USA

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Fences or webs?

old-new schools

In my last post I talked about the Eight-Year-Study, which documented the success of progressive education at fostering intellectual curiosity, cultural awareness, practical skills, a philosophy of life, a strong moral character, emotional balance, social fitness, sensitivity to social problems, and physical fitness.

I had come across materials related to the study in the Progressive Education Association Records in the University of Illinois Archives. This is a treasure-trove, not only of the Progressive Education Association per se, but also of the various social movements they were involved in. I hope to explore it more.

One drawing I found is shown here. It’s included in the folder for the booklet that later appeared as Dare our secondary schools face the atomic age? However, there are no images in that booklet. The drawing shows two visions for schools. In one, the “old school,” there is a fence surrounding the building; activities of the school are separate from those of the world around it, and as a result, schooling is separated from the actual life of the children.

In a second vision, the “new school,” the building is substantially the same, but it is connected to sites for recreation, housing, jobs, health, government, and by implication, all aspects of life. This idea of community-based schools was key to the Progressive Education movement, especially in its later years, as members realized they needed to do more than promote child-centered learning in an individual sense. That was true for “community schools” per se (Clapp, 1939), but actually for all schools, urban or rural, large or small, primary or secondary.

Today, many of these ideas have survived under rubrics such as “civic engagement,” “public engagement,” “community-based learning,” or “service learning.” But often those ideas are seen as one-way or very limited in scope, as in a single course. It’s worth revisiting the earlier visions to understand better how schools and universities could better fulfill the high hopes we place upon them.

References

Benedict, Agnes E. (1947). Dare our secondary schools face the atomic age?. New York: Hinds, Hayden & Eldredge.

Benedict, Agnes E. (1947). Pencil drawing, Progressive Education Association Records, 1924-1961, Record Series 10/6/20, Box 4, folder Dare the Schools Face the Atomic Age?, University of Illinois Archives.

Clapp, Elsie Ripley (1939). Community schools in action. New York: Viking.

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Bill Ayers interview

Bill Ayers gave his first interview after the election on NPR’s Fresh Air on Tuesday. It’s very interesting,  providing some context on a bizarre aspect of the Presidential race this year. Terry Gross gets him to speak freely and also asks probing questions about the war in Vietnam, the 60’s, terrorism, means v. ends, politics, imperialism, and the personal impact.

Fresh Air from WHYY, November 18, 2008 · The name of former anti-war activist William Ayers was brought up twice in an attempt to discredit Barack Obama during the recent presidential campaign — first by Hillary Clinton, and then by the McCain campaign. Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin accused Obama — who served on two nonprofit boards with Ayers — of “palling around with terrorists.”

The accusations stemmed from Ayers’ involvement with the Weather Underground, a radical group responsible for bombings on the New York City Police Department headquarters in 1970, the U.S. Capitol building in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972. The federal case against Ayers was dismissed in the early 1970s.

Ayers is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the author of ‘Fugitive Days: Memoirs of an Anti-War Activist.’

Ayers will be a guest-in-residence on the Urbana-Champaign campus this coming March 8-12.

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Creative democracy: Yes we can!

Yesterday’s election of Barack Obama as President of the United States was not only promising for our future, but was also a moving reaffirmation of all that America can be.

His Presidency may not fulfill all the dreams that the candidacy inspired; some things may not change at all. But it reminds me of what Thurgood Marshall said after the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, which outlawed segregated schools. When asked what the Supreme Court ruling really meant, Marshall, said that in fact nothing had changed, except that henceforth, repeating the civil rights mantra, “the law is on our side”. In a similar way, Obama’s Presidency offers no guarantees, but does offer exciting possibilities in terms of uniting Americans and restoring America’s role in the community of nations.

The election of Obama is also a reminder that democracy is not a static system, but a process in need of continual renewal by all. Dewey (1976/1939, p. 230) expresses this in his essay, “Creative democracy: The task before us”:

Democracy as compared with other ways of life is the sole way of living which believes wholeheartedly in the process of experience as end and as means; as that which is capable of generating the science which is the sole dependable authority for the direction of further experience and which releases emotions, needs and desires so as to call into being the things that have not existed in the past. For every way of life that fails in its democracy limits the contacts, the exchanges, the communications, the interactions by which experience is steadied while it is also enlarged and enriched. The task of this release and enrichment is one that has to be carried on day by day. Since it is one that can have no end till experience itself comes to an end, the task of democracy is forever that of creation of a freer and more humane experience in which all share and to which all contribute.

Let’s have the audacity to hope that we are capable of creating of “a freer and more humane experience in which all share and to which all contribute.” I might add that John McCain’s concession speech was a gracious and thoughtful step in that direction.

References

Dewey, John (1976). Creative democracy: The task before us. In J. Boydston (Ed.), John Dewey: The later works, 1925-1953, volume 14 (pp. 224-230). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. (Original work published 1939)

Kluger, Richard (1977, 1975). Simple justice. The history of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s struggle for equality. New York: Vintage Books.

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Once-secret memos endorse CIA torture tactics

When I was younger I read about torture in other countries and times, with a sense of fear and revulsion. Later I learned about the School of Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia (since renamed as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation). There, the US Army trains Latin American security personnel using training manuals that advocate torture, extortion, and execution. Graduates of the School, including notorious dictators, are responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America. But I sought a scintilla of relief in the idea that the torture didn’t actually happen here.

In recent years, I learned about the CIA rendition program, set up during the Clinton administration, and expanded under Bush, in which people are kidnapped and transferred to countries that practice torture, thus violating the long-standing international legal principle of nonrefoulement. Again, one might grasp for a moral distinction between enacting and simply aiding torture. When we learned about Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse, we saw that, too, as far away. We were told that it wasn’t actually authorized, even though official rhetoric and policies might have set the stage for it.

In all of these cases, we kept grasping for distinctions–someone else carried out the torture, even though we taught them how to do it; some other country’s laws were barbaric, though we kidnapped people, denied them trial, and took them there, knowing full well, even desiring, what would happen; some low-level soldier abused, even killed detainees, but we had trained them, defined their mission, demonized the people they were sent to aid, and then conveniently looked the other way.

Throughout, we kept asserting that while we associate with others who do unspeakable things, we don’t do it ourselves. After all, if we were to begin to engage in torture, where would it end? How would we be any different from those dictatorships and totalitarian regimes?

We’re even uneasy talking about it:

As recently as last month, the administration had never publicly acknowledged that its policymakers knew about the specific techniques, such as waterboarding, that the agency used against high-ranking terrorism suspects. In her unprecedented account to lawmakers last month, [Condoleezza] Rice, now secretary of state, portrayed the White House as initially uneasy about a controversial CIA plan for interrogating top al-Qaeda suspects.

Last week we learned that, well, we don’t just train others to torture; we don’t just write training manuals for torture; we don’t just ship people off to countries that torture; we don’t just have a few aberrant soldiers who stray from the official line:

The Bush administration issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency’s use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding against al-Qaeda suspects — documents prompted by worries among intelligence officials about a possible backlash if details of the program became public.

In this case, the CIA itself knew it was crossing the line, that there could be a public backlash directed at them. It insisted on written authorization before continuing.

The Bush administration quickly complied. Why? Because, like the many Latin American dictators who had been trained by the School of Americas, they thought the torture would serve their purposes and they knew they could get away with it. Americans who had learned to accept the School of Americas, the CIA rendition program, and Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse, had become all too ready to accept that it does actually happen here. And it’s not just someone else who does it. It’s not against policy. It is the policy, and it’s our leaders who make it happen.

References

Mayer, Jane (2005, November 14). A deadly interrogation: Can the C.I.A. legally kill a prisoner?. The New Yorker.

Warrick, Joby (2008, October 15). CIA tactics endorsed in secret memos: Waterboarding got White House nod. Washington Post.

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Powell asks, “What if he is?”

Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama for President was a powerful statement from a much-respected figure. It will certainly help Obama’s campaign. But at least as significant was his challenge of Islamophobia:

I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say, and it is permitted to be said. Such things as ‘Well you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.’ Well the correct answer is ‘He is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian, he’s always been a Christian.’ But the really right answer is ‘What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?’ The answer is ‘No. That’s not America.’ Is there something wrong with some 7-year old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she can be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion he’s a Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

gugart@msn.com">Photo courtesy of Tom Gugiluzza-Smith, August 2008</a>I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo-essay about troops who were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery and she had her head on the headstone of her son’s grave. And as the picture focused in you can see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards, Purple Heart, Bronze Star, showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old. And then at the very top of the headstone, it didn’t have a Christian cross, it didn’t have a Star of David. It had a crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Karim Rashad Sultan Khan. And he was an American, he was born in New Jersey, he was 14 years old at the time of 9/11 and he waited until he can go serve his country and he gave his life. [Photo courtesy of Tom Gugiluzza-Smith, August 2008]

Powell is not the first to make this point, but it’s difficult to name another such prominent political leader who has done so. Others, including Obama himself, have focused on the fact that some statements about his ethnic or religious background have been false, not on the bigotry revealed by the very question itself. Ignoring the presupposition of those questions shows a lack of understanding and respect for the US Constitution, which should bring shame on Republican and Democratic leaders alike.

See Abed Z. Bhuyan, On Faith: Guest Voices: Powell Rejects Islamophobia

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What we do not know: The betrayal of our values

I returned to the US in June after living a year living in Ireland. Many people have naturally asked, “What was it like? How was it different? What did you learn?”

It’s hard to know where to begin. I may have learned as much about myself and my home country as about Ireland, or other countries I’ve visited. And, mostly, if I learned anything, it was how much I don’t know about other people and places. As Confucius says: “To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.”

Our Hollywood Self-Image

But one specific thing I’ve become more aware of is a gap between what most Americans conceive as their moral stance on the world and what many abroad see as our actual practice. I suspect that many of us in the US identify with Jefferson Smith in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. He’s decent, naive, idealistic, earnest, fair, caring, and above all honest, embodying all the American small town values. He’s not sophisticated or slick, but he’s the kind of person you’d like to have as a friend or trust for political leadership. Mr. Smith asks us to adhere to “just one, plain, simple rule: Love thy neighbor” and reminds us that “there’s no compromise with the truth.”

What’s interesting today is that many abroad would also identify with Mr. Smith. And they admire the US for modeling his values, offering hope for other countries. They recall our promotion of the Kellogg-Briand pact, the struggle against authoritarian regimes, the Nuremburg trials, the United Nations, the Geneva Conventions, as concrete examples of how we have stood for truth, peace, courage, and justice, just as Mr. Smith might have wanted. Their values are our values; their people are our people.

But then, we part ways, because of something many Americans do not know. Continue reading →

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Growing our food with sewage

One fifth of the world’s food is now grown in urban areas and for half of the urban fields the only source of water is untreated city sewage. Thus, according to a recent study from the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), one tenth of the world’s food is now grown using raw sewage.

Sewage abroad

Raw sewage brings heavy metals, pathogenic bacteria, and worms. But the water is necessary for the plants, and the sewage contains nitrates and phosphates, which promote plant growth. In many areas the use of city sewage has become necessary to prevent starvation. This is just one reminder of the consequences of our unjust global economic system and of the interconnections among water supplies, waste treatment, agriculture, the environment, and economic development.

Sewage at home

But the issues about sewage and agriculture are not confined to crowded cities in developing countries. In most of Europe and North America, about half of the sewage sludge is now spread on farmland, but after treatment that breaks down most of the complex organic molecules and kills most of the pathogens. A major contribution of US industry and the Environmental Protection Agency, has been to promote the term “biosolids,” for the treated stuff, which sounds much better than “sewage,” “sludge,” or “shit.” But despite the name change, we know little about the health and environmental effects of using it.

A report in 2002 from the National Academy of Sciences says that unsafe pathogens and chemicals remain in biosolids. No epidemiological studies have been done to show whether spreading them on land is safe for agriculture workers, nearby residents, or food consumers. In short, we don’t know whether we’re better off than the 10% getting the raw stuff.

Experimental sewage

Meanwhile, biosolid experiments are underway. Could sludge be a fix for hazardous lead paint by lowering the the rate at which lead enters the bloodstream and circulates to organs and tissues? A study asking that was conducted recently on a vacant lot in East St. Louis next to an elementary school. The 300 students were black and almost entirely from low-income families. It’s not clear how the residents could make informed decisions about participating in the study, given the NAS report that no studies have ever been done on its safety.

Where is the public?

Issues such as this never get mentioned in political campaigns, and rarely make the mainstream news. They’re unpleasant to think about, and solutions might require changes in lifestyle or large expense. Most of us are so confused that we can’t even frame the questions. Nevertheless, these issues deserve more attention as part of the world we’re making for ourselves and our children.

Writing in 1927, John Dewey (in The Public and Its Problems) noted that “The public is so confused and eclipsed that it cannot even use the organs through which it is supposed to mediate political action and polity.” In contrast to Walter Lippman, who argued for a knowledgeable elite to address complex problems, Dewey saw full participation in civic life as essential:

We have the physical tools of communication as never before. [But] the thoughts and aspirations congruous with them are not communicated, and hence are not common. Without such communication the public will remain shadowy and formless, seeking spasmodically for itself, but seizing and holding its shadow rather than its substance. Till the Great Society is converted into a Great Community, the Public will remain in eclipse.

I doubt that sewage will become the rallying call for the Great Community, but Dewey was annoyingly vague about what that call might be. What’s clear is that we need to find better ways to create the kind of democracy in which people really participate and which addresses the most basic problems we all face.

See also:

World’s farmers turn to raw sewage for irrigation – health (New Scientist)

Sludge tested as lead-poisoning fix (AP)

Sewage Sludge Standards Need New Scientific Basis (NAS)

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The Springfield Race Riot of 1908

Loper's restaurantToday marks the 100th anniversary of the Springfield race riot. The riot was a shameful episode in America’s history. It occurred in the Illinois State capital and the hometown of Abraham Lincoln. Anti-black riots followed in East St. Louis and Chicago. There was one positive outcome: In 1909, reformers called a small meeting to address the violence and racism, out of which grew the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization.

The riot, and the subsequent rationalizations, is an event that I’ve found especially disturbing. It’s a frightening reminder of the consequences of racism and mob violence. It may touch me more not only because I live nearby, but also because my father’s family was from Springfield. Although the events happened long ago, they remind us to look closely at our contemporary beliefs, attitudes, and values about race, immigration, and people we see as “other.”

Roberta Senechal writes (Illinois History Teacher, 3(2), 1996):

On the evening of August 14, 1908, a race war broke out in the Illinois capital of Springfield. Angry over reports [later revealed as a concocted allegation] that a black man had sexually assaulted a white woman , a white mob wanted to take a recently arrested suspect from the city jail and kill him. They also wanted Joe James, an out-of-town black who was accused of killing a white railroad engineer, Clergy Ballard, a month earlier.

Tree where man was hangedLate that afternoon, a crowd gathered in front of the jail in the city’s downtown and demanded that the police hand over the two men to them. But the police had secretly taken the prisoners out the back door into a waiting automobile and out of town to safety. When the crowd discovered that the prisoners were gone, they rioted. First they attacked and destroyed a restaurant [top left] owned by a wealthy white citizen, Harry Loper, who had provided the automobile that the sheriff used to get the two men out of harm’s way. The crowd completed its work by setting fire to the automobile, which was parked in front of the restaurant.

barber shopIn the early hours of the violence, as many as five thousand white Springfield residents were present, mostly as spectators. Still angry, the rioters, minus most of the spectators, next methodically destroyed a small black business district downtown, breaking windows and doors, stealing or destroying merchandise, and wrecking furniture and equipment. The mob’s third and last effort that night was to destroy a nearby poor black neighborhood called the Badlands. Most blacks had fled the city, but as the mob swept through the area, they captured and lynched a black barber, Scott Burton, who had stayed behind to protect his home [hanging tree, above right; barber shop, left].

[snip]

The pattern of attacks supports [one black resident’s] opinion that black success brought danger. The first area targeted was the black business district. The two blacks killed were well-off, successful businessmen who owned their own homes. All of those targeted for hit-and-run attacks were also well-off. Although what triggered the riot may have been anger over black crime, very clearly whites were expressing resentment over any black presence in the city at all. They also clearly resented the small number of successful blacks in their midst.

See more at The Springfield Race Riot of 1908 and A Minute With Clarence Lang.