asset-based development

Terms like "Asset

Based Community Development" and the "developmental

assets" approach to working with adolescents are extremely popular today

in foundations, schools, and social service agencies. One could dismiss such language

as a mere effort to sound positive and uplifting, unconnected to any substantial

change in philosophy or methodology. But I think that would be a mistake. The

"asset-based" approach (for lack of a better term) is being used by

people who come out of the Left, and it represents a real change in their views

and methods.

My favorite example of the old ways is now somewhat out of

date, but I can’t resist using it. In March 2002, ACORN

organized protests against federal welfare policy. The angry crowd that they had

assembled shouted down the sole member of Congress who chose to address them,

Rep. Charles B. Rangel of Harlem, demanding that he answer their questions and

meet with them in New York City. One of the rally’s organizers (a Harvard graduate)

explained: "Most of the crowd are people living with the reality of fairly

extreme poverty in their own lives, and they are rightly angry." A colleague

added that the Administration’s welfare policies "are an attack on poor families

in America."

The organizers of this protest apparently believed that

they could speak for poor people, whose main need was more federal welfare spending.

Their strategy for winning such aid was to parade welfare recipients before Congress

and the press, emphasizing their deprivation and anger. (They also displayed the

political naivety and weakness of these people.) The protest organizers implied

that anyone who did not completely endorse their demands was their enemy. And

of course they failed completely.

An assets-based approach would look quite

different. It would treat the welfare recipients as potentially powerful and skillful

political actors, capable of working as peers with selected allies in Congress.

It would also recognize their capacity to build things of value in their own communities,

regardless of federal welfare policy. Poor people do need outside resources, both

capital and government assistance. However, they are unlikely to get such help

unless they have first organized themselves as a powerful political force. The

best way to organize is to identify, advertise, and build up local assets, even

before powerful outsiders offer aid. If residents are used to working together,

have identified their own assets, are confident and experienced, and have created

their own new institutions, then they can win outside support. They can also handle

the influx of aid without being overwhelmed by corruption or manipulative outsiders.

CEOs for Americorps

I’m one of about 200 people—mostly

corporate executives—who signed an open letter to President Bush that’s printed

as a full-page ad in today’s New York Times. It reads, in part: "AmeriCorps

programs are closing. Young people who want to serve their country are being turned

away. Communities, schools and children are losing their AmeriCorps mentors, tutors,

teachers and builders . . . Please save these essential AmeriCorps programs that

have done so much good for our communities." (I can’t find a link to the

Times ad, but the Washington Post has a

story about it.)

Was Saddam bluffing about wmd’s?

Those who believe that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (wmd’s) before the 2003 invasion are now citing the host of Western leaders from various parties and countries who publicly charged Iraq with possessing chemical and biological weapons and working on a nuclear program. This list includes Bill Clinton, Hans Blix, and Tony Blair as well as various neoconservatives. If these people were all making up evidence, the conspiracy was amazingly broad and well-organized.

But it needn’t have been a conspiracy, or anything deliberate and insidious.

Continue reading →

freedom of speech for universities

For me, one of the most interesting aspects of Monday’s Supreme

Court decisions on affirmative action was Justice O’Connor’s deference to universities.

In her majority opinion, she writes:

The Law School’s educational

judgment that such diversity is essential to its educational mission is one to

which we defer. … Our scrutiny of the interest asserted by the Law School is

no less strict for taking into account complex educational judgments in an area

that lies primarily within the expertise of the university. Our holding today

is in keeping with our tradition of giving a degree of deference to a university’s

academic decisions, within constitutionally prescribed limits. …. We have long

recognized that, given the important purpose of public education and the expansive

freedoms of speech and thought associated with the university environment, universities

occupy a special niche in our constitutional tradition. … In announcing the

principle of student body diversity as a compelling state interest, Justice Powell

invoked our cases recognizing a constitutional dimension, grounded in the First

Amendment, of educational autonomy: ‘The freedom of a university to make its own

judgments as to education includes the selection of its student body.’

Courts

have occasionally deferred to universities, not only in admissions, but also in

free-speech cases. Most people think that it is unacceptable for a university,

especially a public one, to discriminate against students or faculty who adopt

radical views, even in the classroom or in their writing. However, most people

think that a university can discriminate against teachers and students

for failing to use appropriate methods of reasoning in the classroom, in papers,

and in publications. The first amendment does not guarantee you a passing grade

even if your final exam is lousy. Thus "academic freedom" is not only

an individual right; it is also an institutional right of colleges to set their

own standards of discourse. (See J. Peter Byrne, "Academic Freedom: A ‘Special

Concern of the First Amendment’," Yale Law Journal, November, 1989,

pp. 251 ff.) In Bakke and other cases, justices have extended institutional

freedom to cover admissions and hiring decisions, within broad limits. Peter Byrne

observes that moderate jurists like O’Connor and Frankfurter are the ones who

typically argue this way. Strong liberals and conservatives of each generation

want to decide constitutional issues that arise within colleges; moderates

prefer to defer to academic institutions.

Deference to universities could

be grounded in freedom of association—but this defense would not apply to

state institutions. Byrne and other commentators want to base institutional academic

freedom on respect for academia as a separate social sphere. They say that science

and scholarship should be masters of their own domains. After about a decade in

the academic business, I can’t decide whether this degree of respect is warranted.

Sometimes I think that academia is an impressive social sector guided by Robert

Merton’s KUDOS norms: knowledge held in common, universalism, disinterestedness,

and organized skepticism. At other times, I think that academia

is a snake pit of favoritism, logrolling, and faddish conformity. I also think

that the broader question is complicated, i.e., Should (or must) democratic governments

defer to professions as the authorities within their own spheres of expertise?

Monday,

June 23

the Alexander bill

Last Friday, the Senate passed, by a 90-0 vote, the "American

History and Civics Education Act” (S. 504), that had been introduced

by Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN). The bill would create summer institutes for

k-12 teachers in college settings, where they would study civics and history.

It would give some high school juniors and seniors the opportunity to attend a

different set of summer academies; and it would organize a National Alliance of

Teachers of History and Civics, for the sharing of information and ideas.

Senator

Alexander said, “Civics is being dropped from many school curricula. More

than half the states have no requirement for a course in American government.

And American history has been watered down, textbooks are dull, and their pages

feature victims and diminish heroes. Because of politically correct attitudes

from the left and right, teachers are afraid to teach the great controversies

and struggles that are the essence of American history.”

I heartily

agree and think that Alexander’s points can be substantiated with solid evidence.

Partly as a result of the way we teach (or fail to teach) civics, the actual participation

of young people in politics and civic life is dropping, and the least advantaged

are the most often left out.

Many people in the "civic-ed" world

are now calling for a movement to revese these trends, using the Civic

Mission of Schools report as the blueprint. This movement or campaign would

have to address fundamental problems that go well beyond what Senator Alexander

mentioned. Above all, social studies are being squeezed out of the curriculum,

especially in grades 1-8, because of budget cuts and an emphasis on testing in

reading and math. S. 504 has no direct bearing on these trends. It deals with

the in-service education of teachers—a worthy goal, if not a crucial one.

But S. 504 could have an indirect positive effect if the participating

k-12 teachers and their college instructors become a national network of advocates

for civic education. Here’s hoping it passes the House and gets adequately funded.