Most people that I know, barring any wacky emotional or psychological issues, love their kids so much that just about everything they do, their kids are part of the consideration. In terms of people in our lives who we have the most impact on, our kids are the top of the list.
The same goes for their parents. Oh, yeah, they may get on our nerves at times as they always have, but we know that we would always be there for them no matter what. Parents who have worked hard all their lives, who have stuck with us through the ups and downs of growing up, who have sacrificed for our wellbeing; there is little we wouldn’t do to help them.
Grandparents are a little different. If we were fortunate enough to know our grandparents, most of us love them. They were the fun side for us. They took care of us sometimes, and made sure we had fun when we were together. Maybe they spoiled us just a little bit. We’ll do the same with our grandchildren. We’ll give them extra cookies just to make them smile, and let them stay up just a little later than their parents would. But usually, the grandparents aren’t making the big decisions for or with us, nor will we for our grand-kids. The impact between these generations is sweet and warm and loving, but not nearly as practical as parents and kids.
When it comes to our great-grandparents or our great-grandchildren, we will be lucky if we even meet them, and they will probably have little to know impact on us in any way, other than being a brief memory of having met, if that.
I have great concern for my son’s future. I also worry about my parents as they get older. I don’t really think much about my son’s kids as they are years away, and really won’t be my main concern. My grandparents are all deceased except for one who is elderly. I doubt I’ll ever meet my great-grand kids, and only met one great-grandparent early in my life. I really never think about how my actions today will effect my great-grandchildren, and never think about my great-grand parents unless we are discussing the family tree. The range of my concern is only two generations: from my parents to my children. And even if I was so insightful as to be concerned further, the ability of my actions to have an impact on my children’s children is pretty limited if it exists at all.
Organizations work much in the same manner. A teacher may have great concern for one of their students, and may be concerned about how they are perceived by their colleagues. At the same time, they may have they ability to directly effect these relationships. To a lesser degree, he or she may be concerned about how a principal or supervisor perceives them.
To the director of education or the superintendent, there is no effective level of concern. There is likely no more existing relationship between a teacher and a superintendent than there is between a great-grandparent and a great-grandchild. In fact, many teachers have probably never met or spoken with the superintendent of their school district.
Decisions are based on this limited range of effective concern. Before I decide to take a job half way across the country, I will seriously consider the impact it will have on my children. If I have grandchildren, they may factor into my decision to relocate based on more limited factors, such as my not being as available to them. What impact this may have on my great-grandchildren probably doesn’t even cross my mind.
In my example with the teacher, the superintendent makes decisions based on her two closest generations of concern; the teacher is not within this range. Consequently, decisions made by the superintendent may not benefit the teacher and his or her situation, and may in fact seem counter to the teachers efforts. Likewise, the decisions a teacher makes on a daily basis in working with needy children will not bring the superintendents views in to factor; the superintendent may demand x amount of time spent on math, but when the lesson is interrupted because a child becomes ill, any good teacher will put the well-being of the child above the superintendents expectations for a particular subject. The superintendent is not within range of the teachers concern and therefore can not factor into the teachers decision making process.
So, when you see the bureaucracy of your choice making policies that leave you scratching your head remember that the decisions were made more than two generations above the person you are currently speaking with, and how the decision would effect this person and yourself was beyond the range of effective concern of the person who made it.
Hence, the Law of Effective Concern: The Maximum Range of Effective Concern is Two Generations.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
G's Laws
I have always been a person who, more than anything else, wants to understand how things work. The first real intellectual love of my life, music theory, was all about my trying to understand the inner workings of sound: what did it consist of, how it was assembled, what made these raw materials turn into something that could make you laugh or cry or get up and dance or get up, walk down the hall, and punch the guy in the next apartment in the head.
Over the course of the past several years I have had the good fortune (?) to have emotional wrestling matches with any number of people, experiences, bureaucracies, compromises, ethical dilemmas, catch 22's, and some just plain outright cruddy luck.
Being that I am still a person who lives in a constant state of trying to understand and figure things out, and being that I have been exposed to the aforementioned life experiences, I have come up with a few observations that I have formulated into what I call "G's Laws". They may be original, or maybe not; they aren't things I've heard people discuss prior to having them slowly coagulate in my head. But then again, I've also never been a person who ever thought himself or claimed to be all that much smarter, or slicker, or more clever, than anyone else, so for me to think that I am the first person to make such observations is somewhat contrary to my usual demeanor.
But anyway, I've mentioned some of these ideas to students over the past few years, and each time I have, my students have said that I should write them down, put them in a book, etc, etc. In other words, they really dug hearing my ideas. So, for their sake, I will surrender my usual manner of disregarding most of what I think as being little more than babble, and set some of them into their rightful place: my obscure blog in cyberspace.
And so, my little school cherubs, it is for your benefit that I begin the process of emptying the contents of my mind here, where the world can read, and laugh, and point their fingers at me without my knowledge. I wish teaching was more like this.
Over the course of the past several years I have had the good fortune (?) to have emotional wrestling matches with any number of people, experiences, bureaucracies, compromises, ethical dilemmas, catch 22's, and some just plain outright cruddy luck.
Being that I am still a person who lives in a constant state of trying to understand and figure things out, and being that I have been exposed to the aforementioned life experiences, I have come up with a few observations that I have formulated into what I call "G's Laws". They may be original, or maybe not; they aren't things I've heard people discuss prior to having them slowly coagulate in my head. But then again, I've also never been a person who ever thought himself or claimed to be all that much smarter, or slicker, or more clever, than anyone else, so for me to think that I am the first person to make such observations is somewhat contrary to my usual demeanor.
But anyway, I've mentioned some of these ideas to students over the past few years, and each time I have, my students have said that I should write them down, put them in a book, etc, etc. In other words, they really dug hearing my ideas. So, for their sake, I will surrender my usual manner of disregarding most of what I think as being little more than babble, and set some of them into their rightful place: my obscure blog in cyberspace.
And so, my little school cherubs, it is for your benefit that I begin the process of emptying the contents of my mind here, where the world can read, and laugh, and point their fingers at me without my knowledge. I wish teaching was more like this.
Monday, April 6, 2009
When the Effect of the Cause is a Problem
Previously, I wrote about the nature of causes: how people create causes in order to find meaning in the ensuing battle.
It’s not that I don’t think that just causes exist and that individuals or groups of individuals are not justified in their actions in support of a cause. Certainly, there are legitimate reasons that people have gone to war, have held protests, or have marched or picketed as a means of bringing about change for the better, or as a means of preventing a change for the worse.
The problem with many causes, at least in my view, is that they quickly become identities and or industries. And the problem with this is that once it happens, the problem is never going away no matter how good things get. And when this happens, what was once a solution quickly becomes another problem.
Take racism for example. In spite of how far things have come socially and in spite of how much better things become, racism is never going to go away. This is true in part because of human nature being what it is; we are never going to completely rid humanity of bigotry and prejudice. But it is true in larger part because there are too many people working in the racism industry. The reverend Jesse Jackson is never going to say, “there aren’t many black guys playing major league baseball because they are just not into it. They are more into playing basketball”. What he is going to say is “there aren’t many black guys playing major league baseball because it is closed to them.” The Reverend Jesse makes a pretty good living off the racism industry, and he is not about to start making statements that would begin to limit his earning power.
Another example is school reform. The schools have been being reformed for about forty years now. If you don’t think schools have improved, take a look at the school curriculum in 1970 compared to today. Granted, every student isn’t learning (have they ever?) and every school is not a good school, probably owing more to its socio-economic setting as opposed to those people who are working in those schools desperately trying to overcome such barriers. But no matter how much we improve our schools, school reform will never go away. Why? Do a Google search on the words “school reform”. See how many companies are in the school reform business. The need for school reform will be perpetuated indefinitely, not because we need better schools, but because there is an industry that is thriving on perpetuating the idea that schools as they are, suck, and that their company is the only viable option. They are not going to say, “You know what? There is only so much you can do with a 100 IQ. There are only so many hours in a day, and only so much you can demand of ten year old kids. We’ve done all we can, now it’s time to go and solve some real problems, like why Johnny’s parents get drunk and beat each other up every weekend.” They aren’t going to say that because if they did, they’d have to find another job, probably doing real work, like trying to stop Johnny’s parents from getting drunk and beating each other up every weekend.
But the real problem is now some of these folks who started out with good intentions are now part of the problem. To Jesse Jackson and his followers, every inconvenient thing that happens to a black person is racism. Sometimes it is, yes. But lots of times it is just life happening as it tends to happen: randomly. But Jesse is perpetuating racism and creating it where it doesn’t exist because it feeds his cause. I heard of one university professor who claimed that even when a white person is kind to a black person, they are only doing it out of guilt because of their own racism. I mean, how do you ever counter this kind of claim?
School reform businesses are now in the business not of helping schools succeed, but of proving schools are failing so they can continue to sell their product. No Child Left Behind was not about helping kids succeed, it was about helping schools fail. Specifically, it was about finding a way to show how schools were failing so they could drum up support of funneling public money into private education under the auspices of “school choice”.
There is no doubt that in history, certain groups have been mistreated in any number of ways. I think it would be a real challenge to find a group of any kind that can’t make a serious claim as such. And there is no reason that when it happens, good people should stand up and well, take a stand. But to perpetuate conflict because it is part of your history (Arabs vs. Jews, Blacks vs. Whites, Irish Catholics vs. the IRA), or your identity (Greenpeace vs. anyone who drives a car, Feminists vs. anyone who has a penis, etc) is taking things a bit too seriously.
And I might add, a bit tiresome for all those who have to pretend to take you seriously, lest you inflict yourselves upon us.
It’s not that I don’t think that just causes exist and that individuals or groups of individuals are not justified in their actions in support of a cause. Certainly, there are legitimate reasons that people have gone to war, have held protests, or have marched or picketed as a means of bringing about change for the better, or as a means of preventing a change for the worse.
The problem with many causes, at least in my view, is that they quickly become identities and or industries. And the problem with this is that once it happens, the problem is never going away no matter how good things get. And when this happens, what was once a solution quickly becomes another problem.
Take racism for example. In spite of how far things have come socially and in spite of how much better things become, racism is never going to go away. This is true in part because of human nature being what it is; we are never going to completely rid humanity of bigotry and prejudice. But it is true in larger part because there are too many people working in the racism industry. The reverend Jesse Jackson is never going to say, “there aren’t many black guys playing major league baseball because they are just not into it. They are more into playing basketball”. What he is going to say is “there aren’t many black guys playing major league baseball because it is closed to them.” The Reverend Jesse makes a pretty good living off the racism industry, and he is not about to start making statements that would begin to limit his earning power.
Another example is school reform. The schools have been being reformed for about forty years now. If you don’t think schools have improved, take a look at the school curriculum in 1970 compared to today. Granted, every student isn’t learning (have they ever?) and every school is not a good school, probably owing more to its socio-economic setting as opposed to those people who are working in those schools desperately trying to overcome such barriers. But no matter how much we improve our schools, school reform will never go away. Why? Do a Google search on the words “school reform”. See how many companies are in the school reform business. The need for school reform will be perpetuated indefinitely, not because we need better schools, but because there is an industry that is thriving on perpetuating the idea that schools as they are, suck, and that their company is the only viable option. They are not going to say, “You know what? There is only so much you can do with a 100 IQ. There are only so many hours in a day, and only so much you can demand of ten year old kids. We’ve done all we can, now it’s time to go and solve some real problems, like why Johnny’s parents get drunk and beat each other up every weekend.” They aren’t going to say that because if they did, they’d have to find another job, probably doing real work, like trying to stop Johnny’s parents from getting drunk and beating each other up every weekend.
But the real problem is now some of these folks who started out with good intentions are now part of the problem. To Jesse Jackson and his followers, every inconvenient thing that happens to a black person is racism. Sometimes it is, yes. But lots of times it is just life happening as it tends to happen: randomly. But Jesse is perpetuating racism and creating it where it doesn’t exist because it feeds his cause. I heard of one university professor who claimed that even when a white person is kind to a black person, they are only doing it out of guilt because of their own racism. I mean, how do you ever counter this kind of claim?
School reform businesses are now in the business not of helping schools succeed, but of proving schools are failing so they can continue to sell their product. No Child Left Behind was not about helping kids succeed, it was about helping schools fail. Specifically, it was about finding a way to show how schools were failing so they could drum up support of funneling public money into private education under the auspices of “school choice”.
There is no doubt that in history, certain groups have been mistreated in any number of ways. I think it would be a real challenge to find a group of any kind that can’t make a serious claim as such. And there is no reason that when it happens, good people should stand up and well, take a stand. But to perpetuate conflict because it is part of your history (Arabs vs. Jews, Blacks vs. Whites, Irish Catholics vs. the IRA), or your identity (Greenpeace vs. anyone who drives a car, Feminists vs. anyone who has a penis, etc) is taking things a bit too seriously.
And I might add, a bit tiresome for all those who have to pretend to take you seriously, lest you inflict yourselves upon us.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Colorblind or Multi-cultural?
Should my ability as a jazz trumpet player be judged by how well I play jazz trumpet, or should I just be viewed in a positive light simply because there have been great jazz trumpet players?
This might sound like a ridiculous question, but apparently, this is a serious philosophical debate in our society today, and particularly in the workplace.
I know this because today I was listening to NPR and they were discussing the issue of race in the workplace. Specifically, they were discussing the differences between a “color blind” workplace and a “multicultural” workplace.
A color blind workplace would be a setting where workers were viewed strictly as individuals, whereas a multicultural workplace would be a setting where cultural differences were recognized or even “celebrated”.
I have to admit, most places I have worked have been color blind, at least when it came to the way they dealt with me. When I worked at Sabatini’s Pizza and I dropped a pot of sausage on the floor, they were pretty adamant about judging me as an individual. No one seemed to want to celebrate the fact that here I was, the grandson of an Italian immigrant, working in an Italian restaurant! I even tried to point out the fact that there have been many great contributions made to society by Italian-Americans, but they didn’t seem concerned about that either. I didn’t really fare better when I was employed by the U.S. Army, who also seemed to overlook my rich cultural heritage and insisted on viewing me as an individual soldier. Even the school where I now work insists on evaluating me personally and never even asks about or mentions my ancestry, let alone celebrate it. I would expect a little more consideration given that the public schools are so big on paying lip service to the cause of multiculturalism. But I digress.
Anyway, the “expert” that was on the show talking about it said that when Martin Luther King, Jr. made his great “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” statement, he didn’t mean that they should only be looked at as individuals, he meant that they should be looked at as individuals as part of their racial or cultural group, or some such babble.
Personally, I always admired the MLK statement as it was before this expert translated it for me. I always thought it was beautiful and profound in its simplicity and directness. I was fortunate enough (at least, I thought) to be raised in an environment where my parents taught me to think and act and treat other human beings in just exactly the way Dr. King dreamt. That is, to treat every person with respect and dignity; to evaluate them only through their actions and deeds; and to expect to be treated and evaluated in the same manner. Period.
But in a poll taken, workers stated that they felt more “involved” when their culture was recognized in the workplace, and less “inspired” when their supervisors were color-blind.
I’m not really surprised by this. Being evaluated strictly as an individual, as Dr. King mentioned, could be a pretty harrowing experience. I know I was pretty uncomfortable getting chewed out by my boss when I, as an individual, dropped the pot of sausage at Sabatini’s. I’m sure I would have felt much better if they would have overlooked my individual error and viewed me as part of a cultural group to which, by the way, they owed their livelihood: if it weren’t for us Italians, there would be no Italian restaurants.
And the next time I am playing jazz trumpet somewhere, I am going to inform my audience that rather than respond to my personal performance, that they should be considerate of the “cultural heritage” of such greats as Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, and Clifford Brown, and that their enthusiastic appreciation for my artistic ancestry will help me feel more “inspired”.
This might sound like a ridiculous question, but apparently, this is a serious philosophical debate in our society today, and particularly in the workplace.
I know this because today I was listening to NPR and they were discussing the issue of race in the workplace. Specifically, they were discussing the differences between a “color blind” workplace and a “multicultural” workplace.
A color blind workplace would be a setting where workers were viewed strictly as individuals, whereas a multicultural workplace would be a setting where cultural differences were recognized or even “celebrated”.
I have to admit, most places I have worked have been color blind, at least when it came to the way they dealt with me. When I worked at Sabatini’s Pizza and I dropped a pot of sausage on the floor, they were pretty adamant about judging me as an individual. No one seemed to want to celebrate the fact that here I was, the grandson of an Italian immigrant, working in an Italian restaurant! I even tried to point out the fact that there have been many great contributions made to society by Italian-Americans, but they didn’t seem concerned about that either. I didn’t really fare better when I was employed by the U.S. Army, who also seemed to overlook my rich cultural heritage and insisted on viewing me as an individual soldier. Even the school where I now work insists on evaluating me personally and never even asks about or mentions my ancestry, let alone celebrate it. I would expect a little more consideration given that the public schools are so big on paying lip service to the cause of multiculturalism. But I digress.
Anyway, the “expert” that was on the show talking about it said that when Martin Luther King, Jr. made his great “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” statement, he didn’t mean that they should only be looked at as individuals, he meant that they should be looked at as individuals as part of their racial or cultural group, or some such babble.
Personally, I always admired the MLK statement as it was before this expert translated it for me. I always thought it was beautiful and profound in its simplicity and directness. I was fortunate enough (at least, I thought) to be raised in an environment where my parents taught me to think and act and treat other human beings in just exactly the way Dr. King dreamt. That is, to treat every person with respect and dignity; to evaluate them only through their actions and deeds; and to expect to be treated and evaluated in the same manner. Period.
But in a poll taken, workers stated that they felt more “involved” when their culture was recognized in the workplace, and less “inspired” when their supervisors were color-blind.
I’m not really surprised by this. Being evaluated strictly as an individual, as Dr. King mentioned, could be a pretty harrowing experience. I know I was pretty uncomfortable getting chewed out by my boss when I, as an individual, dropped the pot of sausage at Sabatini’s. I’m sure I would have felt much better if they would have overlooked my individual error and viewed me as part of a cultural group to which, by the way, they owed their livelihood: if it weren’t for us Italians, there would be no Italian restaurants.
And the next time I am playing jazz trumpet somewhere, I am going to inform my audience that rather than respond to my personal performance, that they should be considerate of the “cultural heritage” of such greats as Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, and Clifford Brown, and that their enthusiastic appreciation for my artistic ancestry will help me feel more “inspired”.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
A Force That Gives Us Meaning
A few weeks ago I finished reading a book entitled “War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning”. I was browsing for something to read and the title struck me as something unusual; not your typical tell-all memoir about combat nor an anti-war message, but a close examination of conflict, and how and why it is such a part of the human experience.
It was ironic that I would find this book. I have been spending a lot of time over the past few months thinking and reading about beliefs and belief systems. Not so much the specifics of what this group believes or what that group believes, but the nature of belief itself. What are they, why do we have them, where do they come from, and given that so many held beliefs turn out to be quite irrational, why do we hold on to them so passionately.
A few years ago the state of Maryland published a comprehensive list of all property owned by the state. The purpose of doing this was to look at each property, find properties that were not being used for any purpose, and to place them for public sale. The list included empty lots where buildings once stood, lots where buildings still stood but where no longer in use, properties confiscated by the state for various legal reasons such as non-payment of taxes, abandonment, etc. Of course, because the list was a COMPLETE list of ALL Maryland property, the list also included Maryland State Parks and other natural and recreational areas.
Some people who are strong advocates for the environment “believed” that this meant that the state was about to start auctioning off parcels of woodlands and wetlands so they could be developed for commercial or residential use.
At the school where I teach, one of the teachers organized a student environmental group and rallied them to attend a protest at a local state park area called “Falling Branch”. They made signs and shirts, got their tree hugging (I’m not calling them this to be demeaning; they actually call their group “The Tree Huggers”) friends together, and spent a Saturday afternoon wandering around the woods with their picket signs protesting the pending sale of Falling Branch.
Lo and behold, Falling Branch was not sold off to developers so they could build a Wal-Green’s. This was of course, because it never was for sale. The state never intended to do anything with Falling Branch except let it continue to be Falling Branch. All they did was publish a list of all the properties they owned and Falling Branch happened to be one of them.
But you couldn’t convince the protestors of this. They knew that the reason that Falling Branch was saved was because of their concerted actions.
Why did these people believe so adamantly that the state was going to sell their beloved park? They believed it because it angered them, and because it angered them it rallied them to action, and because it rallied them to action they were able to feel like they did something meaningful that was for a higher cause or purpose. And when nothing happened to their beloved park (as was the plan to begin with), they could congratulate themselves for having rescued what was (they believed) an endangered nature area.
They essentially took a piece of harmless public information, interpreted it in a way that would cause them the most inner turmoil, refused to believe that it meant anything else but the way they interpreted it, and went to war over it.
They created a conflict because it gave them a goal. They got to plan and implement the attack, and they got to feel rewarded when it was finished. They got to feel important. They got to rise above themselves and feel part of a unified front. The whole episode allowed them to participate in, at least to them, a meaningful experience.
There is a reason that the Jews believe what they do about the Palestinians, and there is a reason the Palestinians believe what they do about the Jews. There is a reason that young Muslim men will voluntarily blow themselves up in a bus station, and that young American men will voluntarily march off to try to stop such men from doing so. There is also a reason that people are racist, sexist, homophobic, feminist, ultra-liberal, ultra-conservative, etc, etc, etc.
It creates conflict. It rallies them to act. It creates meaning within their lives.
So the question remains: given the power of this force, can we ever live in peace?
It was ironic that I would find this book. I have been spending a lot of time over the past few months thinking and reading about beliefs and belief systems. Not so much the specifics of what this group believes or what that group believes, but the nature of belief itself. What are they, why do we have them, where do they come from, and given that so many held beliefs turn out to be quite irrational, why do we hold on to them so passionately.
A few years ago the state of Maryland published a comprehensive list of all property owned by the state. The purpose of doing this was to look at each property, find properties that were not being used for any purpose, and to place them for public sale. The list included empty lots where buildings once stood, lots where buildings still stood but where no longer in use, properties confiscated by the state for various legal reasons such as non-payment of taxes, abandonment, etc. Of course, because the list was a COMPLETE list of ALL Maryland property, the list also included Maryland State Parks and other natural and recreational areas.
Some people who are strong advocates for the environment “believed” that this meant that the state was about to start auctioning off parcels of woodlands and wetlands so they could be developed for commercial or residential use.
At the school where I teach, one of the teachers organized a student environmental group and rallied them to attend a protest at a local state park area called “Falling Branch”. They made signs and shirts, got their tree hugging (I’m not calling them this to be demeaning; they actually call their group “The Tree Huggers”) friends together, and spent a Saturday afternoon wandering around the woods with their picket signs protesting the pending sale of Falling Branch.
Lo and behold, Falling Branch was not sold off to developers so they could build a Wal-Green’s. This was of course, because it never was for sale. The state never intended to do anything with Falling Branch except let it continue to be Falling Branch. All they did was publish a list of all the properties they owned and Falling Branch happened to be one of them.
But you couldn’t convince the protestors of this. They knew that the reason that Falling Branch was saved was because of their concerted actions.
Why did these people believe so adamantly that the state was going to sell their beloved park? They believed it because it angered them, and because it angered them it rallied them to action, and because it rallied them to action they were able to feel like they did something meaningful that was for a higher cause or purpose. And when nothing happened to their beloved park (as was the plan to begin with), they could congratulate themselves for having rescued what was (they believed) an endangered nature area.
They essentially took a piece of harmless public information, interpreted it in a way that would cause them the most inner turmoil, refused to believe that it meant anything else but the way they interpreted it, and went to war over it.
They created a conflict because it gave them a goal. They got to plan and implement the attack, and they got to feel rewarded when it was finished. They got to feel important. They got to rise above themselves and feel part of a unified front. The whole episode allowed them to participate in, at least to them, a meaningful experience.
There is a reason that the Jews believe what they do about the Palestinians, and there is a reason the Palestinians believe what they do about the Jews. There is a reason that young Muslim men will voluntarily blow themselves up in a bus station, and that young American men will voluntarily march off to try to stop such men from doing so. There is also a reason that people are racist, sexist, homophobic, feminist, ultra-liberal, ultra-conservative, etc, etc, etc.
It creates conflict. It rallies them to act. It creates meaning within their lives.
So the question remains: given the power of this force, can we ever live in peace?
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