Thanks to an excellent speech by Dan Fallon (a former colleague of mine, now at Carnegie Corporation), I understand education policy much better. Dan shows that in the 1960s, experts and policymakers were much influenced by James Coleman’s massive studies, which were later confimed by Chrisopher Jencks. Using the data they had, these scholars found that you could predict academic success very accurately by looking only at the home and the neighborhood from which a kid came. In other words, schools didn’t matter; society did. Coleman in particular expressed caveats about this finding, but it was the simple summary of his work.

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Almost a month ago, I was at Wingspread, the retreat center near Racine, WI, to attend a meeting on national and community service programs. This was my second visit to Wingspread. The first was in 1988. Then I was one of two token college students at a meeting otherwise filled with foundation executives and college administrators, including the great Father Ted Hesburgh, President of Notre Dame. The subject was … community and national service programs. The discussions of those days led more or less directly to George Bush’s Points of Light Foundation and then Americorps under Bill Clinton. (I contributed nothing to that history, but I observed a piece of it.)

Two meetings on the same subject, 15 years apart. Since that first memorable experience at a non-partisan, non-profit, professional conference, I have attended similar gatherings on campaign-finance reform, public journalism, civic renewal, digital media policy, Internet research, civic education, service-learning, philanthropy and civil society, economic development and civil society, deliberative democracy, engaged universities, youth digital media work, values in higher education, social capital in Latin America, and many other subjects. There’s a whole culture of these events: shared taxi rides from the airport; tables arranged around hollow squares; introductory sessions where you go around the room and everyone says where they’re from; “break-out sessions” with “flip charts” and “reporting back” to the full group. The conversations tend to drift, especially once there’s a long list of people waiting to speak. Speakers refer politely to previous comments (“Building on what John said, …”). There are complaints, often highly justified, about the people not represented “in the room”–usually racial minorities, but also youth and (in the circles I travel) conservatives. Participants quickly begin to speak as “we” and to imply a hostile outside world, even though they are often not clear about what goals and values they share. There’s always a point when everyone starts talking about “message” (i.e., the need to communicate some simple idea to the broad public).

In short, there are many frustrations. Yet I can’t think of any better models, and civil society would be much weaker without these events. Thus I fully expect to be back at Wingspread in 2018, talking about … community and national service.

Justice Scalia’s dissent in the recent landmark campaign finance case is written with characteristic brio and affords an opportunity to consider the deepest issues. Some of Scalia’s points are rebuttals to arguments made during Congressional debate that I would not myself defend. For example, Members of Congress had claimed that there was too much overall spending on politics, and that “attack ads” were too negative. I agree with Scalia that the total quantity of spending is not too high, and that attacks on incumbents are desirable. But there is still a very good reason for campaign-finance reform: namely, to curb the disproportionate influence of organized interests. Against this position, Scalia makes five main points:

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