Brad Smith was my co-author and his bio will remain along with his posts on our Blog. He has passed away in 2024 and I miss him. His obituary could not capture who he was and is now. Words can never express the POWER of his commitment to Utah’s children and youth. This was what brought us together as we visited schools. Perhaps Utah’s Pando , the trembling giant, can best represent Brad’s life’s of interconnectedness and contribution
As usual Brad has activated memories from my past, since I too used Tinker v. Des Moines along with other Supreme Court* cases in which parents sued school districts. My context, however, was quite different from Brad’s and, yet, in so many ways similar.
When I was a Faculty Associate at Claremont Graduate University, the Director of Teacher Education asked me to take on a special assignment of not only supervising our intern teachers at Pasadena High School, but also teachers who had been hired through the fledgling program, Teach for America (TFA). I met with the principal, touted as an innovative visionary from Harvard, and developed a positive working relationship. She had come to California committed to changing the future of non-white students in a school that had been the epicenter for the 1970 court ordered desegregation ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Manuel Real. Nearly 20 years after Brown v. Board of Education, stating “separate is not equal,” Real’s finding came as an indictment of practices of the Pasadena Board of Education who had ”knowingly assigned” blacks and whites to separate high schools. The principal and I met frequently to discuss and strategize how to better support the enthusiastic academic types from TFA now thrown into urban classrooms. However, for some teaching was not really a career, just an opportunity to try it on or perhaps long enough to get their student loans forgiven which was only available if supported by districts. Others flourished and found education to be their passion, but not as teachers.
The principal also wanted to address the drop out problem which was predominantly non-white students and English Learners. The vision was to develop a Center for Independent Studies as a personalized learning environment with a student teacher ratio of 1-25. I was recruited with another colleague with work-study experience to design the school-within-a school in 1989. There were just two of us and a Spanish speaking paraprofessional. For me the learning was intense and deep. What I quickly discovered was that students, who were referred to CIS and in danger of not graduating because of credit deficiency, were not just incredibly talented, but had been systematically disenfranchised by policies, practices and mindsets that were non-responsive to them, their families, and the conditions of their lives. After two years, I had an opportunity to go to the main campus as the Lead Teacher in one of the five Houses of the newly re-structured high school of 2500 students. My goal was to better understand the system that, from my limited view, was broken.
The restructured high school was shaped by the 1990s research, from both Harvard and Stanford, and advocated for personalizing large comprehensive high schools. The five smaller houses of 500 students with teams of teachers, used a structural approach which then became another sorting mechanism. Students astutely wise-cracked: “Oh, that House has all the smart kids.” They knew the students in one House had been programmed by the counselors, at the bidding of parents, into Honors courses.
This experience helped me see that the language of “reform” (now labeled “innovation” or “school choice”), is generally never disruptive of the status quo. Bureaucratic institutions make structural changes while rarely addressing the fundamental questions of organizational culture, values, beliefs, social and economic justice. My view is that changing labels on an organizational chart generally increases hierarchy and maintains privilege by the few over the many. This is not to suggest that I am a fan of “mobocracy” or a theocratic oligarchy based on religious belief or worse yet, ill-conceived quick-fix programs voted into existence by a simple majority. I believe in the human capacity for dialogue and civil discourse based on the skillful practice of questioning all ideas, concepts, policies and practices. Why? To uncover and elucidate both the implications and unintended consequences of decisions that impact those who are most vulnerable in our communities.
I re-located to Utah nearly twenty years ago because I was invited by a Superintendent to design a high school summit addressing the issue of inequitable access to early college experiences for non-white and low income students. Fast forward 20 years and I am now on a committee at the direction of the Utah State Board to develop a plan to – yes, you guessed it – to remediate the problem of inequitable access to and success for under- represented students in early college course work.
Like Bill Murray in the film Ground Hog Day, I seem to be stuck an never-ending, recursive loop. My role, administrator or teacher, makes no difference in any system of schooling; and during my career I have worked in a variety of settings: traditional public, alternative, charter, and parochial. So what do I personally make of this ongoing conundrum? Our history, in some ways, has solidified our beliefs about who “deserves” access to quality learning experiences, despite the current rhetoric of “educational equity.”
In my work with one of Utah’s Assistant Attorney Generals, we have explored the history of what a “Free Appropriate Public Education”really means for Utah children. This new learning opportunity about the history of public education has been shaped by another court case: the 1994 permanent injunction, brilliantly written by a Utah judge in response to a certified class action suit by families in five Utah school districts on behalf of their children’s right to educational opportunities despite economic hardships.
From the beginning of the Republic, I did not use “democracy” on purpose, the privilege of education was seen to be best suited for the children of wealthy landowners in New England since they attended private academies or could afford tutors. The common-schools crusade of the 1830s was conceived as a vehicle to maintain “moral values considered essential to the American social order:” that is, industriousness, frugality and personal responsibility – values inherited from the Puritans. By 1850 educational reformers led by Horace Mann attempted to generate a common commitment to educating the “huddled masses.” However, for the wealthy classes the idea of taxing the citizenry in order to finance the education of working-class and poor children was seen as not just wasteful, but an infringement on property rights. Labor reformers favored common schools but resented the stigma of “pauper” or “charity” schools because they looked at education as a means to reverse the growing inequality which they considered the main threat to society. Does this sound familiar?
Between 1850-1920, the increasing diversity from immigration provided the impetus for compulsory attendance laws. During the same period a confluence of three pernicious ideas solidified a dominant viewpoint about who deserves a quality education:
1) Spencer’s Social Darwinism gave birth to America’s Eugenics movement resulting in the forced sterilization of poor women and women of color, legalized by a 1927, 8-1 Supreme Court ruling, Buck v. Bell: paving the way for Nazi Germany’s justification for genocide;
2) Taylor’s Scientific Management theories influenced our fascination with the language of “efficiency” and mechanized technologies to increase ROI – Return on Investment for stockholders; and,
3) Binet’s I.Q. test, commissioned by the French government, adapted by Stanford and used by the United States military to determine who was best qualified to be officers in World War I and those suited for trench warfare.
This kind of deterministic thinking about who deserves a good life and who has equitable access begins as early as pre-natal healthcare and available housing for homeless families and their children. Then it continues as we use systems to track students into courses best suited for their abilities. This convergence of ideas along with our own insecurities, fueled by fear of those not like us, have been used by demagogues in every country, not just ours. These unchallenged assumptions about innate abilities, the value of IQ, and inferior classes based on conditions of birth, ZIP code, or economic status have shaped policies and practices that legitimize divisive discourse and political posturing whether on social media or in governing bodies from Poland and India to Myanmar and Moscow, from the Knesset to the Bundestag. The antidote?
Recent advances made in neuroscience and the empirical validation of the brain’s plasticity, provide hope for all of us: starting with the groundbreaking research of Davidson and Begley in 2012 with The Emotional Life of the Brain: How its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel and Live – And How You Can Change Them. In a 2016 book, Peak: Secrets of the Science of Expertise by Ericsson and Pool, recommended to me by a Utah State Senator, challenges our beliefs about innate abilities by articulating a common sense approach: Purposeful and deliberate practice, focused on a specific goal with feedback from a teacher or coach who has experience with getting around barriers. In the 2016 edited collection by Stanford’s Shelley Goldman and Smith College’s Zaza Kabayadondo, there are multiple examples of children and youth using the Design Thinking Process, including empathy mapping, to create fast prototypes with feedback from “clients” by practicing the skills for social entrepreneurship. These references provide us with opportunities to re-think a wide range of educational settings and how learning happens for children and youth in the 21st century. The commonality among the previous resources is that learning is social and we have the power to change; we make our future by collective action in the present.
With Brad and many other colleagues across the country, including members of state and local school boards as well as state legislators, I agree that education for equity and excellence must be our priority. This is a common purpose. However, the way in which we might accomplish this monumental task can be easily derailed by ideology, doctrine, or dogma. This means we must listen care-fully to each other and always question.
I make no apologies for my lifelong commitment as an advocate for free, universal public education as a RIGHT of each child, especially those who have been systematically disenfranchised along with their families and communities. My commitment has been shaped by what I believe the purpose of education is. I stand with one of my heroes, James Baldwin, and quote his brilliant 1963 essay, A Talk to Teachers: “The purpose of education is to ask questions of the universe and then to learn to live with the questions.” The “learning to live” is our task for ourselves and our children.
NOTES:
*New Jersey v. TLO (1985); and, Hazelwood School District v. Kulhmeier (1988)
Desegregation of Pasadena Schools – 12 Years later: https://www.csmonitor.com/1983/0128/012850.html
Tinsley v Palo Alto Unified School District
https://www.leagle.com/decision/197996291calapp3d8711890
Tinsley Desegregation – 22 years later
http://www.mercurynews.com/2010/02/23/tinsley-program-still-attracting-students-22-years-later/
Center for Independent Study: https://www.pusd.us/Page/1172
Educational Reform of 1990s (Harvard) – Ted Sizer and the Coalition of Essential Schools
Stanford’s Center for Research on the Context of Teaching
http://web.stanford.edu/group/suse-crc/cgi-bin/drupal/
Why NCLB Failed & How Can States Avoid Same Mistakes: Christensen Institute
https://www.christenseninstitute.org/blog/nclb-failed-states-can-avoid-making-mistakes-essa/
James Baldwin, A Talk to Teachers from the Saturday Review, 1963
During one academic year while serving as Ogden City Schools superintendent, I took the opportunity to teach a class at each of our two high schools on constitutional law. Ogden High and Ben Lomand High are “highly impacted” schools. Using child nutrition data as a convenient proxy for poverty rates, in 2016, Ogden High had nearly 61% of its students on free and reduced school lunch and Ben Lomand was more than 69%. The schools chose how students would be placed in my class and I had a wide variety of proficiency levels, language skills and backgrounds. At Ogden, for example, I had students who were in the International Baccalaureate programs as well as ESL students who struggled to express themselves in English. At Ben Lomand, I had student body officers and students who were making up credits after having dropped out of school for their sophomore and junior years.
The structure of my class was simple. We read and discussed, in a Socratic dialogue, cases from the United States Supreme Court. There was no other text or text book. I did not edit the cases. My students chose the general topics and I selected the cases. For example, they selected the Second Amendment; we read and discussed Heller v. District of Columbia for several days. They wanted to discuss the rights of immigrants or illegal aliens; we discussed Plyler v. Doe. Supreme Court cases are not easy reading for anyone; they are challenging reading. For most of my students, this was the first time dealing with actual legal documents and the first time where they were subjected to careful analysis of their own reasoning as well as the Courts in a Socratic setting.
What I saw was startlingly apparent. Many students were far more vocal and assertive about their views, far more able to articulate a position in a Socratic discussion, and better able to think and analyze closely reasoned matters than others. Initially, I made the assumption that the differences I observed were primarily related to academic training, or perhaps to socio-economic status. Upon a little deeper review, however, I realized that these differences were not adequately explained by such differences. Certainly IB students were often more verbal or more articulate, but not universally.
When I met with students individually and began to know them individually, some things became more apparent. Students with a rich store of life experiences, broad reading, and lots of observations, simply had more mental categories to draw upon in seeking to understand, analyze, and criticize difficult textual materials. Other students often simply lacked both the language, but also the mental infrastructure, to begin to look at high level text in a meaningful way. They suffered from hypocognition. Many of the students least able to access and address the Supreme Court texts had been lifelong students in my school district. To me, it seemed obvious that we had woefully underserved these students; they had attended school for twelve years, and yet their ability to read, analyze, synthesize and project their learning was all but none-existent.
As we discussed case after case, I was horrified to learn that basic civil rights that I took as fundamental givens in our society were unfamiliar and strange to my students. For example, we read the case of Tinker v. Des Moines School District, a case in which the Supreme Court held that students protesting the Vietnam War were entitled to wear black armbands to school, provided they were not otherwise disturbing the educational process. Many of my students simply could not understand that students could legitimately defy their elders in such ways; this lack of understanding did not have a politically partisan component to it. Students on the left and right were equally unable to discuss ideas like freedom of speech and the need for rights of conscience. One of the greatest moments for me in this process was to simply affirm that there was a “fat, white, middle-aged, Mormon, Republican, lawyer” who trusted them enough to
believe that they could responsibly and civilly challenge me and my generation. We discussed that my agreement with their thinking was not a condition precedent to my respect for them. To the contrary, my respect for them as fellow-citizens and fellow-learners, meant both that I would carefully listen to them and that I would engage with them in a no-holds-barred discussion.
What was also apparent to me was one of the fundamental failures of our educational system. In our district, we had allowed our standards to become so weak and diluted that we actually stated that poor or Hispanic students in schools in downtown Ogden simply could not do as much as wealthier or whiter students on the eastside of town. With pure hearts (I assume) and empty heads, we were content if students were exposed to only the most rudimentary recall and recitation lessons. The idea of analysis, synthesis or strategic thinking was simply never tried. As a result, we had generations of students who were underserved, unable to obtain first-class jobs, or engage as fully-endowed citizens. Moreover, just as slavery degraded both master and slave, this process degraded both the teacher and the learner; teachers no longer really taught and students never really learned.
To me, the grandeur and the power of education, lies in exposing minds to new thoughts, new pathways and new vistas. Those points in my own life are bright, and energized, and filled with power. For example, in high school, taking chemistry and physics and realizing for the first time the tight and deep and enduring connection between mathematical expression and physical reality was like breathing new air; it was heady and exhilarating. Living in a foreign country and being immersed in a foreign language as a Mormon missionary in Finland, was daunting and frightening, but it was also a period of enlightenment as a new language opened upon new ways of thinking about familiar topics. The sun shone from a new angle. Or, law school was an entirely new experience for me in precision and care in expression and thought. My point is that each of these and other times created opportunities for me to experience life in new, unexpected, and unique ways. Absent these chances, my own life would lack dimension; and it is almost impossible to discern the lack of a dimension from within the space bounded by known dimensions.
Education, then, is all about creating the conditions for students to experience their life and their personal dimensions to the fullest possible extent. Certainly, that means creating a space for them to explore and expand without the limits of authority or dogma, However, it also means establishing, without apology and without fear, proficiency in fundamental learning. My students were almost all perfectly capable of reading the words of the Supreme Court, but they had had no training in understanding, criticizing, and synthesizing their own views of the ideas. I want students to be sufficiently instructed that they can understand, criticize, and act for themselves.
I must admit that the same writers that Brad quotes are often the writers who have influenced my own thinking. So once again, though our viewpoints differ a great deal, our foundational assumptions about being open-hearted as well as a thoughtful and kind human being (which for me is a daily practice) is what seems to motivate both of us. This stance in the world is, of course, a challenge. Brad’s honest appraisal of a typical response to children living in poverty “not my children or THOSE poor children” is really the core of our common moral commitment and our mutual respect and treasured friendship.
Brad writes, reflecting on his experience as a school board member: “We saw our children: poor, poorly-educated, often ethnic minorities. While we saw them, we did not see them as ours. Only when I saw them as my children was I willing to take personal responsibility to try to change outcomes.”
What a powerful and beautifully self-reflective truth-telling: so refreshing in our “post-truth era” where the accepted tendency is to just make things up and justify poorly reasoned actions, policies, or ideologies without considering consequences and practical implications. Extremist viewpoints, whether on the left or the right, along with specious self-justifications leave me baffled. Why? There is a carelessness about life and a carefully orchestrated protection of the IDEA of a “self” defined by both our own habitual reactions to and personal perceptions of the world as WE see it: a worldview limited by the language we use to explain it to others.
IS there another alternative? IF we woke up every morning and saw ourselves as learners instead of knowers, curious rather than authoritative, then perhaps we could see the “self” as always becoming; not being stuck in our own ideas about everything. Ancient Pali texts indicate that this is indeed the definition of suffering: “being stuck like a broken axle on a wheel,” unable to move. So in every interaction, in each situation we are called upon to skillfully “read the world,” a method used by Freire in villages in Brazil in the 1960s and described in his 1970 classic Pedagogy of the Oppressed so that as a community of learners we are generative. We see that which we could not see before and we get unstuck. This is the kind of social capital that enables us to respond to each situation with a deeper consciousness about what is at stake, especially for those in our communities who are the most disenfranchised and marginalized for whatever reason. We are in dialogue. Freire’s Marxist analysis of education as a system of “banking” as distinct from a dialogue WITH others is described in this brief passage:
“[T]he more radical the person is, the more fully he or she enters into reality so that, knowing it better, he or she can transform it. This individual is not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world unveiled. This person is not afraid to meet the people or to enter into a dialogue with them. This person does not consider himself or herself the proprietor of history or of all people, or the liberator of the oppressed; but he or she does commit himself or herself, within history, to fight at their side.”
So how is it that we can become more self aware and begin to see the “other” as another precious “I”? According to Jewish scholars like Martin Buber and Abraham Herschel as well as contemporary social psychologists like Princeton’s Susan Fiske, our default is our habitual “comparing-mind” and consequently, we either “envy-up” (We are never good enough.) or “scorn-down” (We are always better than.); so we can easily justify HOW we treat others. For Buber we fall prey to the I-It relationship that objectifies others. Thus Brad’s comments about our systematic demonization of others who are not like us whether the reason is political, religious, or cultural. Is there a possible remedy or intentional practice that can shock the comparing-mind into a different framework? In the Stanford Cultivating Compassion course one practice is to look at others WITHOUT judgment, or fear, or cynicism and say to ourselves as a reminder or a prayer: “Just like me, you want to be happy and free from suffering.” Try it! I often use this method in airports with strangers. Of course it works in so many other situations as well.
More than 30 years ago my mother told me of a dream so clear and lucid that she took it as a command: “Take care of children and old people.” For me I internalized this other worldly message as an indication of what a good society should be: Taking care of our children and our elders as a common commitment above the “liberty of the individual.” When I taught in middle and high school the two essential and interdependent inquiry questions that always shaped my curricular decisions were displayed in bold, black letters on my wall: How does the individual change society? How do we make economic decisions? One impacts the other; both are challenging. Recently one of my students from that very government/economics class, where those questions were posted in1997, disagreed with my Facebook post when I questioned the loosening of Dodd-Frank and rolling back Wall Street regulations. It was a wonderful exchange from two very different viewpoints. What a gift and a proud moment for me as a learner with him, knowing that so many years ago the classroom environment was shaped by asking real questions that would still matter nearly 20 years later.
That Brad ended his post with a verse from Psalm 139 (though in the translation I have used, it is numbered 138) and, believe it or not, every Thursday for 10 years as a benedictine nun I recited this psalm at Vespers (evening prayer), first in Latin and also sung in Gregorian chant on special days and then recited in English. And yes, it was one of my favorites as well. The verse I loved the most, however, was:
…darkness is not dark to you and night shines as the day; darkness is as light to you; for you have created me…You have formed me in darkness…in the depths of the earth, my substance.
Rabbi Nachman suggests that when you apply the words to yourself, you find yourself in every Psalm. So this leads me to quote another favorite Psalm that resonates with my experience of being a Latina, growing up in East Los Angeles with parents and grandparents who loved books, poetry, the natural world, music from opera to jazz, worked hard and yet, knew they were outsiders. And so those who seek a home, who wander, who are outsiders, refugees, immigrants, those who ask questions, those who stand with the poor; they ultimately are my teachers in an era of “post-truth” as the Oxford dictionary has named as its word of 2016.
“By the rivers of Babylon – there we sat and wept; when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps.”Psalm 137
So what must we do in the face of social, economic, and environmental injustice? What must we do when children in Utah and all over the world go to bed hungry every night? Why is it that 8 men have as much wealth as 50% of the entire world’s population? How do we keep awake and conscious of our own privilege and remain committed to working tirelessly on behalf of others? For me there are two basic principles that have been used as the foundation of Civil Rights movements across the world, beginning in 1906 with Gandhi in South Africa, shaped by his incessant reading of Thoreau: “Ahimsa” which means literally ‘do no harm’ and “Satyagraha’” meaning ‘persistence in the pursuit of truth.’ Both terms originate from ancient Sanskrit texts, 3000 years ago, that Gandhi knew well and are used to describe the purpose of life as compassionate action.
One reason I love and respect Christelle is because she challenges my thinking without challenging my humanity. As I look on the public and political events of these past few weeks, I see the angry defiance of a newly elected president, as well as the angry defiance of a newly defeated party. I hear voices of every description filled with vitriol and hatred; I witness violence by left against right and by right against left. I am dismayed at the degree to which anger, hatred and other dark emotions crowd out reasonable and rational discourse. I am reminded of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s quote about racism being “man’s gravest threat to man”: “the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.”
Christelle’s reflection on Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhöffer. Bonhöffer was, in many respects, a great prophet. He ministered to the weak from the beginning of his personal ministry and he recognized the wickedness and evil of the Third Reich, even before it was given formal power. Ultimately, he concluded that only direct action of the most drastic kind would allow the sort of redemptive change that Germany of 1944 needed. He was part of the resistence movement and associated with the July 1944 “Valkyre” plot to assassinate Hitler. Ultimately, he was executed in extraordinarily humiliating circumstances at Flossenburg concentration camp, only three weeks before its liberation by the Soviet Army in April 1945.
Niemöller was different. He had served in the Imperial German Navy during World War I. He was a U-boat commander during the period of unrestricted submarine warfare (a policy that led to the sinking of the Lusitania and the entry of the United States into the war). Following Word War I, he entered the Lutheran ministry. However, like many ministers, Niemöller was suspicious of the Weimar Republic and initially found some degree of common cause with the Nazis. He first opposed the Nazis in 1933, as the Aryan Laws persecuted Jews who had converted to Christianity. Both Bonhöffer and Niemöller were early supporters of the Confessing Church, opposing Nazi state takeover of the state church, though Niemöller was much slower to fully abandon the Nazis. The Nazis confined Niemöller to concentration camps in 1937; he was being transferred from Sachsenhausen, when he was liberated by the American Army in April 1945.
Christelle and I have discussed and wondered aloud what we might have done had we lived in Germany in 1933. Would we have seen the Nazis with the clarity of Bonhöffer? Would we have been seduced to by the idolatrous blandishments of the Nazi state, as Bonhöffer warned? I suspect Christelle would have been among those with such clarity of vision and thought. I flatter myself that I would have been there too. However, I suspect that my native conservatism (general conservatism, not just political conservatism) would have lead me down a path much more like Niemöller’s. The title of Bonhöffer’s most enduring book describes the path of both Martin and Dietrich: The Cost of Discipleship.
Such historical “what-ifs” can be a powerful way to think about personal commitment and flesh out moral, ethical and spiritual commitments. However, such exercises are always a little suspect, to me, until they are tested in the crucible of reality; such exercises are to reality as a stationary bicycle exercise is to an actual bicycle trip through the mountains. So, what do I learn from what Christelle has taught me about Bonhöffer and Niemöller? Here are a few thoughts for our time.
First, angry, attacking emotional appeals have very little persuasive power. President Trump’s election demonstrates that angry, attacking emotional appeal does have tremendous power to confirm existing feelings and to rally people with such feelings to action. Our country is awash in anger. In the words of William Butler Yeats, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.” In a democratic republic, it is certainly critical to understand the reasons for anger and frustration. From my perspective, many of the powerful and elite saw no reason to even try to understand their fellow-citizens’ anger. Media and political elites at best ignored it, at worst, ridiculed it.
I didn’t vote or support the election of President Trump, but I do have some understanding of the angry passion that helped elect him. Sharing a philosophical frontier with many of those who did support President Trump, I can try to understand. I am not a powerless or disenfranchised person. I have been a lawyer for nearly twenty-five years. I have held local elected office and functioned in responsible and important public office. My family has always been blessed to be able to call on an ample supply of social capital. When a substantial portion of our country–nearly half of the voting public, as it turns out–feels left behind, we ignore them at our peril. If that lesson applied in 2016, it applies doubly in 2017.
Second, mutual anger and the substitution of passion for reason are among the most non- partisan phenomena I can imagine. The parallel treatment of Merrick Garland and Neil Gorsuch seem to be a fulfillment of Gandhi’s warning that an-eye-for-an-eye only leaves the world blind. Certainly there are many causes that warrant passionate commitment–just as Niemöller and Bonhöffer each would have taught us. Those of us that have such passionate commitments should never allow that passion to become an excuse to cease reasoning or to demonize those with whom we share disagreements.
Third, now, today, this moment, more than ever it is important for me to see each person I encounter as my sister or brother. Of course, we use such language euphemistically, but I mean it more literally. As a school superintendent and school board member before that, I often heard the most compassionate expressions of pity for students in my district who came from poverty- stricken backgrounds. For two generations, in my district, however, that compassion was almost never conjoined with effective action to improve educational outcomes. We just kept doing the same ineffective thing while repeating our well-meant concern. We saw our children: poor, poorly-educated, often ethnic minorities. While we saw them, we did not see them as ours. Only when I saw them as my children was I willing to take personal responsibility to try to change outcomes. It was critical to my personal development to see these children–so different from me in background, wealth, education, religion, ethnicity–as my own brothers and sisters, each of us children of the same parents.
Finally, Christelle, Martin and Dietrich have taught me, and held an example before my eyes, of personal introspection. Before I presume to judge or condemn another–including those of different political views or conclusions–I need to be sure my own heart is right. I don’t like to be judge or ridiculed, and I have felt the sting of judgment and ridicule. If I don’t like judgment and ridicule, I should be scrupulous to insure that I am not judgmental or a practitioner of ridicule. In particular, Christelle, Martin, and Dietrich all reflect a teaching of Christ: you have to love them that despise and hate you.
I hasten to add that such devotion does not preclude aggressive action when required. Bonhöffer, for example, worked as an agent for German military intelligence, knowing that such work imputed some guilt on him. It also provided a vehicle for opposing the regime. Bonhöffer knew that there were no good alternatives, only imperfect actions open to an ethical person. In our time, that dualism, loving those who hate me and being willing to take ethical, though imperfect action, is called for.
Unlike Christelle, I do count myself a classic “liberal.” Locke, Adam Smith, Edmund
Burke, John Adams all speak loudly to my mind. I accept the “invisible hand” and the “marketplace of ideas.” For me, the highest good of government is to protect and foster the individual liberty of its citizens. On this point, Christelle and I are often on different sides. However, it is precisely because we are different that my obligation to listen and learn from Christelle is heightened; and the more important the issue, the greater the duty to listen closely and question carefully.
Finally, at the end of each day, I can only reflect that a struggle for good starts and ends in my own heart. Christelle, Martin and Dietrich have made me a better person and have inspired me to be better yet. In dangerous times, I need to be my best. I think Christelle and I share the spirit of Psalm 139: “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:/ And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” Psalm 139:23- 24.
The Conversation Continues: I write this on January 27 Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Thanks Brad for your thoughtful response to my initial blog post. Simply put the future of Utah’s children and the children of the world, provides that common moral purpose for our ability to listen deeply to each other. MIT professor at the Sloan School of Management, Otto Scharmer, describes this kind of listening as “leading from the future as it emerges.” This means that there is always the possibility for an innovative “how,” IF we listen with grace and in a place of non-attachment or snap judgments. When talking with Brad, I ask myself: “What next? How will I be surprised?” And, yes the surprises keep coming.
On this 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz I was surprised by our common admiration for two extraordinary people, both Lutheran pastors during the rise of Nazism: Martin Niemoeller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. So I pay homage to those two fearless leaders of resistance.
Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) is perhaps best remembered for the quotation: “First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out…” His critical sermons led him to be incarcerated in Dachau, where he shared a barrack room with Catholic dissenters. After 7 years he was liberated by American troops and then in 1947 started a world tour preaching German collective guilt for Nazi persecution and crimes against humanity, especially German Christian churches who had signed a statement of unconditional loyalty to Hitler (Similar to Pop Pius XII signature on the 1933 Vatican Concordat).
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) wrote The Cost of Discipleship, in which he asserted “Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating.” His vocal opposition began with Hitler’s euthanasia program, starting with physically and mentally disabled children who were considered “useless to society.” Arrested and sent to Flossenburg concentration camp, he continued his resistance by plotting to assassinate Hitler. He was tried, along with other accused plotters, and then executed in April 1945 as the Nazi regime was disintegrating.
So what does this mean for our conversation about civil discourse? I definitely do not consider myself in any way a “liberal” in the enlightenment tradition of Locke (1632-1704), the father of liberalism. I won’t go into my reasons, other than my general suspicion of Locke’s scientific materialism and radical individualism, framing life as a competitive pursuit of self-interest. Rather I consider myself “a pragmatist” in the sense of Charles Peirce, Alfred North Whitehead and John Dewey. A pragmatism focuses on the practical application of ideas by actually acting on and testing them in human experience. I am a fan of Dewey’s anti-elitism and his approach to democracy as an expansive and relational experience united by common purpose. Being a spectator of life in the quest for certainty is “not my thing” or how I live my life. Constant learning with and from other people creates the possibility of “social self” that is both empathetic and innovative. Why take the risk of looking deeply into ideas that are not our own? It is just so much fun to be open to a really fundamental question: “Who am I becoming today?
Niemoeller and Bonhoeffer fearlessly acted on behalf of others, especially those disenfranchised and marginalized and NOT LIKE THEM, and that is who I want to become. To listen with open mind and open heart, as Scharmer suggests, challenges us to question who we really are and what is our purpose, so that together we can lead from the future as it emerges, creating a future our children will love living.
Christelle is my dear friend. We are opposites in many ways. She is quite liberal; I am quite conservative. She grew up in California, in a Roman Catholic home and with the benefit of a strong Hispanic heritage. I grew up in Utah, in a Mormon home and the benefit of a strong Mormon heritage. She is a Democrat (or at least identifies with many of the ideals of the Democratic Party). I am a Republican (or at least I identify with many of the ideals of the GOP). In many conversations, we have recognized that these differences also reflect deeper differences and commitments.
These differences are real and substantial, but they only tell a part of the story–a small part of the story. More important that any of these differences, are two other points. First, as Christelle said in her first blog post, we share “open minds and a respectful and generous spirit of curiosity to better understand each other’s very different ideas.” Respect, generosity, and curiosity are precursors to both understanding and education. I know Christelle is a fine person, motived by good intentions and thoughtful ideals. When we disagree, therefore, I am curious to understand why we disagree and how. For me, it is fundamental to begin that “why and how” analysis with a charitable–in the Pauline sense of the term–bent. Respect for my friend and a recognition of her generosity to me, induce curiosity in me, and impel me to seek understanding.
The second important point is a mutual commitment to children. Again, this does not mean mutual agreement regarding ways and means; it does mean a mutual, fierce willingness to advocate for children in every circumstance. An example illustrates the point. One of our first encounters was a visit to a Utah school to observe a lesson. I was state superintendent and she was a state office literacy specialist. We were accompanied by various district level administrators and others. The educator taught a fine lesson, and after observing the entire forty-five minute lesson, we were able to debrief what we observed. Another educator explained that the lesson we observed was taught to a “gifted” class of students from a broader (and more affluent) area and that the “neighborhood” students could not be expected to learn the same things. I questioned the educator about the reasons for this conclusion–a conclusion that seemed as wrong to me as it was startling. The never was a satisfactory answer. As we walked out, Christelle and I briefly discussed the matter. As we discussed our advocacy for children and the fact that we were each appalled at the cavalier disregard for the “neighborhood” children, I learned that I had met a kindred spirit in Christelle.
We live in times when division, discord, self-regard and tribalism seem to be ubiquitous. In the law relating to jury trials, there is an old jury instruction–not used for juries any more–that seems wise for conscientious people in divided times:
If a [majority of you] are for conviction, [the minority] juror should consider whether a doubt in his or her own mind is a reasonable one if it makes no impression on the minds of so many other[s] who are equally honest and intelligent and have heard the same evidence and taken the same oath. On the other hand, if a [majority] are for an acquittal, the minority should ask themselves whether they ought to reasonably doubt seriously the correctness of [a] judgment which is not concurred in by most of those with whom they are associated, and distrust the weight and sufficiency of that evidence which fails to carry conviction to the minds of their fellow jurors.
Respect, generosity, and curiosity should make us anxious to understand, not just write off differences. Christelle and I may each be wrong about a great many things. However, the civil, social, and spiritual fruit of respect, generosity and curiosity are not among the things about which we are wrong.
Oddly enough the idea for a collaborative blog, representing divergent viewpoints, came to Brad and me in the midst of the fireworks of the 2016 presidential campaign. During our informal meetings to chat about the state of education in Utah, a topic very dear to both of us, we realized something odd. We listened to each other with open minds and a respectful and generous spirit of curiosity to better understand each other’s very different ideas. Our common interest and experience in Utah’s public education system created the conditions for us to look at our own religious, political, and philosophical perspectives more closely so that we could better understand the other person’s “place in the world.”
Growing up in California, our dinner table was a place for hot political conversations. My father was the oldest of eleven children, enlisted at 16 in the Marines right after Pearl Harbor, becoming both a patriotic idealist and somewhat of a revolutionary thinker, fearlessly standing up for the poor and disenfranchised throughout his entire life. Speaking only Spanish in his home, his experience in school was less than positive and he responded to the well-documented racism in Los Angeles pubic schools in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s with indomitable courage labeled “incorrigible.”
My mother, on the other hand, though living through the Great Depression in a coal mining town in Southern Colorado, never felt the kind of poverty that my father experienced. Her parents and older sister, however, were plagued with health problems that forced them to relocate to Los Angeles to join other family members, searching for better medical care and job opportunities after the mines had closed. They boarded a troop train with my grandmother caring for a very ill husband and daughter, one with addison’s disease and the other diabetic. My mother described her experience of stepping off the train at Union Station as terrifying. She adjusted quickly, worked in a factory, danced to the Big Bands at the famous Palladium on Hollywood Boulevard, and became a devoted mother.
These two extraordinary people are my best teachers, still: one an optimistic idealist who survived the beaches of Saipan and the other a pragmatist with a mix of intuitive insight and cynicism. Our dinner table was always full of ideas, anything could be discussed, and disagreements were common. During the Vietnam War, after my brother left the seminary, his draft number made it likely that he would be drafted. Though my father insisted that the military was a patriotic duty, I argued against the government’s foreign policy, and my other had decided to move to Canada with John.
I have tried to follow their example in my own life: disagree with ideas, always question everything, stand up for those who are less fortunate, and practice taking others’ perspectives no matter how different. It is hard work, but in the end, people do matter more than ideas; they change with experience.
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Across The Divide: A Dialogue 