Monthly Archives: October 2011

seascape

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Tethered sailboats hunched in a row.
A gull sails the diagonal, taut and low.
Wind and sinking sun scribble the bay
With fleeting streaks of blue, green, gray.

No Atlantic lobstermen in my line
(Grim faces leathered from the frozen brine),
Nor any yachtsmen forebears in blue and gold.
I stand uneasy in the twilit cold.

We turn past the point and leave the bay.
The waves foam up and throw the wind their spray,
Soaking the windshields in the ferry’s hold.
I stand alone in the whipping cold.

The harbor was not for me; nor was it theirs.
The whole is no one’s, saved for no one’s heirs.
It’s of no account who I may be.
A life is a wave; it is not the sea.

civics in the Harkin education bill

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(Washington, DC) Since President Bush signed “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) in 2002, that has been the name of the comprehensive federal education statute. The name will be dropped, but the law will sooner or later be amended and reauthorized under its original title: the “Elementary and Secondary Education Act” (ESEA).

NCLB had basically nothing to say about civic education, except that some vestigial provisions were left over from earlier legislation. The law’s neglect was not benign: 2002-2011 has been a bad decade for civics, culminating with the termination of all federal funding last spring.

An important ingredient of the actual ESEA reauthorization law will be the bill offered by Senator Harkin, because he chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee. This week, Sen. Harkin is releasing his bill. According to the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools, under “Programs of National Significance” Harkin would authorize:

Developing, implementing, evaluating and disseminating innovative, research-based approaches to civic learning, which may include hands-on civic engagement activities for low-income elementary school and secondary school students that demonstrate innovation, scalability, accountability and a focus on under-served populations.

For what it’s worth, this is exactly what I would write if someone asked me to draft a law. We should thank Senator Harkin and work to make sure his proposed provision survives on the long road to ESEA re-authorization.

Margaret Mead’s quote is trademarked

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I like to start seminars and talks by quoting Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” Almost everyone in my audience recognizes the quotation, and many have been using it in their email signatures or posting it over their desks. I provoke them by claiming that the statement is incorrect on several levels. Yet we should admire the inspirational intention behind it. We need to go “beyond Margaret Mead” by asking when, how, and under what circumstances small groups can change the world, and when, why, and under what circumstances such change is good. Last year’s Summer Institute of Civic Studies had rich discussions on that topic, captured humorously in this graphic by Joshua Miller:

It has never been clear that Margaret Mead actually uttered the quote in question. But a friend alerts me to this page on the Institute for Intercultural Studies website.

What is the source of the “Never doubt…” quote?

Although the Institute has received many inquiries about this famous admonition by Margaret Mead, we have been unable to locate when and where it was first cited, becoming a motto for many organizations and movements. We believe it probably came into circulation through a newspaper report of something said spontaneously and informally. We know, however, that it was firmly rooted in her professional work and that it reflected a conviction that she expressed often, in different contexts and phrasings. …

The “Never doubt” challenge is sometimes quoted in a longer form, with the coda, “indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” We decided on the shortened form both for brevity and because the exaggeration in the coda may, in print, weaken the basic concept rather than reinforce it.

Can my organization use the “Never doubt …” quote?

… If you wish to use the quote for non-commercial and non-partisan purposes, including the trademark sign where noted above, please do so with no charge and our good wishes. Following the quotation and the name Margaret Mead, you may put “Used with permission.”

This quote is now trademarked, and the trademark is held by Sevanne Kassarjian, New York. …

It seems to me that the motivation to trademark the phrase is benign: the Institute for Intercultural Studies is not charging anything and mainly wants to prevent partisan or commercial uses.

I don’t know much about intellectual property but find it surprising that one can trademark a quotation that a Google search finds 809,000 times (almost never with an ® after it) and that has appeared in published texts for decades. If I ever say something pithy and worthwhile, I won’t expect to be able to prevent partisan or commercial readers from quoting it–nor are partisan and commercial uses necessarily contrary to the spirit of the Mead quote. (Couldn’t a movement within a political party be a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens? How about a social enterprise?)

For now, I think I will continue to cite the following as my source for Mead’s remark: Nancy C. Lutkehaus, Margaret Mead: The Making of an American Icon (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 261.

Strong Women Across America

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My Tufts colleague Professor Miriam Nelson is a distinguished nutritionist, a scientist who has been leading federally funded research studies on food and exercise for almost 20 years. She has written many books and articles and serves on official expert bodies, such as the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee for the US Department of Agriculture.

Those are conventional measures of success and impact. But Mim Nelson knows that a whole range of factors beyond our individual choice affect our health: for instance, what food is available locally, whether the sidewalks are walkable, and how friendly local governments are to bicycles. These factors are tough to change, but people can address them collectively, and in doing so, they can gain friendships, skills, and confidence.

Instead of exhorting people to make better choices, Mim Nelson and colleagues are organizing communities for social change. We see that shift in some other fields as well–for example, the family therapy professor Bill Doherty has moved away from treating stress as a treatable personal problem; he now organizes suburban families to fight the causes of stress.

Mim has organized Change Clubs across America, mostly in rural communities and mostly composed of women. She and colleagues are now on a national tour called “StrongWomen Across America: Change Yourself, Change the World.” It is really an exercise in community-organizing, with a focus on nutrition and exercise and an emphasis on rural women. You can follow their progress through videos, photographs, and reflections on their tour blog page.

Owen Flanagan, The Bodhisattva’s Brain: Buddhism Naturalized

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After proposing my own interpretation of a Buddhist doctrine recently, I enjoyed Owen Flanagan’s book about Buddhism. Flanagan (a proponent and practitioner of analytical philosophy and natural science) read a lot of classical Buddhist texts, interviewed the 14th Dalai Lama on several occasions, talked to many other Buddhists, reviewed the results of brain research on Buddhist monks, and explored scholarly literature from East and West. He concludes that:

  1. The Buddha’s own metaphysics and epistemology are strikingly consistent with modern science–a point made by Einstein and others but worked out here in more detail;
  2. Buddhist ethics is appealing from a modern liberal’s perspective, complementing liberalism with its deeper account of a good inner life, but offering a thin account of justice that needs development;
  3. Buddhist philosophy and practice might have some bearing on personal happiness, but that is a complex matter, and the causal link is by no means automatic. Becoming a Buddhist won’t just make you happy, but Buddhism has interesting things to say about happiness (what it is and how to pursue it).
  4. The brain science related to Buddhism is interesting and worth pursuing but has been hyped beyond recognition. The most straightforward causal hypothesis is not about Buddhism and happiness but about the impact of particular forms of meditation on mental health. The studies on that question are inconclusive. In Flanagan’s view, there are also empirical questions regarding the impact of Buddhism on happiness, but they cannot be settled by brain science alone, because Buddhism is much more than meditation, and happiness is a contested term requiring normative analysis.

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