HOW WAS THE CHICKEN?

Last night, at the Al Smith Dinner in New York, there were the two candidates for president at what traditionally has been a chance for such candidates to display their more humorous sides.  It is a competition between which side can muster up better joke writers.  It is to be a light-hearted evening.  Both candidates last night acted as if they had not gotten the memo as to the purpose of the gathering, although both admitted that they had been to prior Al Smith Dinners.

          One of the two candidates, although he began his remarks in the intended spirit, devolved into the same strident tone he exhibited in the last debate, just the night before, between the two.  The other sustained a more jovial presentation but did push her candidacy, which was not the purpose.

The usual tenor at this event is to be self-deprecating and to needle the other candidate with good natured quips.  Last night, one candidate, in trying to be self-deprecating, was more deprecating of his wife.  The other did make certain self-deprecating remarks, but nothing too profound.  She made, for example, a reference to her “deplorable” comment of some weeks ago, a comment she indicated was unfortunate.

          In short, he, Donald Trump, and she, Hillary Clinton, were worth seeing, but they did not exemplify what a “good” Al Smith Dinner is supposed to be.  For that, see the Obama-McCain or the Obama-Romney version – they were just right.  But what was more revealing last night were the opposing leadership styles each candidate exhibited.  In that, they demonstrated clashing approaches of leadership.

          The Republican candidate provides an example of the charismatic style for those who follow him and the Democratic candidate more of the low profile, humble appearing style.  I write “appearing” because in both cases, one is dealing with individuals who have had celebrity status for a long time.  As such, they have had ample opportunity to craft a style they want to portray to the public.

Therefore, one cannot be sure in either case whether what one sees is what one will get.  A person would have had to work for one of these candidates to know how he/she is when the pressure builds.  What does each fall back on when the pressure is on?  This is important because the job they are after will have a boat load of pressure.

          Let’s suppose that what one sees is what one will get come January 20^th.  Based on those appearances, which is best:  a charismatic leader or a low profile, “humble” leader?  According to Michael A. Roberto,[1] there seems to be some disagreement between two gurus of organizational theory and research.  There are Jim Collins[2] and Thomas J. Peters who propose somewhat opposing opinions on this score.

          Collins sides with the low profile, humble approach.  Peters does not so much favor the charismatic approach as he prefers matching the leader and his/her dispositions to the demands of the organization at a given time.

Roberto gives the example of Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City (he was at the dinner last night scowling at Clinton and her unflattering reference to him).  When Giuliani took office, the city was suffering from high crime rates and other ailments.  He “righted the ship” and consequently enjoyed high approval ratings.  He was easily reelected.

          Then there was his second term and he tried to impose more “conservative” policies – policies that many believed were detrimental to minority populations – and his popularity plummeted.  But all that changed with the 9/11 attacks where he took charge, was highly visible and relatively transparent.  He again upped his approval ratings and left office on a high note.

          Giuliani’s example is good in that it demonstrates how, based on one person’s experience, a single personality is good in certain situations and not so good in others.  Apparently, Giuliani was good when things were extremely demanding, but lacking when things were moving along more normally.  As such, his tale seems to support Peters’ argument.

What is wrong with the Giuliani example is that it reflects a very unusual set of circumstances.  Most leaders will not be called upon to handle such extreme conditions.  So, the mayor’s effectiveness seemed to spike when the city was experiencing very difficult challenges.

          On the other hand, Collin’s argument is derived from his study about how various business enterprises that were doing poorly to mediocrely were transformed to becoming top profit-making entities – “good to great.”  In terms of leadership, he found that these companies were led by low profile, humble leaders.  These were not companies that at the time were facing drastic futures; they were not about to go bankrupt.  So, their conditions were not so imminently catastrophic.

          These more “normal” situations seem to relate to what Giuliani faced during most of his second term.  Yes, there were challenges, but established, on-going processes and policies were able to meet the demands of the day.  They could stand to improve, but that process of improvement could be more deliberate and thought out.

Although it should be pointed out that one reason Giuliani was so successful during the 9/11 attacks is that, based on an earlier attack on the World Trade Center, he had instituted appropriate planning and training to meet the challenges of another attack.  He personally supervised these efforts as they were given high priority.

          There is more that goes into successful leadership than personality traits; good sense, knowledge, temperament (which is more than just how flamboyant one is), and a host of other traits. 

I will also add that both Collins and Peters write about leaders who implement, if needed, and sustain more horizontal organizational structures where collaboration and delegation are featured.  Both write of how important it is to have a workforce that feels a sense of being federated among its members – these writers might use other language to describe this, but this is part of their message.

So, the question is, in the upcoming years, how drastic the needs will be and which of these candidates has the personality and other traits for which the place and times are calling.  I know the nation is suffering from certain problems; I’ve written about them in this blog.

But I think you would agree that they are not of the catastrophic type.  The nation is moving toward a more secure economy and there are no immediate threats from any foreign enemy.  Our biggest threat is that of terrorists and any attack from them will have limited effects.  This is serious but does not pose an existential threat.

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[1] Michael A. Roberto, Transformational Leadership:  How Leaders Change Teams, Companies, and Organizations, (Chantilly, VA:  The Great Courses/The Teaching Company, 2011).

[2] Jim Collins, Good to Great:  Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Others Don't, (New York, NY:  HarperCollins Publishers, Inc, .2001). 

AN INVOLVED LIFE

I went to a memorial service the other day for a former next door neighbor.  She was quite the community activist, a former state president of a well-known non-profit organization and was involved in several others.  She died in a local assisted-living facility which she had moved into a few years ago.

The service was well attended and nice things were said.  Whether she heard those things or not – or if we believe she did – is a matter of religious conviction.  What I do know is that we heard those things and it was gratifying.  The room had a glass wall so that we could overlook a forested view, very pleasant.

          I mention this because the topic of my posting today has to do with how rational or reasonable it is to be involved in civic activities.  There are different ways to think about this issue.  How one feels about whether to become involved or not is probably highly dependent on how one views government and politics.

For those of you who have been reading this blog all along, early on, I shared an extended quote from the famous political/social writer of the nineteenth century, Tocqueville.  He describes an American scene in the 1830s when people were eager and enjoyably engaged in conversations and activities that had a strong communal and civic character to them.

Here, there, and all around were people either talking or otherwise engaging in the local, community goings on with pride and a feeling that being so engaged was entertaining.  The tone portrayed a whiff of competitiveness:  who was the best citizen?

It surely was a reflection of a shared sense of duty.  And from our perspective in the twenty-first century, this scene is a source of wonder.  Why?  Why were these people so engaged?  Does it make sense?  Not from our perspective.  And here there is, in true natural rights fashion, a calculation to perform.  To see how this analysis works, let me provide an analogy.

Suppose your daily drives take you past an intersection where there is heavy traffic in every direction.  You are unfortunate on three counts.  One, you have to go through this intersection – there’s no other way to get to where you are going.  Two, there is no traffic light.  And three, your path has a stop sign staring you in the face as you approach the intersection, which causes the traffic to back up quite a bit.

This means you have to inch forward as you wait for your turn to cross the intersection.  This extra inconvenience you deem to be dangerous.  One more bit of information is that you are fairly wealthy and you can afford the cost of a traffic light. 

Should you approach the “traffic” officials and say, “Put in a traffic light; I’ll pay for the damn thing!”?  Or should you go on suffering this daily, headache inducing experience?  What is the reasonable thing to do?

You can probably think of other options, but let us leave it at that.  Here is a “community” situation, one you can improve, but will you?  Should you?  Of course, the reasonable thing is for you not to “buy” a traffic light.  That’s why government buys such things as traffic lights to begin with.  And it is also why most people don’t even get involved with political advocacy or engagement of any sort.

Let me quote Paul Burstein:

[In regard to organizing to meet some communal concern, citizens] aren’t likely to create organizations because of the collective action problem… [O]rganizations attempting to affect policy seek a collective good that will benefit every member.  Because everyone will benefit, whether or not they have done anything to win the collective good, it is rational for everyone to let others do the necessary work.  The result will be little or no collective action.  The same argument holds for individuals:  why try to influence policy when letting others do the work will produce the same benefit?[1]

So, according to this account, not only will you not buy the traffic light, but chances are you will not stir up enough organized effort to get the “traffic” officials to do what it is you think is so desperately needed.

          So what motivated my former next door neighbor to be so involved?  Assuming she didn’t have some mental abnormality – she acted “normal” in every other way – she must have developed an emotional sense that encouraged her to see engagement as either entertaining or fulfilling in some way.

Perhaps there was a religious angle or an intellectual take or some other motivating factor.  The thing is that she had something that most people don’t have.  I think she simply had a strong sense of duty, a sense that as a citizen, she just had certain responsibilities to fulfill.

          Whatever it was, I would bet it had something to do with how she grew up.  I don’t know for sure.  As an educator, I tend to believe schools do make a difference either proactively or from their inactivity in such matters.  She, I like to believe, was exposed to a more active education, one that encouraged her to care about what was happening around her and how others were being affected by the conditions of the time.

This blog has argued that there is an array of social/political problems that schools have, at a minimum, enabled by inaction by not addressing issues, especially if they have a moral aspect to them.  This neglect is caused by many reasons, one of them being that there has not been an acceptable theoretical basis by which to proceed in a more aggressive manner.  Hopefully, this blog is addressing this shortcoming.

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[1] Paul Burnstein, American Public Opinion, Advocacy, and Policy in Congress:  What the Public Wants and What It Gets, (New York, NY:  Cambridge University Press, 2014), location 206.

HOW DYSFUNCTIONAL?

We have an election coming up.  Oh, you noticed.  Chances are, and I might be projecting here, you can’t wait for it to be over.  I am a political junkie and I want it to be over.  Somehow, this time around, we seem to be talking about something other than what we have grown accustomed to.

I, in this blog, called Donald Trump a “black swan.”  This was not, at the time, a derogatory term; it just referred to the fact that Trump and what he promised to represent was on no one’s radar.  He was an “unknown, unknown,” at least as a presidential candidate.

          But here we are with less than a month to go and the unfolding of events has become more and more bizarre.  At first, the bizarreness was amusing; not so much anymore.  Things have become ugly.  My personal exposure to this has been what I see on social media such as Facebook and television media.

I understand the level of “unfriending” is up significantly.  People can’t just disagree politically and leave it at that.  It has gotten to the point that one sees those with whom one disagrees as less likeable or even less human.  In my case, if I were to be of such a mind, that would include family members.  This can’t be healthy.

          And what happens after the election?  Does the bipolar nature of our politics become even more so?  Will it become even more impossible for us to congregate in order to hatch out public policy?  It seems that will happen.  To the extent it is already the case, one can determine that it is probably the chief reason the Trump phenomenon occurred in the first place.

          Our political parties, one in particular, has opted for the position that it will not compromise with the other.  Ironically, that particular party boasts that it defends the original intent of our founding fathers.  And yet central to the system our founding fathers left us is one that depends on congregating, collaborating, and compromising (the three c’s).  And it is that party, for political purposes, that has refused to even be seen as compromising, much less doing it.

          But this reflects these politicians’ political situations with their constituents.  Due to the Tea Party and others, any politician who appears soft on the issues these voters think are important is subject to being ousted by a primary challenger, one who promises he/she will not compromise.  The term, “primaried” has been coined to describe the process.  So they “cannot” compromise since their number one objective is to politically survive the next election.

          What is the result?  If one is talking about Congress being unable to arrive at policy decisions, the political system becomes dysfunctional.  By the way, such a reality is a policy in itself, one of inaction.  The problem is that that policy is not what is intended or satisfying anyone.

Early in this blog, I referenced the work of Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Jr.[1]  They introduced a theory that described the sort of actions a political system had to accomplish in order to remain healthy and even survive.  The theory is given the name, structural-functionalism, and the things that have to be done are known as functions.  One of the functions the theory identifies is rule making and another is interest aggregation.

          When Congress does not pass laws that are perceived as needed by the electorate – or worse, an issue is not addressed, e. g., job losses due to foreign competition or non-enforcement of trade agreements – the system is not fulfilling the rule making function.  And when a portion of the electorate refuses to compromise, the interest aggregation function is also short-changed.

Here are two basic functions not being fulfilled and, a la Almond and Powell, the system seems to be in serious trouble.  This, according to the theory, can eventually lead to the system collapsing and ceasing to exist.  We’re not there yet, but does the outlook indicate healthier times ahead?  I’m afraid not.  Whoever wins, his or her party, it seems, will have to win all organs of government – the presidency and both chambers of Congress – in order to get things done.

Is it time to give up on our founding fathers’ plan and shift to another one, perhaps a parliamentary system?  If so, I, for one, would be heartbroken.  The entire federalist model, one that grew through our colonial times and was refined through the centuries – is it finally at an end?  “Say it ain’t so.” 

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[1] Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Jr., Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach, (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1966).

A CHALLENGED SETTING

One area of concern relating to change is how national or local educational reform should be.  Since the 1980s, there has been a series of reports by various organizations.  The general gist of these reports has been to cast light on the deficiencies plaguing the nation’s schools.  A message many have taken from these revelations is that the way we are doing things in schools should change.  And one of those changes, perhaps, should be taking a more national approach to education.

What seems to be spurring these concerns are international testing results that continuously find American students not doing as well as students in other countries – countries that, by the way, generally have national educational systems with national curricula.

Of course in the US, we have over fifty educational systems, one for each state and then the territories and the District of Columbia.  The national government’s answer to this state of affairs is to have a core, national curriculum issued by the Federal Department of Education with states having the option to adopt it or ignore it.

Even this more modest level of nationalizing our educational effort has not been without controversy – one can hear the cries that Washington[1] is trying to interfere with a local matter.  It should be pointed out that education is not a delegated power of the central government and therefore, it is a reserved power of the states.  Yet given the degree to which the economy has globalized, there is a certain amount of pressure to nationalize the nation’s school system.

But this has not happened, and given the amount of antagonism any suggestion to nationalize engenders, this is not apt to happen soon.  It would call for a constitutional amendment and that is very difficult to accomplish.  Yet the problem remains.  American students still perform comparatively poorly. 

For quite a few postings, this writer has been reviewing a list of psychological and sociological issues that have an effect on education.  There are fields of study dedicated to these issues and, of course, these postings have been cursory at best.  This posting will be the last of such efforts.

It is dedicated to reviewing some of the general concerns these aforementioned national reports have brought forward as a way to familiarize the general reader as to what the major concerns facing our schools are.

This listing is highlighted by Allan C. Ornstein and Francis P. Hunkins,[2] whose work this blog has repeatedly relied on for much of the information it has brought forth regarding these related issues.  These general findings have been taken from a list of twelve reports; the two most widely noted are A Nation at Risk  and the No Child Left Behind Act.

Both of these reports were issued during conservative presidential administrations (the first, Reagan’s and the second was during George W. Bush’s time in office).  As such, they are both considered conservative documents.  Ironically, while both base their concerns on poor comparative results, they, especially the second, support local efforts and downplay the need to “nationalize” education. 

The second of these two reports is also noted for recommendations of choice and charter schools, suggestions that many see as efforts to dismantle the public school system.[3]  They also are seen as being directed against government efforts, such as in the case of public schools.  The ideological case is that private enterprise works best in providing any consumer service, and education is no exception.

Before beginning the list of issues, this writer wants to point out that he is not taking a position on any of these concerns.  He is just informing the reader that these particular issues are out there and are generating interest and advocacy either one way or the other.  If one were to attempt change in the nation’s schools, he/she would be well served to know what concerns are important to educators.

The first issue is that school curricula are drifting away from requirements that were stable fare some thirty or so years ago.  This writer sees this as evidence of what he has contended often in this blog: that over the last sixty years or so, the nation opted for the natural rights construct as its dominant view of governance and politics.

One can say a shift toward electives in schools is a way the individual can tailor his/her education to reflect personal preferences and life choices.  Instead of a core set of courses that was academic, such as foreign language, mathematics, science, English, and history, there is a slew of electives and remedial courses being offered, at least until recently. 

The experience of the writer is that while electives have been introduced, most school systems have retained four core course requirements for most years of study.  They include math, science, language arts, and social studies.  He prefers social studies to be listed first, but it usually isn’t.

Actually, in more recent years, in an attempt to address this softening, state policy has called for more testing.  Test preparation has become more prevalent and this has cut into the number of electives.  This has led to wide scale instructional plans that call for teachers teaching to the tests.  This has led to shallow, un-reflected content and teachers not being able to delve into meaningful lessons, especially on material not covered by the tests.

The second issue is grade inflation and less homework.  Grade inflation is the general trend toward handing out higher grades for proficiency levels that in the past earned lower grades.  It seems that every time a young person is mentioned in the media for doing something untoward, he/she is identified as an honor student.  The fact is that that designation is more readily handed out, at least compared to past years.

The third issue is the continued progression downward of Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores up to the last reported scores in 2014.[4]  For example, the scores in verbal skills dropped about 40 points between 1963 and 1988 and 20 points in mathematics.

The fourth issue is the continuing poor performance of American students compared to students of other industrial countries.  For example, in the 1970s, they ranked last among these countries on nineteen academic tests.  The comparisons have not improved much in the ensuing years.

The fifth issue is that over 20 million Americans test to be functionally illiterate.

The sixth issue is that among the 17-year old population in the US, 13% tested illiterate and those percentages jump significantly for minority students.

The seventh issue is that between the Armed Forces and colleges and universities, millions of dollars are being spent each year to provide remedial courses in basic literacy and math courses.

And the eighth issue is that all these poor indicators cannot be attributed to short-changing the nation’s students in terms of expenditures.  Compared to other countries, the US has low student-teacher ratios and the per student expenditures are second only to Switzerland’s.  More money doesn’t seem to be the answer.

These then are the dominant issues that one must deal with or, at least, be aware of if one wants to delve into instituting change at the school site.  Much of what this writer has provided in this blog tends to point to a sense that what ails American schools is not subject to “silver bullet” solutions.  The sources of these and other problems are varied.

What is needed is a holistic approach that addresses many factors and that many of those factors are cultural in nature.  If that is true, reforming education will be a slow process.  But what this writer would suggest is that that process be done with a commitment for public education.

He fears that many of the proposed solutions have a hidden agenda.  He agrees with Diane Ravitch that the efforts seem to be geared toward undermining the viability of public schools and that, in the long term, will be a de-democratization of the nation’s schools and of its governance and politics.

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[1] Of course, our national capital was named for the “father” of our country and first president.  The way the city is disparaged, one wonders if the designation is an honor or not.

[2] Allan Ornstein and Francis P. Hunkins, Curriculum:  Foundations, Principles, and Issues, (Boston, MA:  Allyn and Bacon, 2004).

[3] Diane Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System:  How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education, (New York, NY:  Basic Books, 2010).

[4] “Fast Facts,” National Center for Education Statistics, accessed October 11, 2016, https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=171 .

BOOM

How does an institution such as education that is conservative by nature survive, much less thrive, in a social reality noted for enormous change?  There is little evidence of it thriving today.  There are pockets of dynamic and interesting developments and innovations but, by all accounts, this common enough institution is suffering from a general lack of successes.

We all generally feel we know this place called school; it’s an institution we deal with for a number of years during our lives – as students and parents of students.  But how well do we know these places?    If you ask the typical person why we have schools, he/she would probably respond that schools are the places we learn things, where we acquire knowledge.

  Yet knowledge is not a stagnant entity; as a matter of fact, we are in the midst of an explosion of knowledge.  There are two areas of concern where this explosion is being palpably felt:  in the fields of technology and of social relations.

          The first of these fields is readily seen.  Warren L. Ziegler makes a few observations on the pace of technological change:  the language of mathematics has added more developments to its arsenal of expressions in the last hundred years than were developed in all of history before 1900; it is anticipated that about half of what we teach engineers today will be passé in ten years, and half of what we teach students today will be no longer truthful or otherwise useful by the time they are in their forties or fifties.[1]  That is a quick turn around and reflects how much new knowledge is being produced.

          Allan C. Ornstein and Francis P. Hunkins attribute a great deal of this explosion to something called “branching.”[2]  That is, specialties are being subdivided and creating areas of study at a greater pace, and within each subspecialty, there are very bright people advancing what is known in ever greater specificity. 

Of course, this causes certain concerns.  One, the more obvious is how do we as a society, generally, and education, more specifically, deal with this increase not only overall, but in such variety?  And two, how do we assist in informing people about developments across various fields?  How do scientists, engineers, and other experts keep up with developments in other branches, much less in other disciplines, that have bearing on their work or interests?  This is daunting in itself.

Now consider what that means to education that is charged with introducing people to those various fields.  One would think that central to such introductions is giving the neophyte a good sense in which direction a particular discipline is headed.  And yet with so much branching, is there a direction?

Curriculum workers, therefore, have the challenge to select meaningfully and viably the knowledge they will include in any given field and determine how they should organize that knowledge, both in what is new and what is not so new.  The disciplines are dynamic entities.

And yet, in the midst of all this change in the one basic “commodity” that education peddles, knowledge, how does it sustain essential areas of knowledge that education must not forget, especially public school education?  It has been argued in this blog – and it is still believed – that the primary responsibility of schools is to prepare young people to be good citizens.

Given that, how do schools maintain a focus on that charge?  Any change agent must hold on and honor that basic responsibility.  And it is in this more socially oriented realm that we are experiencing the second source of great change:  the social dimension and how schooling is expressed politically.

Schools are not the traditional comfort zones they used to be.  From dealing with diversity to the handling of “inconvenient truths” such as global warming and what we now know about race, the beginnings of life, what actually happened historically in our past, all of this is part of the “boom” in knowledge.

And this could prove to be the most challenging aspect of schools as a change target for change agents.  It is in this political environment that he/she will attempt to introduce even newer ideas, goals, functions, and processes.  And yet, given the paucity of successes alluded to above, can we afford not to attempt change?  Given the effort here, one can surmise that the answer being proposed is no.  Hopefully, the reader agrees.

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[1] Warren L. Ziegler, Social and Technological Developments, rev. ed., (Syracuse, NY:  Syracuse University Press, 1981).

[2] Allan Ornstein and Francis P. Hunkins, Curriculum:  Foundations, Principles, and Issues, (Boston, MA:  Allyn and Bacon, 2004).

P S

Would you judge a person by the size of his/her pancreas?  Silly question?  Then why do so many of us judge others by the color of their skin – just as silly.  If you were to determine what the size of each person’s pancreas was and then categorize them according to size, say three sized categories – small, medium, and large – and then correlate the sizes to other factors such as crime figures, attendance in college, Nobel prizes, etc., for each correlation one of the sized categories would correlate the highest and one would be the lowest.

Is there a cause and effect relationship among those correlations or are they just happenstance occurrences?  Most of us would say they are happenstance.  But suppose for some weird reason(s), people began believing that there was a cause and effect relationship and began treating the negatively or positively affected group in some unusual way. Would that treatment enhance the belief or assuage it?  It would probably enhance it.

So the belief is not one based on biological factors – the genetic factor(s) that cause people to have the size pancreas they have – but the social construct (the shared, made up belief) that says pancreas size (PS) leads to the behaviors one sees and with which one must deal.

          Yes, all of this is silly.  But it reflects a serious problem.  For example, the most glaring example is the historical treatment of African-Americans.  That treatment has led to the conditions that exist today, not the biological factors that cause the different shades of skin color we see.  Here, there is a people who were taken against their will from their homes and enslaved.  Then there were generations upon generations of people enslaved and deemed to be inferior in every way possible.

Upon liberation from slavery, they were subjected to horrendous social conditions and messages that continued the negative stereotypes.  And yet those people today can claim, beyond all the negative treatment, advancement.  Most African-Americans live middle class lives, just like the rest of us.  This is due to their diligence, hard work, and continued hope that things would/will get better.

          One such person made it to the highest office in the land.  But this negative social construct persists and among some, the effects can still be seen in promoting the counterproductive behaviors – on both sides of the racial divide – that further the negativity.  In a shorthand way, this brief piece is an attempt to describe what is meant by saying that race is a social construct, a social construct educators have the responsibility to set straight.

AGAIN

“Making America great again” is a slogan that has been bandied about during this political year – it’s a rallying call for one of the major candidates.  The key term, I believe, is “again.”  Now innocently, one can say that the reference could mean that what is sought is the return to the industrial past that marked the economy in the pre-seventies years.  Since about the 1970s, the economy has shifted from a more industrial base to a more service base. 

Industrial facilities used to provide employment to many lower educated, mostly male workers.  Industrial corporations, in search of cheaper labor, have moved many of their production facilities abroad.  This includes opening factories in Mexico and in Asian countries. Of course, the result is that many of the former areas where such jobs were plentiful are now areas of abandoned factories and there are many displaced workers.

So “again” could refer to reversing this trend by some policy or other that either punishes these corporations for moving or provides rewards if they return.  I would guess that such policy or policies would rely heavily on some taxing scheme such as tariffs or exit taxes (one can question the constitutionality of this) or maybe the imposition of some regulation scheme – the details are skimpy.

Finally, there are currency manipulation policies – an option employed extensively by the Chinese – that if implemented here, would encourage more sales of American made products.  But with all the complaining, the US is still a leading industrial power – accounting for about 17% of the world’s production (China, number one, is about 22%).[1]

          Or “again” could be less economic and more social.  Given the added rhetoric of walls and the general antagonistic talk about criminal immigrants and the like, one cannot help thinking the reference is more an anti-diversity message.  In one ad, the idea is that everything we value is under attack.  And here, I suppose, the overall image that is being created could be a “let’s get back to the 1950s,” to a time when only one type of folk was in charge.

I’m not sure this anti-diversity theme is the message, but who is to say?  Definitely not the campaign, where such details seem to be beyond their purview.  Then again, this can all be rhetoric with little intent to follow through.  But is it?

          What one can say is that the issue of diversity is real and it affects many of our institutions, including education.  It’s the type of issue that directly relates to civics education and also an issue that would affect any attempt to transform education or any part of it – it’s that pervasive.

          I have recently pointed out that many of the concerns related to curricular change revolve around arguments that take on an either/or form.  Diversity is no exception.  There is the approach that talks of diversity in terms of assimilation – the melting pot notion that the history of America has seen a steady stream of immigrants, mostly from European countries.  By the time their children or grandchildren (at the latest) come of age, they have converted themselves from whatever the previous nationality or ethnicity was to being “Americans;” that is, a white citizen occupying a middle class or working class position (perhaps holding one of those industrial jobs mentioned above) and enjoying a relatively safe and prosperous existence.  All is well or so the image is portrayed.

          But all of this assumes certain social realities.  For one, it assumes a particular family and all of its members are willing to meld.  And readers of this blog well know that under the regime of natural rights thinking, we are all told and encouraged to be our own selves and that includes what life style we choose to follow. 

One “good” thing about the natural rights perspective is that it broke the chains of cultural homogeny.  You want to be Hispanic, then be Hispanic.  You want to be black, then be black.  You want to be Asian (such as Chinese), then be Chinese, and so on.  These choices reflect rights and those rights only call on the individual to respect others exercising the same right and proclivity.

          Now multiply that with other preferences of choice such as sexual or gender orientation or the various forms of family structures.  The nation’s institutional, social assumptions and arrangements are in serious upheaval and this is disturbing to many more traditional folks.  A political upstart can capitalize on such disorientation especially if that message is coupled with “solutions” for the loss of industrial jobs and promising a return, again, to the more comfortable, the more knowable.

So, if there is an either/or element to all of this, it is that the nation has to decide which way to go.  Will it be, at least, tolerant of diversity (if not embracing of it) or will it attempt to turn back the clock to a previous time – to go back again to a more homogeneous time, a simpler time?  This writer believes this is impossible, no matter how certain segments of the population wish it to be.

The next several postings will assume the answer is that we as a nation want to proceed to a more accepting and diverse future, to be more inclusive; that choice, while challenging, is more in line with our espoused values of openness and inclusiveness. 

Yes, we do have the authority to guard our borders, but there is so much hypocrisy regarding how we have enforced immigration laws that it is difficult to be too high and mighty about the illegals who are here. 

After all, here was a cheap labor supply willing to do work that Americans are not willing to do.  The results have been higher profits for businesses, such as farms and hotels, and a way to keep prices for food and hotel rooms low.  In addition, by keeping them illegal, they are much less likely to complain about anything.

How should we look at this issue of diversity?  Elsewhere, I suggest something called “centered pluralism,” where we as a nation accept the principle that all Americans agree on certain values such as tolerance of diverse lifestyles and beyond that, let people be themselves.[2]  That doesn’t mean certain values can’t be encouraged such as equality and responsible liberty, but people are allowed to be themselves.

Even at that level of agreement, it will probably call on certain perspectives to be drastically changed; intolerance or undemocratic values being the norm in many areas of the world are often brought over by immigrants from those areas.  And then, we have enough homegrown intolerance and undemocratic values right here. 

So, the challenge will be meaningful, but diversity provides many advantages to a people and we have already been able to cash in on many of them.  The following postings will be about change and how change should account for and even promote diversity.

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[1] Marc Levinson, “U.S. Manufacturing in International Perspective,” Congressional Research Service, April 26, 2016, accessed September 30, 2016, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42135.pdf .

[2] Robert Gutierrez, “A Case for Centered Pluralism,” Curriculum and Teaching Dialogue 5, no. 1 (2003):  71-82.