Category: Democracy

America’s Political (Dis)Harmony

Posted on | by Sam

I know it’s still January, but I’m already looking forward to March 26, when I’ll visit the National Constitution Center and participate in a program on Civility & Democracy. During that event, which will culminate in a public Town Hall discussion, we’ll have the chance to consider some essential questions of American identity and organization — questions that have been made even more timely in the wake of the public debate following the shootings in Tucson:

  • Is partisan rancor the exception or the rule in American politics?
  • What would the Founding Fathers think of today’s political climate?
  • What factors contribute to eras of extreme partisanship?
  • Is partisanship “bad,” or simply the way democracies work?

I had been reflecting on those questions all weekend — and then in yesterday’s Washington Post I read a new piece by George Will, who was himself reflecting on the history of America’s political disharmony. “What made the American Revolution a novel event,” Will writes, “was that Americans did not declare independence because their religion, ethnicity, language or culture made them incompatible with the British. Rather, it was a political act based on explicit principles. So in America more than in Europe, nationalism is . . .’intellectualized’: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident.’ Who holds them? Americans. Who are Americans? Those who hold those truths to be self-evident.”

Will suggests we are, at our core, a “disharmonic society” because the ideals of [our] creed are always imperfectly realized and always endangered. For Americans, government is necessary, but “the distinctive aspect of the American Creed is its anti-government character. Opposition to power and suspicion of government as the most dangerous embodiment of power are the central themes of American political thought.”

Agree or disagree?

P.S. Next month, a new book of mine (a narrative history of free speech in America) is coming out. The title, We Must Not Be Afraid to be Free, is a line from a Hugo Black opinion, and the book is largely a trip through his career, and his own evolving understanding of how to strike the right balance, both individually and as an open society, between honoring our freedoms and controlling our fears.

Justice Black — a FDR appointee and, as a younger man in his home state of Alabama, a former Klansman — is remembered as one of the Court’s most vigorous defenders of free-speech rights. And yet at the end of his long career, as he watched the social fabric of the country unravel during the 1960s, Black did an about-face — and began ruling against free-speech claims. His own journey therefore provides a useful window into the personal challenges associated with tolerating the exercise of freedoms when the very act of voicing those ideas runs the risk of tearing us asunder.

To Honor King, Embody Our Ideals

Posted on | by Sam

(This article also appeared in the Huffington Post.)

Today, Americans will pay tribute to the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. with school assemblies, community programs and — to the delight of students and adults alike — a national holiday. Yet few if any Americans, at this crucial time in our nation’s history, will directly connect King’s heroism and accomplishments to his faith in — and use of — our primary tools of democracy, the five freedoms of the First Amendment.

This is a missed opportunity. More so than any other part of our Constitution, our laws or our civic principles as a nation, the freedoms of the First Amendment — religion, speech, press, assembly and petition — embody what it means to be an American. Properly understood and applied, they allow us to expand the promise of freedom more fairly and fully to succeeding generations of Americans, and forge unity in the interest of our diversity, instead of at the expense of it.

Every January, the holiday honoring King provides an opportunity to remember both what the First Amendment demands of us as citizens, and also what is possible when we exercise those rights responsibly in the cause of justice and freedom for all.

Consider, for example, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the iconic 1963 rally that introduced King’s “I Have a Dream” speech to white America — he had delivered those lines in front of black audiences many times before — and produced the most poignant petition for redress of grievances in our nation’s history. Nearly every American is familiar with King’s speech that day. Many of us were asked to memorize it as students. But how many of us were also taught about that day — and the movement — in the specific context of our democratic principles as a nation?

Recall that the march occurred as Congress was wrestling with whether or not to pass President Kennedy’s civil rights program. Recall that young people across the country were being jailed for peacefully assembling to protest the South’s policies of institutional racism. And recall that the quality of our national conversation was still so rudimentary that in the days and weeks before the march, white journalists peppered black commentators with what today seems like a shockingly naïve question — “What is it that Negroes really want?”

King and the other leaders of the movement understood that the best way to counter such naïveté and willful ignorance was by utilizing each of the First Amendment’s five freedoms to appeal to the nation’s conscience. So on that historic day, Aug. 28, they presented a program that celebrated the American belief in religious liberty, beginning with an invocation from the Archbishop of Washington and featuring remarks from the president of the American Jewish Congress; they relied on the press to broadcast images of the massive assembly — ABC and NBC even broke away from their regularly scheduled afternoon soap operas to join CBS and broadcast King’s speech in its entirety; and they petitioned for change with emotional appeals to, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, “the better angels of our nature.”

Nearly a decade of protest and activism reached its symbolic pinnacle when hundreds of thousands of Americans of all colors gathered in the shadow of Lincoln, in the centennial year of the Emancipation Proclamation, to petition the Congress to establish 1963, in the words of organizer Roy Wilkins, “as the year racial discrimination was ended.”

The rest is history, yet both the glory of that day and its unfulfilled promise provide powerful mandates for parents and teachers. As King said later, the night before he was struck down at the age of 39, the future of democracy is always only as secure as the commitment of its youngest citizens. “In 1960,” he preached, “when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters … I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.”

As much or more than anyone in recent American history, King had a profound understanding of the principles found in this nation’s “great wells of democracy.” And at the heart of his work was an appeal to all Americans to live up to our nation’s guiding principles and ideals.

Let’s remember that this holiday.

Education Inception

Posted on | by Sam

(This article also appeared on the Huffington Post.)

I just watched Christopher Nolan’s remarkable new movie Inception, a futuristic film about a group of people who, through a variety of means, plant a thought so deeply in the mind of one man that it grows naturally and becomes seen as his own. In the opening scene of the movie, protagonist Peter Cobb rhetorically asks the audience: “What’s the most resilient parasite? A bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? No. An idea. Resilient, highly contagious. Once an idea’s taken hold in the brain it’s almost impossible to eradicate. A person can cover it up, or ignore it – but it stays there.”

Cobb’s movie-based challenge is not unlike the reality-based one being faced by today’s advocates for public education reform – how to seed an idea so simple and powerful that it can mobilize public opinion, inspire policymakers, and improve the overall learning conditions for children. And yet after reading Michelle Rhee’s two newest efforts to launch her own form of “inception” – an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal and her organization’s inaugural policy agenda – I see further evidence of both her well-intentioned vision for massive educational reform, and her fundamental misunderstanding about the power of ideas.

Repeatedly, Ms. Rhee has shown she believes that the best way to mobilize people is through conflict, oppositional language and negative emotion. In the Journal, she speaks encouragingly about the fact that “public support is building for a frontal attack on the educational status quo.” And in the introductory paragraph of her policy agenda, she seems encouraged by the fact that her actions will “trigger controversy.” This sort of language extends the tenor of her brief tenure as DC Schools Chancellor, when Rhee made enough inflammatory statements to become the single most polarizing education figure in country. Love me or hate me, she seemed to be telling us – but pick one you must.

In some respects, Ms. Rhee’s approach to idea-generation, much like her approach to management, is deeply rooted in 20th-century paradigms of mobilization and leadership. Our culture has nurtured numerous shared archetypes of strong, authoritarian leaders – people who can make the tough decisions, go it alone, and refuse to give an inch. To compromise or collaborate is to be soft and exceedingly conciliatory, not to mention a weak-kneed guarantee that nothing will get done. Get with the program or get out. You’re either with us or against us. Don’t tread on me.

Of course, like all archetypes, these characterizations contain partial truths. To be all about compromise and not at all about principle is a poor model for leadership, and we do need leaders who have the fortitude to make tough decisions, hold people accountable, and speak simply and clearly. Similarly, we all should share Ms. Rhee’s sense of outrage. And in the end, several of her policies make good sense. But in terms of the overall effort at inception – at seeding the foundational idea – one thing seems equally clear: a national movement that is based primarily on negative emotion will not deliver us the long-term changes we need in public education.

Christopher Nolan certainly feels this way – it’s the core message of his movie. “How do you translate a strategy into an emotion?” Cobb wonders. A colleague suggests that an idea fueled by negative emotion will work best – something that would grow and fester in the mind of an individual, building both anger and discontent until it could be turned into action. But Cobb disagrees. “Positive emotion trumps negative emotion every time. We yearn for people to be reconciled, for catharsis. We need positive emotional logic.”

I agree, and I wish Michelle Rhee would, too. She has a national platform, a vital issue in need of being addressed, millions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of followers. Now she just needs the right idea.

Taking the Long View

Posted on | by Sam

In the wake of my most recent post about George Washington’s prescient farewell address — and his concern that factionalism would tear the fabric of our union asunder — I read an Op-Ed this weekend by Stanford history professor David Kennedy that provides another perspective on “wave” elections, political instability, and why a closer reading of American history may suggest that this, too, shall pass. Worth a read.

What George Washington Would Think of the 2010 Midterm Elections

Posted on | by Sam

Before I went to sleep last night — a night that, among other things, resulted in the loss of my wife’s job (she is/was Senator Feingold’s foreign policy adviser) — I happened to read Jill Lepore’s review of yet another new biography of America’s first president, George Washington. In it, she cites briefly from Washington’s renowned Farewell Address from 1796. Given that last night’s election results now mark the third election in a row that Americans have kicked a political party out of power (and we only have two, so . . .), I thought Washington’s two-century-old warnings to us seemed particularly prescient.

A central part of Washington’s legacy to us was his willingness to step away from power precisely at the point when he was most poised to consolidate it. Yet he also made sure in his farewell address to sound a few alarm bells, and urge us into “solemn contemplation, and to recommend to (our) frequent review, some sentiments which are the result of much reflection, of no inconsiderable observation, and which appear to me all-important to the permanency of (our) felicity as a people.”

In particular, Washington cautioned us to be aware of the growing trend in which “one of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heartburnings which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection.

“All obstructions to the execution of the laws,” Washington continued, “all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests.”

It is remarkable to think that when Washington was delivering these warnings, our country was just five years removed from the ratification of the Constitution. Yet it would make sense that his core caution then would have grown to become exponentially more relevant, and destructive, now: “However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

America, where to from here?

The Rally to Restore Sanity . . . Or Anoint a Magic Helper?

Posted on | by Sam | 5 Comments on The Rally to Restore Sanity . . . Or Anoint a Magic Helper?

With Jon Stewart’s satirical/heretical/fantastical rally now in the books – and with memories of Glenn Beck’s own DC fiesta still a recent memory – I’ve been wondering what, if anything, these two cultural events have in common. As I do, I keep thinking about Erich Fromm’s 1941 classic Escape from Freedom, and how both men seem to be wrestling with the same tension Fromm explored in his psychological exploration of modern man – namely, our dialectical relationship with freedom itself, and what that relationship tells us about ourselves and the societies in which we live.

Fromm’s book appeared just as the Second World War was intensifying (and years before the full weight of human depravity would become universally known). His thesis was that before we can understand the dynamics of any society’s social processes, we must first explore the dynamics of the psychological processes operating within the individual.

Central to all modern societies and individuals, Fromm wrote, was man’s relationship with freedom itself, which he defined as “the fundamental condition for any growth.” Since the structure of modern society and the personality of modern man first began taking shape – beginning with the end of the rigid social structures and limitations found in the Middle Ages, and accelerating after World War One – we have become freer to develop and express our own individual selves and ideas. At the same time, however, we have become freer from a world that gave us, precisely because it was proscribed, more security and reassurance. “The process of individuation is one of growing strength and integration of the individual personality,” Fromm wrote. “But it is at the same time a process in which the original identity with others is lost and in which modern man becomes more separate from them.”

So what does any of this have to do with the Stewart and Beck rallies? I think both events were either intentionally or unintentionally appealing to us based on which modern need we are likely to seek more acutely – “freedom from” or “freedom to.”

In either case, the dilemma of modern society and how it impacts us is the same: it has given us more space to develop as individuals – and it has made us more helpless. “It increased freedom,” says Fromm, “and it created dependencies of a new kind. The understanding of the whole problem of freedom depends on the very ability to see both sides of the process and not to lose track of one side while following the other.”

The danger, Fromm cautioned, is if we forget that “aloneness, fear and bewilderment remain; people cannot stand it forever. They cannot go on bearing the burden of ‘freedom from’; they must try to escape from freedom altogether unless they can progress from negative to positive freedom. The principal social avenues of escape in our time are submission to a leader, as has happened in fascist countries, and the compulsive conforming as is prevalent in our own society.”

Because of this anxiety – and this willingness to submit to someone who will do the thinking for us – our capacity to think critically has dulled over time. Ironically, however, this gradual numbing of our critical capacities doesn’t mean we feel more uninformed. On the contrary, the constant barrage of messaging so indicative of modern society tends to be designed in such a way as to “flatter the individual by making him appear important, and by pretending that they appeal to his critical judgment, to his sense of discrimination. But these pretenses are essentially a method to dull the individual’s suspicions and to help him fool himself as to the individual character of his decision.”

This tendency to submit has been widely written about – accurately, I believe – with regard to Glenn Beck.  The same could be said for the followers of other right-leaning hucksters, like Rush Limbaugh, whose followers proudly and tellingly refer to themselves as “Dittoheads.” In what ways is the situation most markedly different with Stewart? What distinguishes his power and the mindsets of his followers, who descended on the same stretch of land where Beck’s minions gathered just two months prior?

Here’s one area where I think Beck and Stewart clearly diverge: whereas Beck seems to use parts of Fromm’s thesis as his own playbook for exploitation, Stewart seems equally intent on waking us up from our stupor, and realizing that democracy “will triumph over the forces of nihilism only if it can imbue people with a faith that is the strongest the human mind is capable of, the faith in life and in truth, and in freedom as the active and spontaneous realization of the individual self.”

Understood in this light, it makes sense that Comedy Central and Fox News, as opposed to, say, Bravo or CNN, are the TV stations with personalities possessed of the power to organize massive rallies on the mall. Fox, after all, is the standard-bearer in a line of programming that exploits modern man’s dialectical relationship with freedom to the fullest. From Bill O’Reilly to Sean Hannity to Glenn Beck, Fox’s leading voices fit the description of what Fromm calls the “magic helper.” The reason we follow them is the same reason we seek freedom from our own ideas – “an inability to stand alone and to fully express our own individual potentialities.”  By contrast, Comedy Central is the station where the most powerful tool of all – satire – is employed daily to lay bare the “play within the play” that is modern democracy, and shame us into both individual and societal improvement. In a world where all is not as it seems, wit is our most powerful weapon.

The thing is, if we’re not careful, we Daily Show-watching, NPR-listening, organic grocery-shopping denizens can make Jon Stewart a “magic helper” as well. This is partially why I think so many feared the ramifications of a rally that would, at some point, need to become more serious than sardonic.

In 1941, Fromm was writing about a world where freedom had reached a critical point. “Driven by the logic of its own dynamism, it threatens to change us into its opposite.”

The same danger exists today. And the future of democracy depends on our developing the capacity to empower people to make meaningful and responsible choices with their freedom, and to help support the fuller creation of a society in which the growth and happiness of each person is our primary aim – and not to acquire fame and fortune, but to discover meaning and purpose.

So here’s to the spirit of today’s rally, alongside a healthy dose of skepticism, humor, and hope.

Free Speech for Teachers? Think Again . . .

Posted on | by Sam | 1 Comment on Free Speech for Teachers? Think Again . . .

In case you missed it, there was a major case last week involving the First Amendment rights of teachers to make curricular content decisions. And the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling puts another nail in the coffin of the free-speech rights of public employees.

In the most recent case, an Ohio teacher’s contract was not renewed after controversy erupted over a few book assignments she made with her High School English class. As recently as a decade ago, the teacher may have had a legitimate chance in court (although not neccesarily). That’s because, prior to 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court evaluated public employee free-speech claims by using a test with two basic prongs. First, the court would determine whether the speech in question touches on a matter of public concern. If it did not, the teacher would receive no First Amendment protection whatsoever. If the speech did touch on a matter of public concern, the court would proceed to the balancing prong of the test, in which it would balance the teacher’s interest in commenting upon a matter of public concern against the school officials’ interest in promoting an efficient workplace of public service.

Prior to 2006, courts sometimes sided with school officials even though the public school teachers’ speech touched upon a matter of public concern. In one 2001 case, for example, the Eighth Circuit determined that a school principal did not violate the First Amendment rights of three teachers who were ordered to quit talking about the care and education of special needs students. Subsequent appeals in the case acknowledged that the teachers’ complaints about the lack of care for special needs students touched on matters of public concern. Nonetheless, the appeals court noted that the teachers’ speech “resulted in school factions and disharmony among their co-workers and negatively impacted [the principal’s] interest in efficiently administering the middle school.”

Conversely, in 1993 the Eleventh Circuit reached a different conclusion in the case of Belyeu v. Coosa County Board of Education. In this decision, a teacher’s aide alleged that school officials failed to rehire her because of a speech she made about racial issues at a PTA meeting. The aide said the school should adopt a program to commemorate Black History month. Immediately after the meeting, the principal asked to speak with her and told her he wished she had raised this issue privately rather than publicly. A lower court determined that the speech clearly touched on a matter of public concern, but that the school system’s interest in avoiding racial tensions outweighed the aide’s right to free speech. On appeal, however, the Eleventh Circuit reversed, writing that the aide’s “remarks did not disrupt the School System’s function by enhancing racial division, nor, based on the nature or context of her remarks, was her speech likely to do so.”

This is all a precursor to 2006, however, when the U.S. Supreme Court effectively eliminated the free-speech rights of public employees in its 5-4 decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos. As my friend and former First Amendment Center colleague David Hudson explains, since Garcetti “public employers are able to defend themselves against allegations of retaliation by claiming that employees’ criticisms of government operations were made as part of their official duties.”

Indeed, a pattern has emerged in this post-Garcetti world, in which it has become almost impossible to mount a successful First Amendment lawsuit based on speech that relates to the workplace. In other words, a teacher who wishes to claim First Amendment protection for decisions about curricular content must do so knowing that the same protections s/he would be afforded as a private citizen will not apply to anything so directly related to his or her official duties.

Ironically, the 1969 case that is hailed as the high-water mark for student free-speech, Tinker v. Des Moines, features these lines: “It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate. This has been the unmistakable holding of this Court for almost 50 years.”

No longer.

(Postscript: If you’re a junkie for First Amendment law, check out my three books on the subject, including answers to all of the most frequently asked questions as they pertain to First Amendment issues in schools.)

The Gift, a.k.a “Waiting for Superman”

Posted on | by Sam | 3 Comments on The Gift, a.k.a “Waiting for Superman”

This morning, I received an email from my dear friend Maya Soetoro-Ng, a lifelong educator and all-around deep thinker, who wrote to her friends and family after seeing Waiting for Superman. Please read it — her way of framing the opportunity provided by the film is exactly what we need to hear.

(Incidentally, plans are underway for the sort of outreach she calls for in early 2011. Email me — schaltain@gmail.com — if you want to learn more . . .)

Dear friend and caring community member,

I only have a few minutes right now, so my evaluation will be necessarily incomplete, but I want to share some thoughts about Guggenheim’s new documentary, “Waiting for Superman”, which I saw last night (I had only seen several discrete segments before).

At the point in the film when children were crying because they weren’t selected in school lotteries, many people around me couldn’t suppress tears and, as a mother of two girls, I too felt intense grief and empathy for the parents of the children.  After the film, I spoke with a wonderful longtime public school teacher and she was teary as well, for a different reason; she was shedding tears of frustration about the fact that the film ignored the enormous commitment and talent of many public DOE teachers and the great work taking place in the classrooms and schools where they throw in their hands and spend large parts of their days. I was one of Randi’s teachers myself in my first years of teaching in NYC. I was even the union rep. for a couple of years. I do understand the hurt, but I urged this teacher not to let the imbalanced nature of the documentary frustrate her, and instead to go talk with others in the community about what she knows, feels, remembers, and can use to help make schools even stronger.

Marveling at the emotion generated by both those who are critical of the film and those who wholly accept the film’s assessments, I’ve become increasingly glad that this imperfect but also compelling film has come along at this time.   Here’s what I hope doesn’t happen:  I hope that we don’t grow more embittered and angry with one another and expend huge amounts of energy in senseless shouting; I hope that public school teachers are not vilified by people who think that they know more than they know about what happens in classrooms.  I hope that the film’s emphasis on test scores doesn’t make us lose sight of the many other potent and meaningful forms of learning and assessment that exist like creative writing, projects of civic engagement, Socratic learning forums, and multifaceted portfolio presentations.

Here’s what I hope happens:  I hope that the film will increase the amount and caliber of dialogue between teachers, administrators, community members, and parents.  I hope that it will encourage teachers everywhere to share their craft and schools loudly and proudly, when pride is merited, and welcome the community’s assistance as well as new opportunities for collaboration.  I hope that the film will help people to see the importance of graceful negotiation when trying to change a system and recognize the true power of persuasion.  I hope that people will think of public schools as belonging to all of us, regardless of whether we have kids in the system, or have kids period.

I hope that we begin to view successful experiments, like good charter schools, as opportunities for evaluation and implementation of best practices.  Of course a larger percentage of charter schools are healthy learning environments, not because the teachers are all better but for the following reasons: charter schools are usually smaller and therefore more manageable; school charters require greater buy-in and contribution from parents; charter schools have the freedom to create cohesive school cultures surrounding issues of local interest and imperative (i.e. Hawaiian language and cultural immersion schools); the choice and freedom in charter schools often allow for a greater sense of ownership by teachers, students, and administrators; and whether conversion schools or new, charter schools are often built using innovations that have been tested and found effective in older, larger, and more overwhelmed regular DOE schools.

Now it is time to reverse the flow of innovation and use charter schools as laboratories for what might work in larger DOE schools.  Let leaders of schools, government, and community focus on building a strong sense of school family, or ohana, in every public school with less tracking, smaller class sizes, smaller learning groups within the classroom, and family-style attention to the whole child.  Let’s think about how to get the community more actively involved in public schools, find new ways for families to participate and share in the culture of the school, and bring the kids out into the community more.  Let’s work to offer free after school, extended year, and parent-enrichment programs, and have school event daycare options for single and overworked parents.  Let’s think of our public schools as the center—the beating heart—of our communities.   Go check out the film, by all means, but then let’s keep talking. With mighty love,

Maya

Election Day

Posted on | by Sam

It’s Election Day here in DC, and in my neighborhood of Columbia Heights, a diverse mix of citizens – old and young, wealthy and struggling, black and white and brown – have been casting their votes all morning in the basement of an old Baptist church. Inside, cheerful volunteers explain the ins and outs of the paper and electronic ballots. Outside, supporters of the prospective candidates line nearby streets to hand out leaflets and answer questions. As they do, two major construction projects – one a new restaurant in an abandoned storefront, the other a new apartment complex in an abandoned building across the street – fill the air with the sounds of power saws, hammers, and the voices of workmen.

Election Days are supposed to be about possibility, hopefulness, and the promise that comes from a system of accountability, transparency, and the will of the people. And yet in my neighborhood, amid the din of new development and community renewal, the primary feeling, paradoxically, is of disappointment and discontent. In DC this year, the election is less a contest between two candidates, and more a referendum on the leadership of mayor Adrian Fenty. And if the polls are at all accurate, it is also the beginning of the end for him and his high-profile schools chancellor, Michelle Rhee.

As I’ve already written, Fenty’s demise has been brought on by a self-inflicted march of strong-armed, tin-eared words and decisions. That same approach to leadership has characterized his choice for schools chancellor, Rhee, even as her tough-minded style has been celebrated nationally. But what the media reports gloss over – and what this election is likely to demonstrate – is a simple fact: the only way real change occurs is if you invest equally in technical expertise (so people will have the knowledge and skills they need to bring about a new way of seeing), and emotional commitment (so people will have the motivation and passion required to see a difficult set of challenges through). The art of democratic leadership comes from loosening one’s grip, at least partially, on what the exact “end result” needs to look like. This doesn’t mean ceding all ground or any core ideas. But it does mean painting a picture for the electorate that is intentionally incomplete, thinking strategically about which broad brush strokes must anchor the work, and leaving ample room for others to fill in the remaining blank space on the canvas. Only then will whatever emerges truly reflect the collective wisdom of a community.

In elections like this, however, too many observers still frame the issues as a false choice between choosing the path of reform or maintaining the status quo.  As always, it’s more complicated than that. In the DC schools, there are undoubtedly some serious issues with the teachers union. There are undoubtedly some horrible teachers in our schools who deserve to be fired. There is undoubtedly a shocking injustice at our continued inability to guarantee each child the same basic opportunity to a high-quality public education.  But history tells us – not to mention common sense – that you can’t address those issues by recklessly demonizing a majority of the people you will need to bring about a paradigm shift in the school system. This style of leadership is media-friendly because it provides a clearly defined cast of heroes and villains. And, as we’re about to see in DC, it will also get you voted out of office by unnecessarily polarizing the electorate.

The language of hope will not always unite. But the language of division will always divide.

I don’t know what type of mayor Vincent Gray will be. If history is any indication, he is as likely to disappoint – and become a victim of his own hubris – as the countless candidates who have gone before him. Still, I cast my vote for Gray this morning because of the possibility that he will take heed of his predecessor’s implosion.

A good first step would be to heed the insights of Edith Warner, the woman who spent her life living along the Rio Grande, and writing about the delicate balance between humans and the natural world. As Warner clearly understood, there is a subtle ecology we all must maintain, and our public leaders are the primary stewards of that human ecosystem. Words matter, in other words, since it is the words of our officials that shape the possibility of our collective action – or alienation.

“What we do anywhere matters,” Warner wrote long ago, “but especially here. Mesas and mountains, rivers and trees, winds and rains are as sensitive to the actions and thoughts of humans as we are to their forces. They take into themselves what we give off, and give it out again.”

The Art of Choosing (or, Mad Men redux)

Posted on | by Sam | 4 Comments on The Art of Choosing (or, Mad Men redux)

As some of you know, I’m in a bit of an ongoing conversation/debate about the uneasy marriage of democracy and capitalism (while still trying to clarify my own position on the issue). It began during a live audio interview with the Future of Education’s Steve Hargadon, and continued in the comments section of an Op-Ed I wrote about the popular AMC show Mad Men, which I describe as “a quintessentially American show about disembodied desire and emotion,” featuring a set of characters who “desire only the freedom to pursue whatever it is they cannot have.”

Today, as if on cue, my friend Steve Moore sent me a link to a recent TED talk by Columbia Business School professor Sheena Iyengar, who was discussing the core ideas in her new book, The Art of Choosing.

I’ve provided a link to the video below, because Dr. Iyengar’s research relates directly to the issues affecting the behavior of the characters in Mad Men — namely, the increasing meaningless of choice (the central right in a democracy) when it becomes primarily defined by the products we can purchase, not the ideas we can articulate (or the range of emotions we can feel).

The value of choice, Iyengar insists, depends on our ability to perceive differences between the options. Yet what has happened in the U.S. (the origins of which, to some degree, we see depicted in the early 1960s ad agency culture in Mad Men) is that instead of making better decisions as the number of choices available to us has grown, we have become overwhelmed by the volume, and the emptiness, of such individualized decisions. In this state, choice “no longer offers opportunities but imposes constraints. It is not a marker of liberation, but of suffocation by meaningless minutiae.”

This is the discomfort I was trying to articulate when I described the disembodied desire of the characters in Mad Men. Iyengar puts it this way: “The story Americans tell, the story upon which the American Dream depends, is the story of limitless choice. This narrative promises so much — freedom, happiness, success. It lays the world at your feet and says you can have anything, everything. But when you take a close look, you start to see the holes, and you start to see that the story can be told in many other ways.