Lynnell Mickelsen, the cofounder of "Put Kids First Minneapolis," has an editorial in today's Minneapolis Star-Tribune discussing the ongoing negotiations between the Minneapolis school district and the teachers' union, which she has been closely observing (with growing dismay). Herewith a couple of excerpts (the full editorial is available here):
Research shows that the classroom teacher plays the biggest school-based role in a student's academic success.
Yet our schools are hamstrung by contract rules that blindly reward teacher seniority over quality, that limit our hiring pool, that force school leaders to accept hundreds of ineffective teachers they don't want and that make it very hard to remove the most dismal performers.
* * *
In short, it's crazy. We've given our schools a huge task. Then we've forced them to work under rules that no successful business or nonprofit could survive. And we keep doing it even as huge numbers of Minneapolis students are failing.
Note that Ms. Mickelsen and her growing list of supporters for alternative contract priority for children "are progressives -- staunch supporters of public schools, teachers and collective bargaining." As she puts it, "I'm a lifelong, active DFLer [Minnesota-speak for Democrat] who got my first union card at age 17. But if friends don't let friends drive drunk, friends of unions shouldn't let one drive off the cliffs of public opinion."
I much admire "Put Kids First Minneapolis" in their public-spirited efforts to change the culture in too many urban public school systems from one that serves primarily the interests of adults to one that gives preference to the needs of school-children. As a telling indication of how bad things have gotten, this current reform effort has attracted the support of a growing number of people and organizations that traditionally fall on the left side of the spectrum -- notablly including prior editorial support (see here) from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune (one of the more liberal editorial boards in the country).
I fear, however, that this public school reform effort will prove Quixotic, as the reformers are attacking a deeply-seated structural flaw in the public school system in Minneapolis, one which is largely immune to public concerns. As Ms. Mickelsen notes, although the negotiations by law are open to the public, the school district makes little effort to publicize the meetings and do not seek public feedback. Moreover, by funding and endorsing school board members, the teachers' union effectively is on both sides of the negotiating table. Indeed, four school board members issued a statement -- printed on teachers' union stationary -- promising to be more cooperative with the union.
We are unlikely to see genuine reform in Minneapolis (and other urban school districts) unless and until greater access to quality education is made available through public support to parents seeking alternatives to the public school monopoly, a monopoly captured by one interest group that does not have the best interests of children at heart. Educational choice, including the economic freedom to choose Catholic schools, remains one of the most important but most unappreciated civil rights and social progress causes of the present age.
The Times has published a series of articles criticizing American law schools; over the weekend, the paper editorialized on the topic, pronouncing that "American legal education is in crisis." It appears that there are no Thomists on the NYT editorial board:
The case method has been the foundation of legal education for 140 years. Its premise was that students would learn legal reasoning by studying appellate rulings. That approach treated law as a form of science and as a source of truth.
That vision was dated by the 1920s. It was a relic by the 1960s. Law is now regarded as a means rather than an end, a tool for solving problems.
I do think that law schools need to get better at training students in the practice of law, especially in the second and third years. I'm pretty sure, though, that viewing law "as a source of truth" should not bear the brunt of blame for what ails legal education.
UPDATE: I note that Marc DeGirolami commented on the editorial over at his non-MoJ blogging perch.
The sexualization of children in our culture is the scandal from which most Americans seem to want to avert their eyes. Perhaps that is because they feel helpless to do anything about it. The forces behind it seem so powerful and indeed dominant. They give us everything from Lady Gaga, to thong underwear for girls sold by Abercrombie & Fitch, to "sex ed" curricula containing images and information that would have shocked a sailor a generation or two back. To complain about any of this is to mark oneself as a "prude" or even a "rube." So people remain mute as the innocence of children is massively compromised and the lives of many youngsters, especially in poorer and more vulnerable comunities, are devastated.
Yet, there are a few brave souls who are willing to speak up. Mary Anne Layden, Director of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School's Center for Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology, is one. Another is the distinguished Muslim public intellectual Hamza Yusuf. (See his speech on the social costs of pornography, here: http://seekersguidance.org/blog/2010/10/video-shaykh-hamza-yusuf-at-the-social-costs-of-pornography-event/). Now Mary Graw Leary of the Columbus School of Law at Catholic University has spoken out in a powerful piece published today at Public Discourse: http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2011/11/4340. Her point of departure is the moral indifference of some in the face of the revelations of child sexual abuse and exploitation at Penn State.
A couple of excerpts:
The second reason we should not be surprised by the callousness of Penn State's protesting students may be a new one: They have been raised in a culture that has normalized children's sexual objectification . . . This generation has so regularly witnessed the sexualization of children that they have become numb to it.
Having created and perpetuated this cultural climate, are we now surprised that some of the young adults it produced do not understand the true nature and gravity of the sexual abuse of children? Are we now surprised that some of these young adults express indifference to the kind of abuse that increases victims' risk for short-term and long-term physical and psychological damage? How can we be? Not only have we groomed the victims for these offenders, we have groomed the generation for indifference.
In an age of "political correctness" we can become so used to hypocrisy and double standards favoring causes that are fashionable among cultural elites that we sometimes fail even to notice them. Bay Area journalist Debra Saunders notices:
Here is my op-ed piece, appearing today in USA Today, on the HHS mandate and religious freedom. I humbly submit that my arguments are more-sound than Dionne's or Kmiec's. A bit:
[G]overnments hoping to make good on Madison's promise will sometimes accommodate religious believers and groups by exempting them from rules and requirements. This sounds like special treatment for religion, and indeed it is. Our country's founders believed that such compromises are sometimes necessary and justified, even when the rules in question are popular or seem sensible, because religious freedom is both fundamental and vulnerable.
It is true that the administration's proposed mandate includes an exemption for some religious employers, but it is so stingy as to be nearly meaningless. It does nothing for individuals or insurers, and it applies only to employers whose purpose is "the inculcation of religious values" and that hire and serve primarily those of the same religious faith. The vast majority of religious educational, social-welfare and health care organizations — not to mention the ministry of Jesus on earth — do not fit this crabbed definition.
The proposed exemption covers only inward-looking, members-only, religious-instruction organizations while excluding those that respond to the call to feed the hungry, care for the sick, house the homeless and share the good news with strangers. Religiously affiliated hospitals, charities and universities that serve people of other religions would be vulnerable. The exemption assumes that religion is only about belief and values, not service, sacrifice and engagement. It purports to accommodate religious believers, but it actually would confine their belief.
We should hope, again, that the administration changes course. . . .
Last night Maureen and I saw the new film My Week with Marilyn, which has generated buzz because of Michelle Williams' portrayal of an alternately alluring and wigged-out Marilyn Monroe (in England shooting a film with Laurence Olivier in 1956; the film is based on the diary of one of the production staff). But another female role stuck with me: Judi Dench playing Dame Sybil Thorndike, the famous British Shakespearean and tragic actress, 75 years old in 1956, for whom George Bernard Shaw had written Saint Joan back in the 1920s. As this biography apparently details, Dame Sybil was sort of a saint herself: a suffragette and labor activist, a Christian believer who prayed before every performance and wrote a short book called Religion on the Stage, and a warm and caring person who "visited leper colonies, held the hands of dying children in Belsen after the war," and as an actor always did her best to make those around her comfortable. In the new movie, Dench as Dame Sybil understands her co-star Monroe's insecurity and tries to build her confidence with repeated acts of kindness. When Marilyn messes up her line (as happens frequently) in a scene they have together, Sybil (who is always consummately prepared) says so everyone can hear, "I must have given you the wrong [cue] line, dear." She stands up for Monroe by telling Olivier to stop "bullying" the young star. And when Sybil notices that another character, a young production staffer, is shivering in the cold studio, she arrives the next day with a new red scarf for him.
Lawyers, other professionals--all of us--can draw on many persons as models. In Dame Sybil's model, the professional does her work with care and skill and also goes out of her way to make those around her the best they can be, by paying attention to the things that burden them and those that encourage them, and by actively affirming their worth as persons. It's a fine model for any of us.
Having just spent a wonderful time with the fratelli in the Order at Mass and dinner, I began to think about the words that have been and are being spent to discuss and critique the upcoming implementation of the Third Edition of the Roman Missal this Sunday for the first week of Advent.
I think for those who are or may think they are upset about these liturgical text changes, we need to take honest stock of the liturgical license that some priests and some laity have exercised over the past three-plus decades in presenting their own texts for canons of consecration and the other prayers associated with the Second Edition of the Roman Missal. If we can do this taking stock honestly and objectively, I think we will reach no other conclusion but this: the Third Edition is a long expected and welcome reform that has been called for in these thirty-some years of liturgical experiment that had no end in sight.
It may well be that if these ongoing experiments with the Eucharist had not been pursued, the Second Edition of the Roman Missal might still have been around for some time to come. I do think the Third Edition is a wonderful reform of authenticity, but I am confident that the Second Edition was the unfortunate test subject of unrestrained creativity in subjectivity.
Here is my interview with Martha Himmelfarb, the William H. Danforth Professor of Religion at Princeton, in the Daily Princetonian's six-part series of interviews entitled "Keeping Faith":
Toward the end of the interview we talk a bit about Professor Himmelfarb's father, the late Milton Himmelfarb, long-time editor of the Jewish Yearbook for the American Jewish Committee. He was one of my intellectual heroes, and deeply influenced my own thinking about religion and society. People not familiar with his writings might want to have a look at a collection of his essays edited by his sister, the distinguished historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, under the title Jews and Gentiles (Encounter Books, 2007). I particularly recommend "Modernity and Religion," "Judaism is Against Paganism," "No Hitler, No Holocaust," and "Church and State: How High a Wall?"
I've recently posted the paper I gave at the symposium John Inazu organized at Duke Law this past September on "Theological Argument in the Law: Engaging with Stanley Hauerwas." In my article, Exposing the Cracks in the Foundations of Disability Law, I discuss Hauerwas' diagnosis of the inconsistencies in contemporary society's attitudes toward the disabled as evidence of the flaws of the presumptions of modern humanism around which our society is organized. I analyze Sam Bagenstos' book, Law and the Contradictions of the Disability Rights Movement, as being largely consistent with Hauerwas' critique, and argue that this convergence of theological and legal arguments on this topic might provide a powerful platform for cooperation in helping shape a less contradictory -- and more inclusive -- set of practices and laws for persons with disabilities. Below is the full abstract; you can download the paper here.
The papers from this symposium will be published in Vol. 75 of the Journal of Law and Contemporary Problems, so any comments on this draft would be appreciated.
The theologian Stanley Hauerwas has described people with intellectual disabilities as “the crack I desperately needed to give concreteness to my critique of modernity. No group exposes the pretensions of the humanism that shapes the practices of modernity more thoroughly than the mentally handicapped.” Indeed, modern practices with respect to the mentally handicapped are undeniably puzzling. On the one hand, advances in the ability to prenatally diagnose genetic conditions that cause mental retardation are widely heralded and enthusiastically embraced, as evidenced by the declining numbers of children born with Down Syndrome worldwide, despite the fact that advancing maternal ages should be resulting in an increase in those numbers. On the other hand, laws that express a strong commitment to the equal treatment of our fellow citizens with disabilities continue to be enacted – from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1975, ensuring the education of children with disabilities in our public schools, to the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, prohibiting discrimination against people with disabilities in public accommodations and employment, to the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act in 2008, prohibiting employers or health insurers from discriminating based on information from genetic tests.
Hauerwas diagnoses these puzzling inconsistencies in contemporary society’s attitudes toward the disabled as evidence of the flaws of modern humanism. Humanism’s emphasis on rationality and capacity for reason is the most obvious target of any critique focused on people with intellectual disabilities, whose capacity for reason is, by definition, compromised to some degree. But the pretensions of the humanism on which Hauerwas focuses his critique are two different corollaries – namely, that autonomy and the ability to freely create one’s own identity constitute equally fundamental markers of humanity.
In his book LAW AND THE CONTRADICTIONS OF THE DISABILITY RIGHTS MOVEMENT, disability law scholar Samuel Bagenstos identifies and tries to explain a series of contemporary contradictions in disability law, including recent case law restricting the scope of the ADA and the debate about abortion after a prenatal diagnosis of a disability. A careful analysis of these arguments reveals that Bagenstos’ explanations for the contradictions he notes are compatible with many significant aspects of Hauerwas’ critique of modern humanism, although Bagenstos does not characterize his critiques that broadly. Bagenstos’ arguments could be strengthened by incorporating more completely Hauerwas’ full critique. Appreciating how Bagenstos’ arguments are underpinned by these Haeurwasian insights does more, however, than simply clarify and strengthen Bagenstos’ arguments. More significantly, it is evidence of a growing and potentially powerful convergence of theological and secular reflection on the thorny conundrum posed by contemporary society’s treatment of the significantly disabled. By joining forces, proponents of these arguments might be able to work together for the development of a less contradictory – and more inclusive – set of laws and practices for people with disabilities.
On Michael's recommendation a few months ago, I am reading Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. The book is a series of letters from an aged and increasingly infirm minister to his young son about his family's past (the boy's "begats") and many other nuggets of advice, personal observation, and internal meditiation. The writing is powerful and moving. With the arrival of Thanksgiving, I thought to share a short passage that I found affecting and to the purpose:
I am also inclined to overuse the world "old," which actually has less to do with age, as it seems to me, than it does with familiarity. It sets a thing apart as something regarded with a modest, habitual affection. Sometimes it suggests haplessness or vulnerability. I say "old Boughton," I say "this shabby old town," and I mean that they are very near my heart.
I do not give thanks for the blessings of my life often enough. Among the dearest of these are the "old." Thank God for them.
