Monthly Archives: September 2010

making our own mosque

With all the controversy about building a mosque in Lower Manhattan (not to mention various bills and laws against erecting minarets in Europe), I thought this might be a good time to recycle a photo of the little “mosque” that my daughter and I built when she was seven.

Height: 14 inches. Construction materials: cardboard, plastic freezer baggies, papier-mâché over a popped plastic balloon. Current location: our attic. It is not really a mosque because it lacks a mihrab (to orient people for prayer) or a minbar (the Islamic equivalent of a pulpit). Our motivations in making it were not doctrinal, nor ecumenical, nor political. Rather, this is our amateur homage to one of the world’s finest architectural traditions, the heritage of Islamic religious architecture.

the righteousness that is the special entitlement of homogeneous groups

I am always torn when I hear discussions about the “fragmentation” of American culture or politics, because fragmentation also means diversity and freedom. Yet there are real disadvantages to losing a common dialog. Bill Bishop has written a brilliant book, The Big Sort, about how we have chosen to live in more culturally and politically homogeneous communities than a generation ago. I think he gets the issue just right:

    It would be a dull country, of course, if every place were like every other. It’s a joy that I can go to the Elks lodge pool in Austin to see the H2Hos, a feminist synchronized swimming troupe accompanied by a punkish band, or that I can visit the Zapalac Arena outside my old hometown of Smithville, Texas, to watch a team calf roping. Those sorts of differences are not only vital for the nation’s democratic health, but they are also essential for economic growth. Monocultures die.

    What’s happened, however, is that ways of life now have a distinct politics and a distinct geography. Feminist synchronized swimmers belong to one political party and live over here, and calf ropers belong to another party and live over there. As people seek out the social settings they prefer–as they choose the group that makes them feel the most comfortable–the nation grows more politically segregated–and the benefit that ought to come with having a variety of opinions is lost to the righteousness that is the special entitlement of homogeneous groups. We all live with the results: balkanized communities whose inhabitants find other Americans to be culturally incomprehensible; a growing intolerance for political differences that has made national consensus impossible; and politics so polarized that Congress is stymied and elections are no longer just contests over policies, but bitter choices between ways of life.

Bill Bishop (whom I know just a little) and his wife sorted themselves into a progressive neighborhood in Austin, where they are comfortable–as I would be. He begins his book with truly troubling quotes from the neighborhood’s listserve about how specific conservative neighbors ought to leave the area. It’s an important reminder that such “righteousness” is by no means a monopoly of the right.

the Project Vote survey

Today, Project Vote released a survey of the current opinions of people who voted in 2008. (They randomly sampled from a list of actual voters, which is available from official rolls, so no one in their sample inaccurately reported that he voted.) As I’ve written before, we ought to understand the views of the majority in the last election, rather than speculating about who will vote next time–especially since such predictions can become self-fulfilling prophesies.

Project Vote finds the following results for 2008 voters:

Approve of President Obama’s job performance: 48.1% (all 2008 voters); 91.8% (African Americans); 60.8% (youth); 61.8% (low income); 10.9% (people who identify today with the Tea Party).

First-time voter? 51.5% (youth); 8.5% (all); 0.6% (Tea Partier)

More important to spend money to stimulate the economy or to reduce the budget deficit 44.8% spend v. 48.5% reduce the deficit (all); 55.5% v. 39.6% (youth); 18.8% v. 78.6% (Tea Partiers).

There are 67 items in all, most of them quite interesting. Overall, a picture emerges of the Tea Partiers as outliers in the 2008 electorate. The average voter’s opinion will probably move in their direction in November, 2010. But that hasn’t happened yet, and the degree to which most voters will agree with them on substantive issues remains very much to be seen.

the meaning of Michelle Rhee’s defeat

Last week, Democratic primary voters dismissed the incumbent mayor of Washington, DC, Adrian Fenty. It looks virtually certain that DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee will also be on her way out. She was the most prominent school district leader in the US, featured on the cover of TIME magazine with a broom as the symbol of her housecleaning efforts.

I have a somewhat unusual take on what happened. Most opinion seems to be divided among these reactions:

1. Rhee was a great reformer. She took over a school system that spends nearly $13,000 per student but only $5,355 on teachers, classroom equipment, and other forms of “instruction.” She raised test scores, narrowed achievement gaps, and stopped the flow of students to charter schools, but was defeated by special interests–notably the teachers’ union that spent $1 million on the election. The problem, in a sense, was “civic engagement”–the active engagement of people whose interests were threatened by her reforms. No wonder Rhee said (well before the election), “collaboration is overrated.”

2. Rhee was misguided or actively malevolent, and DC voters exercised their democratic responsibilities when they stopped her. One commenter on Sam Chaltain’s blog decries “her arbitrary mass firings of hundreds of D.C. teachers, including some of their finest, without any reliance on data or due process. … This isn’t simply the case of another of those misguided, slightly inept reformers who needs another 4 years to carry out her unfinished business before taking a cushy job with the foundations. Rather, Michelle Rhee is a dishonest, megalomaniacal teacher basher–possibly the worst in the country, being egged on by her patrons who see her as the spearhead in their struggle against teacher unions.”

3. Rhee and Fenty had basically the right policies, but their job was to persuade DC voters to support them, and they failed to do so. That is Rhee’s own reaction. According to Education Week, “The chancellor said one of her mistakes early on was in how she communicated with the public. ‘I sort of thought, “Well, OK, if we put our heads down and do the work, after two years we’ll have great results, and everybody would be happy.” That was very naive of me,’ Ms. Rhee said. ‘We weren’t proactive and strategic enough about communication and thinking about how do we get out there and talk about the great things that are happening.’” According to this view, civic engagement is neither good nor bad; it is just a fact of life, and skillful leaders deal with it by effectively communicating.

4. The election had little to do with Michelle Rhee or the schools. It was between Adrian Fenty and Councilman Vincent Gray. Voters did not deliver a verdict on Rhee.

In my view, there was a need for housecleaning in the DC school system. News reports have revealed startling examples of bureaucratic failure: warehouses full of new textbooks that are never distributed to students, payroll systems that cannot keep track of employees.

Rhee presumed that the teacher matters most to a student’s success. Every classroom should be led by a competent and motivated teacher who is supported by efficient systems for distributing textbooks, cutting paychecks, and so on. The most skillful teachers should be deployed in schools where they are needed most, those where test scores are lowest. DC employs excellent teachers–far more skillful and dedicated than I would be–but also many poor ones. Consequently, the Chancellor’s priorities were to remove poor teachers, assign strong ones to troubled schools, and reduce bureaucratic waste.

Research lends her strategy some support: William Sanders and June Rivers deeply influenced national education policy by showing that more effective teachers could move student 50 percentile points higher on standardized tests.

And yet it is far from clear that one can cause better teachers to appear in the classrooms where they are needed most–and persuade them to remain there, year after year–simply through better management. Urban teaching will remain a frustrating job if the social context is difficult (for instance, the crime rate for adolescents in DC is three times the national average), the motivations and expectations of students and parents are misaligned with the goals of the schools, and even high school graduates face poor job prospects. Students will not comply with demanding curricula if they doubt there is a route from the schools to satisfactory employment. Teachers will burn out if the schools prove unable to remedy deep social problems. I have personally known teachers who were reassigned to more difficult DC schools and who immediately left for the suburbs instead.

In any case, imagine that the Chancellor’s strategy worked, and she improved the impact of her teachers on students’ test scores and graduation rates. If the teachers’ impact is limited to the classroom and the school day, it cannot be profound enough to overcome crises in the broader society, from obesity and violence to a lack of jobs. Even if the teachers are able to change parenting styles and other aspects of their students’ home environments, we should ask whether this change is desirable. Who are they to change a working-class culture to match the norms and expectations of Georgetown and Cleveland Park? As always, our social problems are entangled with culture and connected to our deep moral commitments, about which we have no consensus.

So I think the people of the District must be civically engaged to make their schools better in ways that they can endorse. More democracy is the cure, and collaboration is essential, not “overrated.” But the form that civic engagement takes is crucial. Low-turnout primary elections are poor tools for the people of a large city to shape policy. Teachers unions have a right to participate, but political influence should not be a function of money, and no interest group should have predominant power.

Former Mayor Anthony Williams, with whom I have the honor to serve on the AmericaSpeaks board, introduced innovative ways for citizens of the District to discuss and shape policy. In particular, his Citizens Summits (large, representative, deliberative meetings) generated strategies to “support [the] growth and development of all youth.” Summits and other manifestations of deliberative democracy are valuable but not sufficient; there must be daily opportunities for citizens, civic groups, churches, businesses, youth, and others to collaborate with schools on the actual work of education. That is truly an alternative to the strategy pursued by Adrian Fenty and Michelle Rhee, and we need to try it next.

Justice Ginsburg at the National Conference on Citizenship

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (following the example of justices O’Connor, Souter, Breyer, and Scalia) is speaking at the National Conference on Citizenship. It’s helpful for the Supreme Court–and the judicial branch in general–to endorse civic engagement and civic education. Judge Learned Hand was right: “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it. While it lies there, it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it.”

Justices O’Connor and Souter have made civic engagement a special priority in their retirements–more than speaking, they also organize and lead practical efforts–and Justice Breyer has written substantively about civic education. (Apparently, he addresses it in his new book.)

Today, Justice Ginsburg took a turn to address the topic. She used the “Impeach Earl Warren” campaign as an example of a time when people paid attention to the law and engaged, but in an ignorant way. Asked whether she was disturbed by public “ignorance” (the questioner’s term, not hers), she said she was. She cited her own work litigating for equal rights. She said that the litigants who won important court victories for civil rights were ordinary people who understood their rights and the courts.

“The courts are reactive institutions. Why was Sally Reed‘s case before the Court in 1971? Because there was a women’s movement. Why was there activity in the 50s and 60s? Because there was a burgeoning Civil Rights movement. The courts will react …, not to the weather of the day, but to the climate of the era.” I think her point was the importance of active citizenship in the process of reinterpreting and strengthening the law.

Justice Ginsburg argued that case law regarding gender is now quite fair and equitable. In that sense, an Equal Rights Amendment would not change our laws. But our Constitution, she noted, is older than other countries’ and does not contain an explicit statement about gender equality that would be found in almost all other constitutions. “My granddaughters will not find that statement,” she said, and “for that reason, I remain a partisan of the Equal Rights Amendment.”

“If I could design an affirmative action program, it would be for men. It would give men every incentive to be an equal partner in raising the next generation.”

Justice Ginsburg praised the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools, which is now co-chaired by Justice O’Connor, and materials supported by the Annenberg Foundation. “There is an important job to be done to persuade school administrators to request these materials and use them in their classrooms.”