Monthly Archives: May 2004

making maps

Yesterday, in the late afternoon, I was back on the streets of Hyattsville, MD, mapping the neighborhood by entering data into a Palm Pilot pocket organizer. This week, unlike last, we had a large group of high school students with us, as well as five adults. Even though it was as hot and humid as August, and even though there are no sidewalks on many of the busy roads, we managed to cover some ground and enter a lot of data into our organizers.

We have also collected data on about 50 kids–where they live, what they eat, where they get their food, and how and when they exercise. In addition, we have general Census data on the neighborhood. What we need at this point is a strong research hypothesis about the relationship between urban form and healthy behavior. We could continue collecting street-level data about types of businesses, sidewalk and street safety, and residential housing for years. It has been good to map some areas intensively, because we’ve learned how to collect and manage data (and how to get kids safely from A to B). But we need to focus on some compelling issue or finding; otherwise, we’re going to run out of motivation. Ideally, the kids would come up with this focus. We will certainly consult with them, but we have so little time with them that I’m afraid the adults are going to have to develop the main ideas. As soon as I get some time, I’m going to sift through what we’ve collected and look for patterns.

students and the First Amendment

The First Amendment Schools program would probably surprise many people–especially reporters–who examined it closely. One of its major sponsors is the First Amendment Center, which exists to advocate civil liberties. Its very name implies a commitment to protect and enhance liberties of speech, press, assembly, religion, and petition. Therefore, one might expect that First Amendment Schools would protect civil liberties within their own walls: for instance, by allowing student newspapers to publish without prior review, or by tolerating offensive t-shirts. Participating schools might also promote respect for the First Amendment by teaching students to understand and value a free press, free exercise of religion, and so on.

Indeed, many First Amendment Schools do these things. I don’t think that a school with a very restrictive speech code could participate. However, participating schools do a lot more than grant rights to their own students. They also ask students to learn and practice virtues and obligations of citizenship, such as deliberation, tolerance, and concern for the common good.

I think this is great, because I would like high school graduates to understand the obligations as well as the rights of the press. Journalists do not have to do anything to earn their freedom; they have inalienable rights that students should understand and value. Nevertheless, as consumers and citizens, we can expect reporters to do a great deal.

I personally think that reporters, especially in the broadcast media, are doing a miserable job of supporting our democracy and civil society. We might, for example, expect that a multi-million-dollar industry devoted to collecting important public information might have focused on terrorism before 9-11. There were plenty of public reports that could have alerted them to the importance of this topic. However, as Nightline’s producer, Tom Bettag, said recently:

If there were warnings throughout government about al Qaeda, let the record show that on the three network evening news broadcasts that summer and Nightline, the name ?al Qaeda? wasn?t spoken??not a single time. The record will show that on the week of August 20, three weeks before the attacks, the story most covered on the three network evening news broadcasts was Gary Condit. It got twice as much coverage as the next story (Quoted in PressThink).

In this case, the complaint is a failure to grapple with substance. In other cases, the news media can be charged with ignoring legitimate points of view, with sensationalism, with exploitation, with bias, and with many other sins. I wouldn’t want high school graduates necessarily to share my negative view of the press, but I would hope that they’d become critical readers and viewers. Most of all, I would hope that some of them would respond to the failures of the mainstream media by creating alternatives of their own. In the age of the blog, you don’t need a printing press to become a news producer.

The genius of the First Amendment Schools project is to put the First Amendment in an appropriate context, without compromising individual rights but without forgetting civic obligations.

the September Project

The September Project is a great idea for promoting public deliberation. Libraries across the country will hold public discussions on the third anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. The library systems that have already signed up are shown on this map. Here’s an overall description of the project, written by its organizers:

On September 11, 2004, citizens across the U.S. will come together at their local libraries to discuss ideas that matter to all of us. Through

talks, debates, roundtables, and performances, citizens will share ideas

about democracy, citizenship, and patriotism. What better way to spend

September 11th, recently designated “Patriot Day,” than by participating

collectively, thinking creatively, and becoming a part of the

well-informed voice of the American citizenry?

Public libraries provide all citizens open and free access to information.

Almost all communities in the US have at least one library. There are over

16,000 public libraries in the US, and that’s not including university

libraries, K-12 libraries, and church libraries. In other words, libraries

constitute an impressive national infrastructure. Moreover, 96% of public

libraries have computer technology that can serve to connect events across

the nation, thereby constituting a national and distributed media

infrastructure. In this way, the September Project will foster a national

conversation with, for, and by the people.

The September Project has three goals:

1) To coordinate with all libraries — big and small, urban and rural —

to host free and public events on September 11;

2) To work with all forms of media — mainstream and alternative;

corporate and independent; print, radio, film, and digital — to foster

and sustain public discourse about issues that matter;

3) To foster an annual tradition for citizens around the world to

recognize and give meaning to September 11th.

The aim of The September Project is to create a day of engagement, a day

of community, a day of democracy.

the proximity of evil

I?m still at Wye River, at the end of two long but productive and interesting days discussing education and democracy. It?s a beautiful place. There must be four or five square miles of property, flat farmland surrounded by placid estuaries that drift imperceptibly toward the Chesapeake and buzz with insect life. Long paved avenues, lined by evenly spaced maples, connect the various buildings; in between are pastures with grazing cows, patches of pine woods, and open meadowland. During the break I saw deer, vultures, and schools of small fish. It?s very quiet here, and there?s been little time for following the news. It?s easy to make the evil world seem far away. Yet on the Web I see pictures of a smiling, wholesome, young American woman who has been credibly charged with torture in Iraq, and I reflect that the land that looks so lush and peaceful around me must have been worked by generations of slaves, brutalized by whips, guns, and rape, and I keep thinking that we need to face our own national character squarely. We do have a far better political system and a healthier culture than many countries?, but we also have a terrible tendency to sentimentalize ourselves. We like to think we?re all Jessica Lynch, the spunky survivor. But some of the alleged American torturers look just like her.

Some Americans think that our national record is basically one of sacrifice and service. We lost thousands of young men in two World Wars, saving our allies from tyranny. Thanks to us, there is democracy and prosperity in Japan and Europe (both east and west of the old Iron Curtain). We fought in Korea and Vietnam with good intentions, to say the least. Unfortunately, foreigners are often ungrateful for our aid and advice?perhaps jealous or resentful, or perhaps just so different from us that they can?t appreciate our help. This is what one group of Americans thinks, while another argues that our record is basically blood-soaked and imperialistic. We vaporized Nagasaki to intimidate the Soviets and to gain control over Asia; we created tyrannies in Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, Zaire, Chile, and elsewhere; and we support current dictators for financial gain. Which version of recent history you adopt will deeply shape your view of any contemporary American intervention overseas. My own position would fall somewhere between these two caricatures, but right now I?m very conscious of our faults. Americans were victims on 9/11, but that doesn?t mean that we are a nation of innocents. Democracy and service may be American traditions, but so is brutality. If we’re going to try to improve other people’s countries, we’d better remember our own capacity for evil.

democracy and education

I’m on my way this morning to the Wye River retreat center on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where the 1997 Arab-Israeli agreement was hammered out. I’ll be attending a much lower-profile event: a retreat for the First Amendment Schools project. Schools may apply to join this project if they want to increase student participation in their own governance as a means of civic education. For example, they may develop a school constitution, protect free expression for students, and strengthen student government and student news media. There are grants and other forms of support available for participating schools.

Some people take the line that education for democracy must itself be democratic. This is the theme, for example, of Carl Glickman’s Holding Sacred Ground. John Dewey is the patron philosopher of this movement. Dewey and his followers hold that democracy is not just a system of government; it’s a way of thinking about all aspects of life, from ethics to education to science and art.

My own view is a little different. I think that “democracy” means rule by citizens; it means elections and freedom of speech. It’s an open question whether the best way to educate people for democracy is to organize schools in democratic ways. It doesn’t follow logically that education for democracy requires democratic methods, and the empirical basis for this claim is not very strong. Nevertheless, I admire the First Amendment Schools, because I believe that it’s good for educational institutions to embrace comprehensive and inspirational guiding philosophies. If a school embraces democratic education voluntarily and thoughtfully, it should get good results. However, democratic education is not the only way to make good citizens. I can imagine that a school might be organized according to scientific values, for example, and produce excellent citizens as graduates. Science, like democracy, is compatible with public education; but science is not the same as democracy. Likewise, a school might embrace artistic creativity as its core value and get good civic results. (Although some art is democratic, democracy is not the essence of art.) Religious instruction can also produce good citizens, as Yates and Youniss showed in their evaluation of a Jesuit high school that is not internally democratic. In my own work with high school students, we try to embody democratic values, but I regard this as only one road to civic education.

Meanwhile, the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools has officially announced its existence and has released applications for grants. State teams that want to improve civic education are encouraged to apply.