Visceral combination of hatred, guilt and fear of blacks. They would gravitate to Martians before people of color. “Practical” fears are a rationale.
The disquietude at the “other” is baked in. Start from that premise.
"The disquietude at the “other” is baked in. Start from that premise."
And then move on to how that baked in disquietude is exacerbated, misdirected, and weaponized.
How racism is manufactured to misidentify the actual source of existential threats, misdirect rational fears away from that source, and misdirect justifiable anger away from its proper target.
Target the exploited rather than the exploiters
The entire right wing apparatus, including the Republican dominated courts, employed to perpetrate racial injustice in order to
perpetuate economic injustice.
Judges who bent German law to serve the Nazi regime were prosecuted at the Nuremberg trials, in order to emphasize the importance of an independent judiciary.
I really like how you extended my comment. But tonight the Like button died on the vine to prevent me affirming it.
Yes, I so agree. There is an impulse taken to the farthest reach in America to compete, to hustle, to get the edge on others, to exploit…It applies to perhaps 1% of the population but they do enormous damage.
And the result of how they manipulate is that it’s baked in more. Plus ça change, plus c’est le même chose.
Your comments are densely packed and wide ranging. It is tempting to follow many threads, but I just pick a few.
I think the bird brain I was looking for might be magpie (nest) and that crow's nest is a lookout on a ship.
I think American Hustle is a movie.
And yes, it is possible that certain human traits/impulses are taken to such an extent in some countries that they are seen as national characteristics. Eh.
I was climbing a mountain in Japan in the pouring rain on a not well groomed trail which was turning into waterfalls and so it was hard to see the rocks and get a sure footing. I was fine going up but was worried about going down. My companions were three young Japanese. We stopped at a hut near the summit, and I explained that I was going to start down because I wanted to go slowly. They were horrified that I would go alone. I think I put them in a bad position because I was old and they wanted to take care of me and we were a team. 'Oh we can all go to the summit and go down slowly. Oh we will go down with you now. Please let us keep our team.' Very 'Japanese'. I had to be very firm and friendly to get it my way. American individualism and all that. The sun came out just as we got to the bottom. A good time for all.
But were you replying to what I said about pressures here on parents to 'fix' their odd children? Individualism is idolized, but conformity is expected. Choses de la vie.
Actually no, I wasn’t thinking of that comment of yours. I had too many other strands to follow.
But to give it a moment now. American (and to not quite such an extent, Canadian) education is fucked at the top and fucked at the bottom. How kids emerge is mostly dependent on their parents’ sanity. Of course it also depends on the luck of the draw vis-a-vis who teaches them.
At the top, in the elite prep schools and the elite pre-k and k institutions (!), there is obviously a buffet of excellent educational opportunities, probably as great as anywhere in the world. But along with that, there is pressure, pressure and more pressure. This serves to do one thing peerlessly - rob children of their childhood. That, in my not so humble opinion, is a crime against humanity. It enrages me. Seriously. Read the book “Excellent Sheep”. I forget the author, but it is the most compelling and poignant of all looks into this subject. Of course the Asian countries are insane as well at the top.
An anecdote. There is a “prestigious” school in Vancouver whose name I will not mention. At the peak of my school’s (Madrona) performance, the Head of Admissions for School X visited me to float the idea of her Grade 9 daughter leaving that school and coming to Madrona. Think of that slowly. The person most responsible for attracting students to School X wanted to remove her own daughter from said school. It was June. We set up an appointment, and another and another. The first two times the girl cancelled because of exams. Not the exams themselves of course, but things like optional review sessions. When we finally met, I saw a dull washed out girl with circles around her eyes - a wraith of what a bubbly 13 year old should be. I can’t remember what we talked about exactly - no doubt I explained the vast chasm between Madrona and her school. But I do remember this. She said at one point, “They tell us all the time that marks don’t matter. Just do your best and [sarcastically] have fun. Then we have an assembly where they bring the students with an average of 90%+ up on stage. All the rest have to clap for them”. This, my good friend Lin, is child abuse.
I knew she wouldn’t have the spark/energy to come to us and she didn’t.
Two more things. I had my wits about me for once at my first meeting with the mom. About a month before I had interviewed the school nurse for Schools X and Y (she was inquiring about admission for her kid and did send him eventually). During the course of a wide-ranging conversation, she told me that at Schools X and Y (both all-girls, another imbecilic idea), the rate of “acute eating disorders for pubescent girls” was around 50%, partly because the girls policed themselves in sticking to not eating. In fact at the time, several students had forced someone “caught eating” into a bathroom stall and made her undress to her waist. Then they took a picture which they threatened to publish if she didn’t “come around”. Mercifully, the school had found out and was spending 50% of its time dealing with the matter and 50% covering it up. Jesus.
Anyway this was going off in my mind like a revolving red flashing light when I interviewed the Head of Admissions a month or two later. So I said to her at one point, “This is all probably totally ridiculous and absurd, but I heard that your school had an eating disorder rate of around 50%. I’m sure it’s not so, but I’m interested in you refuting it.” She paused for a long moment, looked away from me, and said slowly, “No, that’s probably accurate”. I bit my tongue from saying, “And you choose to work there? As Head of Admissions?” But I’m polite.
Second thing. Like other schools of their ilk, they cheated on BC’s standardized testing at Grades 4 and 7. They advised parents of certain children who wouldn’t perform well to stay home on those days. [For their own welfare of course]. Because doing phenomenally as a school on the Standardized tes, got you ranked somewhere in the Top 5 by the fucking Fraser Institute which kept track, noblesse oblige, I’m sure. Then you could advertise on your website that of 1000 schools in BC we finished 3rd. Then more kids came.
I don’t know if they cheated on the marking of said tests. I hope not because that was done by the teachers. And I knew a number of them who were golden.
And they used to take admissions bribes, although they’ve at least publicly renounced that practise. The very parent who started the process that brought me crashing down told me that her daughter had been refused admission in K. The refusal came when she was in Europe. So she emailed the school that she was going to contribute $25 000 to the school’s growth fund. The next day, her daughter was admitted. Some other child didn’t get in because of that action (perhaps to her benefit :(. The mom *bragged* about this.
Ah well. The schools are fucked at the bottom as well. A whole different reason.
Parents are either saviors or enablers or, in today’s times, liberty seeking idiots.
I do not know where to start. So will resort to origin stories. My mother's mother worked at the Eagle Pencil Factory and graduated from high school through a night school program. My mother was able to go to school, while working outside school hours; she graduated from high school at 16, was admitted to the top public womens college in NYC, studied while working full time, but was prevented from continuing once her family realized she wasn't just studying medical stenography at night. I worked a bit through high school and was able to complete college debt free through a state scholarship and work study program which no longer exists.
We lived in Brooklyn Heights when my son was born. It was an epicenter of privilege and preschool hysteria. I only sent him to preschool at 3 because there were no children left in the playground. I was a room mother and later hired as an aid working half days in classrooms and half in administration. Physically and ideologically at the fringe of extreme privilege, run by 'returned Peace Corps' volunteers, and serving a diverse population, even without cache it was not immune to the craziness you describe.
I had grown up during the baby boom, in the courtyard of a European model apartment building. Copied from the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City.
It was kid world. I was going in and out on my own by age 3 1/2. My son had no comparable experience. The closest was at the preschool, the after school program brought kids age 3-5 together, mostly to play on the roof playground or in the largest classroom for a few hours each day. There were no adult directed activities - just kid sorting it out under minimal supervision. As you say, play is essential.
We moved to DC when my son was 5. He went to DC public schools. But in Hebrew School we intersected with private school families.
All to say, from my experience, public school does not inevitably condemn you to a bad education, nor does private school guarantee a good one. And as you say, children are at the mercy of their parents, for better or worse.
Government has an investment in some standardized base line for educating the next generation and for mitigating undeserved disadvantages and unearned privileges. But that has been willfully obscured.
Which leads me back to something you wrote earlier. You listed your top three worst politicians. I was surprised not to see Ronald Reagan. 'by merit rais'd to that bad eminence.' (A favorite phrase about Satan, from John Milton.) Reagan tops my list, even above Trump. (Although GW Bush comes close.) The steady drip of Reagan's depredations set the stage for Trump's flash turn. Trump is Reagan writ large and vulgar. Tragedy repeated as farce. (As Marx, says Hegel says somewhere.)
Reagan started his destruction of public education as governor of California. His schemes spread across the nation. I watched it one summer from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Friends in California told of cuts from preK to uni. Then we would hear from friends in NY. I always thought the impetus was 'educated the dirty brats and next thing you know you get the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti war movement, and the womens movement. Next thing homosexuals will want rights. We'll have none of THAT.' My conspiracy theory.
As president Reagan's small government scheme shunted responsibility for essential and emergency services to the states. Suddenly with slashed budgets, public schools had to provide a full range of social services. My son's elementary school Parent Organization purchased a washer and dryer. The school kept on hand a stock of clean clothing.
I have to run now (literally), so will be ungratefully brief. Sounds like you shouldn’t have moved to DC. Your son was in a place of privilege and opportunity to grow into his true self. But life has a nasty habit of inserting itself.
American education, so far as I can tell, was pretty open to the openness of the Sixties. God I loved that decade and a half. Though I have not studied it, I have read some about the golden age of education in California. Some of it remains, but most of it has been hacked to pieces.
I squarely blame America for the dry rot of standardized testing. Although the Uk is not far behind. Standardized testing was the hand grenade thrown into education by the penny pinching political class of the day. It changed everything in education - literally every single day, every single teacher. Well, that latter is a bit hyperbolic. There has always been the resistance. If I was of of the “exploding head” type (looking at you, Lin :), testing would accomplish the trick. I assume you know about Finland and education. It is the mecca, that faraway place where common sense has prevailed and crushed the mythology of Testing.
Reagan didn’t occur to me. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. He was the Teflon Don who smiled warmly as he stabbed you in the back. The wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. And he had Thatcher to embolden him and vice versa. You can be shrewd and still a dolt. That he was. He was the man with a closed mind and all the wrong things in it. I spat mentally when I heard Obama praise him. He started the ski ride down the slope where Trump waited at the bottom.
Yes indeed I missed him. Thank you for the reminder.
As for R-U:
I am a betting man (or was, at least), so I tried to make sense of the situation as it stands now by imposing some odds. Very slapdash. And, by the way, have you noticed, like everything else in this freaking century this situation is moving at warp speed. That’s one theme of the book I am trying to write (4/5 of the way in and now feel an embarrassing diffidence at my utter lack of credentials). So have stopped.
Anyway - Odds that:
Kyiv will not fall to Russia: 5:1
Other countries are ensnared in actual fighting: 30:1
Putin will be toppled: 200:1
Putin will commit suicide: 100:1
Zelensky will survive: 1:2
Russia will carpet bomb a neighborhood, or commit some such atrocity: 75:1
Russia will use tactical nuclear weapons: 100:1
The world will be engulfed in nuclear destruction: 1000:1
Fox News will never recover their power and sway (restricted to Hannity, Carlso, Ingraham et al): 4:1
I think those dudes better get off the Russia train fast.
Hopefully something to chew on. And nothing to hard to swallow.
Speaking of which. So your reference to a somethingK race wasn't arbitrary. You run. I apologize for the snarky comment. I cycle (2 Centuries last Summer.) Sometimes I have to up my desultory game or be outpaced by a runner.
"Sounds like you shouldn’t have moved to DC. Your son was in a place of privilege and opportunity to grow into his true self."
Its complicated.
1. Housing
We lived in a very wealthy neighborhood - in a 21 foot x 21 foot tenement rathole, but a rent stabilized rathole. Which we could just afford. It was not going to be sustainable. You do not want a tutorial on NYC real estate. Unless you do.
2. Schools
Schooling this child was always going to be complicated. Odd IQ. Overall way high enough to get him into St. Anns (links included for your professional interest)
but by an odd route - a couple of categories somewhat above average and the rest literally off the charts. They had him tested again by the Chapin School tester, who replicated the results without knowing what the first set was.
Self learner, entirely disinterested in school. Until 10 years after dropping out of college and then working in IT, was tapped for management, got accepted in an elite/experimental program at Harvard, and while working full time, and with over half the class of 40 flunking/dropping out, graduated cum laude with a bachelors and masters. No one saw that coming. On the other hand, why not? We named him Jacob because Jacob was stubborn, wily, wrestled with angels. Yup all that.
3. Career move
My husband, an academic, was made an offer he really did not want to refuse. I was dragging my heels. Our apartment was burgled, everything we owned was on the floor, the only thing they took was Jacob's penny bank - junkie missed my cameras, whew, - the police were teaching Jacob how to dust for fingerprints, the university phoned, I said 'tonight is your best window, make him your best offer', they did. It was actually a good move for all of us. Jacob found some really good friends.
OK. Whew.
You are writing a book. 4/5 done and blocked by concerns about qualifications? What is *that* about?
Obviously you are a thinker and write well when you want to or even off the cuff. So ... Not to pry. But ... yeah.
Sorry so slow. My email malfunctioned and consistently showed no new message from you. I thought I had somehow offended you by my “odds” ramble. So this morning I actually went into the link rather than just seeing no blue dot and leaving. There were your priceless messages.
What a life! What an amazing son! “Off the charts” - a term I am very familiar with. Jacob illustrates a very strong principle I have about kids - leave them alone. The vast majority will find themselves. All the parental twitching and fretting and scheming and nagging amounts to very little in the end. What matters is your love and steadfastness - and good example. Parents forget do quickly they a were willfully children once, pushed by internal forces they had to answer. Man proposes; God disposes.
I tried to run my school exactly as I had parented more than how I had taught. It worked.
In another world I would have been honored to have met Jacob at Madrona - and listened to what he was not saying.
No arguing about your move to Washington. Greater forces got fed up with your slowness and staged an intervention. I hope you feel that it enhanced your life.
Today I feel the heat emanating from Ukraine. As I said yesterday, the world has moved at warp speed this century to the detriment of all. Why should war be any different?
I have watched things I wish I hadn’t, the most sickening being a Russian boy’s last text to his mom, moments before he was shot. This was read at the UN and in the video I saw there was a haunting voiceover by a woman. He was lied to. I watched videos of soldiers captured by Ukraine. They were expecting - get this in the 21st century - to be greeted as liberators, and then watched people throw themselves in front of their trucks.
Madness has descended. Or rather it has crashed upon us suddenly, where before it slipped and slithered and wormed its way into our lives until truth seemed relative.
The sheer madness of this war has reached into the collective consciousness of all but a few. It is the most binary experience of our lives.
There could be inestimable good come from it - except in Ukraine and Russia of course. We are being confronted with the deepest realities of life and death and ultimate danger. The manipulators who have so polluted issues with their faux cleverness have been revealed as the enemy within.
My hope is that madness is followed by this clarity - not blackness. Today my stomach twists in knots.
My “book”? Forever to be labeled in scare quotes. I will tell you of it in another exchange. Be kind. 😟
Anecdote. I dropped out of an Anthro. MA program because I thought I had to be another Claude Levi-Strauss to deserve a PhD. Then I typed some dissertations. One truly brilliant and later recognized as such. Others solid yeoman work. A bar I could have met.
Opinion: Maybe your work needs to percolate for a while. Back burner of your mind, so you can go back with fresh eyes. Although being abashed at your own audacity. Catholic, Canadian. That seems to fit.
Warning: My husband called me The Ruthless Blue Pencil.
Yes. As a parent, I went to sleep each night vowing I'd do better the next day and hoping I'd some day catch up. Yes, and not get in the way. The most difficult thing was/is knowing when to stand firm and when to be yielding. I told Jacob "My yes is my yes and my no is my no, unless something really changes. Badgering and 'sweet puppy dog eyes'' won't work." The payoff - to this day he asks my opinion because he knows I'll be straight with him. Whether or not my opinion is worth anything. He inhabits realms I am almost entirely ignorant of.
Ukraine. Putin is really doing this. Damn. Hopes and Prayers? Javelins and Stingers. How to counter a bully? That is always the question. Ukrainians are giving an answer. Biden et al are admirably playing catch up.
Putin is hedging his bets on the speed of his assault and the drip drip of supporters in the rest of the world making his case. I am seeing the first when I look on my phone (I don't know whether I could watch on a larger screen.) And I am hearing the second on CSpan. From callers across the political spectrum and from what seems to be across other demographics. Leftish Putin apologists, like Max Blumenthal have sway. It's not just the Carlsons.
I think scale also comes into it. I will not rehearse the variations on a theme of militia and military violence, non state and state actors. Or examine racial / caste prejudices. But when have we last seen a pincer action from land, sea, and air where the full military force of one state is being brought against the people of another? For a purely political motive. 40 mile convoys of tanks? Putin is hedging his bets that Ukrainians will give up and turn over Zelenskyy before Russia's supply chain collapses. They are digging in. But ...
Yes. Speed. Would the outcome have been different if Napoleon had had modern weapons? Then as now, though, in some way it depends on the Russian people uniting and standing up to overwhelming odds.
Have you seen Eisenstein's October? One of my favorite lines "Comrades, the Bicycle Battalion is with us."
Obviously I've run out of useful things to say. Or did a paragraph ago.
I have a sense that, all but for a few rational actors, everything is out of control. That includes the sanctions.
We are all riding the Putin train and it’s a downward express. No milk run here. Where it ends still remains the sticking point. Russia is going to be bled dry if this goes on for a long time. In the 21st century I’d describe a “long time” as somewhere around three weeks. There’s already lineups at ATMs there and I’m sure there must be at least some shortages. It’s going to get exponentially worse for them. Perhaps the Revolution will come. This is a long-suffering people.
I also am waiting for the first appearance of malicious actors. People not of Russian origin, not directly affiliated, but holding a deranged sense of justice. Who will get blamed if an American or German power grid goes down? Nobody’s going to believe a Russian denial. Yeah, it can probably be traced back to the source and then we’d know. But that’s just an example. The dogs of war have been loosed. Hmm…think I read that somewhere. 😀
My book is called “Splintered”. It’s on America, not Canada, although there is, of course, cross pollination.
The thesis is that the pace of life has inexorably become more and more sped up since WWII. Institutions have sunk - people are no longer ‘joiners’. Technology has created all sorts of changes. Some of those we have anticipated. But others have arisen that could not have been foreseen. New Thing A creates change. New Thing B creates change. We can plan plan for their effects. But we can’t foresee the combination of New Thing A plus New Thing B.
At the same time we moved squarely out of the fag end of the Industrial Society into the new Information World. Hugely dislocating. Unions have been disappeared. Family ties have suffered. Church relevance is minimal compared to what it was. And we (for good reason) do not trust the biggest institution - government. He’ll, even the Boy Scouts and service clubs like Kiwanis follow this trend.
So now we are atomized. This brings about loneliness and a kind of faux-individualism. And anger.
By the way, this is a later comment, I really appreciated your anecdote from Japan. It is so illustrative of the difference in the two cultures, and touching as well. I thought of it again as I read about the humanity in Poland now - human beings can be so altruistic. Thank you.
Visceral combination of hatred, guilt and fear of blacks. They would gravitate to Martians before people of color. “Practical” fears are a rationale.
The disquietude at the “other” is baked in. Start from that premise.
"The disquietude at the “other” is baked in. Start from that premise."
And then move on to how that baked in disquietude is exacerbated, misdirected, and weaponized.
How racism is manufactured to misidentify the actual source of existential threats, misdirect rational fears away from that source, and misdirect justifiable anger away from its proper target.
Target the exploited rather than the exploiters
The entire right wing apparatus, including the Republican dominated courts, employed to perpetrate racial injustice in order to
perpetuate economic injustice.
Judges who bent German law to serve the Nazi regime were prosecuted at the Nuremberg trials, in order to emphasize the importance of an independent judiciary.
I really like how you extended my comment. But tonight the Like button died on the vine to prevent me affirming it.
Yes, I so agree. There is an impulse taken to the farthest reach in America to compete, to hustle, to get the edge on others, to exploit…It applies to perhaps 1% of the population but they do enormous damage.
And the result of how they manipulate is that it’s baked in more. Plus ça change, plus c’est le même chose.
Your comments are densely packed and wide ranging. It is tempting to follow many threads, but I just pick a few.
I think the bird brain I was looking for might be magpie (nest) and that crow's nest is a lookout on a ship.
I think American Hustle is a movie.
And yes, it is possible that certain human traits/impulses are taken to such an extent in some countries that they are seen as national characteristics. Eh.
I was climbing a mountain in Japan in the pouring rain on a not well groomed trail which was turning into waterfalls and so it was hard to see the rocks and get a sure footing. I was fine going up but was worried about going down. My companions were three young Japanese. We stopped at a hut near the summit, and I explained that I was going to start down because I wanted to go slowly. They were horrified that I would go alone. I think I put them in a bad position because I was old and they wanted to take care of me and we were a team. 'Oh we can all go to the summit and go down slowly. Oh we will go down with you now. Please let us keep our team.' Very 'Japanese'. I had to be very firm and friendly to get it my way. American individualism and all that. The sun came out just as we got to the bottom. A good time for all.
But were you replying to what I said about pressures here on parents to 'fix' their odd children? Individualism is idolized, but conformity is expected. Choses de la vie.
Actually no, I wasn’t thinking of that comment of yours. I had too many other strands to follow.
But to give it a moment now. American (and to not quite such an extent, Canadian) education is fucked at the top and fucked at the bottom. How kids emerge is mostly dependent on their parents’ sanity. Of course it also depends on the luck of the draw vis-a-vis who teaches them.
At the top, in the elite prep schools and the elite pre-k and k institutions (!), there is obviously a buffet of excellent educational opportunities, probably as great as anywhere in the world. But along with that, there is pressure, pressure and more pressure. This serves to do one thing peerlessly - rob children of their childhood. That, in my not so humble opinion, is a crime against humanity. It enrages me. Seriously. Read the book “Excellent Sheep”. I forget the author, but it is the most compelling and poignant of all looks into this subject. Of course the Asian countries are insane as well at the top.
An anecdote. There is a “prestigious” school in Vancouver whose name I will not mention. At the peak of my school’s (Madrona) performance, the Head of Admissions for School X visited me to float the idea of her Grade 9 daughter leaving that school and coming to Madrona. Think of that slowly. The person most responsible for attracting students to School X wanted to remove her own daughter from said school. It was June. We set up an appointment, and another and another. The first two times the girl cancelled because of exams. Not the exams themselves of course, but things like optional review sessions. When we finally met, I saw a dull washed out girl with circles around her eyes - a wraith of what a bubbly 13 year old should be. I can’t remember what we talked about exactly - no doubt I explained the vast chasm between Madrona and her school. But I do remember this. She said at one point, “They tell us all the time that marks don’t matter. Just do your best and [sarcastically] have fun. Then we have an assembly where they bring the students with an average of 90%+ up on stage. All the rest have to clap for them”. This, my good friend Lin, is child abuse.
I knew she wouldn’t have the spark/energy to come to us and she didn’t.
Two more things. I had my wits about me for once at my first meeting with the mom. About a month before I had interviewed the school nurse for Schools X and Y (she was inquiring about admission for her kid and did send him eventually). During the course of a wide-ranging conversation, she told me that at Schools X and Y (both all-girls, another imbecilic idea), the rate of “acute eating disorders for pubescent girls” was around 50%, partly because the girls policed themselves in sticking to not eating. In fact at the time, several students had forced someone “caught eating” into a bathroom stall and made her undress to her waist. Then they took a picture which they threatened to publish if she didn’t “come around”. Mercifully, the school had found out and was spending 50% of its time dealing with the matter and 50% covering it up. Jesus.
Anyway this was going off in my mind like a revolving red flashing light when I interviewed the Head of Admissions a month or two later. So I said to her at one point, “This is all probably totally ridiculous and absurd, but I heard that your school had an eating disorder rate of around 50%. I’m sure it’s not so, but I’m interested in you refuting it.” She paused for a long moment, looked away from me, and said slowly, “No, that’s probably accurate”. I bit my tongue from saying, “And you choose to work there? As Head of Admissions?” But I’m polite.
Second thing. Like other schools of their ilk, they cheated on BC’s standardized testing at Grades 4 and 7. They advised parents of certain children who wouldn’t perform well to stay home on those days. [For their own welfare of course]. Because doing phenomenally as a school on the Standardized tes, got you ranked somewhere in the Top 5 by the fucking Fraser Institute which kept track, noblesse oblige, I’m sure. Then you could advertise on your website that of 1000 schools in BC we finished 3rd. Then more kids came.
I don’t know if they cheated on the marking of said tests. I hope not because that was done by the teachers. And I knew a number of them who were golden.
And they used to take admissions bribes, although they’ve at least publicly renounced that practise. The very parent who started the process that brought me crashing down told me that her daughter had been refused admission in K. The refusal came when she was in Europe. So she emailed the school that she was going to contribute $25 000 to the school’s growth fund. The next day, her daughter was admitted. Some other child didn’t get in because of that action (perhaps to her benefit :(. The mom *bragged* about this.
Ah well. The schools are fucked at the bottom as well. A whole different reason.
Parents are either saviors or enablers or, in today’s times, liberty seeking idiots.
Gotta stop. Hungry.
I do not know where to start. So will resort to origin stories. My mother's mother worked at the Eagle Pencil Factory and graduated from high school through a night school program. My mother was able to go to school, while working outside school hours; she graduated from high school at 16, was admitted to the top public womens college in NYC, studied while working full time, but was prevented from continuing once her family realized she wasn't just studying medical stenography at night. I worked a bit through high school and was able to complete college debt free through a state scholarship and work study program which no longer exists.
We lived in Brooklyn Heights when my son was born. It was an epicenter of privilege and preschool hysteria. I only sent him to preschool at 3 because there were no children left in the playground. I was a room mother and later hired as an aid working half days in classrooms and half in administration. Physically and ideologically at the fringe of extreme privilege, run by 'returned Peace Corps' volunteers, and serving a diverse population, even without cache it was not immune to the craziness you describe.
I had grown up during the baby boom, in the courtyard of a European model apartment building. Copied from the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City.
https://lawty.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/take-a-visit-to-chateau-frontenac/
It was kid world. I was going in and out on my own by age 3 1/2. My son had no comparable experience. The closest was at the preschool, the after school program brought kids age 3-5 together, mostly to play on the roof playground or in the largest classroom for a few hours each day. There were no adult directed activities - just kid sorting it out under minimal supervision. As you say, play is essential.
We moved to DC when my son was 5. He went to DC public schools. But in Hebrew School we intersected with private school families.
All to say, from my experience, public school does not inevitably condemn you to a bad education, nor does private school guarantee a good one. And as you say, children are at the mercy of their parents, for better or worse.
Government has an investment in some standardized base line for educating the next generation and for mitigating undeserved disadvantages and unearned privileges. But that has been willfully obscured.
Which leads me back to something you wrote earlier. You listed your top three worst politicians. I was surprised not to see Ronald Reagan. 'by merit rais'd to that bad eminence.' (A favorite phrase about Satan, from John Milton.) Reagan tops my list, even above Trump. (Although GW Bush comes close.) The steady drip of Reagan's depredations set the stage for Trump's flash turn. Trump is Reagan writ large and vulgar. Tragedy repeated as farce. (As Marx, says Hegel says somewhere.)
Reagan started his destruction of public education as governor of California. His schemes spread across the nation. I watched it one summer from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Friends in California told of cuts from preK to uni. Then we would hear from friends in NY. I always thought the impetus was 'educated the dirty brats and next thing you know you get the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti war movement, and the womens movement. Next thing homosexuals will want rights. We'll have none of THAT.' My conspiracy theory.
As president Reagan's small government scheme shunted responsibility for essential and emergency services to the states. Suddenly with slashed budgets, public schools had to provide a full range of social services. My son's elementary school Parent Organization purchased a washer and dryer. The school kept on hand a stock of clean clothing.
OK a mouthful. And there is so much more.
A great mouthful. Thank you.
I have to run now (literally), so will be ungratefully brief. Sounds like you shouldn’t have moved to DC. Your son was in a place of privilege and opportunity to grow into his true self. But life has a nasty habit of inserting itself.
American education, so far as I can tell, was pretty open to the openness of the Sixties. God I loved that decade and a half. Though I have not studied it, I have read some about the golden age of education in California. Some of it remains, but most of it has been hacked to pieces.
I squarely blame America for the dry rot of standardized testing. Although the Uk is not far behind. Standardized testing was the hand grenade thrown into education by the penny pinching political class of the day. It changed everything in education - literally every single day, every single teacher. Well, that latter is a bit hyperbolic. There has always been the resistance. If I was of of the “exploding head” type (looking at you, Lin :), testing would accomplish the trick. I assume you know about Finland and education. It is the mecca, that faraway place where common sense has prevailed and crushed the mythology of Testing.
Reagan didn’t occur to me. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. He was the Teflon Don who smiled warmly as he stabbed you in the back. The wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. And he had Thatcher to embolden him and vice versa. You can be shrewd and still a dolt. That he was. He was the man with a closed mind and all the wrong things in it. I spat mentally when I heard Obama praise him. He started the ski ride down the slope where Trump waited at the bottom.
Yes indeed I missed him. Thank you for the reminder.
As for R-U:
I am a betting man (or was, at least), so I tried to make sense of the situation as it stands now by imposing some odds. Very slapdash. And, by the way, have you noticed, like everything else in this freaking century this situation is moving at warp speed. That’s one theme of the book I am trying to write (4/5 of the way in and now feel an embarrassing diffidence at my utter lack of credentials). So have stopped.
Anyway - Odds that:
Kyiv will not fall to Russia: 5:1
Other countries are ensnared in actual fighting: 30:1
Putin will be toppled: 200:1
Putin will commit suicide: 100:1
Zelensky will survive: 1:2
Russia will carpet bomb a neighborhood, or commit some such atrocity: 75:1
Russia will use tactical nuclear weapons: 100:1
The world will be engulfed in nuclear destruction: 1000:1
Fox News will never recover their power and sway (restricted to Hannity, Carlso, Ingraham et al): 4:1
I think those dudes better get off the Russia train fast.
"A great mouthful."
Hopefully something to chew on. And nothing to hard to swallow.
Speaking of which. So your reference to a somethingK race wasn't arbitrary. You run. I apologize for the snarky comment. I cycle (2 Centuries last Summer.) Sometimes I have to up my desultory game or be outpaced by a runner.
"Sounds like you shouldn’t have moved to DC. Your son was in a place of privilege and opportunity to grow into his true self."
Its complicated.
1. Housing
We lived in a very wealthy neighborhood - in a 21 foot x 21 foot tenement rathole, but a rent stabilized rathole. Which we could just afford. It was not going to be sustainable. You do not want a tutorial on NYC real estate. Unless you do.
2. Schools
Schooling this child was always going to be complicated. Odd IQ. Overall way high enough to get him into St. Anns (links included for your professional interest)
https://saintannsny.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Ann%27s_School_(Brooklyn)
but by an odd route - a couple of categories somewhat above average and the rest literally off the charts. They had him tested again by the Chapin School tester, who replicated the results without knowing what the first set was.
Self learner, entirely disinterested in school. Until 10 years after dropping out of college and then working in IT, was tapped for management, got accepted in an elite/experimental program at Harvard, and while working full time, and with over half the class of 40 flunking/dropping out, graduated cum laude with a bachelors and masters. No one saw that coming. On the other hand, why not? We named him Jacob because Jacob was stubborn, wily, wrestled with angels. Yup all that.
3. Career move
My husband, an academic, was made an offer he really did not want to refuse. I was dragging my heels. Our apartment was burgled, everything we owned was on the floor, the only thing they took was Jacob's penny bank - junkie missed my cameras, whew, - the police were teaching Jacob how to dust for fingerprints, the university phoned, I said 'tonight is your best window, make him your best offer', they did. It was actually a good move for all of us. Jacob found some really good friends.
OK. Whew.
You are writing a book. 4/5 done and blocked by concerns about qualifications? What is *that* about?
Obviously you are a thinker and write well when you want to or even off the cuff. So ... Not to pry. But ... yeah.
Sorry so slow. My email malfunctioned and consistently showed no new message from you. I thought I had somehow offended you by my “odds” ramble. So this morning I actually went into the link rather than just seeing no blue dot and leaving. There were your priceless messages.
What a life! What an amazing son! “Off the charts” - a term I am very familiar with. Jacob illustrates a very strong principle I have about kids - leave them alone. The vast majority will find themselves. All the parental twitching and fretting and scheming and nagging amounts to very little in the end. What matters is your love and steadfastness - and good example. Parents forget do quickly they a were willfully children once, pushed by internal forces they had to answer. Man proposes; God disposes.
I tried to run my school exactly as I had parented more than how I had taught. It worked.
In another world I would have been honored to have met Jacob at Madrona - and listened to what he was not saying.
No arguing about your move to Washington. Greater forces got fed up with your slowness and staged an intervention. I hope you feel that it enhanced your life.
Today I feel the heat emanating from Ukraine. As I said yesterday, the world has moved at warp speed this century to the detriment of all. Why should war be any different?
I have watched things I wish I hadn’t, the most sickening being a Russian boy’s last text to his mom, moments before he was shot. This was read at the UN and in the video I saw there was a haunting voiceover by a woman. He was lied to. I watched videos of soldiers captured by Ukraine. They were expecting - get this in the 21st century - to be greeted as liberators, and then watched people throw themselves in front of their trucks.
Madness has descended. Or rather it has crashed upon us suddenly, where before it slipped and slithered and wormed its way into our lives until truth seemed relative.
The sheer madness of this war has reached into the collective consciousness of all but a few. It is the most binary experience of our lives.
There could be inestimable good come from it - except in Ukraine and Russia of course. We are being confronted with the deepest realities of life and death and ultimate danger. The manipulators who have so polluted issues with their faux cleverness have been revealed as the enemy within.
My hope is that madness is followed by this clarity - not blackness. Today my stomach twists in knots.
My “book”? Forever to be labeled in scare quotes. I will tell you of it in another exchange. Be kind. 😟
Ha! And I thought I had overstepped.
Anecdote. I dropped out of an Anthro. MA program because I thought I had to be another Claude Levi-Strauss to deserve a PhD. Then I typed some dissertations. One truly brilliant and later recognized as such. Others solid yeoman work. A bar I could have met.
Opinion: Maybe your work needs to percolate for a while. Back burner of your mind, so you can go back with fresh eyes. Although being abashed at your own audacity. Catholic, Canadian. That seems to fit.
Warning: My husband called me The Ruthless Blue Pencil.
Yes. As a parent, I went to sleep each night vowing I'd do better the next day and hoping I'd some day catch up. Yes, and not get in the way. The most difficult thing was/is knowing when to stand firm and when to be yielding. I told Jacob "My yes is my yes and my no is my no, unless something really changes. Badgering and 'sweet puppy dog eyes'' won't work." The payoff - to this day he asks my opinion because he knows I'll be straight with him. Whether or not my opinion is worth anything. He inhabits realms I am almost entirely ignorant of.
Ukraine. Putin is really doing this. Damn. Hopes and Prayers? Javelins and Stingers. How to counter a bully? That is always the question. Ukrainians are giving an answer. Biden et al are admirably playing catch up.
Putin is hedging his bets on the speed of his assault and the drip drip of supporters in the rest of the world making his case. I am seeing the first when I look on my phone (I don't know whether I could watch on a larger screen.) And I am hearing the second on CSpan. From callers across the political spectrum and from what seems to be across other demographics. Leftish Putin apologists, like Max Blumenthal have sway. It's not just the Carlsons.
I think scale also comes into it. I will not rehearse the variations on a theme of militia and military violence, non state and state actors. Or examine racial / caste prejudices. But when have we last seen a pincer action from land, sea, and air where the full military force of one state is being brought against the people of another? For a purely political motive. 40 mile convoys of tanks? Putin is hedging his bets that Ukrainians will give up and turn over Zelenskyy before Russia's supply chain collapses. They are digging in. But ...
Yes. Speed. Would the outcome have been different if Napoleon had had modern weapons? Then as now, though, in some way it depends on the Russian people uniting and standing up to overwhelming odds.
Have you seen Eisenstein's October? One of my favorite lines "Comrades, the Bicycle Battalion is with us."
Obviously I've run out of useful things to say. Or did a paragraph ago.
I am horrified.
I have a sense that, all but for a few rational actors, everything is out of control. That includes the sanctions.
We are all riding the Putin train and it’s a downward express. No milk run here. Where it ends still remains the sticking point. Russia is going to be bled dry if this goes on for a long time. In the 21st century I’d describe a “long time” as somewhere around three weeks. There’s already lineups at ATMs there and I’m sure there must be at least some shortages. It’s going to get exponentially worse for them. Perhaps the Revolution will come. This is a long-suffering people.
I also am waiting for the first appearance of malicious actors. People not of Russian origin, not directly affiliated, but holding a deranged sense of justice. Who will get blamed if an American or German power grid goes down? Nobody’s going to believe a Russian denial. Yeah, it can probably be traced back to the source and then we’d know. But that’s just an example. The dogs of war have been loosed. Hmm…think I read that somewhere. 😀
My book is called “Splintered”. It’s on America, not Canada, although there is, of course, cross pollination.
The thesis is that the pace of life has inexorably become more and more sped up since WWII. Institutions have sunk - people are no longer ‘joiners’. Technology has created all sorts of changes. Some of those we have anticipated. But others have arisen that could not have been foreseen. New Thing A creates change. New Thing B creates change. We can plan plan for their effects. But we can’t foresee the combination of New Thing A plus New Thing B.
At the same time we moved squarely out of the fag end of the Industrial Society into the new Information World. Hugely dislocating. Unions have been disappeared. Family ties have suffered. Church relevance is minimal compared to what it was. And we (for good reason) do not trust the biggest institution - government. He’ll, even the Boy Scouts and service clubs like Kiwanis follow this trend.
So now we are atomized. This brings about loneliness and a kind of faux-individualism. And anger.
So we’re fucked.
End of book. Not a good explanation.
ps
The Peloponnesian War. Very slow.
The odds. Wowza. No idea how that works. Am totally not a betting man.
I am very sad about Zelenskyy's odds. But even if, perhaps especially if, Ukraine survives then he is in danger.
I am glad Fox is more likely to lose its sway than the world is likely to be engulfed in nuclear destruction.
By the way, this is a later comment, I really appreciated your anecdote from Japan. It is so illustrative of the difference in the two cultures, and touching as well. I thought of it again as I read about the humanity in Poland now - human beings can be so altruistic. Thank you.