As the 4th of July approaches, some controversial thoughts on the Pledge...

"You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that's clear
I will choose freewill"

                                                               (Rush, "Freewill")

Didja miss me?  After a prolonged absence from the blogosphere due to some personal and family medical crises, I'm back.  With a vengeance.

As the 4th of July approaches, something to think about:  “Under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance at the years-long insistence of the Knights of Columbus (a Catholic organization).  It was an attempt to counter-balance the perceived Communist threat Joe McCarthy claimed to have identified, which was seen as “godless.”  So its origin was not religious piety and principle; rather, it was a strategic and pragmatic countermeasure to a perceived threat, and an attempt by a religious organization to use the current coin of the realm – anti-communist fervor – to sidestep the Bill of Rights and leave its mark on a nation it sought to change into its own image through creeping gradualism.

This, from a 2002 New York Times article by David Rosenbaum:

Introducing his resolution in the Senate, Senator Homer Ferguson, Republican of Michigan, declared, "I believe this modification of the pledge is important because it highlights one of the real fundamental differences between the free world and the Communist world, namely belief in God." 

President Eisenhower, in 1954 (emphasis mine):

"From this day forward, the millions of our school children will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and rural school house, the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty. To anyone who truly loves America, nothing could be more inspiring than to contemplate this re-dedication of our youth, on each school morning, to our country’s true meaning.... In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America's heritage and future; in this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country's most powerful resource, in peace or in war.”

This is NOT indicative of an America that touts the First Amendment as something of value.

Please take "God" out of my (our) public schools. I'd like my kids to be able to choose when (and if) they speak something that sounds dangerously like a prayer, especially if they're doing so under the direction of someone other than their parents. There is simply no justification for this; it is a black mark on our national character. We can discuss the heroic actions of our soldiers and fighting men and women without invoking a deity, and we can respect the nation, the flag that represents it, and the actions people have taken to defend it (many of them anyway) without forcing children to recite a religious mantra.

I don't know why Neil Peart chose to write "free will" as one word instead of two, but however we choose to write it, we should consider living it a little more, especially in regards to our children. All due respect to the great General Eisenhower, in loco parentis can and should only go so far.

That's not too much to A.S.K., is it?

From the emergency room to the classroom -- bias and prejudice in "treatment"

Recently, a nurse named Lou Davis published a piece on slate.com, answering the question of what it is like to treat (medically) a person who has committed heinous acts, crimes or atrocities.  The idea is to explore how our biases, beliefs and preconceived notions get in the way of our being able to perform in the manner in which we are tasked. 

Davis writes:

The care I give is, to all intents and purposes, exactly the same as I would give to anyone else. I would be as attentive, my standards are as high, I am as diligent in giving pain relief or in ensuring that the wounds I am suturing are done in exactly the same way.  Outwardly then, there is no difference. None at all. You could stand by my side and be able to tell no difference.   

Inwardly is rather different. Over the years, I have treated murderers, rapists, pedophiles. I have carried on working while some of these patients have made comments, been rude or abusive.  I know that my standards have never been compromised.  That isn't to say that I don't have feelings of anger or revulsion or even hate. But it isn't my job to show those feelings.

As a lifelong fan of the hour-long medical drama genre (Chicago Hope, ER, Grey’s Anatomy, House; Marcus Welby was a bit before my time), this is a sub-plot that has been played out many times: the rapist or murderer who has been wounded by his (or her) victim and is rushed to the emergency room for treatment, where there is always at least one doctor or nurse who expresses his or her anguish at having to treat such a despicable person.  An example is ER, season 4, episode 13, “Carter’s Choice,” synopsis courtesy of  fandango.com:

The hospital's blood supply runs out during a devastating blizzard, forcing the doctors to make literal life and death decisions. Should [Doctor] Carter (Noah Wyle) try to save the life of a seriously wounded serial rapist, or should the blood go to someone more "deserving"?

A more extreme version of this same plot device was used in the House episode “The Tyrant,” in which the doctors are called upon to treat an ailing patient who turns out to be a genocidal African warlord:

When a controversial African politician (guest star James Earl Jones) falls ill, he is brought to Princeton Plainsboro [Hospital] for treatment. The team struggles with whether to help a merciless dictator being sued in the United States for crimes against humanity in his country.  (courtesy House Wiki)

Watch the full episode here.

I’d like to think that in real life, the decision is more cut-and-dry.  If you are a doctor or nurse, you treat the patient in front of you.  Ultimately, the course of action is perhaps best summed up in the words of advice given to Davis by a colleague: "Just think to yourself:  'We care for you, not about you' and it will make it easier."

In the classroom, however, the situation is somewhat different.  We do care, both for, and about, our students. We are tasked with acting in loco parentis, and our charge is not just imparting curriculum but, to a certain extent anyway (and we can agree to disagree about how much, as anyone who has read my posts will realize I am not a “progressive” in most ways) educating “the whole child.”  We do get emotionally involved with our children, we involve ourselves in their lives, we interact with their families, we live (in many cases) in their communities.

In other words, we cannot simply, to use a phrase common to my beloved medical dramas, “treat ‘em and street ‘em.”

In my classrooms, I have had violent kids, felons, drug dealers, hardcore gangbangers, kids with extensive records, and kids who have committed (or allegedly committed) horrific acts.  I have had students cuss me out, threaten me, even engage me physically. And I will admit that the knowledge of these things does change the way I feel about them, the way I look at them, the way I “inwardly,” to use Nurse Davis’s word, regard them.  But do I let it affect how I teach them?

I hope not.  But it’s possible, I’ll admit.  I am, as they say, only human.

I certainly grant occasional perks and privileges, special considerations if you will, to exceptional, hard-working, responsible and respectful students.  I certainly deny privileges to students who habitually behave in the opposite fashion.  And I believe, as do most sensible people, that the idea of giving awards and rewards to everyone in the room to avoid hurt feelings is just plain dumb, not to mention counter-productive.  But all this is in relation or in response to student actions and behaviors in my classroom and with either me or the other students.  That’s not the same as treating a student differently based on “prior bad acts,” to use the appropriate legal phrase (okay, I love the hour-long crime drama genre as well).

Teachers have a bad habit of both talking up and talking down students.  I’ve done it, as has every teacher I’ve ever worked with.  Sometimes, I can imagine that that “talking down” could lead, in a teacher of lesser integrity, to a situation where the students don’t get a fair shake from day one.  A hypothetical conversation:

Teacher A:  Hey, you got your class lists from next term?  Let me see.
Teacher B: Yeah, sure. Here.
Teacher A:  Oh, dang!  You’ve got Umfufu?  Oh man, I’m sorry. She’s a nightmare!  Last year, she ___________ [fill in the blank with whatever damning anecdotes you can dream up]. And when she was in intermediate school, she was suspended twice for ____________________ [ditto].

Now it’s up to Teacher B how, or whether, to utilize that information. 

If you’re teacher B, does that conversation linger in your mind when Umfufu steps into your classroom? When you take attendance for the first time, does that knowledge affect the way you interpret the look she gives you?  The first time she’s late for class, or fails to bring in homework, do you say, “Yeah, it figures.”  (Even if it’s just behind closed doors to your colleagues?  If you’re a teacher, I’m guessing you know EXACTLY what I mean.)

Is the teacher situation analogous to the doctor/nurse situation? What do you think of the advice given Nurse Davis by her colleague?  Am I right that such a maxim simply would not work in a school environment where caring is de facto part of the job?  Or do you think teachers actually should be more detached, professional, and less “involved” than they sometimes are?

I’m just A.S.K.ing…

U.K. schools BAN best friends -- dystopian fiction made real!

In March of 2012, I was teaching a Composition and Literature to a small class of community college students.  We were just finishing up our first of two novellas – Anthem, by Ayn Rand, which I have referenced in this blog before – when my plans for the rest of the semester received a most welcome, though unexpected, shake-up.  While surfing the internet, as I often did to relax just before a class, I came across an article in the Sun (excerpted here, following this link to read the full text):

Schools ban children making best friends.
Teachers are banning schoolkids from having best pals — so they don’t get upset by fall-outs. Instead, the primary pupils are being encouraged to play in large groups. Educational psychologist Gaynor Sbuttoni said the policy has been used at schools in Kingston, South West London, and Surrey. She added: “I have noticed that teachers tell children they shouldn’t have a best friend and that everyone should play together. They are doing it because they want to save the child the pain of splitting up from their best friend. But it is natural for some children to want a best friend. If they break up, they have to feel the pain because they’re learning to deal with it.”

Rand’s Anthem was inspired by fellow countryman Yevgeny (Eugene) Zamyatin’s 1924 novella We. Ironically, We was not even published in Russian in the U.S.S.R., from which a young Ayn Rand (born Alisa Rosenbaum) emigrated, until 1988, but existed in English and French translations before then.  Allow me to digress for a moment to channel Wikipedia (sigh) to promote Zamyatin’s book, which has not received anywhere near the love that Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four and even Anthem have received by American educators:

George Orwell averred that Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) must be partly derived from We. However, in a 1962 letter to Christopher Collins, Huxley says that he wrote Brave New World as a reaction to H.G. Wells's utopias long before he had heard of We. According to We translator Natasha Randall, Orwell believed that Huxley was lying. Kurt Vonnegut said that in writing Player Piano (1952), he "cheerfully ripped off the plot of Brave New World, whose plot had been cheerfully ripped off from Yevgeny Zamyatin's We."  Ayn Rand's Anthem (1938) has many significant similarities to We, although it is stylistically and thematically different.

Orwell began Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) some eight months after he read We in a French translation and wrote a review of it. Orwell is reported as "saying that he was taking it as the model for his next novel." [Clarence] Brown writes that for Orwell and certain others, We "appears to have been the crucial literary experience." [Alex] Shane states that "Zamyatin's influence on Orwell is beyond dispute." [Robert] Russell, in an overview of the criticism of We, concludes that "1984 shares so many features with We that there can be no doubt about its general debt to it," however there is a minority of critics who view the similarities between We and 1984 as "entirely superficial."

Anthem takes place in a dystopian society of uncertain date.  The society exists in the wake of some grand cataclysm – a war and/or political upheaval not unlike that wrought by the Khmer Rouge.  (For a more modern comparison, Rand's fictional setting is an only slightly exaggerated version of present-day North Korea.) The current regime in Rand's nameless realm has been in power long enough for all but the most aged of citizens to have any inkling of what life might have once been like, and their ramblings are dismissed as the incoherent talk of the soon-to-die elderly:

“At forty, they are worn out. At forty, they are sent to the Home of the Useless, where the Old Ones live. The Old Ones do not work, for the State takes care of them. They sit in the sun in summer and they sit by the fire in winter. They do not speak often, for they are weary. The Old Ones know that they are soon to die. When a miracle happens and some live to be forty-five, they are the Ancient Ones, and children stare at them when passing by the Home of the Useless.” (chapter 1)

The olden days are referred to by the ruling Council as the Unmentionable Times, and any reference to the history that predates the current society is harshly punished, as is any attempt to express an individual thought or preference.  One of the major devices of the novel is the disappearance of singular personal pronouns form the language, to reflect its Borg-like eradication of individual identities in favor of a hive-like collective, as can be seen in this excerpt (paragraphing has been modified from its original source):

“Our name is Equality 7-2521, as it is written on the iron bracelet which all men wear on their left wrists with their names upon it. We are twenty-one years old. We are six feet tall, and this is a burden, for there are not many men who are six feet tall. Ever have the Teachers and the Leaders pointed to us and frowned and said: "There is evil in your bones, Equality 7-2521, for your body has grown beyond the bodies of your brothers." But we cannot change our bones nor our body.

“We were born with a curse. It has always driven us to thoughts which are forbidden. It has always given us wishes which men may not wish. We know that we are evil, but there is no will in us and no power to resist it. This is our wonder and our secret fear, that we know and do not resist. We strive to be like all our brother men, for all men must be alike. Over the portals of the Palace of the World Council, there are words cut in the marble, which we repeat to ourselves whenever we are tempted:  

    'We are one in all and all in one.
    There are no men but only the great WE,
    One, indivisible and forever.'

“We repeat this to ourselves, but it helps us not. These words were cut long ago. There is green mould in the grooves of the letters and yellow streaks on the marble, which come from more years than men could count. And these words are the truth, for they are written on the Palace of the World Council, and the World Council is the body of all truth. Thus has it been ever since the Great Rebirth, and farther back than that no memory can reach. But we must never speak of the times before the Great Rebirth, else we are sentenced to three years in the Palace of Corrective Detention. It is only the Old Ones who whisper about it in the evenings, in the Home of the Useless. They whisper many strange things, of the towers which rose to the sky, in those Unmentionable Times, and of the wagons which moved without horses, and of the lights which burned without flame. But those times were evil. And those times passed away, when men saw the Great Truth which is this: that all men are one and that there is no will save the will of all men together.”

 Not only do the citizens of this realm have no proper names (referred to instead as an ironic attribute – “Liberty,” “Equality,” “Brotherhood,” followed by a code number), but they wear clothing of no color, live in group barracks of no ornamentation, and are expressly forbidden from all forms of artistic expression.  They may not choose their course of study, their profession, or even their friends:

“International 4-8818 and we are friends. This is an evil thing to say, for it is a transgression, the great Transgression of Preference, to love any among men better than the others, since we must love all men and all men are our friends. So International 4-8818 and we have never spoken of it. But we know.”

 It goes without saying that such things as romance and love are taboo in the extreme.

I won’t summarize the whole piece – you can read it; it’s extremely short.  Suffice it to say that it is a rare dystopian novel with an optimistic ending, which makes it unique among those titles I have previously mentioned.  I also like it for working with lower-level students, because the narrative is as rich as any title, but the lexile is relatively low, and does not require advanced reading skills or stamina (like Nineteen Eighty-Four or Brave New World) or a complex understanding of  history  (like Animal Farm) or the ability to navigate satirical and magical realist elements to get at the core theme (like “Harrison Bergeron” – this is particularly difficult for younger readers or ESL readers).

We had just read the last few short chapters when I came across the aforementioned Sun article, and I had an epiphany.  I needed to incorporate this into my class.  Most works of fiction remain works of fiction, and despite having familiar themes, their plots and the details thereof typically safely ensconced in a world of irreality that allows us to enjoy them as works of creativity more or less divorced from actual life.  Here, however, was life, imitating art.  A rare opportunity to show students a piece of a fictional world made very much real.  (p.s. Not surprisingly, the Objectivist community picked up on this story as well.)

I shared the article with my students, asked them what they thought of it.  Their position echoed my own, even when I chose a devil’s advocate position to try and talk them down from it.  I decided to take a week to teach them proper business letter format, and they used it to write Russell Hobby, of the National Association of Head Teachers, a letter expressing their thoughts, if not their outright dismay.  I sent the letters to Mr. Hobby, along with a cover letter of my own, and a copy of Rand’s novel.  I am pleased to say that he responded to my students’ letters, and mine, each individually.
 
For the record, Mr. Hobby is not in favor of the ban, and the NAHT does not apparently have the power to stop the practice – it is a school-site decision, but one that is, even now, a year later, apparently still out there as a viable model for teaching children, as this news item from just this week (May 2013) suggests:

Pupils at £14,000-a-year primary school are BANNED from having best friends as headteacher tries to prevent hurt feelings. […] “I would certainly endorse a policy which says we should have lots of good friends, not a best friend. I would be happy to make it school policy, although it would need to be age-appropriate.  By the time they are 11, 12 or 13 they are making up their own minds. But when they are aged between four and ten, [the ban] would be helpful for parents, teachers and children[,” the Headmaster said.]

Of the ban, the headmaster of the aforementioned Battersea prep school quipped confidently, “There is sound judgment behind it.”

Really?  I’m aghast.  Are you?  I’m just A.S.K.ing…

Cinco de Mayo revisited - Mexicans weigh in, and one other fellow...

As Cinco de Mayo approaches, many Americans (both of Mexican and non-Mexican extraction) will get drunk without every really knowing why.  As I mentioned in my last post, Cinco de Mayo is largely celebrated by Mexican Americans (not to be confused with Mexicans still living in Mexico).  I had made the assertion that this was ostensibly to feel a closer sort of connection to the homeland from which they find themselves separated. (The Mexican Americans, anyway; the non-Mexican Americans just want to get drunk.)  I got some feedback that made me think, however... much of it from Mexicans who were of the opinion that Americans’ celebration of Cinco de Mayo is, in many ways, a big joke.

One poster responded:

My wife is from Mexico City, she knew the historical significance, but said that maybe they do something in Puebla but it isn't celebrated by anyone she has ever known in Mexico. As an American, I wouldn't say it is celebrated here either, just an excuse for people to get drunk. People have to know what something is to celebrate it, right? and Americans know nothing about Cinco de Mayo except "Mexico" "holiday" and "drinking". In other words... nothing about what it really is. What they are really celebrating is getting drunk in the name of Mexico.

This seemed to be a common theme, a Mexican contempt for the over-the-top celebrations (and the ignorance that fueled them) of Cinco de Mayo north of the border. For some, the reasons are historical.  One offered, by way of local knowledge, a "balanced" analysis of the history involved:

Puebla es (aún hoy día) una ciudad netamente conservadora. En la época de la intervención Francesa, la sociedad Poblana (y gran parte de la de la ciudad de México) estaba a favor de que un país tan avanzado como Francia tomara el poder en México y nos gobernara. Esto era visto como necesario por parte de quienes creían que no había otra manera de pacificar el país (que llevaba 50 años enfrascado en guerras civiles). Los liberales de esa época, consideraban que esta actitud era una actitud vendepatrias y a todos los que ansiaban un gobierno Francés, traidores a la patria. Nomás hay que recordar que, mientras que la alta sociedad Poblana era pro intervención, las clases bajas apoyaban al gobierno de Juárez y murieron en gran número defendiendo la ciudad (que finalmente cayó). Así que sería más justo decir que la Alta sociedad conservadora Poblana si puede ser acusada de traición, mientras que el Pueblo poblano tuvo una actitud heróica.

Another was less equanimous:

Hay un refrán: "A perro, perico y poblano, nunca le des la mano." 

Todos por acá recuerdan que durante la invasión estadounidense los poblanos recibieron con los brazos abiertos y hasta alimentaron a los gringos, tanto así que el desgraciado del general Scott armó con poblanos la "Mexican Spy Company", para usarlos de ayuda en la guerra (gracias a su ayuda, los gringos luego atraparon a los del Batallón de San Patricio, en la batalla de Churubusco). 

Nunca olvidaremos, nunca perdonaremos.

Yet another poster addressed the article  directly, with a more mature criticism (that still stung a little bit) but a wistful, almost poetic, look at a severed population, and what s/he calls "the mythology of the expat":

Este artículo falla en desentrañar los aspectos más obscuros y profundos del aparentemente inocente "Cinco de Mayo". Es verdad que corresponde a una nostalgia por la patria abandonada de los ancestros, y que es la desconexión casi total con la cultura madre lo que lleva a los Mexicanos-Americanos a celebrar este día con el fervor del día de la Independencia. Sin embargo, esto es un análisis superficial de los móviles socio-psciológicos que crearon la fiesta en su manifestación actual. 

La masa no se moviliza sola, sino que corresponde a empresas, sobre todo en EEUU, moldear y explotar la necesidad de mitología de los expatriados. No debería llamarse Cinco de Mayo, que como bien apuntan, no es celebrado en el interior de la República, y no significa nada históricamente, sino "Corona Day", porque finalmente fue un "día festivo" planeado por ellos, para su beneficio, y que al final del día solo representa "cultura light", donde celebrar consiste en tomar Corona y tequila, y creer que por hacerlo estás honrado, recordando, etc. a una cultura que se te escapó para siempre.

Lastly, two short posts that were informative, to the point... and in English:

WE, born and raised in Mexico, know exactly what Cinco de Mayo is. The most that we would get close to celebrat[ing it], is holiday at school, meaning NO SCHOOL. I felt actually embarrassed when I moved to the US, and found out that even Mexican-American[s] celebrated in a bigger way May 5th, rather than September 16th [Mex. Declaration of Independence], and even angry, when nobody even acknowledged November 20th (Mexican Revolution). Most Mexican-Americans come from born-and-raised Mexican parents, and it's a shame that they have forgotten to teach their children about Mexican culture.

And simply:

Ahem. Mexicans know about their own history. You are confusing Mexicans with Mexican Americans.

But I reserve the place of honor for the response that actually fried my cookies.  I might well deserve snark from Mexicans, who ostensibly know a thing or two more about Cinco de Mayo than I, but when a (non-Mexican) MA TESOL-holding ESL professor who cut his teeth teaching adults in Southern California (no shortage of Mexican-Americans there, last I checked), and who has now become an expat teaching English in the Middle East, wrote the following, not on my blog page, not in reddit.com (where people will write anything – one Mexican poster wrote, in response to my blog, “[¡]Señor escritor, usted es una verga parada!”), but on the page of a members-only professional ESL discussion board, the following:

"I think it's offensive that a country that dumps its worst criminals and low lifes [sic] feels entitled to tell America how to treat them. Why don't you ask Mexicans to celebrate holidays in El Salvador? Do you know what kind of response you'll get?  Better yet, try teaching Mexicans in the slums of Long Beach or Compton. People like you are the reason America is losing sovereignty."

I just had to respond in kind.  Call it a pathological weakness.

"People like you are the reason America is losing sovereignty" ????  You and I, sir, are going to have a problem.

I taught Mexicans in the slums of the San Francisco Bay Area - Oakland, San Jose, East Palo Alto, Hayward... for 15 years. I know that of which I speak. "People like you," sir, to use your ignorant turn of phrase (did you even look at my profile to see my experience before you called me out for what I have and have not experienced in my professional career?) are the reason why "people like me" blog. If you are so concerned about America's sovereignty and the state of its national integrity, why don't you come back from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia [Note: poster has spent 2 of the last 3 years teaching English in S.A. and Kuwait] and be part of the solution, instead of hurling firebrands at the stonework from a distance?

Further, with regard to your opening salvo ("I think it's offensive that a country that dumps its worst criminals and low lifes [sic] feels entitled to tell America how to treat them..."), your ability to compound logical fallacies is truly staggering. "A country that dumps its worst criminals..." implies volition which is unfounded, is a grotesque straw man hyperbole of Mexico itself as a nation, and an utter non sequitur in that it is completely irrelevant to my thesis. In fact, if you actually read my blog (which I'm pretty sure you did not, since your retort is so completely off-topic and irrelevant) you would have read the part where I acknowledged, "the Mexico of the 20th and 21st centuries did/does not appear to have held up the glorious promise of its inspiring foundational period..." but why ruin a perfectly good rant with inconsequential irrelevancies like detail, precision, clarity, accuracy, and nuance?

Your follow-up ("Why don't you ask Mexicans to celebrate holidays in El Salvador?") is equally silly and irrelevant. First of all, Mexicans would not celebrate a holiday *in* El Salvador. Perhaps you meant to ask "Why don't you ask Mexicans to celebrate Salvadorean holidays?" Ahhh, now that's a relevant question, to which I have two answers: 1.) If the E.S. holidays are relevant/germane to the historical legacy of Mexico, then sure; 2.) Again, further proof that you did not actually read my post, you missed the part (right at the end, in a paragraph all by itself) that read "Is it appropriate to recognize a non-U.S. holiday in the U.S.? Does it set us down a slippery slope? I dunno, I’m just [asking]"

So you see, the very purpose of the blog was to stimulate discussion. You sir, are clearly not interested in discussion; you prefer the name-calling approach. That's fine, I have thick skin. I see that you have a few years of ESL experience, mostly with older learners, in California, so I won't accuse you of not knowing anything (despite evidence to the contrary) but I will merely say that my 15 years teaching English and Spanish and ESL in largely Chicano areas in California, plus my Spanish, English and ESL teaching at the college and university level, plus my experiences as an adviser for Latinos Unidos and MEChA, plus my work as a Department Chair in Spanish and ESL, plus my curriculum work in developing Spanish for Native Speakers programs, plus my research in the sociolinguistics of Hispanic speech communities, plus my extensive community outreach during my secondary teaching years, plus my MA TESOL and Linguistics degree, plus my three teaching credentials in English, ESL and Spanish, plus my postbac studies in Mexican and Latin American History, plus my social and professional relationships in the Chicano community, plus a couple of other things, all add up to something you should consider not dismissing so cavalierly, and in spectacularly embarrassing fashion, if I do say so myself.

Stay in the Middle East. I'm sure you won't have to deal with any Mexicans there; they are obviously anathema to you. Good luck in your career. I hope you are able to find a corner of the world for your intolerance to relax comfortably unchallenged. 

How dare you.

I’m actually (surprisingly) very conservative when it comes to immigration issues, certainly more conservative than most ESL professors, I’d wager.  But I also don’t think that my initial post had anything to do with immigration reform, nor did it have anything to do with ceding anything to a Mexico that this fellow seems to think “dumps its worst criminals and low lifes [sic] [and] feels entitled to tell America how to treat them.”  I simply pointed out that, at its roots, the Mexican Constitution of 1857 (the beginning of their first truly long-term stable period as an independent nation), and the Declaration of Independence share a lot more than most people would ever guess, and that the heroics of the Battle of Puebla should remind us of our own selves.  We are so used to seeing difference in others (refer to my blog post on just this very issue); when we have an opportunity to see affinity, we should seize on it.

So did I overreact?  (I do tend to do that.)  Was my response too much?  I dunno, I’m just A.S.K.ing…

Cinco de Mayo – A uniquely American holiday, courtesy of… México!

Outside of areas with large Mexican populations, Cinco de Mayo as a holiday is largely ignored.  Allow me to suggest that this perhaps is a mistake.  In schools, certainly, the history of this critically important day provides a valuable historical lesson, not just about our neighbor to the south, but about the intangibles that once defined us as a nation.

When asked what Cinco de Mayo is, most people – even, I learned after many years of teaching in California schools, many people of Mexican extraction – automatically report, erroneously, that it is Mexican Independence Day.  (That would be September 16, sorry.)  It is always sad when a people is disconnected from its heritage to such an extent that no one can even recall the significant formative moments in the formation of that culture’s psyche; can you imagine an American calling him- or her-self a “patriot,” but not knowing why there were 13 stripes on the flag, or not knowing why we recognize certain presidents’ birthdays, or what “the shot heard ‘round the world” was? 

In Mexico, Cinco de Mayo is acknowledged, but not celebrated as a national day with any real fervor on a national scale; official recognition of the day varies regionally, with individual states (yes, Mexico has states) deciding how the day is to be commemorated, if at all.  The occasion is celebrated with much more vehemence, pomp, circumstance and ornamentation in parts of the United States – those with a significant Mexican population, understandably – than in Mexico itself.  This makes intuitive sense, perhaps; people separated from their cultural center, if they have any desire to commemorate or celebrate their heritage and cultural identity, or any drive to maintain the same, will strive wherever possible to forge connections through ritual.  Islands of Mexicanity within the borders of the United States can therefore engage in these celebrations and feel a closer connection to their homeland, their distance, like absence, having ostensibly made the heart grow fonder. 

However, many American celebrations of Cinco de Mayo have degenerated into generic and heavily commercialized cultural celebrations; Cinco de Mayo is, in many American communities in the West and Southwest, merely an undifferentiated outpouring of nostalgia for a missed fatherland, a contrived concatenation of music, color, dance and food, with little – if any – acknowledgment (or even understanding) of the historical occasion which the day is meant to commemorate.  I recall that once a Mexican-American administrator in a school at which I spent an early part of my full-time teaching career, in an attempt to voice an elegant encomium to Mexico over the loudspeaker for Cinco de Mayo, informed the student body, perhaps a quarter of whom were Chicanos, that “today [was] the day we celebrate the Mexican declaration of independence.”  ¡Carajo, hombre!

That is a shame, because despite the occasional flare-ups of grotesque and arbitrary anti-Mexican sentiment extant in many sectors of the current American political landscape, Cinco de Mayo is, above all things, very much a holiday in the American spirit, and a significant movement in a critical historical period in our hemisphere worth getting to know.

The period between the 1760s and the 1860s was a momentous era in Western history. Thanks in no small part to Schoolhouse Rock, everybody knows the phrase “taxation without representation,” and has a vague idea that the American colonists were spurred on by outrage to fight for independence.  Anybody who cares to dig a little deeper quickly gets past the easy potential misconception that the outrage the colonists felt was simply petty, petulant and trite, (a la Occupy Wall Street – don’t get me started on that; it’s off-topic, just move along… ), like a child protesting his “unfair” bedtime and throwing a fit; in fact, the Revolution and subsequent Declaration of Independence (I’ll pause for a moment while you go look it up – yes, the war started before the Declaration was penned) were the inevitable end product of a principled line of thinking that had its seeds in the Enlightenment.  But the story does not end with the surrender of Cornwallis.

Proper historians may cringe at the truncated treatment I am about to give a rather complex series of political upheavals, but this plays better from 30,000 feet, so broad strokes only for a while.
 
The French Revolution, which lasted from 1789 to 1791, was directly influenced by the American Revolution, and the French National Constituent Assembly’s The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen paid generous homage to both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  One wonders if the last thing that went through Louis XVI’s head in 1793, besides a guillotine blade, was the idea that maybe signing the Treaty of Alliance with the American colonies in 1778 wasn’t such a hot idea after all.  The French Revolution stimulated the people of Haiti, then a French colony, to revolt, and for thirteen years, war raged in that tiny country.
  
Then, a few short years later, nearby Mexico caught the revolution bug but good, as Napoleonic War-era France distracted Spain for long enough to disrupt their attentiveness to their own colonies, giving Mexico an opening to follow Haiti’s lead, which they did.  This chain reaction of wars of independence cascaded down the spine of Mesoamerica into the South American continent, and by mid-century, 1849, to be precise, almost all of the modern-day Spanish-speaking nations had declared, fought for, and won their independence from Spain. 

Mexico, as a newly independent nation, had what one might understatedly call growing pains.  An almost constant state of civil war existed over the three-and-a-half decades between 1821 and 1857, with a shocking series of revolving-door presidencies (Santa Anna alone was named President some ten or eleven separate times) while that nation saw not one but three separate, distinct national constitutions implemented.  The anti-theocracy capitalist reformer Benito Juárez played an important role in the creation of Mexico’s 1857 Constitution, a document which set forth guidelines that included freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, a reaffirmation of the ban on slavery [Note/edit: Thanks to the poster at /r/mexico in reddit who alerted me to the fact that Mexico had banned slavery actually in 1829], the right to bear arms, and the familiar notion of “the consent of the governed,” captured in the Constitution’s Article 39:

Article 39, The Mexican Constitution of 1857:

La soberanía nacional reside esencial y originariamente en el pueblo. … El pueblo tiene en todo tiempo el inalienable derecho de alterar[o] modificar la forma de su gobierno. 

“[Our] national sovereignty resides in and originates with the People. … The People at all times have the inviolable right to alter or modify the form of their government.”   

Compare to the American Declaration of Independence:

“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…”

Juárez became Mexico’s next president, in 1858.  He borrowed funds heavily from European powers – England, France, Spain (yes, Spain) – to rebuild his war-torn country, but after a short few years, his creditors came calling, led by an extraordinarily zealous Napoleon III of France, who in response to Juárez’s non-repayment, invaded Mexico in 1861, driving Juárez into exile, and succeeded in installing Hapsburg stooge and eventual fall guy Maximilian I as the puppet Emperor of Mexico in 1864.

The Mexican people did not go gentle into that good night, however.  While the elite French forces generally made short work of whatever Mexican resistance stood in its way, there was one battle, at the village of Puebla on May 5, 1862, that, while not a key or decisive battle in the larger conflict, came to become the best known (at least by name) battle on Mexican soil – the Battle of the Alamo was technically fought in the Republic of Texas – in that nation’s history. Reports vary on the precise troop strength of the opposing armies: on the Mexican side, estimates run as low as 1,500 and as high as 4,500; on the French side, estimates are fairly consistent at around 6,000, though I have read some as high as 8,000.  What is certain is that the Mexican fighting force was perhaps one step up from rabble, while the French forces were arguably among the most formidable, well-trained, and well-outfitted in the world.  David, however, defeated Goliath, sending the French temporarily into retreat, the number of their casualties three to four times that of the stalwart Mexican defenders.

True, the French did come back, this time with an army several times larger, and they completed their national conquest by 1864. But it did not take.  By 1867, Napoleon III had withdrawn both his interest in Mexican involvement and his troops, leaving Maximilian without a lifeline.  Maximilian was overthrown and captured in 1867, where a repatriated Benito Juárez sentenced him to death by firing squad. 

In commemoration of the Battle of Puebla, which despite its ultimate futility showed the rest of the world a nation of unexpected guts and grit, and provided an emotional flashpoint – like the Alamo, the Spartans at Thermopylae, or the defeat of the Gunpowder Treason – to kindle a resurgent sense of national pride, Juárez declared May 5th a day of national celebration.  It never, however, really became an official federal holiday in Mexico:

“Battle of Puebla is not a general public holiday, as per the "artículo 74 de la Ley Federal del Trabajo", but is included as a public sector holiday (Las dependencias y entidades de la Administración Pública Federal, cuyas relaciones de trabajo se rijan por el Apartado B del artículo 123 Constitucional) in the separate "Decreto por el que se reforma el Artículo Segundo del Decreto por el que se establece el Calendario Oficial"

However, the symbolism of the strength showed by an isolated and outnumbered band of ragtag underdogs surrounded by adverse hostility became a go-to font of patriotic pride for displaced Mexicans within U.S. borders.  Non-Mexican Americans would do well to acknowledge this day as of equal significance to America’s own Declaration of Independence, for while the Mexico of the 20th and 21st centuries did/does not appear to have held up the glorious promise of its inspiring foundational period (for that matter, The U.S. seems to have betrayed its legacy in a number of ways as well, but that too is a topic for another day, another time, another blog), the day itself, and the battle it commemorates, are sterling examples of the spirit that once made America great. This is something that students – all Americans – need to understand.  Let Cinco de Mayo be celebrated in our classrooms nationwide.

Pride is not a sin.

Is it appropriate to recognize a non-U.S. holiday in the U.S.?  Does it set us down a slippery slope?  I dunno, I’m just A.S.K.ing… 

                      [Note: Read the follow up to this post here.]

Oh, Those Golden Handcuffs

When I left my last school district, making well over $70,000 (those of you in California reading this will say “so what,” but in upstate New York, a house that would cost $500,000-$600,000 in the suburban San Francisco Bay Area where I used to live and teach only costs $125,000-$225,000), I found it nigh impossible to reestablish with a school district.

My resume looked pretty good – 18 years teaching secondary school and college, three teaching credentials (English, Spanish, ESL), experience being  a department chair (three times), a program manager (twice), and a curriculum designer (twice), oodles of experience with the school accreditation process (four cycles), a fair amount of committee work, and some educational technology experience to boot.  My references were excellent – a small stack of emphatically supportive letters from various people at different levels stretching back 24 months or so.

Then an interviewer in 2011 told me, mid-interview, that there was a problem with my experience.  They simply would not agree to pay anyone in accordance with their experience, citing the ample supply of eager teachers who would work for much, much less.  In my case, that meant that if they were going to offer me a job (which they did not, because I ended the interview) it would be at a salary of perhaps $43,000 instead of $73,000.

Vivek Wadhwa, a blogger and “top linkedin.com influencer,” also a Fellow at the Arthur & Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University, wrote an inspiring article just today (4/25/13) on how industry de-values experience and expertise at its own peril.  An excerpt:

True, some older workers become complacent as they age. They become set in their ways, stop learning new technologies, and believe they are entitled to the high wages they earned at their peak. Their careers stagnate for a valid reason. But these are the exception rather than the rule. Whether it is in computer programming or entrepreneurship, older workers have many advantages—they still are the guru’s [sic].

This entry immediately followed, and was a direct sequel to, a post Wadhwa had written on 4/22/13, on the rampant ageism in the tech industry.  An excerpt:

It may be wrong, but look at this from the point of view of the employer. Why would any company pay a computer programmer with out-of-date skills a salary of say $150,000, when it can hire a fresh graduate — who has no skills — for around $60,000? Even if it spends a month training the younger worker, the company is still far ahead. The young understand new technologies better than the old do, and are like a clean slate: They will rapidly learn the latest coding methods and techniques, and they don’t carry any “technology baggage.” The older worker likely has a family and needs to leave the office by 6 p.m. The young can easily pull all-nighters.

What the tech industry often forgets is that with age comes wisdom. Older workers are usually better at following direction, mentoring, and leading. They tend to be more pragmatic and loyal...

The two essays, both absolute must-reads, are two sides of the coin of the realm in the modern world of work – expediency over expertise; malleability over maturity; deference over dynamism.  Employers want people cheap, who will do the job, loyally and faithfully even to a fault, and not get in the way of management’s mission.  And the fact is (and we can admit this as an empirical truth) older folks are less likely to have the kinds of flexibility required of that type of management style.

The redactio ad absurdum at the end of this slippery slope is a scene right out of Ayn Rand’s Anthem:

You shall do that which the Council of Vocations shall prescribe for you. For the Council of Vocations knows in its great wisdom where you are needed by your brother men, better than you can know it in your unworthy little minds. And if you are not needed by your brother men, there is no reason for you to burden the earth with your bodies…

...Thus must all men live until they are forty. At forty, they are worn out. At forty, they are sent to the Home of the Useless, where the Old Ones live. The Old Ones do not work, for the State takes care of them. They sit in the sun in summer and they sit by the fire in winter. They do not speak often, for they are weary. The Old Ones know that they are soon to die. When a miracle happens and some live to be forty-five, they are the Ancient Ones, and children stare at them when passing by the Home of the Useless.  (ch. 1)

Hyperbole? Perhaps.  But bit by bit, older teachers are being forced out in a war of attrition, either for financial reasons, philosophical reasons, or a combination of the two – refer to the saga of Gerald Conti for a refresher course on how principles (as well as principals!) are driving many teachers to abandon the career that many have lovingly dedicated their lives to – and once forced out, it is increasingly difficult for them to find purchase in another teaching position.  They’re just too expensive, and expertise has so little value anymore.

Not only do older teachers cost more (most schools use a salary schedule), but instead of being respected, the changing climate of America public education puts modern progressive mores in direct conflict with the values of most teachers 45+, which has the net effect of stigmatizing older teachers and their experience. I have had numerous hiring committees and district administrators tell me that it's simply not worth it to hire an experienced teacher, unless s/he can be paid a starting teacher price. Younger teachers are more malleable, more eager to please, and more willing to drink the Kool-Aid. There also seems to be a pervasive feeling that older, more experienced teachers, when they try to share their experiences with younger faculty – especially when and if their views diverge, as is more and more the case these days – are somehow hegemonic in asserting their wisdom and experience, as if that somehow invalidates the energy and youthful missionary zeal of younger teachers. It is incredibly divisive, and there seems to be an us vs. them, at least in public school systems I've looked at lately, especially in the current educational climate.

I used to mock professional athletes when they would “hold out,” demanding to be paid “what they’re worth.”  Now I kind of get it.

But here’s a final thought, a sort of counterpoint:  I’m teaching college now, as an adjunct on two campuses.  I’m waiting to hear if I made it through to the third round of interviews for a tenure-track position at one of them.  If I get the job, I will be ecstatic.  It does not bother me that the salary will likely be $20,000-$25,000 less than I would get as a high school teacher.  This is not all about money… there are more ways than just money to value an employee, and to demonstrate that value through a supportive and collegial environment and a teacher-friendly atmosphere.  More and more, public schools have neither.  (My college is, thankfully, an embarrassment of riches in this regard.)  At this point, I don’t know if an offer of $75,000 would be sufficient to bring me back, even though my family desperately needs the benefits, the health care, and the stability.
 
Gerald Conti is leaving the career that he loves after 28 years; I’m guessing his salary is far more than mine was when I left my last school district on "Salary Step 19."  He could hang on for two more years and become more fully vested in his retirement plan, netting him a significant bump in future disbursements.  He is choosing not to.  He is lucky to have the financial stability to be able to make that principled decision.  A lot of veteran teachers do not – they are chained to their job by the very real threat of not being able to find another one, at least not one that pays anything close to what they’re worth, locked in place by the Golden Handcuffs.

What is the key to unlock the Golden Handcuffs?  I dunno.  I’m just A.S.K.ing…