I tried to talk one of Maryland’s Rhodes Scholarship applicants from
last year into reapplying, because he came within a whisker of winning.
Since he’s primarily a scientist, it’s not necessarily in his interest
to go to Oxford. But he’s also something of an activist for deaf culture,
and the Rhodes could open doors for him later if he wanted to continue
advocacy work.
Most of my time is spent planning for the launch of our report on k-12
civic education, The Civic Mission of Schools. At a press conference
on Thursday, it will be "received" by John Bridgeland, Advisor
to the President and Director of USA Freedom Corps, in the presence of
the presidents of The Pew Charitable Trusts and Carnegie Corporation of
New York, and others. So there are millions of practical details to attend
to.
Meanwhile, my colleagues and I filed an interim report with the Kettering
Foundation, describing our progress on a project involving journalism
and political theory. We’re trying to figure out how each discipline
might learn from and benefit the other. As an experiment, two graduate
students (under the direction of a philosophy professor and a journalism
professor) are creating a Website presenting ideas from political theory
in a format useful to working journalists. The idea is to learn what kind
of philosophy would be practically relevant—and what journalists
should learn from philosophers. The students have decided to focus the
Website itself on war and democratic theory. The central issues to be
addressed are (1) the uneasy relationship between national security and
civil liberties in a democratic society; (2) freedom of information, and
especially press access to information in time of war; and (3) the implications
of a professional military for the health of a democracy.
My day began with a nice breakfast at a fancy downtown hotel, talking
to a foundation program officer about a project that he is planning. I
camped out in the lobby to do some work, and then Metro’d to the Cesar
Chavez Charter High School for Public Policy. It seems like fun to go
there. Two hundred kids are tightly packed into improvised classrooms
in a former office building. There’s a sense that they are helping to
create something idiosyncratic and important. Students participate heavily
in planning the service projects that are central to the curriculum, so
their voice matters. At the same time, discipline is strict: if you arrive
one second late, you go straight to detention. As we walked through the
halls, the principal had something specific to say to practically every
kid she met: "We set up SAT classes for you. Oh, you can’t do them
because you’re in the Corcoran art program. OK, we’ll figure out an alternative."
The neighborhood, near U Street, is full of charter schools—I suspect
because the rent is fairly low and Metro connections are good. It’s a
transitional neighborhood, traditionally African American and working
class, but now with quite a few White yuppies. I was thinking about the
problems and advantages of gentrification when I passed workers restoring
a beautiful row house. Outside the next-door house, an African American
woman stood and shouted at them: "White man already has everything!"
As an illustration, it was too perfect.
I had a chance to meet today with a state social studies supervisor,
which was an interesting opportunity to find out more about the complex
interplay among state standards, high-stakes tests, curriculum design
at various levels, and the textbook market. If I write a civics textbook,
I’ll have to navigate these treacherous waters.
Later, with our high school class, we spent quite a bit of time talking
about why they should (or should not) vote. I tried to move the conversation
to a related topic: How do we find out enough about candidates that we
can make a choice? It seems to me that the need for that kind of knowledge
is the biggest obstacle to voting.