In a previous post, I discussed at some length the question of eduational policy and reform, which I described as the most neglected issue in the current presidential campaign. And yet access to quality education is vital as a powerful engine for economic progress, especially among the poor, and probably ranks as the government benefit of greatest importance to most American families.
In the last presidential debate, we heard more than previously on education from the candidates in their most prominent appearances before the American public. As the Chronicle of Higher Education says, “[i]n the last question in the last of three presidential debates, John McCain and Barack Obama fielded their first, and only, question in these forums that focused squarely on education policy.” (A full transcript of the third and last debate may be found here; you can scroll to the end for the education discussion.) In general, the candidates’ remarks fit comfortably into the categories that I had outlined in my earlier post.
Despite portraying himself as the candidate of change, Senator Obama largely adhered to longstanding liberal preferences and to the platform of the teachers’ unions by offering to spend more federal money on education. Although he said in passing that both more money and reform were needed, he proceeded to ignore reform and speak only about spending programs, such as for expanded pre-kindergarten programs and increased pay to teachers. Obama seemed not to appreciate the irony of his litany of spending proposals in light of the question that had been posed by moderator Bob Schieffer. Schieffer had highlighted that the United States already spends more money per capita on education than any other nation, but with much less in educational achievement to show for it.
Senator Obama concluded his initial remarks on education by urging parents to take greater responsibility by turning off the television and taking away video games and working to “instill[] that thirst for knowledge that our students need.” Obama did not, however, offer any hope or choice for those kids “thirsting for knowledge” who arrive at failing public schools in places like the District of Columbia or Cleveland, where record-setting public funding rates has led to little improvement in the quality of public education.
Senator McCain then characterized education as the “civil rights issue of the 21st century.” Lauding the achievements of the civil rights struggle for “equal access to schools in America,” McCain then asked the pertinent question for today: “But what is the advantage in a low income area of sending a child to a failed school and that being your only choice?” More pointedly and personally, McCain argued that “we have to be able to give parents the same choice, frankly, that Sen. Obama and Mrs. Obama had and Cindy and I had to send our kids to the school—their kids to the school of their choice.”
In response, Senator Obama pointed to charter schools and said that he agrees it is “important to foster competition inside the public schools” (emphasis added). However, returning to his strong opposition to vouchers for poor families who wish to choose private educational opportunities, Obama said that he disagreed with McCain “on the idea that we can somehow give out vouchers—give vouchers as a way of securing the problems in our education system.”
The two candidates sparred over their contrasting positions on the current voucher program for the District of Columbia school system, which is the only public school system that falls directly under federal control. Senator McCain touted his support for that program, noting that 9,000 families had applied for only 1,000 vouchers and arguing that choice opportunities should be increased. Senator Obama insisted that the data doesn’t support vouchers as the answer and noted that a program for vouchers in the District of Columbia doesn’t address educational policy in the remaining 50 states. As the moderator sought to cut off the discussion, McCain tried to insert a rebuttal that the D.C. voucher program was working as well as could be expected but that the number of vouchers allowed remained too small to offer meaningful alternatives to failing schools in the district.
Earlier, Senator Obama had also addressed the question of the federal role in education. While saying that “we have a tradition of local control of the schools and that's a tradition that has served us well,” he nonetheless insisted “that it is important for the federal government to step up and help local school districts do some of the things they need to do.” He criticized the “No Child Left Behind” program for imposing burdens on local schools without providing greater federal funding to assist in meeting those higher standards. Interestingly, when referring critically to the problem of “unfunded mandates,” Senator Obama’s solution was not to reduce federal mandates but rather to increase federal spending to support such mandates. As an example he spoke about what “happened with special education where we did the right thing by saying every school should provide education to kids with special needs, but we never followed through on the promise of funding, and that left local school districts very cash-strapped.” Thus, Obama is favorably disposed to federal regulation of education, within limits, provided that increased federal spending accompanies that regulation.
As had been much anticipated, the controversial subject of Senator Obama’s past associations with radical and former domestic terrorist Bill Ayers was raised during the debate. But overlooked was the specific educational character of some of the foundation work on which Obama and Ayers participated together and what those educational initiatives might reveal about Obama’s attitude toward and competence of his approach to education.
As discussed in my earlier post, Obama’s only prior executive experience—and one of the few matters of substance on which he has an actual record in public service—consists of his prominent role as the leader of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge in the 1990s. This was a well-funded effort, supported by the political and social establishment in Chicago, to bring about reform and improvement in public education. The picture that emerges from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge is not a pretty one. Even acknowledging that many mainstream projects were included within this well-funded program, Obama nonetheless also agreed to subordinate some substantive math and science educational proposals in favor of diverting funding to Ayers’s questionable initiatives to politicize public education and radicalize public school children. More importantly, the overall effort was a depressing failure. As reported by a comprehensize evaluation of the program (here), after spending $100 million on public school enhancement, the Obama-chaired Chicago Annenberg Challenge failed to bring about any significant progress on student educational achievement, student academic engagement, or student social competence.
Despite this disastrous and textbook example of the futility of simply throwing money at public education, while tracking the nostrums of the liberal education establishment, Obama’s present educational proposals as a candidate suggest that he learned nothing of substance from this sobering experience. Under an Obama Administration, the future of educational quality and equal access does not look bright.
Greg Sisk
Sunday, October 12, 2008
In recent weeks and months, we have returned regularly to prudential questions about government programs and government spending, as well as private and religious initiatives and alternatives, and their value and efficacy in creating the conditions for human thriving. On the Mirror of Justice, our debates about such policies are further influenced by Catholic social teaching about the preferential option for the poor.
Within the vast and ever-increasing range of government projects and spending programs at all levels of government, the single most important government public service has to be access to a quality education. For most American families, government provides no benefit that is more direct (in terms of prominent role in their lives) or more substantial (in terms of financial value) than a free education for their children. For the disadvantaged, no conceivable government program offers greater promise for moving upward on the economic ladder than assuring educational opportunities.
While a college degree may be the tool to reach the highest rungs of the economic ladder, a high school diploma is the ticket out of poverty. In its 2007 “Profile of the Working Poor” (here), the Bureau of Labor Statistics using 2005 data found that the adults who did not graduate from high school were much more likely to fall among the working poor (more than 14 percent), as contrasted with those who obtained a high school diploma (6.6 percent). Among African-Americans, the working poverty is higher at each level of educational achievement, but even here the poverty rate for those with a high school degree and no college education is half that of those who did not complete high school.
Catholics have long had a particular interest in education. The original universities were created by the Catholic Church. Catholic elementary, secondary, and higher education have been central to the Catholic experience in America for centuries. And Catholics always have sought to integrate the highest of academic standards with faith, so that families do not have to choose between ensuring a quality education and moral formation for their children. Thus, broader opportunities and educational choice are central to the Catholic vision of education. So education ought to be central to our policy discussions on the Mirror of Justice.
And yet, during this presidential campaign season, educational policy has been a largely neglected subject (see here):
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Tuesday, October 7, 2008
When I began exploring the Catholic Church more than a decade ago and was moving toward Rome as my spiritual home, one of the things that emerged as a small but persistent obstacle for me was the Church’s canonization of people whose behavior was, well, downright weird. I looked with discomfort, even dismay, at the veneration of a man who had lived on top of a pillar for decades, or a woman who had lived as a desert hermit in extreme ascetism, or a man who had whipped his back raw to ward off the sins of the flesh. How could these strange actions be seen as useful examples to the faithful, as instructive stories of great men and women held up as saints of the Church? The monsignor who led me into the Church well explained these behaviors to me as emphatic rejections of the corrupt and unbalanced societies in which they lived. Almost ironically, their prominent and startling behavior served as prophetic calls, not to the extreme, but toward healthy balance. When society has departed from the path to the good life or culture has become perverted, men and women who exemplify the opposite can be an essential antidote.
We live in a time in which far too many among the elites in academia, the legal profession, media, the entertainment industry, and government have abandoned the fundamental values upon which a healthy society is founded and have elevated themselves as superior not only in learning but in character to ordinary Americans. Rather than serving the people and being grounded in society, a detached form of intellectualism has emerged, disconnected from the real world of communities bound by shared moral values, economic markets, and neighborhood life. As we have seen during this campaign year, some of these elites look with disdain at ordinary working people, especially those who live outside of urban centers, as the unwashed and “bitter” masses who “cling to their guns and religion.” Those who are not centered in the professional enclaves of the Left or Right Coast are ridiculed as the unfortunate and ignorant denizens of “fly-over country.” Highly-educated academics and lawyers employ intellectual rationalization to justify the killing of unborn children and to embrace the Culture of Death as a constitutional good. Sexual experimentation by teenagers is downplayed by our social superiors as harmless fun (if undertaken with a condom of course) and, in any event, inevitable, while any attempt to promote sexual responsibility or suggest moral implications is demeaned as unrealistic and prudish. The experts in our colleges of education and the bosses in the teacher’s unions see the public schools as the laboratory for political consciousness-raising, while sneering at those who promote teaching the fundamentals.
Never having built anything, created anything, or grown anything, many of the elites in this intellectual class devote their entire careers to pursuing political or academic influence and prominence, not to advance principles of lasting importance but primarily to advance themselves. Being quoted in the New York Times or publishing a book with a university press is the coin of the realm. The things of the mind that are lasting and that are grounded in the higher things are impatiently pushed aside. Due to their supposed intellectual and cultural superiority, many intellectual elites regard themselves as holding an entitlement to govern, to use the power of government to remold society in their own graduate-school image, to capture the resources of society through taxes to be redistributed according to expert prescriptions for the Great Society, and to impose regulations so that everyone marches to the beat of their college-educated drums.
In such times as these, what a breath of fresh air it is to see a Hockey Mom from Alaska who has not spent her lifetime in political social climbing, who did not devote her youth to writing her memoirs and giving speeches, who knows what it means to run a business and to live day-to-day on the fruits of the family’s labor, who has volunteered for the parent-teacher association, and who has devoted her time in public service to the practical concerns of citizens on such matters as zoning rules, public services, energy production, tax reduction, etc. Although it only appears extreme by comparison with the hot-house intellectualism and government-centric expertise of the chattering class, Sarah Palin’s simple common-sense and uncomplicated approach to political matters is an antidote to those who would impose the tyranny of the expert. She stands as a reminder that the vital strength and moral foundation of America does not lie on Wall Street or in Hollywood or in Washington, D.C. –- or even in the college towns that dot the country (as much as we in higher education do add to our society). Instead, the Salt of the Earth kind of folk who have always made the sacrifices, worked the jobs, fought the wars, and lived the lives that keep this country going are still to be found in cities and towns, large and small, where you will see them at the neighborhood picnic, the school board meeting, the soccer game, and the church coffee hour. To paraphrase Sarah Palin, bless their hearts!
Greg Sisk
Thursday, October 2, 2008
There’s been a lot of buzz on the cable news stations and the internet about a video of choir of children being led in the singing of an original song praising Obama and built on his campaign themes. Although some commentators have found the video to be cute or at least innocuous, most of the bloggers and accompanying comments have characterized it as creepy or even sinister. Once it became controversial, the Obama campaign apparently removed it from its campaign web site and YouTube. But the video has been reposted by others (after all, nothing ever truly disappears once it is up on the internet). You can judge for yourself below (assuming it hasn’t yet disappeared), if you are one of the few not yet to have seen it:
(If the video has disappeared, you can try looking here to find another copy of it.)
Some of my colleagues around the country with an historical sensitivity saw parallels to cult of personality behavior surrounding political leaders past and present of an authoritarian bent. Sharing the same perspective, commentary on the internet has often juxtaposed the Obama children’s choir video with excerpts from the film, Cabaret, in which a group of Hitler Youth sing “Tomorrow Belongs to Me,” or with a vignette of a children’s choir singing songs of adoration to Korean dictator Kim Jong Il as the “Dear Leader.” Now to the extent that anyone is suggesting that Obama is an aspiring dictator, much less that his political views are as reprehensible as these other examples, such a comparison is grossly unfair. (Nor do I think the accusations of brainwashing of children are telling here, as if the children of conservatives do not tend to adopt the perspectives of their parents as well.)
More legitimately and fairly, most of the critique suggests that the Obama campaign’s mistake in this episode lies in its tone deafness to such disturbing historical parallels, as well as reinforcement of the impression that the Obama campaign is focused primarily on personality and fails to discourage the messianic flavor of some aspects of its campaign (for more on that see here). Both impressions should have been apparent to any objective observer of the performance. Nor can the promoters of the Obama children’s choir video be excused as ignorantly exuberant. The video apparently was created by Obama’s wealthy supporters among the Hollywood entertainment industry (here). Of all people, those working in the film industry should have known better. (While the video was not produced directly by the Obama campaign, it was created by leading supporters and was, until yesterday, prominently displayed on the Obama campaign web site.)
My immediate reaction to the Obama children’s choir was a little different. When I first saw the video, it brought to my mind a religious gathering, with children singing at worship in an evangelical church or Bible camp. (Although we are Catholic and my daughter attends Catholic school, she often goes to evangelical day and week camps, where she has loved the worship, Bible study, and prayer time and comes home spiritually energized.) The parallels are almost exact: A group of children wearing identical t-shirts with a designer icon; bright and shiny young faces; an inspirational song about spreading the word, lifting up our hearts, and changing the world; choreographed hand motions, and even the ubiquitous, if often annoying, overly-enthusiastic choir director making exaggerated gestures. Of course, the crucial difference is that the devotional songs lifted up by children at an evangelical church or Bible camp are directed to our Lord and Savior – not to a political figure or political campaign.
In contrast with or addition to the other critiques being sounded, I suggest the real lesson to be drawn from this episode is a reminder to all of us, of whatever political leanings, not to allow politics to be elevated into the place of religion in our lives. Watching this video closely, including observing the presence and reaction of the parents in the audience, the viewer wonders whether this performance is the equivalent of a religious ceremony for these families (and it reportedly was filmed and recorded by Hollywood producers on a Sunday morning). Attendance at and involvement in a church or synagogue appears to have been displaced by political devotionals. Placing a political cause in such a central place is a dangerous temptation for many of us. (Now I'm not suggesting that any of us on the Mirror of Justice would be tempted to sing adoration to a political leader, but rather I know how easy it is to displace religious duties and relationships with political or professional ones).
For those of us who take a greater than ordinary interest in public, legal, and political affairs, we are constantly at the risk of losing a sense of priority, of devoting too much attention to temporal matters and placing faith in human institutions or movements or laws, while forgetting the higher things. Yes, I do think this danger is greater for those on the liberal side of the political spectrum, precisely because their political views are so heavily centered on government as a provider and on the employment of politics to achieve social justice. But politically-active conservatives are hardly immune, as we too can begin to believe that politics matters more than anything else, that patriotism trumps all else, and that the world really can be changed by a political movement rather than by a revolution of hearts.
In my published writing and previously on this blog, I have quoted a powerful reminder of priorities by Richard John Neuhaus, but it bears repeating:
Whether the political dimension is major or minor in our vocations, we will all do our work much better if we understand that we are not doing the most important thing in the world. It may be the most important thing for us to do because it is what we believe we are called to do, but not because it is the most important thing in the world. (Richard John Neuhaus, America Against Itself: Moral Vision and the Public Order 23 (1992).)
Greg Sisk
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
A video making the rounds on the internet of excerpts from a 2004 hearing before the House subcommittee on capital markets offers an interesting contrast to the conventional wisdom now taking hold about the cause and the blame for the current financial crisis. (The video is an advocacy piece and the captions are over-the-top, but the hearing excerpts show the actual words of the participants; for a New York Times article on the same hearing, see here)
The emerging historical revisionism is that our current credit crisis was caused by lax regulation generally of financial markets and should be followed by a new era of greater and broader regulation (i.e., more government). But the answer instead may lie in a surgical and nuanced regulatory initiative targeted toward governmentally-sponsored interventions into those credit markets (such as with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac).
Likewise, while the popular myth is that conservative Republicans set the stage for this crisis by opposing regulation and putting too much faith in unbridled capitalism, the House hearing excerpted on this video featured repeated calls by Republicans for more regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac including better accounting rules and greater capital holdings, while Democrats vociferously opposed any such regulation, denied any financial security dangers with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, promised that housing loans have no risks, and characterized greater regulation of the credit market as likely to impair the ability of those in poor and minority communities to obtain easier credit and buy houses. Not exactly the perspectives that are presently being attributed to the political actors in the mainstream media now that the crisis has broken.
Now the $64,000 question is whether we will see a misguided reaction to this problem that increases government control and regulation of the economy generally, moving the United States toward a European style economy with perpetually low growth and high unemployment. Or instead will wiser heads prevail so that we might fix the real problem with targeted regulation and government oversight that does not try to plan the economy or burden the economy with excessive costs and taxes. I’m betting on the former reaction, but maybe I am just becoming too pessimistic about the “Change” that’s coming.
Greg Sisk
