Been in a Family Way

Which is my way of explaining not posting for weeks.  There has been much going on in the world at large -- the repeal of DADT, the possibility of murderous anarchy in the Ivory Coast -- and in the mini-universe of my own family (extended and otherwise).

The news round-up for my small world is:

1.  the world's tallest 4 1/2 year old is now smitten with Lady Gaga.  This is what happens when you let Uncle Mark babysit for a week.  Nuff said.  As long as this love affair doesn't get in the way of her getting a full scholarship to play basketball for UConn (which I assume will still be a powerhouse in 2024) then I'll turn a blind eye ....

2. Daughter No. 1 is getting married on her 30th birthday, a day I've always called One Onedy One Onedy One (01/11/11).  It's bittersweet; she and Son-in-Law No. 1 have been together for several years, and will have a good good marriage, of that I'm sure.  But, frankly, I know I'm losing her and with that realization comes sorrow.  As it has always been it will always be.  I know I'll get over this transitional grief and when I do I will become annoyingly relentless about grandbabies.

3.  This morning we will head out for the East Village to have New Year's Eve dinner with Mel and Fred.  Being with old friends tonight (and at Christmas) is a remarkable feat.  People who have known you and who you've known carry your history.  I continually learn who I was and who I am now through them.

As for the traditional festivities,  I won't make any pretense of staying up until midnight.  Rest assured I am as happy as the next person to wake up in the morning which is celebration enough these days.  And, have you noticed that the friends who send photos on or with their holiday cards are the friends who drink Elixir de Dorian Gray?  Gawd, don't you people ever age?  Can't you leave anything up to the imagination?

Happy New Year to You.  I hope we all have the grace we'll need.

Here's to Depression

I was texting this morning with a friend who's in therapy.  (Don't worry, there are so many of you your identity is safe!).  It reminded me of my time in therapy during the late 1980's through the early 1990's.  I wouldn't be here today without the work I did then and while no one would nickname me Sunny, I am a happier person because of it.

There are many names for depression and if I weren't in such a hurry to get ready to go to NYC for the weekend I'd look up what William Styron or Andrew Solomon had to say about the matter.  I think one thing depressives have in common is that they name their enemy.  Mine was called The Sludge, I explained to my friend this morning.  I envisioned it as a black, viscous, slow-moving organism that took up every molecule of optimism and will to live I owned.  (Remember the movie, "The Blob"?  It looked like that, I kid you not.)  In the process of leaving me, The Sludge would tear through my soul (thanks to the catalytic nature of psychotherapy) and I would be sick, inert with suffering and doom for days.  But it was leaving, that was the difference I intuitively realized.  It was leaving.  The feeling was different than my standard issue depression where I could feel it settle into some region of my body and leave barely enough energy for me to eat, sleep, job and take care of a kid.  I managed to endure this metamorphosis and since that time I've rarely been depressed in the way I once was.  Unhappy?  Yes.  Miserable?  Indeed.  But a depression that wasn't precipitated by a specific event (a break up, a literary rejection) but only by having the audacity of being alive?  Never again did I suffer one of those.

Every day without The Sludge has been a blessing magnified.  Now if I could do something about my visceral fat ...

We Can Dance Until We Die

How lucky I am to live in this modern age:  We here have progressed from seeing cancer as a moral failing to seeing dying from cancer as a moral failing.  The body dies in many ways, aided and abetted by the toxic shitstream we've made of Mother Earth, but it dies nevertheless.  It is never about how you die, it's about how you live.  If there is one gift of knowing in advance when one's contract with life is over is that we can choose what we do with our selves.  And, Elizabeth Edwards did so superbly.  With outspoken courage.  So, thank you Elizabeth Edwards.  I hope you see your son.

I'm Still Not Hearting Diane Ravitch, Part II

Although I was sober yesterday I wrote a convoluted paragraph about the way to teach children that mention private schools and public parks.  What I mean to say is that (as a generality) all children benefit from the same ways of teaching.  I don't believe that there's a way you teach kids who'd attend Choate that is profoundly different than the way you'd teach kids who'd attend any big city's public schools.  What had infuriated me with the Old Ravitch and others is that too often education is talked and written about as if there are some evolutionary differences between white and black kids.  Or, more to the point in Our America:  there are intractable differences between White and Asian (i.e., honorary white -- and if you don't believe me read some California history) and Black and Hispanic and Native American children.  The dirty little secret is that so many folks on all sides of the issue fear that it is innate and genetic.  (We are all evolutionary biologists now.)  Maybe, just maybe Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein were right after all.

I said it then and I'll say it now; I call bullshit on that.  My bona fides:  I'm black, which means that the percentage of African "blood" exceeds the percentage of European "blood" in me and my siblings.  And it means that by choice (and so as not to be classified as barkin' mad) I self-identify as such.  I'm middle class -- always have been, and sigh, unless the real estate market in NYC really goes crazy, always will be.  I grew up taking standardized tests such as the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and never met a standardized test I didn't like.  And I'm not unique.  So, can we stop with all lot of the racialized "black and brown" this and "black and brown" that and start looking at how class affects education?  Then let's talk.


These dispatches are about convincing myself to take Diane Ravitch seriously, since the positions she promulgated, defended and believed in were so obviously flawed.  I -- bet I'm not alone in this -- have trouble taking apostates seriously.  (And yes, Glen Loury and David Brock I'm talking about You!!)


To be continued.

I'm Still Not Hearting Diane Ravitch, Part I

Last night I attended a School Change Summit organized around Diane Ravitch's “The Death and Life Of The Great American School System”.  Disclaimer:  I have not read her book.  Yet.  So, my remarks are based on the panel's responses to her book, to her own responses during the forum and to my incomplete knowledge of her thinking and impact on American education.  The summit itself was a terrific idea.  Paul Bass, publisher of the New Haven Independent partnered with the Community Foundation and others to convene a panel of New Haven parents, educators, scholars and students to read the book and join Ravitch onstage.  Meanwhile (in the winds section) radio, print and net journalists (I don't know why I feel the need to make the distinctions), one of New Haven's state reps and the Mayor live blogged.  People could and did send in their comments while the Summit was live-streamed, and, the auditorium held a great and lively audience.

I like to "touch and smell the produce" so I actually attended.  Before I go off (I'm afraid I will) let me share my frame of reference because you know that people-of-a-certain age always look back.

I started teaching writing in New York City public schools in the mid-1990's.  That was during the years when Rudy Giuliani had school chancellors jumping the turnstiles faster than a broke pickpocket.  The work was great; I, and other writers and artists like me were on a mission, and there was a great deal of respect (tempered by many educators' skepticism and their own fear of writing) for teaching poetry, fiction and drama to city kids.  By the late 1990's the climate was changing as "standards" and "accountability" took up more of the educational airwaves.  All of us in the education biz fell down the rabbit hole of metrics and quantifying the work we did as if it were possible to slice thinner and thinner slivers of raw learning and still call it tuna.

Don't get me wrong.  I am all for standards and any child or adult who has survived one of my courses will tell you that if I get a whiff that you aren't challenging yourself to do better I will make your ears bleed.  But even back then I felt that whole school systems were heading off in the wrong direction where in the effort to quantify they would deracinate the joy of learning and erode what little autonomy public school teachers have.  I remember thinking at the time that if "they" wouldn't teach this way at Dalton or Brooklyn Friends or St. Ann's (to mention a few of the estimable private schools in New York) why would "they" think that teaching merely to pass standardized tests even for poor kids, kids with massive educational deficits, emotionally damaged kids is the right way to teach?  (Kind of reminds me of the welfare reform conundrum:  if you're a middle-class or upper middle-class mom we are all for you being a stay-at-home mother; but, if you're poor and we must supplement your living, raising children [which you are no damn good at anyway, or we wouldn't be having this education debate now, would we?] is second to cleaning the public parks.)

And back when I was on the Advisory Board of City-As-School High School I was part of a group of teachers, students and administrators who had a meeting at Tweed Hall with Joel Klein.  The meeting opened with us all introducing ourselves.  When the Chancellor, who by that time had been on the job close to a year said to all of us, "This is the first time I've met with students ...." I was stunned.  It was all I could do not to look around the table as if to say, did you hear what I heard?  Didn't this man think that his learning curve might have been accelerated by hearing how adolescents saw their own education?

Ohhh.  Kay, I said, don't make too much of one boneheaded executive oversight.  Change takes time.  I'll give Bloomberg 7 years.  Then we'll see how things work out.

 If I dwell on New York's reform experiment I will never, and I mean never, get to my thoughts about New Haven's.  So, let me say this.  If you asked any New York City public school supervisor, administrator or educator if they had to send their children to a New York City public school randomly assigned using some obscure algorithm would they be comfortable with that assignment, I bet their answer would be [expletive inserted] NO!  You can reform education all you want but I'll wager that there will never be an actualized urban public school system that adequately (and beyond) serves its children.  Public school education must be examined through the prisms of late-stage Western capitalism, the effects of race and class on urban demography, and the particular impact of the finance and real estate sectors on municipal development (to name just 3 factors).

I've gotten this far without actually talking about Ravitch.  (I haven't mentioned Sarah Palin either and that's something to be applauded.)  Last night's summit is the hanger on which I'm exploring my ideas about and relationship with public education.  That's why I'll call this posting Part I.  Part II (soon to a cinema near you!) will follow tomorrow.