Monthly Archives: March 2004

the politics of obesity

On Monday, I was with 45 high school kids, talking about the causes of obesity. Then the Centers for Disease Control announced that excessive body weight will soon be the leading cause of death in the US; and the House of Representatives passed legislation to shield fast-food restaurants from being sued for causing obesity. (This is the so-called “Cheeseburger Bill.”)

I have never made a serious study of nutrition, the politics of food, or body-image and gender. But I can report that the minority adolescents in our project mostly think of obesity in psychological terms. They ask: Do we have enough will-power? Do we know enough about nutrition? Do we have appropriate body-image? What are the effects of the entertainment media on our health?

Meanwhile, some research shows that our geographical environment affects our body weight. Connected sidewalks help by encouraging exercise; convenient grocery stores increase the odds that people will cook vegetables; and so on. In our project, we are drawing kids’ attention to these factors instead of the strictly psychological ones. Originally, this was simply because we wanted to teach geography–and you can’t make maps of body-image or TV ads. However, I’m starting to think that we are making a radical move. Our project will locate the cause of weight gain outside of kids’ heads and bodies, in the local community–and it will suggest that adolescents can understand and change where they live. In other words, this approach could be very empowering.

I have the same ambivalent view of the “Cheeseburger Bill” as Calpundit. He says:

On the one hand, I don’t think much of using civil damage suits aimed at a specific industry as a way of changing social policy. Down that road lies madness.

But at the same time, I also don’t think much of Congress exempting specific industries from the civil justice system. That can lead to some madness of its own.

Those in favor of the “Cheeseburger Bill” say that we should be personally responsible for our behavior; eating too much is our own fault, and suing McDonald’s is a cop-out. I disagree in part: a rapid increase in the obesity rate is a social problem with political solutions. However, I agree that lawsuits aren’t the right response. There are much more constructive, positive, participatory responses to obesity. For example, a community can work to make its streets safe and walkable, to identify and publicize existing assets, and to provide new food and exercise options.

In the areas around Hyattsville, MD, there are no full basketball courts. This is a political issue (the authorities don’t want young Black men hanging around, so they don’t build courts); and it may affect adolescents’ body weight. It shows the limits of conservative arguments. You can’t exercise if there are no sidewalks, no basketball courts, and no grassy spaces. If the only place that lets you hang out at 10 pm is McDonalds, then you’re going to eat a lot of fries. Still, that doesn’t mean that lawyers will ever solve the problem by suing McDonalds on behalf of the American people. Communities have the power to take their fate into their own hands.

This is a rambling post, badly in need of reorganization; but let me add a quick summary. There are not just two ways of thinking about obesity: either individuals are responsible for what they eat, or huge corporations are responsible (and deserve to be sued). Instead, we can take responsibility as communities. This third choice is more productive and realistic than either of the others.

social studies classes are highly traditional

Social studies education is a battleground in the Culture Wars, with some critics charging that schools teach subversive and anti-American versions of history, while others accuse mainstream teachers of papering over injustice. Almost never is this debate anchored in any empirical evidence about what actually occurs in typical classrooms. Instead, critics site news stories about radical or reactionary teachers in particular schools, or they quote controversial education professors and assume that average teachers think the same way.

Today, CIRCLE and the Council for Excellence in Government released some actual poll results. When 15-25-year-olds were asked to choose one or two themes that were emphasized the most in middle and high school classes, they answered as follows:

45% — The Constitution or the US system of government and how it works

30% — Great American heroes and the virtues of the American system of government

25% — Wars and military battles

11% — Problems facing the country today

9% — Racism and other forms of injustice in the American system

5% — Other, all of the above, or don?t know

I’m a fairly neutral party in this debate; besides, I don’t think that empirical data can ever settle an argument about what themes should be emphasized in social studies. However, I challenge conservative critics to stop attacking schools for teaching a leftist version of history, because there’s no evidence that this is happening. Leftist critics have more to complain about.

There’s a lot more information, including detailed statistical analysis, here.

rap + written “art” poetry = ?

I’m wondering what would happen if one tried to combine the rhythm of rap with some of the conventions of written poetry. (This is a naive question; there may be very obvious answers and lots of great examples.) As I understand it, rap lines usually contain four strongly accented syllables. There may also be any number of unaccented syllables, but each line takes an equal amount of time to say. That means that lines with many syllables go very quickly; but the four accented beats occur at a regular rate. Rhyme alerts listeners to the end of each line. Rap is sung/spoken against a digital beat, and the combination of that beat, the changing speed of the words, and the regular occurance of strong accents makes for an interesting form of syncopation. Rap doesn’t work especially well on paper, because it’s too hard to tell which syllables should be accented, and there’s no background beat.

In contrast, it’s hard to hear the length of a line in most modern written poetry. Even if rhymes are used, they tend to be subtle (off-rhymes or slant rhymes) and they are often concealed by enjambment. In conventional forms like iambic pentameter, each line has the same number of syllables, but a varying number of accents. In free verse, the number of syllables varies, but the reader still perceives each line as a meaningful unit. Information about line breaks is transmitted best on paper; it may be lost in speech. (Poetry in which line breaks are completely unimportant is simply prose.)

I don’t really listen to rap, but I understand that it’s a vital cultural phenomenon with tremedous energy and potential. I do read some contemporary “art” poetry, and I deeply admire a portion of what I read. I would probably like even more of it if I understood it better and worked harder at it. Written verse is valuable if only because silent, slow, careful reading of distilled language is good for the mind. Besides, “art” poetry connects to a wonderful heritage of writing as old as Sappho. Yet I suspect that as a whole body of work, current written poetry is not really going anywhere.

So could written verse draw inspiration from rap prosody? If rap performers could be persuaded to write some silent verse, they would contribute their energy and experience to the form. The technical trick would be to signal strong accents and line-speed–two aspects of language that ordinary writing does not automatically convey. I wonder if it would be possible to use subtle typographic clues, like slightly larger print for the accented syllables.

exhaustion

I just spent a whole day with 45 high school students, eight college students, and eight colleagues, talking intensively about the causes of obesity in Prince George’s County, MD, and planning a map-making project that will take us all spring. I have overall responsibility for the project, and this first day felt like a constant crisis, starting at 7 am. The tables we ordered didn’t seem to be there; we didn’t have recorders for some of the focus groups; we thought we’d lost a kid; the pizzas didn’t show up; sleet began to fall while the kids were outside learning how to use Global Positioning devices; and on and on. Actually, all the problems were solved and no damage was done. Once we go over the audiotape, videotape, written notes, and the maps that the kids made, I think we’ll find that it was a rich and highly informative day–a window into the lives of these young people. (Or perhaps a better metaphor would be a mirror, to show the kids what they are like as a group.) But for today, I’m too tired to think straight.

youth-led research

Last fall, CIRCLE issued a call for groups of young people (adolescents, or people 20-25 who haven’t attended college) to study youth civic engagement, possibly in partnership with adult mentors. CIRCLE has the funds to support a few such projects. We are looking for genuine, high-quality research that really emerges from young people. We closed the competition some weeks ago and deliberated today about 75 applications.

Meanwhile, a different group of colleagues and I are in the last stages of planning our own youth-led research project–a study of geographical factors in our community that may influence healthy eating and exercise. Next Monday, 35 high school students will come to the University to discuss these issues and help us begin planning a series of mapping exercises that they will conduct. I have been spending a lot of my time working on issues like: how to rent a school bus, how much pizza to order, and where to get tape recorders with mikes.

It’s clear that our work is far from state-of-the-art. We adults have done too much of the planning before the kids arrive on Monday. However, I don’t know whether any of the true youth-led projects generate excellent research. There is presumably a tradeoff between research quality and youth leadership. To get both at once would take time; you would need cadres of young people and an infrastructure for serving them (regular classes, meeting places, community partners, etc.). So I hope that we are at least on the road to doing work like that proposed by the best applicants to CIRCLE.