why the sixties wore jeans

(Philadelphia) In preparation for his visit to Tufts on March 17 (which you should attend if you are in the area), I have been re-reading Doug McAdam’s book Freedom Summer. It is one of my favorite works of social science, combining sensitive and moving narrative history with a persuasive quantitative method to generate numerous important insights.

One of McAdam’s significant themes is the role of the roughly 1,000 Freedom Summer volunteers in creating the New Left and the Counterculture of the late 1960s. In 1964, the volunteers were deliberately recruited from high-status universities and well-connected, rich or comfortable families. (The goal was to bring media attention and federal assistance when such elite students were arrested and beaten.) They arrived in Mississipi in chinos and short hair, often motivated by mainstream religious doctrines, and believing in the essential soundness of national institutions. They left radicalized, not only in their political opinions and diagnoses, but also in their career commitments and their ways of life. They literally left Mississipi in blue jeans, ready to form communes on their home campuses, where they were received as heroes and leaders.

Take the blue jeans: McAdam explains that seasoned SNCC staff wore denim in Mississippi to fit in with the agricultural workers whom they were trying to register. There was nothing cool about jeans in mainstream youth culture in 1964. But the SNCC staff seemed enormously cool to the 1,000 Freedom Summer volunteers, who imitated their clothes and idioms. Pretty soon they were back at Harvard and Berkeley, wearing denim and saying “dig it.”

And the communes: McAdam writes that the original plan was to place the volunteers in African Americans’ homes. That worked in some cases, but because of the violence or threats that host families suffered, it became necessary to house some volunteers together in group homes. Under conditions of exhilaration, terror, anger, and constant internal struggles among volunteers and staff, these homes became hotbeds of conversation and exploration. From cans of shared food money, to midnight meetings, to sexual experimentation, the Counterculture was born.

McAdam received attention recently for his study of Teach for America, which found disappointing effects on the participants. Comparing TFA and Freedom Summer only goes so far: nothing can (or should) rival the impact of joining a mass political movement that is the major national news story of the season and that–following the murder of three participants–changes American politics. I am struck, however, by the differences between being young in 1964 and 2008. No recent event compares to the intensity of experience, the deep generational fault-lines and generational identities, or the comprehensiveness of the changes that young people led in the mid-1960s. Many Millennials’ parents weren’t even born in 1964, yet I think the hangover lingers even today.

the Common Core State Standards and active citizenship

Educational “standards” are general guidelines for what should be taught and assessed. They can have the force of law, and policymakers can be held publicly accountable for them. I think the general concept of explicit educational standards is good, because deciding what should be taught is a core democratic task, a matter of establishing values and priorities. The standards that govern our schools should be transparent. Of course, bad standards are worse than none, and many actual state standards are weak, miscellaneous and arbitrary, hopelessly unrealistic, or otherwise misguided. If Texas continues on its course to rewrite its social studies standards, Texas children would be better off with none.

A related question is who should set standards, and for whose kids? Most of the nation’s governors and state school superintendents are now proposing a set of uniform state standards that would be voluntarily–but widely–adopted. The goal is to provide one set of good standards (streamlined, thoughtful, and ambitious but not onerous). This effort threatens local autonomy and citizen participation, but also promises to improve existing standards in many states. And the authors have tried to reduce the damage by proposing truly “core” standards in only two disciplines–English/language arts and science math–while leaving much to be decided at the state and local level.

My professional concern is democratic education or education for active citizenship. From that perspective, it could be problematic that the proposed standards are not for social studies or civics. National standards for only English and math could narrow the curriculum even further. On the other hand, streamlining standards in those two disciplines could actually increase space and time for civics.

Besides, English skills are civic skills, if they are well designed. I have read the proposed standards for English/language arts and see many openings for improving civic education.

That seems to be an intention. On p. 2, the document says, “Students who meet the Standards … reflexively demonstrate the cogent reasoning and use of evidence that is essential to both private deliberation and responsible citizenship in a democratic republic.”

Some specific objectives seem especially useful for civic purposes. For example, students in grades 11 and 12 are supposed to “Analyze how various authors express different points of view on similar events or issues, assessing the authors’ assumptions, use of evidence, and reasoning, including analyzing seminal U.S. documents (e.g., The Federalist, landmark U.S. Supreme Court majority opinions and dissents).”

Another example is the standard that says, “Present claims and findings with relevant evidence that is accessible and verifiable to listeners, and use appropriate eye contact, adequate volume, and clear pronunciation.” That is a very important skill for civic participation. By 11th grade, students are also supposed to “Cooperate with peers to set clear goals and deadlines, establish roles, and determine ground rules for decision making (e.g., informal consensus, taking votes on key issues, presentation of alternate views).”

The general thrust of the proposed Standards is to define outcomes, not methods or approaches, which are left to schools. But sidebars provide advice about methods, and sometimes that advice would be favorable to civic learning. For instance: “To become college and career ready, students must have ample opportunities to take part in a variety of rich, structured conversations—whole class, small group, and with a partner—built around important content in various domains.”

The standards do not mandate a curriculum or syllabus, but they suggest readings, including “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King, Jr. (1964) and America’s Constitution: A Biography by Akhil Reed Amar (2005)–good choices.

I wish education reform today emphasized constructive ways to get communities involved in education, and this effort is very different: top-down. Yet I would acknowledge that the ideas in the document are thoughtful, not burdensome, and sensitive to democratic values,

Edward Tufte and the stimulus

The Administration has sought the help of Edward Tufte in designing Recovery.gov. Tufte is the genius expert on how to present information visually. His books are visually stunning and persuasive. As a result of his guidance, Andrew Romano writes in Newsweek, Recovery.gov is “perhaps the clearest, richest interactive database ever produced by the American bureaucracy.” It quickly tells you, for example, that very little of the money has been spent so far and that tax cuts are a bigger component than “contracts, grants, and loans.”

It seems important for Americans to know these things, so that they can properly judge the use of their $787 billion and the Administration’s stewardship–and perhaps also improve the performance of government through their advocacy. But in general, we are asking ever more of citizens and expecting them to be able to absorb ever more information. Disclosure of stimulus funding is one example; another is the Supreme Court’s assumption that shareholders can discover the political positions of companies and withdraw their investments when displeased. (Apart from other problems with this decision, the duty to survey companies’ political positions will impose steep new cognitive demands on citizens.)

I think better displays of information are promising and should be saluted. But using public information also requires skills and motivations (no matter how clear and attractive the graphs may be). Civic skills are very unequal and inadequate in the United States, and motivation is uneven. Although some individuals just happen to enjoy using public data, most people are motivated only when they are recruited into organizations or movements that have political or public agendas. Such movements are scattered and relatively weak today. So the paradox is better information, presented better, to a smaller number of interested people.

no coincidence, comrade

In China, the Communist Party has held supreme power since 1949. Its original ideology was Marxist and anti-capitalist. Today, the Communist Party is strongly opposed to independent trade unions and favorable to corporate interests. The Communists appoint a leader for Hong Kong who opposes strong labor reforms and supports big business against the wishes of the more popular parties, which are to his left. The poorest 20% of the whole nation’s population collects less than 6% of national income (just about the same as in the United States).

From 1974-88, the only legal party in Burma was the Burma Socialist Programme Party. The military seized power in 1989 and took “socialism” out of the country’s name, but the same ruling class continues to govern. Today, children age 10 and 11 work 84 hours/week for $6/month, and the junta has jailed at least 30 trade unionists as political prisoners. The junta is now selling national assets to allies in the private sector.

In Vietnam, the only legal party is Communist, and its official ideology is Marxist-Leninist. Yet the country saw the second-fastest GDP growth in the world through much of the 1990s and 2000s, due to heavy foreign private investment and privatization. All workers are enrolled in state labor unions, and the government decides when strikes are legal. The poorest 20 percent of the population gets 7% of income, and almost all of that group are below the poverty line of $1.25/day.

These cases reinforce a general and important lesson. It doesn’t matter what the original leaders of a political movement say. It doesn’t even matter what those leaders privately think and want. What matters is the incentive structure that they create. The communist revolutions monopolized power, and monopoly creates incentives for private exploitation. Justice requires pluralism. That lesson can be hard for people to swallow because we align with the explicit values of one institution (such as the state, the market, or the law), and we don’t fully accept the legitimacy of the others. But balance is essential even if that means preserving the power of sectors you don’t much like.

Obama, race, and democracy

I spent Friday and Saturday at an excellent conference on “Barack Obama and American Democracy.” It was organized by Tufts historian Peniel Joseph and drew a diverse group of scholars and students, predominantly experts on African American history, politics, and culture. The discussion was rich and complex: this Twitter feed offers a feel for it.

The question for the final panel was simply: What does Barack Obama mean for American democracy? I said it was too early to tell, but I would break the assessment into three parts.

1. Obama as policymaker will strengthen democracy if he makes government work better and more equitably. Compared to some of the other speakers who explicitly addressed his policymaking, I was more supportive. I think passing a health bill like the one now before Congress would be quite a remarkable achievement, relative to my expectations about what is possible.

2. Obama as political reformer would help fix some of the grievous structural and procedural problems with our democracy, such as campaign finance abuses and the indefensible misuse of the filibuster. Such issues did not figure much in the 2008 campaign, presumably because they were not popular causes then. Thus Obama has no mandate for procedural reforms. Besides, the executive branch has relatively little leverage over these matters (as compared to its leverage in appropriations and foreign policy). Yet demand for deep procedural reform could build in response to the deepening crisis of our institutions, in which case the Obama years may be an era of reform, even if that doesn’t originate in the White House.

3. “Democracy” also means the whole repertoire of civic and political acts undertaken by citizens. In many Americans’ minds, that repertoire has shrunk to occasional voting and noncontroversial service, and wealthier Americans dominate even those acts. Barack Obama understands the full range of civic action better than any occupant of the Oval Office: he has a record of practicing, teaching, and studying robust and innovative forms of citizenship. His campaign was notable for its creativity in promoting active citizenship. His administration so far has not advanced that cause, but it will be difficult to do so from the White House and I am happy to give the Obama team some time to find its way.

Finally, strengthening democracy means tackling the specific crises facing the African American community. After this weekend’s conference, I am more sensitive to the dilemmas of Black politics under the administration of the First Black President. African Americans in general are extremely supportive of Barack Obama and want to minimize criticism of him. That means that many are leery of directly advocating issues that disproportionately affect African Americans, lest they put the president in the position of having to pick between Black opinion and White opinion. Yet all other constituencies and interest groups feel free to make explicit demands.

Take health reform, for example. The best estimate (albeit with various caveats) finds that a lack of insurance causes 45,000 deaths in the United States each year. Twenty-five percent of adult African Americans lack health insurance, as compared to 15% of whites (source). Thus, in a sense, health reform is an “African American issue.” A moderately disproportionate share of the lives saved will be Black people’s lives.

On the other hand, if any individual or group seriously assessed the highest priorities for African Americans, I don’t think health insurance reform would make the top three. Sentencing reform, educational equity, and youth unemployment would top my list. But all of these issues are more divisive and more difficult for a Democratic president to address than health care is. If the president were White, African Americans and others concerned with Black issues would be pressing for reforms on those fronts. With Barack Obama in the White House, the pressure is muted, and that’s a problem.