Affirmative Action, Education, and Society

I’ve been thinking about the recent deaths of Maynard Jackson and Strom Thurmond and Lester Maddox, of the seemingly never-ending story of the flap over the Georgia state flag, and of the recent Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action.

Let’s talk honestly about race consciousness, racial equality, and equal opportunity–and simple respect. Forget victimization! Forget white guilt! Forget indemnification! Forget self-righteous breast beating! And, forget political correctness! Let’s just talk about the truth that our attitude towards others and the way we behave towards them is an expression of our values and character.

I’ve just a few overlapping questions: Does anyone really think there is yet a deeply sincere and wide-spread complete change of heart towards racial minorities? Does anyone really think we in this country are not race conscious? Does anyone really think no one plays the race card in political nominations, appointments, campaigns, and redistricting? Does anyone really think racial bias, prejudice, and bigotry is a vanished problem? Does anyone really think that there aren’t subtle winks and nods of bias and prejudice? Does anyone really think there are no denigrating racial “code words” in our everyday conversation? Does anyone really think that there is equality in our legal and judicial and educational systems? Does anyone really think racial prejudice is not encountered in housing, in education, in the workplace, in financial transactions, in job searches, in real estate deals, in awarding contract, in everyday commerce, and in daily life? Does anyone really think disrespect and intolerance is no longer tolerated? Does anyone really think there is equitable inclusion? Does anyone really think there is no longer any racial divide? Does anyone really think the barriers preventing equal opportunity and discrimination have been torn down? Do you really think discrimination has been replaced by a sense of community based on mutual respect and the sacredness of each individual? Does anyone really think that the habits and attitudes reflected in legally, socially, economically, politically, and culturally sanctioned prejudice that have marked the history of our country have gone away? Does anyone really think that the corrosive racial stereotypes have been eaten away? Does anyone really think that the legacy of race does not carry special weight in this country?

And my last question: how is it that no one in the dominant “white” society complained of using racial preferences when it was they who were the sole beneficiaries of favoritism and discrimination simply by reason of skin color?

Contrary to a chorus of “Not me,” anyone who thinks that racial bigotry and prejudice is a thing of the past, that we have reached the point of being color blind, is blind.

No, Martin Luther King’s dream is not yet close to being a reality. There are too many lingering nightmares. Affirmative action, then, is not patronizing or racial gerrymandering or disrespecting or demeaning. It is offering opportunity and impose responsibility. It is simply living in the present-day real world that sadly is still too perniciously “Bunkeresque” and still populated by too many backstair Archie types.

For us academics, if education is to serve, it must do so beyond merely transmitting information and granting a credential. It must be a transformation of the heart. The most powerful tool we have in knocking down the walls of separation is modeling and coaching on how to show unconditionally what Aretha Franklin electrifying spelled out in 1967.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Another word for My Dictionary of Good Teaching

No walking this morning. I haven’t walked since we returned from two weeks of grandbaby spoiling in three days ago. A wrenched knee and a stern order from my angelic boss will do that. I may have strained the knee playing frisbee with my son and daughter-in-law or walking the wind-swept, fog-shrouded, snow-capped steep peaks they call streets in San Mateo. You know in that area I think they measure their walks by height rather than by distance.

So, I was stranded in the morning heat and humidity by the fish pond. As I sipped a hot cup of coffee in the hot air, listened to the soothing sounds of the pond’s waterfalls, and watched the graceful koi, three things slowly came together. First, yesterday I had one of those chance conversations with a student that you dream about and which ended with a mutual “thank you” hug and has since kept me soaring. Second, there has been a discussion on a faculty development list about the impact of enthusiasm on teaching and learning. And finally, Kenny has been bugging me again for another word.

Putting all this together, if I was to write another word for Kenny in “My Dictionary of Good Teaching,” it would be “Contagion.” When I use this word, I’m not thinking abut small pox or the flu or SARS, although with some teachers you couldn’t tell. No, when I talk about contagion, I’m thinking about a yawn. Have you ever been around someone who yawned and you defensively drawled, “Don’t do that” as you involuntarily and reluctantly started your yawn? There are lots of things that are contagious besides diseases; and some things, like feelings and behavior that are contagious that have nothing to do with disease. And yet, these contagious things are influenced by their environmental circumstance no less than by a virus or bacteria. Students are a lot more sensitive and susceptible, no less than are we academics, administrators, staff personel, whomever, to their environment than they or we know or let on.

Sometimes I think teaching has all the characteristics of an epidemic. There’s the carrier, the teacher; there’s the disease, education; and there’s the infected, the student.

Now, what makes someone influential or persuasive? I’m not sure it is as obvious, simple or straightforward as it seems. I think it is more a matter of who you are rather than what you do. If you want to enthuse, be enthusiastic about each student and the subject. If you want to excite, be excited and exciting about each student and the subject. I say this because researchers say that when a non-verbal message is sent, people either dig in their heels or click their heels. But, the small gesture, a nod of the head, a quick thumbs up, a sublte smile, or a slight touch makes much more difference than a demonstrative lecture or detailed lesson plan. It’s the incredibly subtlte, hidden, unspoken that is most influencial because most people, conscously or otherwise, feel it is the most sincere and authentic. That is to say, do you immediately stop what you are doing when someone asks for your help or appears to simply want to talk about “nothing?” Does your face and body look relaxed and focused when you are listening? Are you listening? Do you see? Are you mindful? Do you send out a deafening silent “I wish I was somewhere else” or “I wish I was doing something else” signal? Do you go that proverbial extra mile? If you are talking by phone, do your tones, words, and conversational pace encourage others to feel heard and important?

I was thinking about a book I just finished. It’s called EMOTIONAL CONTAGION by Elaine Hatfield et al. It’s not particularly an easy read, but it is an interesting one. The authors talk about how we each are an emotional Typhoid Mary, how we each infect each other with our emotions. I smile, you smile. I yawn, you yawn. It’s not just mimicry; it’s that somehow and for some reason I’m passing on my happiness or sleepiness to you, even for a millisecond. It’s an interesting idea. A mood is not just an expression of an inner mood–I feel happy, so I smile. It’s direction is not just inside-out. It’s can also move in the opposite direction. If I smile, I can help you smile; if I am happy, I can help you be happy. The direction is outside-in as well.

I suppose I could use Daniel Goleman’s concept of a tuning fork-like “resonance” that he discusses in his PRIMAL LEADERSHIP. But, Hatfield’s concept of an infecting-like “contagion” is more of an eye-catching word. Aferall, we sometimes say “his enthusiasm is contagious” or “his pessimism is contagious.” If we think about emotions this way, contagion or resonance, as outside going in and inside going out, we teachers may have an enormous impact and influence on students. We’re “carriers.” We sort of dance in a harmonized gestures and conversational rhythms. We forge a bond with our gestures and movements long before we utter a word. It’s not something deliberate, to ape moving and talking styles. It’s a reflex. It’s like knowing when you’re on, when those around are with you, when everyone is in sync.

That is true for each of us. It is no different with students. When students feel good, when they feel respected and noticed, when they are valued, when they’re loved, they have a better chance of performing at their best. That good feeling is an oil that lubricates the spirit, the intellect, as well as the joints. People move spryly, think clearly and focused. They’re nimble and flexible. Then we’re feeling upbeat, we more positively view ourselves and students. It’s no different with students. As important as intellect and subject may be, said Einstein, they should not be worshipped. They are lead by emotions. Emotions are the glue that creates community, that commits us to teaching, that commits students to learning. Emotions affect how people will lead and be led, and therefore perform. And while “climate” in itself isn’t a guarnatee in itself. It is a powerful influence. Anyone in the heavy, hot summer of South Georgia or the light, coolness of San Francisco knows that. Good mode, good work; bad mood, bad work. Moods impact results. What Goleman calls “disonance,” an out-of-tune resonance, dispirits, depresses, caps. Excitement and enthusiasm elevates, opens, promotes.

A while back, I shared what I thought were the three basic “laws of teaching”: the “Law of Sales, the “Law of Surroundings,” and the “Law of Glue.” I’ve got another one. I call it the “Law of Influence.” It says that we are the true pollinators–or polluters–of each student. We are dealers in hope or hopelessness. We can arouse or suppress. We can be respectful or disrespectful. We all influence one another whether we know it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not, whether we want to or not. We are a part of each others reality, like it or not. And, of that we must be constantly mindful.

Resonance or contagion, however, is not about something you do. It is about something you are. Therein is the rub. As I wrote to faculty developers about enthusiasm:

So, we know that enthusiasm has a positive impact
on instructors, that is, ourselves. Didn’t take
a rocket scientist to figure this out. The big
question is: so what?

What do we do now? Do we think that a faculty
development course called Enthuse 101 is going
to be effective? Do we gear up the quick-in-quick-out
“let’s be happy” workshop cottage industry? Can
do you do something to someone else to instil that
special kind of energy, that wholeheartedness,
that warmth and feeling to relationships with each
student, that freshness to the class, that
enlivening spring-like climate, that shouting “yes?”

Do we really think that enthusiasm is a learned,
pedagogical skill? Do we really think that it is
simply a matter of being “Bob Fossi-esque:” looking
into a mirror, putting on a smile, and procaliming,
“It’s showtime?” Or, is it a deeply rooted attitude,
an outlook, a way of living?

No, the issue is not merely to proclaim, “Be enthused!”
It’s more complicated than that. The issue is how to
overcome and/or help others help themselves overcome
disinterest, sameness, sluggishness, and dreariness to
become enthused, excited; to see an interesting and
exciting newness in everything and every person–
including ourselves–each moment. You can’t change
what you do unless you change who you are. And, I
assure you that it is a long, hard, scary, challenging,
and sustained small step by small step daily process
that takes perseverance, endurance, persistance, and
lots of patience.

At the end of this day, and everyday, things will be different because of what we have done. We will have an impact. There is no way to avoid it. The question, then, is simply what kind of impact will it be? How will we make use of this power to influence? Once again, the thoughts we think, the words we speak, the actions we take make a difference. We are contagious! Our choice is whether or not that difference will be a positive or negative one; whether we are willing and able to fight what I call “the three ‘lazies'” of convenience, resignation, and resentfulness.

It is an awesome responsibility and a trememdous opportunity.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Questers

Well, Susan and I are about to embark to San Francisco for two weeks of grandbaby spoiling time. Anyway, as I found myself doing my Gene Kelly act and walking in the rain, I started thinking about an exchange I had with a student that took me to my core. Maybe “embroiled” is a better description of this engage. Soon after the semester ended, she was on the internet “demanding” a grade change. While leading ignorance of the reasons for her low grade, she started pulling out all her guns to lay a guilt trip on me: I alone am keeping her from entering a professional program; I alone am the cause for the loss of her Hope Scholarship; I alone am going to keep her from returning to school for lack of funds. I alone am the cause for the strain on the relationship with her boyfriend. Gosh, you’d think I was also the sole cause for world hunger, natural catastrophes, world conflict, and global economic depression! Our e-mail conversation that went on for about two weeks had been a process of she demands, I ask questions about her performance, she keeps making accusations and demands without answering the questions, and I keep asking more specific questions in response to her accusations and demands. After a week of this, we had a series of short machine-gun burst exchanges.

In a fit of annoyance, she “screamed” at me, “GRRRRR!!!!! I AM SO EXASPERATED. YOU WON’T ANSWER ME!!!!”

“Yes, I am.”

“No, you’re not. All you do is ask me a lot of damn questions about why I did or didn’t do this or that and why did I feel about this or that. How the hell do I know why. You want me to come up with the answers to my own questions?”

“Yes.”

“If I had the answers, I wouldn’t be asking you.”

“Hadn’t you already decided not to believe me before you first wrote to me? You have to ask the questions from someone whose answers you’ll believe.”

“And who might that someone be, smarty pants?”

“You.”

“Me? I don’t have any answers.”

“Yes, you do! And, you’re the only one whose answers you’re going to believe. You have the answers, if you’re truly honest first with yourself and then with me,” I quietly answered with a tone of finality. “Now, when you want to stop shouting at me and start answering your questions yourself–honestly this time–write me again and I’ll listen.”

She answered and I listened. Over the next week, slowly, oh so slowly, painfully, agonizingly she reluctantly “opened up” to herself and to me. I found out stuff I didn’t know about. She found stuff to which she finally admitted. We amicably agreed to resolve the issue in what I’ll call a unique and creative way. And, I’ll leave it at that.

This discussion with her has gotten me thinking about an insatiable and driving habit I have, my habit of questing, of asking questions. It has long history and aged roots embedded in the soil of my home.

My father was born in the first decade of the twentieth century, the son of an immigrant brush maker whose small store was on Houston Street in the Lower Eastside of Manhattan. Technically, my father was first generation American born, but he still had a lot of the old world immigrant in him. Three of the seven children in his family–the only three–would go on to get an education. He and two of his brothers had gotten LLB’s. Unfortunately, they had the misfortune of hanging up their shingles during the depression. He couldn’t make it. Unlike his brothers, he had an alternative livelihood. He was lured into my mother’s family antique business. However lucrative the business may have been, there he was treated–tolerated is a better word–as a brother-in-law, like a less than fully respected second son not destined for any inheritance of lands or title. Maybe worse. I think he lived with a deep sense of failure. We didn’t talk of such personal matters.

Anyway, what we did talk about was questions, and it was always at the evening dinner table. After we had moved out to Rockville Center on Long Island in 1948 and until the declining family business finally collapsed around 1954 and my father had to work late into the night to make ends meet, our family had an evening ritual. Those were my formative years of 8-14. My father would commute home from New York City on the Long Island Railroad. We would wait his arrival and be called to the dinner table. As soon as we sat down to dinner, the ritual would begin.

Education was important to my father. My father had a lot of faults, the consequences of which I, as the second son, bore until a little over a decade ago. What I call his “golden hands” was not one of them, nor was what others would clinically call his “critical thinking skills.” He was a master fixer-upper from whom I learned how to work with my hands and with tools. He combined this ability with a confident, curious, imaginative, vice-like, razor-sharp, penetrating, logical mind. If he was going to repair or build something, he always said something to effect: make the decision to do it, ask the questions about it, see the problems, solve them, and do it. It was an organic combination of knowing, thinking, doing, and feeling. Without hesitation he went–and me with him–into new experiences that opened new worlds: tearing down automobile engines and transmission, building stone patios, constructing new rooms, laying concrete, drawing electrical wire, repairing small applicances, painting and wallpapering and plastering, puttering and tinkering, planting a garden, making home movies, playing the organ, whatever.

He was an avid reader. NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, LIFE, LOOK, POPULAR MECHANICS, POPULAR SCIENCE, COLLIER, NEWSWEEK, TIME, even READER’S DIGEST were strewn about the house like surrealistic clocks in a Dali painting. NEWSDAY, THE TIMES, and the HERALD TRIBUNE were on our door stoop each morning and afternoon. Our den had walls of bookshelves crammed with encyclopedias, dictionaries, magazine back issues, and books in all disciplines (my heap of comic books were confined to the kitchenette corner cabinet).

When we sat down by the dinner table, before anything was served, I, especially, would be asked about school. My younger sister was too young and my older brother was off somewhere. The eldest son followed a different set of rules. Anyway, my father wouldn’t ask what I had learned that day. He would ask what question did I ask that day and why had I asked it. If I hadn’t asked the teacher a question he would question me with a “why not? Did you understand everything?” If I answered that I had, I would get a “tell me all about it.” When I invariably stumbled, he would pointedly say, “You should have asked a question.” If I replied that I did not want to look stupid, that I was embarrassed to ask, and/or that I was afraid of what others thought about me, he would say over and over and over again, “You won’t learn anything that lasts if you don’t ask questions.”

Once, in my defense, I told him that I didn’t have to ask a question since I silently had solved the problem, fully and correctly answered the question, the teacher gave to the class. He came back, shot back is a better description of his response, with the explanation that all I had done was to solve the teacher’s problem, answered her question, and gave her her answer. I had to learn to see the problem on my own when no one was around to point it out. And, I could only do that by asking my own questions about her question or her answer and come up with my own answer.

Of all the words, I most vividly remember from those schoolday evenings at the dinner table, the one that is branded on my soul, is “WHY.” He would always admonish me with a “Why didn’t you ask ‘why?'” And so, at the dinner table the challenges would be made. The string of “why’s” would be asked. The discussions would start. The arguments would rage. The voices would rise. Invariably, the paternal proclamation would ring throughout the house: “Get out the books.” Dishes and glasses and tableware would be pushed out of the way. The tablecloth would be wrinkled back like an accordion. Opened encyclopedias and books and magazines and blank sheets of lined paper would be scattered about. Fingers would point. Pencils would scribble. Only after we had settled the issue–which always meant my father’s way– would we hear, “Now let’s eat. Helen!” It was a family joke that at night we always had heated discussions and cold meals.

As I look back, my father’s method was far closer to that of Socrates than what I call the present day question-and-answer “neo-socratic method.” That was a magnifcent gift which I surely did not appreciate at the time and for a long, long time thereafter. Heck, I didn’t even realize or acknowledge until a decade ago that he had helped me—sometimes to the annoyance of my teachers and friends– become what I’ll call a “quester.” Asking questions and questioning answers–except his–became second nature to me. For me, problem perceiving–not merely problem solving–asking questions, being a quester, is not an activity. It is a way of seeing and feeling. It is both a head and a heart exercise. It’s a sharpening and invigorating and moving way of living. It is a paying homage to curiosity and imagination and creativity. It is something that I cannot leave either at the edge of the campus or the classroom threshold. It is a living in my imagination and making it and inseparable part of my tangible world. It is something that causes me to move from mindlessness to mindfulness, from dull to keen, from casual to rigorous, from passing to rich, from missing to noticing, from slumber to awakening, from blaise to thrilling, from gloss to meaning, from superficial to essential; to go beyond mere “looking at” to being “aware of” and then onto “seeing.” It is a something for constant “reimagining,” whether I am in a book, in the garden, in a repair, in a meeting, in a discussion, in a classroom, in wherever and with whomever.

A Haiku master once said something to the effect: do not seek to follow in the the footsteps of others before you, seek what they sought, seek truth, honesty, and meaning. Questing, then, creates the opportunity and challenge to look at the same thing and the same person–the same reality–from a different angle and in a different context and with a different perspective. Questing is not for the timid. To practice questing, you figuratively have to leave home for unknown places. You have to break away from the crowd or the mob. You have to stand out and often stand there by yourself. It can be a fearful and challenging venture into the unknown. At the same time, it feels like a pilgrimage that refreshens and renews, that can be a thrilling journey which broadens horizons.

As I told this student, we learn most to understand what we have learned and what we need to learn by questioning. Lessons are where you learned to look with your own questioning eyes. We are not what we proclaim to know; we are what we proclaim we don’t know, what we question, and from what and whom we are willing to learn.

As I told some people the other day, questing can drive me up a wall! Questing has the characteristics of quicksilver. First, it creates a mood of personal–and exciting–restlessness. Second, there is a constant need to feel something deeper than the surface glare and gloss. Stuff pours through my pores that I never imagined. I can’t read anything without making marginal comments that are more often than not in the form of questions. It’s like being unable to quiet the voices in my head and heart. It’s brain swelling and heart swelling stuff. It creates what I call “organized chaos.” I’m always packing and unpacking my bags, always changing, always on the move, always developing, always growing. And, I’m not sure I feel that the destination, if there is a destination, ever gets nearer. The truth is never reaching; it’s always evolving. Things are always different from what they might be, as Henry James would say, and never what you wish or expect.

And yet….. Qusting is not an obstacle. It is a motivation with a payoff. It serves as an exhilarating on-your-toes antidote to the matte rigidity of certitude, that is, thinking that you already know it all. It demonstrates your ignorance for your own good. It is like being a constant wanderer in the desert, going where you’re not sure you’re going, probing to the edges of the unpredictable, renewing the passion for stepping into the unknown, confronting difficulties and dangers, and returning home with new understandings of themselves and of the world, cultivating new abilities to see and listen, talking or thinking the way to a new understanding, summoning the courage to articulate new visions. It develops a welcomed hunger for risk-taking and a willingness to seek out new ways to develop and change. I have found that unless I say goodbye to what I hold, unless I travel constantly to completely new territories and meet new people, I can expect atrophy, a long wearing away of myself, an eventual living extinction, and being reduced from living to mere existing.

Today especially, with information flowing at a whitewater pace, with change carrying us as a raging torrent, we should be more mindful that unchange is unnatural. Lifelong adaptation and adoption are critical. Learning, then, is mandatory. Unlearning, that critical process of cutting bait, of letting go of outdated ideas and ways, is a critical mindset to cultivate. Unlearning and learning means moving out of our comfort zone and trying out new behaviors. If we’re not willing to take some risks, we’re unlikely to grow. And, if we’re not growing, our work itself is at risk. It’s not a matter of tolerating risk; it’s a matter of welcoming it. Each of us needs to develop a hunger for risk-taking and a willingness to seek out new ways to develop and change.

The Sufis say, asking good questions is half of learning. In that spirit, I ask one big question, especially of myself, each day.

In my closet, on a neat looking navy blue sweatshirt designed by the publisher of the first volume of collected Random Thoughts are printed my words: “Education boils down to acquiring the desire, confidence, and courage to question the answers.” I believed it then. I affirm even more now that authentic individuality and true independence lies in the heart of a quester, and that the purpose of a teacher is to help students help instill in themselves the Euripidean spirit of becoming a “prudent skeptic.”

Thanks Dad.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–