society

Talking About Diversity
Some people have a very limited view of diversity. Most people avoid the topic completely in the absence of EEO, HR, and “progressive” mandates. I thought seriously about staying out of the fray but here I am!

Jumping Into The Pool
There are a few reasons that I have made the leap. I am one of the “And People.” My nature and nurture make me an embodiment of The Mosaic. My children have the same gift/curse. It is also not lost on me that many people have made a significant living out of the topic – some deservedly so. I regard myself as an equal opportunity critic when speaking truth to power. This means that it was important for me to enter the field in order to confront the Diversity Mafia. I have the most experience with this group at the independent school level. They are often the Talented Tenth who somehow got discovered and marched on to claim their elite education birthright. They know all the diversity buzzwords and jargon and control the red velvet rope against those who don’t. Their class fears are as strong as the those of the oligarchs whose “accomplishments” they worship.

Taking The Cheap Way Out
Albert Einstein stated, “The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.” Yet the purveyors of the party pablum insist on fighting the battle of diversity on the fields of cultural and identity diversity. School administrators and diversity coordinators love to put on the cultural events that celebrate their efforts at open-mindedness. Like reform efforts in public school accountability, these events are cheap and easy to do and everyone feels that they have done their part to make the tent bigger.

Fairness
I have worked with too many children who will never get the chance to see their cuisine sampled, songs sung, or humanity dignified. The common denominator for these children is their poverty. We allow private schools, elite colleges, and Fortune 500 companies to conflate race and ethnicity with deprivation. The five year-old of any race, growing up in a poor household will never have the chance to be invited to the dance.

Most people in this country will profess and believe they are open-minded on issues of race, gender, ethnicity, etc. It’s generally not popular to be a bigot. Ask people to contribute to a system that ensures educational equity for all poor children and they avert their eyes while their fingers point to the nice wall displays for Black History Month.

As the author Walter Benn Michaels asserts, “celebrating diversity shouldn’t be an acceptable alternative to seeking economic equality.”

We should not allow discrimination. Stereotype rigidity and the “Stereotype Threat” (see the research by Claude Steele) are very real problems and have to be addressed. This should not prevent debates on ideas and ideologies.

Most people don’t have access to the elite education that will open the doors to the American Dream. No one should be let off the hook just because their school or business seems appropriately diverse – there’s still that tiny, nagging issue about equality.

I am getting a better handle on the sources of my Paleo lifestyle fascination.  One of the wonderful legacies left to me by my parents is that I am one of the “And People.”  For me, this means that I wear the cultural fabric of the Africans and Native Americans passed through my mother’s genes AND that of the German Lutherans on my father’s side who made a living farming the land of Nebraska.

Yes, I love NY but I have always felt a restlessness in this place.  The deserts of Sudan and Utah, the wilderness of Montana and New Mexico, a lake in Maine, a village in Nicaragua – these have seemed to hold (at least for the short period of my stay) the rhythm and resonance that I need.

This realized rhythm and my genetic inheritance let me know that I am not suffering from orthorexia or a juvenile and dramatic desire to play a role in a caveman reenactment. My ancestors from all the branches of my family tree shout to me that factory farming is wrong.  It is disrespectful and deadly to the land and its animals;  it is disrespectful and  deadly to the people who are victims of poverty and the trance caused by false abundance.

I don’t wear the robes of a Paleo priest or subscribe to a nutritionism orthodoxy.  I do know that the lowfat  high carb movement of the 70′s and 80′s coincided with the beginning of the obesity epidemic.  I know that the poor, especially poor Native Americans and African-Americans suffer disproportionately under the weight of the food pyramid with its choice of either cheap and  harmful calories or hunger.

As Wendell Berry said, “Eating is an act of agriculture.”  Those of us with options can no longer pretend that our food choices have no consequences.  We have a responsibility to support the local food movement and to expand the market for this food.  Subsidies that allow the increased production of high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils should instead be made available to people who want to produce vegetables and pasteured, free range animals.  We can no longer afford to ignore the externalities we support in exchange for cheap unhealthy food.  At least that’s the message from my ancestors – ALL of them.

One of the symptoms of our nation’s current malaise is our reliance on experts. In the areas of education, economics, and health, we have abdicated our responsibilities. Theology and God are proven away by scientists who are given free rein to pronounce on any area of mystery.

In some instances, people have become so disengaged that we’ve allowed education and economics to get combined for convenience. Hedge fund managers and investment bankers have taken the lead in education “reform.” They got bored with all their hard work in making our economy more efficient. They know how to close the achievement gap – create institutions that control the “stranger”, the “other.” Institutions they wouldn’t be caught dead sending their own children to.

The production of high fructose corn syrup gets subsidized and the poor population becomes fatter and unhealthier. We worship food pyramids that have been built to the gods of greed (In future posts I’ll be providing my own food porn antidote to this control measure).

Letting the experts run things have created an obesity epidemic in information, entertainment and food. They are our enemies.

We’re suffering from learned helplessness with no cure in sight. We need a diet and we need more simplicity.

I am a ronin. I am joined by people like Ken (check out his blog), Dino (make sure you follow this), Ian, Bernadette, and Yaro. We all pursue our positive deviant status in different ways. I quit a lie of a job; I workout and eat Paleo; I am a member of the NRA; I look for every opportunity to engage in rants against the enemies of cognitive diversity; I am unapologetic in my faith, and I help people who seek their path in spite of the fear. I do what I can. What are some of the things you are doing?

Anyone else want to join the tribe?

The recent New York Times story about a remarkable drop in  test scores (after being recalibrated by New York State), should give us immediate pause and force a reassessment of claims about what really works in public education.  Many people are  scrambling to explain away what happened.  Some are even complaining that “the goalposts were moved.”   Some of the shining lights of the charter school movement are at a loss and can only say: “we just have to try harder.”  Try harder at what?!  Teaching to the test?  Teaching even more skills to improve performance on standardized tests?  I would like to suggest the crazy notion that the ladder is against the wrong wall.  Unfortunately, for too many people, this will have a short news cycle and it will become business as usual.

Abdication of Responsibility

I’ve said it before:  the game is rigged.  The idea of a meritocracy in education is laughable.  We’ve seen during our recent series of financial woes that qualities like integrity, hard work and sound morals have no significant correlation to economic success at the very top.  IQ cannot be proven to directly influence economic outcomes.

The merit myth also applies to education.  One thing that may be “post -racial” about this country is the extent to which the lives of poor, working, and middle class – Black or White – are all dictated by the needs of an oligarchy determined to maintain its power and privilege.   This plays out starkly in the field of education.  I have too much experience with elite private schools to believe that it’s about hard work, good character, and intelligence. I’ve been in too many meetings with wealthy supporters of charter schools to believe that they would subject their own children to the same education model they believe in so strongly for poor children.

Taking It Back

Education is a gatekeeper but not the type that anyone interested in fairness or American ideals should allow.  Educational attainment is primarily a reflection of family income.  This has to change if this country is too have a significant, viable  future.  Here are a few things that those of us interested in fairness and the future of the Republic should do:

• Read anything by John Taylor Gatto.
• Do your own research on best practices in literacy.
• Learn more about the history of education models like Montessori and Reggio Emilia
• Skip the vacation to the Hamptons and attend an event sponsored by the Appleseed Project.
• Attend a meetup of the local homeschooling association.
• Join a charter school board.
• Help kids get involved in Junior Achievement, Civil Air Patrol, and 4-H Clubs.
• Teach your children to play and win the “Inner Game.”
• Don’t blindly accept “expert” definitions of “measurable success.”
• Teach your children that competition doesn’t always have to be a zero sum game – it can also be about cooperation where you and your opponent bring out the best in each other.
• Learn the difference between end goals (which we don’t have total control over) and process goals (which we can control).

Knowing the truth about inheritance, family income, and luck should give those at the top some pause, greater humility, and a desire to do better by those less fortunate.  In the meantime, we have to get tougher, smarter, and more strategic about doing it for ourselves.

Do you have any models of schools that work for everyone?

Happiness is our natural condition. All you have to do is look at a healthy infant to notice that their default state is one of unfiltered joy. As we grow older, we learn to add to our list of needs. Our wants and needs become confused. Eventually, as Ralph Waldo Emerson pointed out, “Things are in the saddle and ride mankind.”

Our attention has become fractured. We are losing our ability to intuit. We seek increasing stimulation from external sources. When the stimulation is no longer present, when we feel we are not able to meet our “needs,” we pick up the pace or become despondent.

We have to create opportunities for silence – periods of meditation where God speaks to us. This will aid us in understanding our points of individuality and our points of connection. Before we can value our differences, we must accept the things that we have in common. This begins when we seek the answer to the question: “Who am I and why I am here?” I believe that an honest effort to answer that question will prevent the moral nihilism that too many people organize their lives around.

We have the tools for happiness. They can only be accessed when we strip away the extra. They are only effective when we are honest about all the parts that make us who we are. Only then can we discover and work with our real strengths. The world has need of our gifts. They can only be given when we engage in addition by subtraction.