" in the stock market when they have more disposable income, the stock market (especially the Dow and even the S&P 500) don't represent the economy as a whole, and while the Dow has broken many records since the huge Trump tax cut of late 2018 (which makes the wealthy VERY happy and even cheers up poor blokes like me with a modest 401K), this hasn't been matched in terms of increases in real wages, income, or financial or health security of most Americans.)

(Democrats believe that the average American's pocketbook is, in the end, MORE important than the average rich person's portfolio.)

Third, Trump has destroyed America's reputation as a world leader. Leaders in Europe and Asia are laughing at Trump (and his leadership). While this might make so-called "patriotic" Americans happy -- because they WANT foreigners to dislike or at least distrust America -- it doesn't improve the world as a whole or into the future. Examples of this "America First" agenda are withdrawing from the TPP, withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord, withdrawing from the nuclear deal with Iran, withdrawing from WHO, and threatening the future of NATO, not to mention emboldening Russia and ignoring Putin's efforts to undermine the West. (When did the GOP decide to embrace Putin as a friend of the US?)

Fourth, Trump isn't even a great businessman. He inherited a lot of money. Many of the things he's invested in have gone belly up or have been shut down because of fraud. Many of his most "successful" projects (Trump SoHo, the Trump Tower in Chicago, for examples) have only been "profitable" because they have relied heavily on foreign money (especially Russian money) or because of fraud. (The Trump Tower in Chicago was built with Chinese steel despite pledges that Trump would only use American materials.) I believe that Trump is similarly defrauding the American people, by saying one thing, but doing another, repeatedly, in order to line his own (and his children's) pockets.

To the extent that Trump has done "good" things for America (and while I believe that most of the things you and other Trumpists would list are actually failures of America's best interests, but for now I'll concede for the sake of argument that he's done some good), it's because he has relied on some competent advisors. Among these I'd include Mnuchin as well as FORMER Trump advisors such as Gary Cohn and James Mattis. Many of Trump's initial advisors were stalwarts of the "establishment" GOP, which has some credibility (although I think it will be hard to regain that cred post-Trump). I'm not sure how many of those establishment GOP types are still involved in Trump's administration.

Fifth, so many of Trump's supporters (such as you) will ONLY believe the news when Trump-supporting media report that news. Then, when formerly-Trump-supporting journalists report BAD news about Trump, it's those journalists (not Trump himself) who are blamed for the news. Trump is more "teflon" that Reagan, except that Reagan's obvious moral character and principles EXPANDED his support among the population during his tenure. Except for within his base, Trump has lost support (which was obvious during the 2018 midterms and will be obvious this election as well). Even among Republicans in Congress, Trump's star has fallen considerably (just ask Ben Sasse or Lisa Murkowski or so-called RINO Jeff Flake). Many Republicans rightfully fear a huge loss this November, but they won't speak out against Trump because Trump actually does have a lot of power with his core voters such as you. Why? Well, that leads me to....

My sixth and final point. Trump has political genius. This is demonstrated by his fervent support among certain demographics, who believe he walks on water and who believe that he is a superior president. (Oddly, Trump supporters believe he will go down in history as a superior president and that someone like Obama, or Clinton, will go down as terrible presidents. This is just...frankly...laughable.) Why does his have this power over these demographics? Because he says EXACTLY what those people want to hear. Trump has an "ear" for his audience, which is why he LOVES his "rallies," because then he can test out his political lines and see what excites the audience. Because Trump has ZERO true principles except his desire for power and/or wealth; he'll say ANYthing that gets him power. And his supporters eat it up. Why? Because they (generally) feel that the "political establishment" has ignored them; they feel that the "elites" misunderstand them; and, they feel aggrieved by "reverse discrimination" and the success of recent immigrants (when in fact, the success of recent immigrants is a great American story).

Okay, seventh: one more thing (you DID ask me to tell you these things, so don't get mad): Trump says he "loves the uneducated." This gets HUGE cheers from his adoring crowds. Why? Because, generally, they ARE the uneducated. I don't say this to be mean. It's a FACT that the more educated a person is, the less likely they are to support Trump. (There are exceptions, of course, but this is the general trend.) As I've said before, educated people tend to be more liberal. You (and other Trump supporters) attribute this to the "brainwashing" we've received through our educational institutions. NOTHING pisses me off more than when you or others claim (without evidence) that colleges and universities are "brainwashing" students. How the hell do YOU know?!?! Maybe these institutions are actually, you know, "educating" people, opening their eyes, giving them critical thinking skills, opening them up to the lessons of history, teaching them how to interpret statistics and demographics and probabilities. Maybe these institutions form a BEDROCK of American success in industry, science, engineering, the arts, etc. etc. Maybe America is GREAT because we have been committed to education (generally).

Last one! Eighth: COVID19. We can't blame Trump for the emergence of this virus (nor can we blame China, by the way), but Trump's response was terrible by any measure. His claims to have been proactive (e.g. "China travel ban") dissolve quickly when examined. He didn't use the tools available to him (e.g. Defense Production Act) until very late in the crisis and he actively undermined the efforts of governors. And, what's worse, he has sidelined expertise (e.g. Fauci) when the experts don't repeat his talking points. Trump is anti-science and anti-expertise. Unfortunately, many of his followers are also anti-science and anti-expertise. (I think pretty much EVERY American who denies evolution or climate change are pro-Trump.) I'd call these attitudes anti-American, anti-education, and anti-democracy.

In short, for democracy to survive, a nation needs several things. (These things have been identified by thinkers ranging from Plato and Aristotle to John Dewey and Amy Gutmann.) A democratic society needs free access to information of all kinds: political, scientific, and historical. This means that a democratic society needs a free press and widespread access to means of communication. It also means that the citizenry needs to be well-educated so that it can interpret available information and form judgments related to it. A democratic society needs transparency in government, as well as checks and balances to prevent the executive, legislative, or judicial functions from becoming beholden to particular partisan interests. One of those checks and balances is freedoms related to speech, assembly, and protest. (Other checks and balances can be written into a Constitution.) Transparency and effective checks and balances lead citizens to trust that the government is actively working toward the public good. Democratic societies also need the rule of law, such that no individual, corporation, or political party is treated differently based on their wealth or access to power.

One thing that democratic societies DON'T need, and in fact can be destroyed by, is huge inequality in income. Beginning with the Reagan administration, the US Tax Code has been restructured to reduce the share that rich people supply to government, leading to chronic deficits and the constant refrain of so-called "conservatives" that the US can't afford quality healthcare, housing for all, or equity in public schooling. (It's extremely ironic that the GOP strongly supports tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy but refuses to fund public initiatives designed to ensure economic and health security of all Americans.)

It can be argued that four more years of Trump can't destroy our democracy because it is healthy and robust. But only about 60% of eligible voters actually voted in the previous Presidential election.

Many young people are extremely cynical about whether voting makes a difference. While most Americans don't subscribe to the view that "politicians are all the same," a sizable minority do hold this view, and even if they don't go quite that far, many believe that Democratic and Republican presidential candidates are more similar than alike and that third-party candidates are more likely to work toward substantive change.

Perhaps the biggest source of optimism in 2020 is that Trump has acted in such a way as to increase the motivation of people to vote. Perhaps the four years of Trump that we've already had will have an invigorating effect of our democracy. Perhaps history will look upon Trump as the savior of American democracy. Then again, even if this might be plausible, this is no reason to support him for four more years.

On the complexity of liberal education; Or, Is BLM "radical"?

2020-09-08T12:12:00.004-05:00

(Note: this post was written in response to something that someone wrote to me in a private discussion about what it means to be "liberal." That person is a Trump supporter, who generally thinks that liberals are wrong-headed in political perspectives and also revealed as not "really" liberal in the educational sense by so-called "Cancel Culture" and the apparent unwillingness of so many contemporary students to listen to ideas that are different from what they have been taught. I'm keeping that person's identity confidential, simply because the "personal" aspect of my relationship with them could be hurt by a public airing of this disagreement. However, the disagreement has "public" relevance.)

Let's talk about "cancel culture." You used this as an example of how "formal education" does not necessarily open one's mind or make people liberal in their thinking.

"Formal education" is a very broad set of activities and practices, not all of which are actually educational. (As you know, I prefer to talk about "schooling" separate from "education.") A lot of "formal education" (i.e. schooling) isn't at all about opening of one's mind. (I'm assuming you meant "liberal in your thinking" as "not closed minded." I agree.) Indeed, the "liberal arts," which are the part of schooling that does aim to open one's mind to new ways of thinking, has been under attack for decades. It's never been fully embraced, because in the population as a whole, "dogma" (i.e. "thinking rightly," according to a particular set of beliefs and values) is widespread in almost every society (including in the US). Dogma is especially powerful when a population believes it is under threat from external or internal enemies.

Common among conservatives (although I think it's found among liberals as well) is a fear that society is going to fall apart because of "free thinkers," otherwise known as "the opposition," or "radicals," or "hippies," or even "anarchists." This was the fear (as you know) in the late 1960s, when drug use and sexual experimentation (and anti-war fervor) scared many Americans, leading them to get behind Nixon and his "law and order" message. (I'm not saying "getting behind Nixon" was bad, although it certainly didn't pan out the way some hoped). The dogma ("orthodoxy") of "law and order" leads many to label others in the society as "enemies of the people" or "commies" or worse. You and I probably disagree about how much of a threat these "radicals" really are, or even how radical they really are.

But GOOD education should cause people to question "received wisdom," or "conventional thinking" about "radicals" and the threat that they pose. History includes lots of examples of so-called radicals pushing for societal change that, in retrospect, looks good even to conservatives. The American Revolution is a perfect example. To the Tories, American revolutionaries were "radical" "agitators" who would destroy society with their "liberal" beliefs.

One needs to question contemporary efforts to label elements of our society as "radicals" or "agitators." 200 years from now, will these people seem as radical as they do today? Will we look back on 2020 as a year in which society IMPROVED its treatment of Black people? (I certainly hope and believe so.) A good education would at least open the minds of people to the possible good that can come from the current "agitation." (I, for one, decry the rioters and the violence, but totally support the BLM protests and will defend their basic demands.)

"BLM" is a perfect example of a divider in society, with some claiming in response that "all lives matter" or "blue lives matter," as if "black lives matter" is at all controversial. Many who attack BLM are, to my mind, racists; that is, they believe that black lives DON'T matter as much as white lives, or they believe that it's appropriate for the police to treat black people differently than white people or they believe that there is no difference between "black lives" and "all lives" and that it's BLM itself that is racist.

I know you like to believe that we live (or ought to pretend that we live) in a "color-blind" society that offers equal opportunity to all, regardless of skin color. This is certain central to the "Dream" of MLK, Jr. But MLK didn't believe we had reached this "promised land," and "agitated" to get white people to pay attention to the plight of black people. (The fact that the civil rights movement and the 1960s sex and drug "revolutions" happened at the same time made it hard for many white Americans (and black conservatives) to distinguish the "radicals" from those calling for "civil rights.")

A "liberal" education should, in my judgment, cause the student to question whether the distinctions made "conventionally" or even by the majority are distinctions that ought to be made, or whether it is better to examine the similarities between "radicals" and "civil rights advocates" and figure out whether society as a whole has some re-thinking to do in terms of fairness, opportunity, etc.

Look again at the American Revolution. Some "agitators" were true radicals, in that they believed that the monarchy was an enemy of freedom and opportunity and that a democracy (or "republic") would open up society to innovation and improvement. (History has borne out this view: practically no one in the US or even England believes that a monarchy is better than a democracy. The "radicals" proved to be "right" in their thinking.)

But also among the revolutionaries were many (especially in the South) who were more afraid that the monarchy would destroy their way of life, because in England in the 1760s and 1770s was becoming an anti-slave society, and southern colonists were worried that the monarchy would take away the "right" to have slaves. So they supported the "radical" views of the northern revolutionaries not because they actually accepted the "radical" aspects of those views, but because it was clearly in their self-interest (economically at least) to separate from England. The debates that followed the revolution centered on "states rights," because many in the south feared that the northerners would come after their slaves. (The north did eventually do this, as we know.) But even the Civil War didn't resolve the questions involved; we are STILL to this day debating whether states have the "right" to have laws or practices that discriminate. Indeed, now we have a lot of white people complaining about "reverse discrimination," which is, without a doubt, a "reaction" to policies like affirmative action that are designed to increase equity. There is ALWAYS a REACTION to social change. Always.

Which leads to the inevitable need for citizens to differentiate in their minds between the moral authority of the desired change and the moral authority of those reacting to it. This differentiation, as described above, often appears different from the standpoint of people living in the future than it does to people living in the present. Some (in the present) will, like the southern slave owners, put their self-interest above the interests of everyone, but won't even necessarily be aware that they are doing this. Apologists for slavery, for example, argued (some still believe) that slavery was "good" for African-Americans, because they lacked the "civilization" that freedom requires.

Similarly, I'd argue, many who, at the present time, believe that Black Lives Matter is "hate speech" (I'm thinking of a particular US president that YOU support) are most likely not applying moral principles at all, but are merely expressing their personal self-interest, although often in language that appears to be principled, but is actually just selfishness.

How do we differentiate in our own minds between selfishness and principled behavior? THIS, I'd argue is the very essence of good education in the liberal arts.

Being well educated in the liberal arts does NOT mean that the person accepts all points of view, regardless of the motivations underlying that point of view. A "liberally-educated" person takes stands against points of view that are biased, racist, classist, etc. Taking such a stand may lead, in some cases, to civil disobedience, thus offering more conservative people the opportunity to call them out as "radicals" or "agitators," or even "Marxists." (How that word finds its way into the discussion is itself worthy of deeper study, i.e. good liberal education; but that's a topic for another conversation.)

Back to "cancel culture." As I understand this phrase, it's typically used by conservative people to complain about those who would "cancel" beliefs, people, actions, symbols, etc. that are anti-liberal. I'm quite sure that your use of it in your post was intended in that sense. You believe that "cancel culture" is a bad thing, and a sign of a lack of "open-mindedness" among liberals.

I think the dispute over the Confederate flag is a great example of how "cancel culture" is used. Conservatives complain about NASCAR banning the flag at its events. They claim the "right" to display the flag and go on and on about how it really isn't a racist symbol, but a symbol of southern "heritage." They say that NASCAR has fallen "victim" to "cancel culture" because they chose to ally themselves with more liberal elements of society calling for the flag to be "cancelled."

I don't know how you feel about the NASCAR thing, but there are other examples. Liberals call for people like Tucker Carlson to be removed from his position as a Fox host. For liberals (including me), Tucker is a white supremacist racist with vile opinions that should be banned from public discourse, whether by fiat or by public consensus. (I personally have no doubt that Tucker WILL be fired; it's only a matter of when.) If the public shifts in its values, over time, such that Tucker is no longer tolerated, even by conservatives, will those who continue to support him scream about being "cancelled" by the "liberal elite."? Probably. But who is morally right?

I don't think this is an easy question to answer. Indeed, it's a perfect scenario upon which to base a lesson in the liberal arts. However, if a professor at an "elite" university chooses to focus a lesson on Tucker today, that professor will be condemned by conservatives as yet another example of "cancel culture," EVEN if the professor believes that what's most important is to have students think about the issue from various points of view, and even if the professor has no personal opinion about Tucker. (I can't imagine a professor of the liberal arts who DOESN'T have an opinion!)

Because of the inevitable controversies that would erupt if Tucker were made the subject of a liberal arts lesson today, a wise professor would probably choose a less controversial example. I'm thinking the somewhat less controversial example of the issue of eugenics. Most people (even conservatives) have accepted that eugenics is not a good idea because it can lead to vile choices and it augments evil beliefs about one person, or group, being superior "genetically." (I just want to mention that Trump thinks a reason for his success is his "superior genes." I find that scary, but again, a topic for another day.)

Eugenics is an example of an idea that was WIDELY popular 150 years ago, but which, for a variety of historical and intellectual reasons, is now considered archaic and superseded by less racist ideas. Because it is now generally considered out-of-date, it offers a great opportunity to build a liberal arts lesson relevant to "cancel culture."

As I consider this, I am thinking of a book that came out 30 years ago or so called The Bell Curve. You probably remember it. A Harvard professor and an MIT professor wrote it. It argues that the "bell curve" (otherwise known as a "normal distribution") provides evidence that some people are genetically superior to other people, and offers the suggestion that intelligence tests can and should be used to decide who gets access to resources in higher education and who is, instead, guided to choose a career that doesn't require a four-year degree. When you think about The Bell Curve as offering a way to decide who gets access to higher education resources, it doesn't seem all that controversial. (Indeed, the SAT is used like this.) In fact, you can easily make an argument that not only is it in society's interest to make good decisions about the allocation of educational resources, it's also in each individual's interest. Letting a kid who will not do well into an elite educational institution hurts the institution AND ALSO hurts the kid, because coming out of college with a C- average is not especially good for job prospects, but coming out of a vocational school with a certification as, say, an electrician, offers a solid opportunity for economic advancement and security.

But see how a very controversial idea--eugenics--has, under the scrutiny of two very smart people (the authors of The Bell Curve), been transformed from a vile idea into a practical one? Who's to argue with the practical suggestions in The Bell Curve? Why was the book so controversial?

As an erstwhile professor of education, I thinking reading The Bell Curve, along with some historical readings about human genetics and eugenics as well as some other contemporary approaches to how to handle admissions to an elite school, would make a great lesson in the liberal arts. But I'm immediately forced to ask myself, okay, but for which students? Would such a lesson be appropriate for middle school students? high school students? so-called "average" or "remedial students"? How do you decide questions like this?

Personally, given the state of American schooling today, I would be VERY hesitant to use this lesson with younger students, or even most students at the college level. I MIGHT use it for "honors" students at the undergrad level, and I certainly WOULD use it for graduate students. But aren't I doing EXACTLY what "The Bell Curve" argues for? Aren't I making decisions about "access" to resources based on claims I'm making about the intellectual abilities of different groups of students? Aren't I, myself, being "elitist" in a way that belies my claim to being a "liberal"?

You wrote about the "unwillingness for students to listen to ideas that are opposed to what they're taught." I agree with you: this is a problem. I wouldn't want to use the lesson I just described with a group of students who had been taught that the intellectual differences among students should ALWAYS be used to make educational decisions. And that, unfortunately, applies to the vast majority of American students, who have gone to high schools where students are routinely separated into different "ability groups" based upon prior grades and, often, test scores. For the typical American student, those who are selected for "honors" classes DESERVE to be in those classes because they have "earned" it through being extra intelligent or extra good in academics, and students who are placed into "remedial classes" DESERVE to be in those classes because they haven't shown intellectual ability or academic discipline. And, what's more, many will argue, the remedial classes are BETTER for those students, because they can be taught in a manner that is better for them, along with other students who won't make fun of them for their lack of knowledge or ability. Putting a bad student in an honors class is a terrible thing to do to that students' self-esteem, etc. etc.

Who's right? I'm not entirely sure. There are strong arguments on both sides. These arguments range from moral considerations (what's the right thing to do) to practical considerations (what works "best") to even what I'd call "conventional" considerations (what have schools been doing historically).

The reason I said that I would only probably use this lesson with honors undergraduates or graduate students is because I'm fairly sure that those students either HAVE experienced opportunities to consider such complicated questions or have the MOTIVATION to struggle with them. (I'm thinking here about graduate education students, who wanted to pass my philosophy of education class so they can get a teaching certificate; they are motivated. However, in my long experience, such a lesson will be very difficult to pull off EVEN among the graduate education students because, frankly, most of them haven't gotten very good educations themselves.)

Indeed, I found, in my years of teaching education students (i.e. those who wanted to go into teaching), that it is very difficult to know what will "go over" with students and what, instead, will lead them to rebel (or, more likely complain, whether immediately or on course evaluations). Education students are deeply conflicted, as a group and often individually, about what topics should be discussed in their teacher education classes, and subsequently what topics should be taught once they have their own preK-12 classes. Most teachers learn, after a while, to stay away from truly controversial topics and to stick to more conventional topics/content. (An example is above, when I said I probably wouldn't conduct a lesson these days about Tucker Carlson.) In the United States, especially, with so-called "local control" of schooling, it's quite dangerous for a beginning teacher to attract controversy before they are tenured, and the system works hard to "conventionalize" teachers during their probationary period. It's a rare teacher who GETS tenure in an American public school who will implement controversial lessons. Whether a teacher can get away with attracting controversial depends on many things, especially the overall qualities of the parent population, because school administrators aim, for the most part, to avoid parental complaints. (Parents of students in "honors" classes might be less likely to complain about difficult or controversial topics. Some parents might really want teachers to focus on "basic skills" rather than "liberal arts," or might believe that teachers have no "right" to offer opportunities for students to have political ideas different from the parents' own. Like I have said, this is very complex.)

Okay, enough for now. Next topic: whether "spreading money around" can solve social problems.

I'm getting angry: Coronavirus edition

2020-05-01T18:32:00.001-05:00

I am very sad about what's been happening in America. Sad about the deaths, sad about the need for social distancing, and sad about being ordered to stay at home. I'm sad about the disruption to schools (my children, e.g,), to retail, to public entertainment, and to the freedom to enjoy this beautiful country.

I find myself struggling to maintain any sense of optimism for myself, my family, and my country. 😪

But I'm also struggling with incipient anger. I'm angry at Trump for ongoing delays in an adequate federal response, in the obvious ways his narcissism and basic illiteracy stand in the way of reason and science, and in the ridiculous display by some right wingers of hatred toward their fellow humans. But I'm also feeling angry at those who enabled Trump to become president.

All of my friends know that I thought Hillary was highly qualified and would be a great president. (I still believe this.) I know, this was adjudicated in 2016, in a way that I didn't expect.

Trump won, somehow. But some of you participated in that unexpected political result. Some of you hated Hillary (for questionable reasons); some of you loved Trump (howsoever initially reluctant); some of you didn't care because, as you said, the election didn't matter. Some of you didn't vote, some of you voted for the spoilers (Gary Johnson, Jill Stein), and some of you clung to your resentment related to Bernie Sanders or various others.

I'm struggling with being angry at y'all.

Whoever becomes president is not the "fault" of any particular person. We're all entitled to have our opinions and to express those views at the ballot box. One typically hopes that common sense will overcome temporary fanaticism.

I also understand why Hillary wasn't a perfect candidate. The Republicans successfully grabbed the narrative (with help from the FBI and the Russians). I understand that Trump promised to "shake things up." I understand the desire for systematic change.

But I don't understand why any reasonable person would support Donald J. Trump. We all knew who he was. A celebrity. A con artist. NOT a believer in government or international cooperation. Not a real Republican. A hypersexual playboy. Bankrupt several times. A congenital liar. Someone unwilling to share tax returns, college transcripts, or details of his business entanglements. Accused of sexual assault. An avoider of personal responsibility. A luster after women (including his daughter and his employees). Not IN ANY WAY admirable as a person. (Still not.)

So why did you vote for him? Lesser of two evils? A "snappy dresser?" Someone who will dismantle the so-called "Deep State"? An entertaining rally speaker? WTF? We were electing a PRESIDENT, not a "disrupter" or entertainer or, even a Republican. (Is he a fiscal conservative? Hawkish on Russia and the undemocratic Arab states? Cued in on North Korea? Willing to work with our allies?).

So, I'm getting angry at you. Not just the conservatives among you. The so-called "liberals" as well.

HOW THE F7CK CAN YOU LOOK AT YOURSELF IN THE MIRROR today!?!

I'm calling some of you out. I'm angry at you.

Please convince me that you didn't make a terrible mistake. Or, unfriend me. Because you KNOW I stick to my beliefs, even though I am willing to engage with friends and family who don't share my bedrock values. Specifically,

I'm calling out some Facebook friends. Are you still happy with your choice? Anyone willing to repent and repudiate Trump? Anyone I missed and should call out as well? I'm sorry. I'm angry. Forgive me.

The Metaphysics of a Gun

2018-02-17T19:42:00.000-06:00

The recent tragic school shooting in Parkland Florida has sparked a renewed round of debates about whether there should be new laws in the USA limiting access to guns by certain people, or to certain types of guns. Inevitably, there are those who argue that "Guns don't kill people; people kill people" or who see any attempt to discuss gun control as interfering with absolute 2nd amendment rights.

The "root cause"

In this particular case, there are also many who argue that the "root cause" of the incident at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is mental illness, and that our nation needs to address the lack of access to good mental health care rather than the proliferation of guns. My good friend Tom is one of those.

This is Tom and I from WAAY back in 1997.

(Tom has a been a friend a long time, and even though we sometimes disagree about politics and policy, we share an interest in rational debate and clarity of expression. I appreciate him very much.)

I started it by posting an intentionally provocative post on Twitter and Facebook:

[The shooter] didn’t need a f*cking semi-automatic rifle.

And neither do you, despite your #NewAmericanRevolution fantasies.
#GunControlNow #GunReformNow #Gunsense #ParklandSchoolShooting

I wasn't really aiming this provocation at Tom, per se, but he was the one who took the bait. Tom wrote (emphasis added):

Mental health is the root culprit.

To which I replied:

The NRA is the "root culprit."

Aaannnd the debate was on!

Tom continued:

Here’s where that argument falls apart (and, yes, I believe lobbying should be illegal.) If the NRA vanished tomorrow, we’d still have unstable, deranged people in our society who could use a knife to kill; or a board with a nail in it; or plow a car into a crowd of people; or build a pipe-bomb from common materials. The logic fails when the desire of some people to kill is ignored. Blaming a gun is short-sighted, and to bring such blame to its ‘logical’ conclusion, you’d need to control everything which could or might be fashioned into a weapon - cars, trucks, pipes, batteries, bow/arrows, wire, nails, PRESSURE COOKERS, and list goes on... I see that argument akin to blaming forks for someone’s obesity. The root cause is deeply seated in the brain of a human being who has been damaged and needs psychological help. All the typical warning signs seem to have been ignored, just as in the other tragic cases where PEOPLE - not guns - have gone on a rampage. Don’t ignore the human factor, mental instability is THE root.

And later:

My point was simple and direct - mental illness is the root cause of people who abandon civility and turn to killing innocent people. We need to provide better ACCESS to mental health services to prevent people from turning to violence. You, Craig, were the one who disagreed with that by stating that the NRA is the root cause, side-stepping the human factors in their entirety.

And more:

Here’s a fact - if I put a gun on a table, it will stay there without harming a soul until the end of time unless someone moves it. If by rational argument you mean I would agree with the notion that a gun killed a person, that’s never going to happen - no more than you might agree that the match stared the fire, not the arsonist...or would you try to make that argument in a court of Law.

Then,

I stand by what I said at the beginning - mental health (or lack thereof) is the root cause of mass murder(s), not the inanimate instrument. The only reason I posted that opinion is because I get very frustrated by simplistic, knee-jerk reactions in times of stress and hysteria to very complex issues.

(I definitely appreciated Tom's acknowledgement that the overall debate is "very complex," although I don't believe that I myself was offering a "simplistic, knee-jerk reaction." I truly believe that no-one (other than the military) needs semi-automatic assault rifles, and I would ban them forever, in addition to imposing gun licensing requirements at least as stringent as those in place for getting a driver's license.)

One direction the discussion might have taken (but didn't) is to discuss the different types of "cause" from a philosophical perspective. Aristotle ("The Philosopher") identified four types of "cause":

The material cause: “that out of which”, e.g., the bronze of a statue.

The formal cause: “the form”, “the account of what-it-is-to-be”, e.g., the shape of a statue.

The efficient cause: “the primary source of the change or rest”, e.g., the artisan, the art of bronze-casting the statue, the man who gives advice, the father of the child.

The final cause: “the end, that for the sake of which a thing is done”, e.g., health is the end of walking, losing weight, purging, drugs, and surgical tools.

The differences Aristotle identified are interesting in their own right, and they do help us to understand how an event (or "effect") could have multiple causes. Aristotle also differentiates between the general cause(s) of a category of events (such as "mass shootings") and the particular cause(s) of a particular event (such as the Parkland shooting). Because of Aristotle's teleological metaphysics (the view that nature acts in certain directions based on the "proper" function or "end" of an object's underlying substance (earth, air, fire, water, or aether), Aristotle doesn't believe that psychology is what makes things happen in general, but only in particular.

To apply Aristotle's view to the current issue, we might say that the "material" cause of mass shootings is guns and bullets; the "formal" cause is the way that a person can initiate an act leading to gunpowder causing a projectile to fly out of a gun and enter a victim's body and possibly kill that victim; the "efficient" cause is the murderers; and the "formal" cause is the basically animal nature or territoriality of humans. (I'm not sure of this analysis... Comments welcomed.) The cause of a particular mass shooting, such as Parkland, might be the beliefs, intentions, or grievances of a particular shooter. In other words, Aristotle would never say that the "root cause" of mass shootings is "mental health" (in general), although he would certainly accept that the "root cause" (or at least one cause) of a particular mass shooting might very well be the mental health of the shooter.

In any case, I didn't bring Aristotle or any other philosopher's views to bear in the discussion with Tom, but I eventually got Tom to admit that an event such as the Parkland shooting might have multiple root causes, although he never retreated from his core argument that "mental health (or lack thereof) is the root cause of mass murder(s), not the inanimate instrument."

Inanimate instrument?

The idea that an object such as a gun could be "inanimate" would never have occurred to Aristotle, because he believed nature has built-in teloi or ends which "animate" all of nature. Nothing is ever truly "inanimate" because everything has a "natural" end or function which it must fulfill. Tom's image of the gun on the table sitting there until the end of time unless "someone" moves it is not an Aristotelian one, because Aristotle held that movement is inherent in the chaotic nature of nature: that is, nature is always trying to "sort itself out" by putting things back the way that are supposed to be. (Earth in the center, Water along its surface, Air above the surface, Fire above the Air, and Aether above it all.)

So in Aristotle's universe, that gun on the table would be striving (in a manner of speaking) to get to the center of the universe, and eventually the table would break or be upended by some cataclysmic event and the gun would move ever closer to the center. (The gunpowder might burst into flame, thus releasing its fire, allowing it to move to its proper place as well.)

But most people don't really believe in Aristotle's universe any more. Rather than "proper ends" or "functions" of objects based on their underlying substance, we now have a model of the universe that envisions all physical/material objects as "inanimate" in the sense that they will continue in the direction and speed in which they are moving forever unless forces (such as gravity or magnetism, or the "animate" force of a wilful being) operate on them to change that state of motion (Newton's First Law). According to this more "modern" theory, the gun is "inanimate" in the sense that it has no will, or purpose, or "end" other than that to which it is subjected to.

Now, Tom is an construction engineer, and his professional training and approach to the world is definitely a "modern" one, in the sense that he makes a firm distinction between inanimate (material) things and animate ones (pets, people). I'm not sure if Tom would say that "gravity" is "inanimate," but he would certainly argue that gravity has no "intention" but just is the attraction of masses to one another. To the extent that the Earth (along with the table and the gun on it) is actually moving VERY fast through space would be seen as the natural result of the Big Bang, not some willful movement "toward" anything.

I don't think Tom believes in God, so, for him, the universe will keep going until either it expands so much that celestial objects no longer interact with one another or it reaches a point where the energy of the Big Bang has dissipated to the point that the forces of attraction overcome the forces of expansion, and we get a Big Crunch.

Even in this "modern" view, Tom is technically incorrect that the gun will stay on the table until the "end of time." The Sun will probably at some point consume the Earth or flame out, and the forces on that gun on the table will change in ways it's hard to predict. Not only is the gun moving NOW, it will be moved eventually (probably many times), even if no person every picks it up off the table.

But Tom can be forgiven for his figure of speech about the end of time. Practically, for us, that gun might very well sit there on the table "forever," or at least as long as we care to keep track of it. (It's kind of like "happily ever after"...that doesn't really mean "forever," either.)

The gun as object

Here's where I want to introduce a new complexity into the debate. I don't actually accept that the gun is "inanimate" in any meaningful sense.

Here, I'm going to rely somewhat heavily on a metaphysical understanding that differs from both Aristotle's and Newton's. This sense derives largely from the philosophical views of John Dewey, especially the "metaphysics" he set forth in his 1925 book, Experience and Nature. (I've written extensively about Dewey's metaphysics. If you're interested in looking at some of my writings on that subject, see here.)

John Dewey, 1859-1952

Dewey started his academic life as Christian Hegelian, believing that the Christian God as "Absolute Mind" was the formal/final cause of everything that happens. He would probably have said in those early days that the "root cause" of mass murders was evil, which was an absence of the presence of God (or, maybe, the presence of Satan) in the mind of individual men and women. (Lots of people still believe that, even those claiming to be scientific.)

Dewey gradually lost his Christian faith, and drifted away from Hegel, seeking a more "naturalized" world-view that could be based on observable facts and experimentation. A huge and important part of Dewey's journey to a new metaphysics was his embrace of Aristotle, and the notion that things have proper "ends" or "functions" that determine how they behave. But Dewey wasn't satisfied that Aristotle's metaphysics effectively removed "supernatural" (non-observable) causes from nature, and so he moved past Aristotle, and constructed his own metaphysics without the kind of cosmological teloi that Aristotle posited.

The most important aspect of Dewey's metaphysics that distinguishes it from other viewpoints is that it is a metaphysics of experience, not of essence. Dewey didn't want to use his metaphysics to understand the underlying essence of nature, an allegedly pure metaphysics that would remove humans from our picture of reality and get to the things in themselves. Dewey believed that experience was the medium in which we, well, "experience" reality, and that experience had to be included in any description of the nature of nature. Things-in-themselves are unknown and unknowable; all we can know is that which we experience; and we experience things in experience, with qualities that are not necessarily of the things-in-themselves but of our interactions with things.

Dewey reconstructed the concept of an "object" away from the unknowable "thing in itself apart from human interactions with it" toward a view of entities as themselves constructed by human experiencers. (Yes, this is a form of constructivism, implying some of Dewey's educational beliefs, but I'm not going to get into that here.) When we encounter an entity (or "thing," although Dewey didn't constrain is metaphysics to only physical things) in experience, the "thing" doesn't just enter into our minds pure and unadulterated. Rather, it "enters" our minds through the complex web of expectations, prior experiences, assumptions, culture, biases, meanings, and habits that make up our understanding. Again, we experience things through our experience, and while we can try to get a sense of the thing that minimizes the psychological aspect of our experience of it (through science, largely), we have to work at understanding nature, and can never rid ourselves of the effects of our understandings on that which we are trying to understand.

(Some people speak of an inescapable "hermeneutic circle" in which our interpretations of events such as texts, or anything, are always shaped by our interpretations of our interpretations, in an endless loop.)

As we process an experience, we create objects, which are essentially the contents of our thoughts, beliefs, and feelings of the entities in our experience. An object doesn't exist outside of us, necessarily. However, objects can be cultural as well as personal. As members of human society, we share objects with others, and assign these objects certain names (signs/words) so that we can evoke them in conversation even if the entities to which they refer are not currently in view.

If I say "gun" in a conversation, and if you are someone who is literate in the English language, the word (either its written form or its auditory equivalent) will evoke in your mind an image of "gun," even if you have never actually seen a gun in person. Your image of the gun may be different from my image of the gun, so if I want to evoke a more specific image, I need to add some additional words, like: "semi-automatic assault rifle."

Now (this is important), your image of the "semi-automatic assault rifle" is unlikely to be purely visual. The phrase will evoke a complex image involving emotion, memory, belief, and numerous connections to other objects in your mind, such as the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution, or the NRA, or that time you got to hold or fire one, or your frustration that there is no longer a federal ban on such weapons.

Similarly, if you encounter a gun or semi-automatic assault rifle in your personal experience, it will not enter into your experience as just a visual "thing" that can be easily detached from your experience or your understanding or your culture.

In other words, a "semi-automatic assault rifle," or "gun" is not limited in our minds to just the material from which it is made and is physical form. There may well be some entity "on the table" that is just metal and plastic and paint and ??? in a certain physical form, but that isn't what you experience. (And, I would argue, such a "thing" doesn't actually exist except in your imagination!)

Okay, hold on there a second, Dr. Cunningham!

Yes, I am claiming that the "common sense" notion of the gun on the table as "inanimate" is itself a figment of someone's imagination. The actual gun, the object of our experience, is fraught with a complex array of associations, implications and potentialities. The "object" is animated by a zillion and one interrelationship in our minds (and, in actual fact, in the world), and it cannot be detached from those interrelationships (except, perhaps, in our imaginations).

Let me go a step further. The gun on the table isn't just the physical amalgamation of different ingredients in a certain form. It has a history. It hasn't always been a "gun," and it hasn't always been on the table, and it's actually quite unlikely that it will remain on the table, untouched by human hands. It was actually manufactured at some point, to a set of specifications that were themselves developed over time. It didn't somehow come together "naturally." Someone decided to make it. Someone had a purpose in making it. Probably, the intention of the manufacturer wasn't to have it sit on a table for eternity. What was the intention of the manufacturer? I can't say for sure, but I bet you the cost of an AR-15 that part of the intention was to sell it to someone who wants it for some reason. Why would anyone want an AR-15? Well, there are many possible reasons. To shoot it? Probably. At what? Who knows? (I would wager the idea is to shoot it at something and that the goal isn't for that something to remain intact.) Or, maybe someone just wants to hang it on the wall and admire it. Okay. But they don't want to hang it on the wall because it's an inanimate chunk of metal. They want to hang it on the wall because of what it implies or suggests. It's a gun, after all. NOT a pressure cooker!

The gun on the table has a past, yes, but also it has a future. And the fact that it's a gun (and not, say, a used tissue) has considerable implications for what that future might be. Someone (hopefully, not a child or a deranged person) will inevitably see it, be motivated to touch it, move it, pick it up, take it home, get some bullets for it, and take it out to a field and fire it. Or, maybe someone will turn it into the authorities. No matter what happens, the gun invites interaction with humans who encounter it. This invitation is not solely in the minds of the person who encounters it! The invitation is built into the gun, along with the steel and whatever else.

In this way, the gun on the table isn't the same as a rock on a hillside, or a car in a driveway, or a "pressure cooker" in a kitchen cabinet. It exists because of the manufacturer's desire to make a profit, and this possibility of a profit exists because humans seem to want guns. The military, yes, and that's understandable. But in addition many American humans who have all kinds of associations in their minds with having a semi-automatic assault rifle. It's a symbol of power, freedom, autonomy, wealth. It's a tool with particular purposes.

But, quite essentially and inevitably, it has possibility. Potentiality. It can, potentially, kill an animal. Even a human.

And if it finds its way into the hands of a person who wants to kill people, for whatever reason, it empowers that person with a power and a possible future that the person didn't previously have. This power doesn't exist solely in the person who has the desire to kill. It exists in the gun. Yes, a person is required to fire it. (I don't think the gun can fire itself.) That person may be intentional about killing someone. Or that person might just be curious to see what it does when the trigger is pulled.

"Pow! Pow!"

The image is cultural. It exists even in the minds of small children.

The person might be of sound mind (whatever that is) or might be certifiably insane. I'm not even going to get into the complexity of defining mental health or illness.

That's going to require another blog post.

Technology Coaches vs Technology Coordinators

2017-03-20T17:18:00.001-05:00

The faculty in National Louis University's Technology in Education program (AKA "Learning Technologies") have recently revised our course sequence (and the courses themselves) to better reflect the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Technology Coach standards, which were revised from the previous Technology Facilitator standards in 2011. (Yes, it took us a while.)

In addition to the ISTE standards, our program is also aligned with the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) Technology Specialist standards (hard to find on the ISBE web site, but available in legislation originally passed in 2002). The ISBE Technology Specialist standards are much older, and are currently under revision. The faculty specifically aligned our program in 2004 with both the ISBE Technology Specialist and the (then new) ISTE Technology Facilitator standards, which was a prodigious task, but it ensured that we would be accredited by ISBE to offer the Technology Specialist certificate/endorsement to those who completed our program (and passed a content-area test), and also accredited by ISTE (through NCATE, now CAEP) as a program aligned with their Technology Facilitator standards.

As I mentioned, the ISBE Technology Specialist standards are a bit long in the tooth, and need revision. I am not personally aware of the direction that this revision is taking. However, I have noticed that the evolution of the Technology Facilitator standards into the Technology Coach standards has taken the direction of more emphasis on the Technology Coach as a mentor to teachers and less emphasis on administrative tasks. (The Technology Coach standards still include such things as contributing to a shared visions, but do not include purely administrative tasks such as budgeting, break-fix, networking infrastructure, or life-cycle planning.)

With the revision of our program to align with the Technology Coach standards, we have also evolved our program to focus much more on the Coach role and less on the administrative aspects of a Technology Specialist (as envisioned in the current ISBE standards). During this revision, we did align our courses with the Technology Specialist standards, but I'm not sure how well prepared our graduates would be for a largely administrative role (rather than a coaching/mentoring role), unless they had previous training in technology management or educational administration.

This issue came to the fore for me today, when I received an email from ISTE with a promotional flyer for the 3rd edition of their Technology Coordinator's Handbook, by Max Frazier and Doug Hearrington. I was interested to read through the Table of Contents and the supplied sample chapter. Illinois is specifically called out for having been in the forefront of the licensing of technology coordinators, I assume because of the longstanding Technology Specialist certification. This calling out made me think about whether Illinois' certification is a "technology coordinator" endorsement or a "technology coach" endorsement.

In the sample materials I reviewed from the Technology Coordinator's Handbook, I noted a couple of things. First, the word "coach" only appears twice in the "Introduction," in both cases only in reference to ISTE's Technology Coach standards, which are described (along with the ISTE Administrator standards--on which more, below) as "important guides for those who aspire to work as technology leaders and facilitators at the school and at the district level" (p. 3). And, the word "coach" doesn't appear at all in "Chapter 1: Qualifications and Expectations."

Interestingly, the ISTE Technology Coach standards don't seem to receive much additional attention in the book (although I only saw the Introduction and Chapter 1), but the ISTE Administrator standards are actually included in the book as "Appendix C." In addition, the structure of the book reflects the "Technology Coordinator Issues Model" (TCIM), a five-part organization of the types of issues that a technology coordinator might face. These five areas are:

1. Teaching and Learning;

2. Supporting Teaching, Learning, and Computing;

3. Network Operations;

4. Administrative Computing;

5. Planning and Budgeting

Area 1 is clearly related to the Technology Coach role (and includes instructional support for teachers as well as planning for professional development of teachers), but the other areas are clearly framed as administrative or technical rather than pedagogical, and would seem to be more closely addressed in the ISTE Administrator standards.

I need to see the entire book in order to make a final judgment about this, but it seems to me from my review of the materials I received that the book doesn't believe that a person who is prepared to be a Technology Coach would be necessarily qualified to be a Technology Coordinator. Rather, it seems to me that the preferred route would be for someone to add an administrative certification to their teaching license, and somehow to gain (through their teaching experience or otherwise) the technical skills and knowledge necessary to run the technology operations of a school or district. And, if the envisioned Technology Coordinator position is equivalent to the certified Technology Specialist role as described in the forthcoming revised ISBE standards, I wonder if our Technology in Education program is going to need some major revisions if we hope to maintain our accreditation as a preparer of Technology Specialists in the State of Illinois or elsewhere.

(See this old but interesting discussion of one person's disappointment at the expectations of a technology coordinator, as well as this more recent and more upbeat narrative.)

I'm curious if anyone else has thought much about the differences between the Technology Coach and Technology Coordinator and how these differences pertain to a graduate program aligned to the ISTE Technology Coach standards as well as state standards for a similar, but more administrative role. Please comment below, or contact me at craig.cunningham@nl.edu.

What skills do teaching and corporate work have in common?

2015-11-24T11:49:00.005-06:00

Some skills (soft and "hard") that are transferable between classroom teaching and corporate work:

1. oral and written communication skills
2. interpersonal skills
3. demonstrated ability to work independently
4. demonstrated creative problem-solving skills
5. demonstrated ability to learn new things quickly and apply them in various contexts
6. demonstrated ability to work in fast-paced, pressured environment
7. active listening skills
8. patience
9. planning and organization
10. discipline
11. adaptability
12. ability to work collaboratively and to coach teamwork
13. ability to give clear instructions and to rephrase for different learners
14. cultural intelligence
15. emotional intelligence
16. social media/networking

(To be continued.)

From https://thosewhoteach.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/five-skills-teachers-have-that-employers-want/

http://resumes-for-teachers.com/career-change/switching-careers.aspx

http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-job-skills-report/

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-should-teachers-have-soft-skills-what-you-can-do-khurshid

What's an "envelope link"?

2015-06-25T10:04:00.000-05:00

I obviously have too much time on my hands (or, more likely, I am vigorously procrastinating from finishing up my grading for the Spring quarter), but…

I subscribe to a daily blog post by my friend Nick Burbules. Nick (who is an educational theorist in his day job) has been writing this blog for many years (since 2004!!).

The Blog, called Progressive Blog Digest, or PBD, is a summary, or "digest," of progressive blogs (and other news sources), tracking what's currently interesting to the progressive blogosphere.

Before it was a Blog, PBD was a daily email message, called "Today's News." A vestige of those humble origins exists in Google Group, called "Today's News," that allows anyone to get the daily edition of PBD delivered via email. The archives of "Today's News" shows 3442 "topics," which translates into approximately 3442 daily editions. That's a lot of writing!

In any case, I've been reading Nick's daily posts since the beginning, or nearly so. I like to get it via email, and usually read it while drinking my morning tea as my primary way of keeping up on what's going on in the political world. (Yes, yes, I know, it's not exactly objective news, but still it keeps me up to date on big political events.)

Anyway, I heartily recommend PBD to anyone who is interested in progressive politics. You can subscribe to the daily email here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/todays-news or read the blog on the Web at http://pbd.blogspot.com.

When I read PBD/Today's News on my phone (which is typical…I use CloudMagic these days for my consolidated emails), this is what I see at the end of every Today's News post:

This morning, a particular sentence in this boilerplate footer jumped out at me:

If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL: http://pbd.blogspot.com

I’ve looked at this sentence a thousand times and never wondered until this morning.

However, this morning, I wondered: "What’s an 'envelope link'?

(There are a number of links there: none obviously looks like an envelope link.)

So, naturally, I googled “envelope link.” Nothing relevant. (Try it!)

If I am using Gmail via its web interface, it’s a little easier to figure out what "link" is referred to, because there is only one link “below.”

Gmail is smart enough to normally “trim” out the Google Group boilerplate, but you can see it if you click the little gray ellipses at the bottom of the message, as I've done here:

But still, what’s the “envelope link”?

When I teach my students how to post their blogs to D2L (Desire2Learn, our learning management system, which I think might be changing its name to "Brightspace"), I teach them the difference between the overall blog URL and the “permalink.” (http://www.bloggingbasics101.com/what-is-a-permalink/)

The link at the bottom of a blog post (linked to the title of the blog, or sometimes to the date that it was originally posted) is the permalink.

“Permalink” isn’t a very pretty word (I like “envelope link” better), but maybe there is a better phrase?

I looked up “What’s another word for permalink,” but Word Hippo said “No words found.” (http://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/another-word-for/permalink.html)

So…I guess we’re stuck with “envelope link” (which as near as I can tell Nick made up) or “permalink.”

By the way, while writing this blog post, I learned two new words:

Carnival (http://www.northernlightspr.com/how-to-find-submit-to-blog-carnivals/)

And

Slug (http://www.wpkube.com/seo-beginners-guide-to-permalinks-and-slugs/)

See what I get for procrastinating?

P.S. As I was about to hit “send” on an email to Nick about this, I realized something. “Envelope link”….”envelope...”….AHA!

My visual memory kicked in. When you read a blog on blogspot.com, like this one, at the bottom of every post, you see:

Notice the little icon of an envelope? When you point to it with your mouse, it says:

This must be the "envelope link"!!

THAT makes sense. (However, it only makes sense when reading the blog on the blog…as opposed to reading it as an email.)

(Let's see how Nick responds to my email to him about this...if at all!)

Generalizations and Individual Destiny: Geeking Out on Choosing Nerdiness

2015-05-30T18:26:00.003-05:00

The ability to recognize opportunities and move in new - and sometimes unexpected - directions will benefit you no matter your interests or aspirations. A liberal arts education is designed to equip students for just such flexibility and imagination. --Drew Gilpin Faust, American Historian

Last night, I was hanging out at my favorite local watering hole, and I met my friend Matt, who introduced me to his friend, Jill, a beautiful, vibrant woman who happens to date one of the watering hole's employees. The three of us got into an elaborate and funny conversation about the differences between "nerd" and "geek."

My own view is shaped by my having come of age in the 1970s, when nerd meant something very specific, and it wasn't a compliment. I was constantly called a nerd as a kid, I guess because I liked school and got good grades or maybe because I kind of looked/look like a nerd!

The word "geek" didn't even really appear in my experience until the 1980s and always seemed to have more of a connotation of a person having a particular idiosyncratic interest that goes way beyond what's typical.

In any case, it seems that comparing "geek" and "nerd" is something a lot of people feel compelled to do, as you'll find out if you google "geek vs. nerd." One fun comparison is in this not-official-but-parodic Epic Rap Battle of History starring Rhett and Link of Good Magical Morning:

The three of us went back and forth and all around, eventually lapsing into a kind of punchy silliness in which each of us tried to use "nerd" or "geek" in some new way that illustrated the different ways they can be used. Jill made perhaps the best point of the discussion, which is that the definitions of these terms are quite fluid and you don't really know what someone means by their use of one or the other unless you look at the context and sometimes even then you have to ask for some elaboration. We three agreed that equivocation about the meaning of "nerd" and "geek" was the better part of wisdom.

But that's not what I want to write about today. As the nerd vs. geek discussion wound down, we began discussing the particularly nerdy (or geeky) quality in some people that they are really interested in some particular area of study, often not very practical. Jill expressed a somewhat negative view of people who study, for example, sociology in college, as if that might prepare them for some sort of practical job afterwards. I pressed her on this a bit, because it seemed to me that she was saying that it's a mistake for people to study a discipline like that in college--that college should have some relationship to getting a decent job afterwards. "You know how many people with B.A.'s in the liberal arts are working in places like this as waiters and waitresses?"

As people who know me can attest, I often find myself defending a point of view that goes against what is taken to be "conventional wisdom." This notion that going to college and majoring in the liberal arts is impractical and in fact somewhat idiotic given the realities of the current economic climate is one of those conventionally accepted ideas that I consider to be worthy of ongoing critique.

It turns out that Jill is a professor of social work, which might explain why sociology was her particular choice of an impractical college major. Whereas sociology at the undergraduate level is full of grand theories that don't have much particular application to the actual concerns of actual people in actual situations (or so Jill's sense of it goes), social work is a real profession, and those who study social work are initiated into a whole set of practices, useful theoretical frameworks, and standards that ensure that it connects directly to the real world.

I myself majored in history in college, and I think I've done quite fine by myself (thank you very much). Yet getting a job in 1983 when I graduated was no cake-walk, for sure. (Like many of my liberal-arts-educated friends, I went to law school, which was supposed to ensure that I would get a great job, make a lot of money, and be eternally happy. It didn't quite work out that way, but that's a story for another time.) Now I work as a professor in the field of education, which, like social work, has a similar kind of existential connection to the real world that keeps it from being the province primarily of academic nerds. (This is not to say there aren't education nerds, but they are a lot more rare than, say, sociology nerds. People don't tend to go into education out of a purely theoretical interest. If the standard response that an education major got when she revealed her choice of major at a cocktail party was "What are you going to do with that?," many of us education professors--especially those of us with a primarily theoretical interest--would be out of a job.) So I get what Jill was trying to say about the difference between majoring in something like sociology--with little practical application--and social work--which is nothing if not practical.

But I'm a nerd, and I get a particular nerdy kick out of being particularly contrarian about what I see as too-likely-to-be-accepted-without-question conventional wisdoms like "it's not smart to go to college and major in something like sociology and expect to find a job afterwards."

Without necessarily being aware that she was playing a role in a more common morality play, Jill hit all the right notes in the ensuing conversation. She even started getting emphatic about her main point when I began pushing back.

You always know someone is getting emphatic about something when they start using this "illustrator" gesture:

This gesture is less threatening than a "tomahawk chop" through the air, but it is used to "indicate decisiveness, chopping with each point." When someone starts emphasizing their point with this gesture, I'm always tempted to mimic them, to show them the effect of their gesture. Sometimes, it gets people to realize that their gesture may indicate that they're passionate about what they're saying, but the gesture does little to convince someone else.

Jill's point was that going to college and majoring in the liberal arts is not only impractical but even idiotic. "Everyone [hand chop] knows that it's nearly impossible [hand chop] to get a job [hand chop] out of college with a liberal [hand chop] arts {hand chop] major [hand chop]."

"But not everyone knows that!," I interjected. "And it's not even true! Lots of people get good jobs after going to a place like the University of Chicago with a liberal arts major!"

"But that's not the point," she chopped. "The world has changed! It's no longer the case that having a liberal arts degree identifies someone as an elite person with enormous potential in a job!"

"But it's true for some people!"

"But it's not true for most!"

"But that doesn't mean people shouldn't do it!"

"They shouldn't do it if they expect to get a job!"

At this point, we paused. She was clearly frustrated that I wouldn't admit a simple empirical point about the changing value of a liberal arts degree. I was frustrated that she seemed to believe that her "empirical point" was more important than the circumstances of an individual person's life choices.

As we briefly debriefed what had just happened, I realized that she was expressing a more-or-less typical social worker position that tries to help people make good choices by clewing them into the larger context of those choices, whereas I was expressing a philosophical, existentialist position that each individual's choices are unique, with specific unique circumstances that are far more important in determining outcomes than empirical generalizations. As Jill put it, we were "having different conversations," which is why we weren't coming to agreement but just clinging more strongly to our positions.

So what to make of all this?

First, let's look at the claim that a liberal arts degree isn't worth what it used to be. Turns out that this claim, while widely held, is harder to prove than it might seem.

How widely held? In 2012, Gallup surveyed parents of pre-collegiate students and found that more parents believed that majoring in a vocational/professional/technical degree was likely to result in their children getting a good job than those who believed a liberal arts degree would, and in fact, that more parents thought not going to college at all would result in a good job than parents who thought going to college and majoring in the liberal arts would:

(That study also showed that more parents identify getting a good job as the most important reason to go to college than becoming a well-rounded person.)

Conservative pundits and politicians seem particularly likely these days to criticize the liberal arts. Part of the reason for this seems to be an underlying distrust of the the focus of some liberal arts subject-matter on examining power relations and the history of oppression of certain groups, such as gender studies does with regard to women. The humanities seem to have a particularly bad rap in terms of how people think of their value as a college major. One "study" (more like an opinion piece with a right-wing bias) claims that the following majors are "useless" and "do jack sh** for you in the real world": art history, philosophy, American studies, music therapy, communications, dance, English literature, Latin, Film, and religion. But criticisms of the liberal arts aren't confined to conservatives; even Robert Reich, Democrat and former Secretary of Labor, believes more students should choose technical degrees rather than liberal arts.

A Pew study released in early 2014 found that graduates who had majored in the liberal arts, social science, or education were more likely than those who had majored in science and engineering to express regret about their choice of major (33% to 24%). The former group is also much more likely to say that they are overqualified for their current job (42% to 28%). Graduates who majored in science, engineering, or business are also more likely to believe that their college major is closely related to their current job.

Interesting, Millennials are more likely than Baby Boomers to express some regret about their choices in college, including their choice of major. This gives some tangential support to the notion that things are changing in terms of whether majoring in the liberal arts is something people come to regret later. However, it could also be the case that Baby Boomers have had a longer time since college to come to terms with their choices or find some way to make those choices work for them.

Further evidence of a change in the value of the liberal arts comes from educators and administrators who work in higher education. David Maxwell, outgoing president of Drake University, writes that "Thirty years ago, it was fairly risky for an academic at a liberal arts college to talk among colleagues about the 'relevance' of liberal education to the real world, especially to preparing students for employment." But that has changed; everyone in higher education now recognizes that dealing honestly and up front with issues of relevance and job prospects is necessary to make the case that parents and students should invest time and money in a college degree of any type.

What about employers' perceptions? Certainly they want to hire people with the technical skills they need for particular jobs. And according to some employers and economists, there is a shortage of skills in many technical fields, whereas there seems to be a surplus of those with liberal arts majors.

According to one study, only 2% of employers are seeking to hire graduates in the liberal arts, whereas 27% want engineering and computer science graduates, and 18% want business majors.

However, the number one "job skill" that employers want in their new hires is a strong work ethic. They also want adaptability. As some researchers have written, "The modern workplace demands adaptability, broad-mindedness and creativity -- competencies that are well developed in programs based on a liberal or general education model." Critical thinking, problem-solving, and communication skills are developed by rigorous participation in disciplines across the liberal arts.

But what of the bottom line? Does majoring in the liberal arts hurt the prospects of college students in terms of salary?

Well, yes. Recent college graduates with liberal arts degrees tend to make less money than those who majored in professional or preprofessional fields, or in the sciences, math, or engineering. One study concluded that the college majors with the lowest overall financial return on investment (ROI) are, beginning with the lowest: Communications, psychology, nutrition, hospitality/tourism, religious studies/theology, education, fine arts, and sociology. (Only some of these are what is traditionally thought of as "liberal arts.) This echoes what career advisor Penelope Trunk says, that 85% of college students are wasting their money. (Trunk doesn't specifically criticize the liberal arts, saying that what really matters is the quality of the school rather than the major. More on this, below.)

Liberal arts majors do tend to make up this ground over time, earning more during their peak earning years (age 56-60) than the professional or pre-professional majors. However, this advantage of the liberal arts disappears when those who have gone on to get advanced degrees are taken out of consideration. What's more, those who majored in science, math, or engineering end up making considerably more ($20 - $30K per year) than those who majored in the liberal arts. (See the report details here.)

So majoring in the liberal arts is likely to result in lower earnings overall during a career than majoring in science, math, or engineering. The unemployment rate among recent liberal arts graduates is also slightly higher than it is for science majors. Does this mean hand-chopping Jill was right?

Certainly there are financial premiums for majoring in science, math, or engineering (the so-called STEM fields). But there's no evidence that majoring in a professional or pre-professional field (like social work or education) is better than majoring in the liberal arts, at least not financially, and certainly not over the long haul.

Some have argued that the advantage of the STEM fields isn't so much the particular subject matter that is studied, but the ways that this subject matter is taught, in a practical and applied manner. As Boston's Northeastern University President Joseph E. Aoun recently writes, "liberal arts classes are often framed by the traditions of the essay and exam paper." This makes them more likely to stress abstract concepts.

"This boundary between the abstract and the real may largely account for the conceit that a liberal arts education doesn’t equate to a tangible outcome, or a tangible paycheck. However, liberal arts programs can counter this misperception by reproducing the lessons from engineering laboratories or business school co-op programs and adding an experiential component. By practicing the experiential liberal arts, they would better prepare their students to engage in the world."

Aoun, whose university has pioneered a cooperative approach to undergraduate education involving partnerships with businesses and nonprofit organizations, urges liberal arts programs to incorporate applied experiences such as internships and community service programs. The tendency to draw sharp contrasts between "applied" work such as that in the sciences and more theoretical work such as that in the liberal arts is, Aoun suggestions, a false dichotomy.

"Every scientist needs to ponder the context of her work and communicate its meaning; every liberal arts student should wrangle with the revelations of big data. Both applied disciplines and the liberal arts have much to share between them. By bleeding a little into each other, these two approaches to higher education would give every graduate a powerful, marketable education for today’s economy.

"So let’s move past the false dichotomy that characterizes the current debate over the liberal arts and applied disciplines. Better to draw lessons from both, and agree that the most valuable education is one that works."

Another less dichotomous way of thinking is for liberal arts majors to take advantage of the flexibility that many of their programs offer for taking electives.

“In the current economy, majoring in liberal arts won't yield good job prospects, so you have to pair a liberal arts degree with business [or marketing, or operations] courses in order to become a more appealing candidate,” said Dan Schawbel, founder of Millennial Branding.

Schawbel also found that for some employers, a candidate with no college degree--but real world experience--is more attractive than a typical liberal arts graduate who hasn't really done anything practical. What really matters isn't so much the degree as positive attitude, communication skills, and an ability to work well on a team, especially one with diverse participants.

However, the combination of the liberal arts with more practical and applied subjects--especially when coursework is supplemented by real-world experiences--may be the best of both worlds. The liberal arts have value for helping people across many fields to ask good questions and think through difficult problems--skills that potentially have enormous payoff. Some colleges are experimenting with hybrid courses and majors that aren't easily characterized as "liberal arts" or something else.

So much for the point that Jill was trying to make. She's clearly wrong that majoring in the liberal arts is a poor choice for young people today, or that majoring in professional or pre-professional fields is a better choice. In general, students may do better financially and in terms of getting immediate post-graduate employment if they major in STEM fields, but that's simply not a choice that every person can make.

But everything I've brought into this debate up until this point suffers from the fact that these are generalizations: they capture what is true overall, on average, in general. Do they determine what will happen in any individual's life?

I think the answer to that question is no. Individuals make choices. Sometimes those choices have consequences. Sometimes those consequences can be vaguely predicted from what is true in general. But not always. Maybe not even usually.

This idea that what happens to each of us in life is a result of how our choices fit into the percentages of the larger population (usually determined using samples, sometimes of sufficient size to make identify significant differences) is fundamentally flawed. Yes, in general a recent college graduate is slightly more likely to find a job immediately after graduation if he or she majored in a STEM field. But the difference is relatively minor and more field-specific than determined by the broad categories of STEM vs. liberal arts. A 2013 report found the unemployment rate among recent college graduates was lowest in nursing (4.8%) and elementary education (5.0%), followed by physical education/recreation (5.2%) and then chemistry (5.8%) and physics (5.9%). Having a professional major, then, is more likely to get someone a job immediately following graduation--more likely even than majoring in pure science fields. But the highest unemployment rate among recent graduates is in the field of information sciences (14.7%), followed by architecture (12.8%), neither of which is considered "liberal arts." Indeed, one of these is a STEM field, and the other is a professional field. So the generalizations at the level of "STEM" and "liberal arts" don't even hold true once we get more specific and look at majors in specific subjects.

This illustrates a general point about generalizations: while they may hold true "in general," they begin to break down as soon as more specific categorizations enter in. (These things also change over time, and not always in one direction. Liberal arts graduates, for example, seem to fare better during times of economic growth.)

So, yes, majoring in sociology carries a higher risk of unemployment immediately following graduation from college (9.9%) than does majoring in social work (8.2%). (This ignores the fact that one of the most likely career choices of sociology majors is social work.) But what does this mean for the individual?

Let's get real here. If 100 people who majored in sociology are looking for a job, 9.9% of them might fail to find one. If 100 people who majored in social work are looking for a job, 8.2% of them might fail to find one. But does this mean than any given person is only 98.1% as likely

(((100-9.9)/(100-8.2))*100%) or (90.1/91.8)*100%

to find a job immediately after college if they major in sociology vs. social work? And how significant is that 1.9% difference, really?

Here's the thing: the categories "sociology major" and "social work major" are very crude characterizations. For one thing, they ignore the influence of gender, race, GPA, specific courses taken, the quality of recommendations, who the student (or his family) knows, and the specific school that they graduate from! Could it be that THESE categorizations, or qualities, are more important than college major in determining who gets a job right out of college?

The specific school matters quite a lot, which supports Penelope Trunk's advice to maybe skip college unless you get into a top school. 96% of graduates from the University of Chicago, for example, are employed or in graduate school within 6 months of graduation. While students' specific major might matter, simply graduating from the University of Chicago gives someone a huge leg up over graduating from a less elite school such as

I believe that we have a tendency in our culture to take data as determinative of what will happen. But data isn't reality! It is simply a numerical or categorical representation of the reality that is encompassed by our measures or categories.

Hunter Rawlings III, president of the Association of American Universities, makes a similar point, using the example of James Madison, one of the most important contributors to the US Constitution.

Madison, Rawlings reminds us, returned home after spending his undergraduate years (and one graduate year) at Princeton, without a job and with few prospects. His studies of the Classics did little to given him the specific skills necessary for a trade or occupation. He was unemployed for two years, and would have shown up in data as having made a bad choice of college major. However, when the American Revolution broke out, Madison was poised to become a great statesman and leader. The data would have characterized him very differently in 1809, when he became the fourth President of the United States.

The liberal arts have the capacity to expand a students' consciousness of sometimes hidden realities such as the importance of power in human relationships, the aesthetic qualities of seemingly technical situations, intuitions into the perennial spiritual questions that all humans face, and the ways that adversity can generate a range of human responses. No one knows when these capacities might be helpful to a person. Perhaps those with a background in the liberal arts are more adaptable or flexible in the face of enormous social change. The liberal arts train students to thrive in subjectivity and ambiguity, a necessary skill in the tech world where few things are black and white.

But again, these general truths about the value of the liberal arts don't matter nearly as much--indeed, they matter little at all in comparison--as the specific ways that educational experiences affect the outlook, thinking, and habits of a particular person. Each of us is unique. The consequences of the choices each of us make will be unique. What matters to each of us is unique.

Jessica Kleiman gives what I consider pretty good advice:

"Do what you love, study what interests you, get good internships, connect with as many people as possible who might help you land a job, be willing to work hard and be resourceful–and you’ll be fine, whether or not you know how to build an app or program a computer."

Generalizations ignore particularities. But these particularities are what makes each of our lives what they are. We are not a statistical artifact. Our individual lives will always matter more than generalizations.

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. - Steve Jobs, American entrepreneur