Sam Stein

stein@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting

Exxon Valdez Lawyer: Louisianans, 'To Use A Legal Term,' Are 'Just F--ked'

Long after oil stops spilling from the Gulf and the ecological catastrophe caused by the spill begins to be cleaned up, the process of determining the extent to which BP owes the afflicted will be litigated in the courts.

And while the case against the oil company seems fairly clear-cut (BP admits, after all, to being responsible for the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history), a lawyer with perhaps the most relevant experience on the matter at hand is painting a depressing picture about the litigation ahead.

"[I]f you were affected in Louisiana," said Brian O'Neill, an attorney with the firm Faegre & Benson, "to use a legal term, you are just f--ked."

More than any attorney in the country, O'Neill personally understands the implications of that imprecise legal term. For more than two decades, he represented fishermen in civil cases related to the now second-most-damaging spill in U.S. history: the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989. And from it, he learned valuable lessons about how to sue an oil giant for the damages it has caused -- above all, to push for the best and plan for the worst.

"In Valdez we had 32,000 legitimate claims -- that was a lot," he said in an interview with the Huffington Post. "I think there will be more claims in this one."

"These big oil companies, they have a different view of time and politics than we do," he added. "The fact that BP hard-asses it a little bit for 5 to 10 to 15 years, despite all the bad publicity there may be between segments of society and BP as a result [of this spill]. Exxon sure weathered it really well. The market went up the next day for Exxon stock [after the settlement]. They just thrived despite treating an entire state poorly. And there is a lesson there for BP, and that is: it really doesn't matter whether you treat these people nicely or not. The only difference is if you extract oil. It sounds cynical but it might be true."

The similarities between the two crises are telling in many ways. When Exxon's ship hit Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef -- in the process, releasing an estimated minimum of 10.8 million gallons of oil into the water -- the company pledged (like BP has done now) that they would cover the entire cost of the cleanup and all legitimate claims of damages. Two decades of litigation and appeals resulted in punitive damages being reduced from $5 billion to $500 million.

The irony, as O'Neill tells it, is that the law Congress passed in the wake of that spill -- the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 -- may end up hindering the type of relief that Gulf residents can expect currently. Under that legislation, a $75 million cap was placed on economic damages that an oil company can pay as a penalty for a spill (this isn't true, O'Neill notes, in states that have passed their own liability caps -- of which Louisiana isn't one). Congress is currently trying to lift that cap. But there are constitutional questions about whether it can do so retroactively to cover BP.

"Constitutionally, I don't know whether you can do that. I don't know whether it is ex post facto," O'Neill said. "It will likely be challenged. I would, if I was representing BP."

There are other problems that the Exxon Valdez vet recognized when discussing the forthcoming courtroom battles for BP. There are questions, for starters, as to who actually can sue the oil company under the Oil Pollution Act law and whether, in fact, those 11 workers killed on the rig will have their settlements capped by the Death On the High Seas Act. Mainly, however, O'Neill is concerned over the pervasive influence that the oil industry has on all sector of governance -- which he predicts will weigh heavily on the legal process.

"This is more important than banks," he said. "This is oil. And at some point in time, the administration and the states will resolve all their dealings and it will leave fisherman and the tourist industry to resolve their differences in the courts. It could be another 20 years till then because BP [is] going to defend this like Exxon did."

GULF DISASTER: END OFFSHORE OIL DRILLING NOW June 11, 2010 – Evidence of oil spill's toll on wildlife is collected June 11, 2010 – Obama overlooked key points in giving OK to offshore drilling June 11, 2010 – Pensacola Pass closed to protect bay  June 11, 2010 – BP Sees $3-$6 Billion Oil Spill Cleanup Bill June 11, 2010 – Wall Street Journal: Spill May Harbor Unique Hazards  (More. . .) This Web site is updated daily — check back for the most up-to-date information. (Last updated: June 12, 11:38 a.m. MST) How big is the spill? How fast is it spreading? What species are threatened? Who is responsible? FAQ – dispersants (new) What if a spill occurs in the Arctic? Are oil spills inevitable? How often do oil spills occur? What can I do? HOW BIG IS THE SPILL?  BP initially asserted that 1,000 barrels of oil per day (42,000 gallons) were gushing forth from the broken pipeline. A May 27 estimate from federal government scientists placed the leak rate at between 12,000 and 19,000 barrels per day. On June 10, a government panel doubled its estimate of oil spewing from the BP well: 25,000 to 30,000 barrels (1.26 million gallons per day), but perhaps up to 40,000 barrels per day. The new estimate is for the period before BP cut a pipe on the ocean floor last week to install a new capture device, an operation that may have increased the flow by four to five percent. The BP disaster has already become the worst oil spill in U.S. history (at 1.26 million gallons, an amount equivalent to the Exxon Valdez disaster flows into the Gulf of Mexico every eight to ten days.) The spill is now the second worst world-wide accidental oil spill in history, but is rapidly gaining on the first, the Ixtoc oil well blowout in the southern Gulf of Mexico in 1979 that leaked 138 million gallons of crude. If the wellhead fails completely — which hasn’t happened yet — the spill rate could increase to 6.8 million gallons of oil per day. On May 19, heavy oil landed for the first time on the delicate marshes near the mouth of the Mississippi River. On May 23, government officials announced that they were directing all water flows from diversions along the Mississippi River out to the Gulf in a desperate attempt to keep more heavy oil from entering the Mississippi Delta. Officials fear that once oiled marsh vegetation dies, the coastal islands and coastlines it holds together will disintegrate. That will accelerate Louisiana’s already serious coastal-erosion problems and obliterate key fish and wildlife habitat.  Oil and oily debris have reached key bird breeding sanctuaries, including Raccoon Island and Breton National Wildlife Refuge. Oil-covered gannets, egrets, and brown pelicans have been found, and the refuge was closed to the public for safety reasons. The area provides key nesting and migratory stopover habitat for thousands of birds, as well as important fishery habitat. On June 1, heavy oil reached Alabama's white sandy beaches of Dauphin Island. The stench of crude permeates coastal areas, where it’s causing headaches, burning eyes, and nausea among the people who live there and more serious illness among cleanup workers. All in all, the spill has impacted 150 miles of coastline as of May 24, with more heavy crude on the way. Officials reported that an oil sheen had made its way just off the coast of Penscacola, Florida on June 1. Federal and state officials now plan to build miles of sand berms in an attempt to prevent more oil from reaching Louisiana’s fragile coast. Many worry, however, that building such berms could deplete the area’s sediment supply and undermine natural wetlands, rendering the area especially vulnerable to hurricane damage.  Plugging one of the three leaks in BP’s crumpled pipeline has failed to slow the gush of oil, and BP’s next-best hope of drilling an adjacent well to relieve the pressure from the damaged well, so it can be capped, will not be complete until at least August. BP attempted to contain the spill with a giant steel box placed over the leaks, but put aside the effort after frozen gas hydrates clogged the funnel. On May 16, BP managed after several attempts to fit a tube into the leaking pipe. On May 20, the company reported that the pipe was capturing about 5,000 gallons per day. On May 26, BP began attempts to implement its “top kill” procedure, a method of plugging the well by pumping fluid similar to antifreeze up the pipe to stop the flow of oil, then capping it with cement. The procedure has never been tried in deep water and, if it fails, could blow failsafe systems and dramatically worsen the spill. Late on May 29, BP announced that the “top kill” method had failed. On June 3, BP announced that it had successfully severed the leaking pipe and put in place a containment dome. By June 10, BP reported it had captured about 15,800 barrels the day before, but significant amounts of oil are still escaping. The amount of oil still spewing from the cut riser has some experts believing that BP’s latest attempt to kill the leak actually made it much worse. The federal government now admits that the leakage rate is likely at least 25,000 barrels — more than one million gallons — per day. Some experts estimate that if BP continues to hit snags in its efforts to stop the leak, it could keep gushing through next December.  On June 4, 2010, Department of Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano and National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen sent aletter to Congressional leaders warning that the response effort was in danger of running out of money within two weeks and needed cash from the federal oil spill liability trust fund, financed by fees on oil companies. The letter said that as of June 1, federal agencies had already spent $93 million on the spill response, which BP has yet to reimburse. In comparison, in the first quarter of the year, the London-based oil giant's profits averaged $93 million a day. Florida Governor Charlie Crist on June 3 sent a letter to BP asking for $50 million, then on June 4 sent a letter asking for an additional $100 million to pay for evaluating water conditions and help scientists find ways to combat the threats to Florida waters and beaches. Florida has already received $50 million from BP. HOW FAST IS IT SPREADING? The most recent satellite images show that the various surface oil slicks and sheens believed to be associated with the BP spill may cover as much as 28,950 square miles (about the size of South Carolina). The surface sheen has stretched towards north toward the Mississippi Delta, west toward Port Fourchon, and southeast toward the Loop Current and western Florida. On June 1, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that southerly and southwesterly winds could push oil onto the shores of Mississippi and Alabama within days. Compare the size of the spill to your city. Satellite images also indicate that oil has reached the Loop Current, which forms part of the Gulf Stream and flows between Cuba and the Yucatan peninsula and eventually exits through the Florida Straits. Oil and tar entrained in this current could make their way around the southern tip of Florida and the Florida Keys, and into the Atlantic Ocean all the way up to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. The oil could foul beaches, mangroves, sea-grass beds, and coral reefs — all of which are crucial to coastal wildlife and economies.  On May 21, scientists reported that an apparent natural shift in the Loop Current may move it away from the oil and offer Florida and the Atlantic coast at least a temporary reprieve from receiving more oil. Oil residue and tar balls have already been observed on Dry Tortugas, which lies west of the Florida Keys and similarly hosts an abundance of marine life. On June 3, the Coast Guard confirmed that oily sheen and tar had been found along several of the Florida Keys. The government tested the oil to determine whether it came from the Deepwater Horizon spill, and determined that it’s not likely from the oil spill. Oil sheen and tar balls from the spill, however, have washed up on the beaches of the Florida Panhandle. In addition, oil birds have started showing up on Texas beaches as of June 6. The Coast Guard now believes that the spill has spun off hundreds of thousands of smaller oil slicks, which are being spread in different directions by winds and currents. See the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s daily map of the spill. BP is flooding the surface and deep ocean with hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic chemical “dispersants” in a desperate attempt to keep the visible surface slick in check. These chemicals bind with oil droplets so that they sink and become “dispersed” by currents. As of June 9, more than 803,000 gallons of dispersants have been applied on the surface and 368,000 gallons have been pumped deep into the water column in an effort to dilute the oil. The effects of using dispersants at such depths or in such enormous volumes have not been tested. Moreover, Corexit, the dispersant that BP is pumping into the Gulf, has been banned in the United Kingdom due to concerns that it posed too much harm to the marine environment. On May 24, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that it would require BP to reduce dispersant use on the surface by at least half, but would allow untested subsurface applications to continue. The agency said it was conducting its own tests of the toxicity of various dispersants after BP refused EPA’s order to switch to a less toxic brand.  On June 2, the Center filed a notice of its intent to sue the Environmental Protection Agency for authorizing the use of toxic dispersants without ensuring that these chemicals would not harm endangered species and their habitats. The letter requests that the agency, along with the U.S. Coast Guard, immediately study the effects of dispersants on species such as sea turtles, sperm whales, piping plovers, and corals and incorporate this knowledge into oil-spill response efforts. On June 4, a federal panel of about 50 experts recommended the continued use of chemical dispersants to break up the oil gushing in the Gulf of Mexico, despite its harm to plankton, larvae and fish.Learn more.  Much of the oil remains underwater. On May 16, reports revealed the discovery of enormous oil plumes deep in the Gulf. One of these plumes currently measures 10 miles long, three miles wide, and 300 feet thick. The plume has already sucked nearly one-third of the oxygen from the water surrounding it. On May 28, researchers announced they had found another deepwater oil plume about 20 miles northeast of the collapsed Deepwater Horizon rig. They believe that the 22-mile-long and six-mile-wide plume of oil droplets, hovering more than two miles below the surface, may have resulted from BP’s excessive use of dispersants. Scientists fear that, in addition to poisoning plants and animals at the base of the food web, the oil could cause oxygen levels to drop to levels that would create large “dead zones.” In addition, the submerged oil may end up settling on valuable coral formations in the Gulf, like the Flower Gardens. Scientists say it’s unlikely that any part of the Gulf ecosystem will escape the ill effects of oil and dispersants. On June 2, scientists reported that some of the underwater plumes appear to be located in the vicinity of at least two recently discovered deepwater reefs. At this point, it’s unclear whether oil has settled on these reefs yet. Astoundingly, BP has flatly refused to help scientists gather the information necessary to determine just how much oil is really spewing into the Gulf ecosystem. WHAT SPECIES ARE THREATENED? The BP oil spill threatens some of the most productive — and fragile — marine ecosystems in the United States. About 25 percent of the nation’s wetlands lie in the Mississippi River Delta, providing habitat for nesting seabirds and resting migratory birds. The Gulf itself is home to dozens of threatened and endangered species, as well as commercially important fish, crab, and shrimp that provide much of the basis of the Gulf Coast economy. While the response to the oil spill has largely focused on stopping oil from reaching shore, the offshore ecosystem, from plankton to dolphins, will suffer devastating impacts. Endangered sperm whales and dolphins have been spotted passing through the giant slick — which, on May 7, hit critical habitat for the federally protected piping plover on the Chandeleur Islands. Oiled gannets and brown pelicans were the first victims discovered by response teams, and some recovered birds were released on May 10. On May 22, reporters observed heavy oil coating a pelican colony near North Breton Island off the Louisiana coast. The goo permeated mangroves and had soaked birds and their eggs. By June 7, heavy oil had soaked the Queen Bess Island pelican rookery, a nesting site that has been essential to the recovery of brown pelican population. Experts worry that the spill could set back the Louisiana state bird’s recovery from near-extinction. The timing of the spill could not have been worse. Imperiled species including the Atlantic bluefin tuna, Kemp’s ridley sea turtles, loggerhead sea turtles, piping plovers, and sperm whales are flocking to the Gulf right now to spawn, migrate, and feed. For many of them, there’s nowhere else to go. As of June 11, federal wildlife officials reported that 351 sea turtles, 296of which were dead, and 39 marine mammals (mostly dolphins, almost all of which had already died) had been collected on or near the shore. Necropsies are being performed to determine whether their deaths were oil-related. Wildlife rescuers have collected 1,183 birds; tragically, 679 of these birds had already died. Many more birds have been oiled as heavy crude continues to seep into the coastal marshes. The state of Louisiana has identified 210 birds, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals likely to be affected by the spill — including about a dozen threatened and endangered species. Another 445 fish and invertebrate species will also be impacted. No estimate exists yet as to the number of corals and plants such as sea grass and wetland vegetation likely to be covered in oil. This area of the Gulf is home to abundant communities of deepwater corals, which may be smothered directly by sinking globs of oil or indirectly by water robbed of oxygen by oil and dispersants. One recently discovered species, the pancake batfish, could be snuffed out by the disaster. On land, the approaching hurricane season could bring storms that would push the oil into inland freshwater wetlands. Numerous species of seabirds, dolphins, and sea turtles have been spotted struggling through the oily muck. Dead seabirds, including gannets, herons, and brown pelicans; sea turtles, jellyfish; and fish are being found on the shores of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Shoals that are favored by spawning blue crabs, a vital food source for Kemp’s ridley sea turtles and a staple of the regional economy, are awash in oil. On May 15, Louisiana closed shrimping grounds in state waters after fishermen reported that their catches were contaminated with oil. On May 25, the federal government declared a fishery disaster in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama due to the oil spill. On May 28, the federal government expanded the Gulf fishery closure to include a large area of oil-sheen patches crossing the eastern edge of the current boundary, as well as an area currently outside the southern boundary that a small portion of the sheen is moving toward. As of June 8, the closed area covers 78,264 square miles — nearly one third of Gulf waters. A pod of endangered sperm whales that resides in this area of the Gulf is believed to be present and feeding on squid in deep water. The whales’ food may well be contaminated with oil and dispersants. While no one knows how profoundly this tainted food may affect the population, scientists say that the death of just three sperm whales in one year could deal a harsh blow to the species’ chances of survival. On May 24, the Center petitioned the federal government to protect bluefin tuna under the Endangered Species Act, pointing out that the few adult tuna that make it past the gauntlet of longlines back to their Gulf spawning grounds are now threatened by oil and toxic dispersants. Smalltooth sawfish, another critically endangered species, also face grave threats should oil continue to move into their coastal habitats. Read more about threatened species and see a map of the spill and nearby critical habitat. WHO IS RESPONSIBLE? 1. The Bush administration. The oil-drilling lease was sold to BP by the George W. Bush administration in 2007 under its 2007-2012 Five-Year Offshore Oil Drilling Plan. 2. The Obama administration. The actual exploratory drilling was approved by the Obama administration on April 6, 2009. Within days of the 2009 approval, the Center for Biological Diversity and its allies won a court order vacating the Bush Five-Year Offshore Drilling Plan. Rather than use the court order as a timeout on new offshore oil drilling to develop a new plan, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar filed a special motion with the court to exempt approved oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. He specifically identified BP’s operation as one that should be released from the vacature. In July 2009, the court agreed to Salazar’s request, releasing all approved offshore oil drilling — including the BP operation — from the vacature. 3. BP. BP has the worst environmental and safety record of any oil company operating in America. Even after the 2005 Texas City Refinery blast that killed 15 people, BP has continued to rack up safety violations. Despite the dangerous nature of all offshore oil drilling and BP’s own egregious safety record, BP’s exploration plan downplayed possibility of a spill, repeatedly asserting that it was unlikely or virtually impossible. Amazingly, Secretary Salazar’s Minerals and Management Service approved BP’s exploration plan without any consideration of the environmental consequences of an oil spill. 4. The oil industry and its political backers. The Gulf crisis shows that the glib safety claims of the oil industry cannot be trusted. There’s no way guarantee that a massive oil rupture will not occur. And if one does occur, there’s no way to contain it quickly and fully enough to avert unacceptable environmental damage. Ultimately, it’s the inherently dangerous nature of offshore oil drilling that led to this disaster. That’s why the Center is calling on the Obama administration to 1) revoke its 2010 decision to open up Alaska, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic Coast to offshore oil drilling, 2) revoke all leases to drill off Alaska, including those held by Shell Oil, 3) not permit any new offshore drilling anywhere, and 3) transition the nation away from fossil fuel so the pressure to continue offshore oil drilling dissipates. WHAT IF A SPILL OCCURS IN THE ARCTIC? The Gulf of Mexico has by far the largest, best-equipped, most experienced oil spill-containment system in the nation. It has hundreds of experienced volunteer fishing boats at its disposal. The water is warm year round and relatively calm except in hurricane season. Wildlife rehab and cleanup crews have access to a road system in close proximity to much of the shoreline. Yet with all these advantages, the government and the oil industry are unable to contain the spill. Imagine what would happen if a similar spill occurred in the Arctic — 140 miles from land. In subzero temperatures. With miles of sea ice to hack through, ship-killing icebergs in all directions, and darkness for 20 hours a day in the winter. It would be a disaster many magnitudes worse than what we’re suffering in the Gulf of Mexico. There’s no way to clean up a massive oil spill in the broken-ice conditions that prevail in these Arctic areas for much of the year. In fact, the ice-free drilling season is so short in the Arctic — July to early October — that leaking oil from a similar accident there could continue to gush for an entire winter while efforts to drill a relief well were necessarily postponed. In a huge victory for the Arctic, on May 27 President Obama announced he wouldn’t allow Shell Oil to conduct exploration drilling in Alaska’s Beaufort and Chukchi seas this summer — but we don’t know what will happen next year. In fact, Obama has proposed to open up both the Chukchi and Beaufort seas to additional offshore oil drilling in coming years. It’s imperative that drilling never goes forward to prevent an Arctic oil-spill catastrophe that could be even worse than the Gulf disaster, threatening the polar bear, Pacific walrus; ringed, spotted, bearded, and ribbon seals; cetaceans like the  North Pacific right whale, thebowhead whale, and the Cook Inlet beluga; migratory birds; and many other species. ARE OIL SPILLS INEVITABLE? Yes — as long as offshore oil drilling exists. We can and should improve spill prevention technology, but no technology will ever be 100-percent effective. The oil industry, Department of the Interior, and oil-state politicians told us for years that oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico was completely safe. BP refused to even consider the effects of a catastrophic leak in its drilling plan because it said the likelihood was too remote to imagine. The Department of the Interior agreed, approving the plan without even conducting an environmental review. They were all wrong. If we drill for oil offshore, we will suffer oil leaks. Many will be small, some big, and occasionally, one will be catastrophically large, like the one in the Gulf. HOW OFTEN DO OIL SPILLS OCCUR? Oil spills happen every single year. Year in, year out. Large spills happen every few years, from the 1969 offshore oil-platform catastrophe that dumped 3 million gallons of oil into the Santa Barbara Channel to the April 6, 2010 spilling of 18,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico’s Delta National Wildlife Refuge — from a ruptured BP pipeline — to the current cataclysmic spill. Indeed, the U.S. Minerals Management Service cavalierly assumes that nine large oil spills and 600 small oil spills will occur in the Gulf of Mexico as a result of its 2007-2012 program. Click here for a timeline of major spills in the Gulf and other U.S. waters. WHAT CAN I DO? It’s easy to feel helpless as 1 million gallons of oil spew into the Gulf of Mexico per day with no end in sight.  At the same time, this is our opportunity to stop offshore oil drilling once and for all. You can get involved to save the Gulf, the Arctic, the global climate, and the oceans and all their inhabitants — learn how to take action now and get up-to-the-minute info on the Center’s Twitter page.

Fat Freddy’s Drop - Live @ Amoeba Music, San Francisco 11-18-09 (Full Set Video)

Posted on June 8th, 2010 by HighVoltage in Fat Freddy's Drop

Fat Freddy’s Drop stopped by Amoeba Music in San Francisco on their first ever U.S. tour leg of California last year.  We now have the full video of their set courtesy of the good folks at Amoeba.  Hit the jump to watch the full concert and be sure to get their new release, Live @ The Roundhouse (Available here).

Setlist:

1. The Raft
2. Ray Ray
3. Flashback
4. Roady
5. Midnight Marauders
6. Shiverman

ShareThis

Classified

Please Send Me Someone To Love

Pixie

The 2010 Bechtel Prize

Since 2004, Teachers & Writers Collaborative (T&W) has honored the author of an exemplary essay on literary arts education with the annual Bechtel Prize. Submissions for the award address important issues in creative writing education and/or literary studies.

The 2010 Bechtel Prize will be judged by Phillip Lopate. Lopate has written three personal essay collections, two novels, two poetry collections, a collection of film criticism, and Being with Children, a memoir of his work with T&W as a writer in the schools. He is the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Public Library Center for Scholars and Writers Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts grants, and two New York Foundation for the Arts grants. He holds the John Cranford Adams Chair at Hofstra University, and also teaches in the MFA graduate programs at Columbia, the New School and Bennington College. Lopate serves on the T&W Board of Directors.

The essay selected to receive the Bechtel Prize appears in Teachers & Writers magazine and on the T&W website, and the author receives a $1,000 honorarium. Honoraria totaling $500 are shared by the authors of entries selected as finalists for the prize, which may also be published in Teachers & Writers.

Possible topics for Bechtel Prize submissions include contemporary issues in classroom teaching, innovative approaches to teaching literary forms and genres, and the intersection between literature and imaginative writing. The previous winners of the Bechtel Prize can be found here.

Selection criteria for the Bechtel Prize include the essay’s relevance and appropriateness for readers of Teachers & Writers magazine, most of whom teach at the elementary, secondary, or postsecondary level. Teachers & Writers publishes work that is concise, lively, and geared to a general audience. Prospective entrants for the Bechtel Prize are encouraged to review a sample issue of Teachers & Writers to familiarize themselves with the magazine’s style. Click here to order a sample issue of the magazine for $5.00.

The submission deadline for the 2010 Bechtel Prize is 5:00 PM (Eastern), Wednesday, June 30, 2010. Please refer to the submission guidelines below for additional information.

2010 Bechtel Prize Submission Guidelines

• Entry fee: $20 for each entry (make checks payable to Teachers & Writers Collaborative). Each fee entitles the entrant to a new one-year subscription to Teachers & Writers or a one-year extension of a current subscription. Please indicate your choice and include a complete address for subscriptions.

• Submissions should relate to creative writing education and/or literary studies.

• Submissions must be previously unpublished and under 5,000 words in length.

• Submissions must be typed, paginated, and double-spaced.

• Submissions will be judged anonymously. The author’s name and address must not appear anywhere on the essay/article.

• Two copies of the entry must be submitted. One copy should include a cover page with the following information: the author’s name, mailing address, e-mail address, telephone number, the title of the submission, and where the author learned about the Bechtel Prize. The other copy should include a cover page with only the title.

• Authors of the Bechtel Prize winner and finalists must permit T&W to publish their submissions in Teachers & Writers magazine. The winner must permit T&W to publish the essay on the T&W website. T&W reserves the right to edit the submissions for publication.

• Please mail entries to The Bechtel Prize, Teachers & Writers Collaborative, 520 Eighth Ave., Ste. 2020, New York, NY 10018. Entries may be delivered to T&W between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM, Monday through Friday. Submissions will not be accepted via e-mail or fax.

• Submissions must be received by 5:00 PM (Eastern), Wednesday, June 30, 2010.

• Submissions that do not conform to the above guidelines will not be reviewed for the Bechtel Prize.

• Submissions will not be returned to the authors.

Questions regarding the Bechtel Prize should be directed to bechtel.

First Crime Novel Competition 

Rules for the 2011 Minotaur Books/ Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Competition

Sponsored by St. Martin's Minotaur and Mystery Writers of America (MWA)

back to top

1. The Competition is open to any writer, regardless of nationality, who has never been the author of a published novel, as defined by the guidelines below, (except that authors of self-published works only may enter, as long as the manuscript submitted is not the self-published work) and is not under contract with a publisher for publication of a novel. Only one manuscript entry is permitted per writer. 

2. All manuscripts submitted: a) must be original, previously unpublished works of book length (no less than 220 typewritten pages or approximately 60,000 words) written in the English language by the entrants; b) must not violate any right of any third party or be libelous, and c) must generally follow the guidelines below. 

 

GUIDELINES

a. Murder or another serious crime or crimes is at the heart of the story.

b. WHAT CONSTITUTES PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED: For the purpose of this Competition, previously published material includes the publication or distribution of the entry, in part or whole, in paper or electronic format or in any other medium, including self-published works. This does not include a chapter excerpt on an author's website, subject to the conditions that: (i) the excerpt is the only text that exists for public viewing; (ii) the excerpt is not for sale to the public, and (iii) the number of words in the excerpt does not exceed 10% of the total number of words in the work as a whole.

(The decision of the Competition's judges as to whether or not a manuscript qualifies will be final.)

3. Nominees will be selected by judges chosen by MWA, with the assistance of the editorial staff of Minotaur Books, and the winner will be chosen by Minotaur Books editors on the basis of the originality, creativity and writing skill of the submission. The decision of the editors as to the winner of the Competition will be final. Minotaur Books reserves the right not to select any winner if, in the sole opinion of the editors, none of the manuscripts submitted are of publishable quality. 

4. An attempt will be made to notify the Competition winner, if any, no later than March 31, 2011. The winner will then be recognized at the Edgar Awards Banquet in New York City in April 2011. 

5. If a winner is selected, Minotaur Books will offer to enter into its standard form author's agreement with the entrant for publication of the winning manuscript. After execution of the standard form author's agreement by both parties, the winner will receive an advance against future royalties of $10,000. THE WINNER WILL NOT RECEIVE ANY OTHER PRIZE AND WILL NOT RECEIVE ANY PART OF THE ADVANCE UNTIL THE STANDARD FORM AUTHOR'S AGREEMENT HAS BEEN EXECUTED BY BOTH PARTIES. Those terms of the offer not specified in the printed text of the Minotaur Books standard form author's agreement will be determined by Minotaur Books at its sole discretion. The entrant may request reasonable changes in the offered terms, but Minotaur Books shall not be obligated to agree to any such changes. Minotaur Books may, but will not be required to, consider for publication manuscripts submitted by other entrants. 

6. All requests for entry forms must be received by Minotaur Books at the address below by November 13, 2010. DO NOT SEND MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSIONS TO MINOTAUR BOOKS. For copies of these rules and to request an entry form, please send a stamped, self addressed envelope to: 

Minotaur Books/MWA Competition
St. Martin's Minotaur
175 Fifth Avenue, 18^th Floor
New York, New York 10010

Each entrant will receive an entry form containing the address of the judge to whom he or she will send his or her manuscript. Entries must be postmarked no later than November 30, 2010 and received by judges no later than December 15, 2010 and must include: 

a) A double-spaced and neatly typed copy of the manuscript (photocopies are acceptable), with pages numbered consecutively from beginning to end.

b) A letter or cover sheet containing the name, address, email address and telephone number of the entrant and the entrant's previous writing credits, if any.

c) The application form, duly completed, and a self-addressed letter-sized envelope for our response.

d) A digital copy of the manuscript either burned to a CD or saved to a disk as a Microsoft Word document. All disks and CDs should be marked with the author's name and the title of the manuscript.

*Each entrant must keep a copy of the manuscript for his or her own protection. Minotaur Books will not be responsible for lost, stolen, or mislaid manuscripts. Because of the great volume of submissions we receive, the fact that judges are volunteers with full-time responsibilities elsewhere, and the fact that most writers now have the work in their computers, manuscripts, CDs and disks will not be returned. Please do not send return postage or envelopes for return of your manuscript. 

1. No critical evaluation or commentary will be offered by the judges or the editorial staff of St. Martin's Minotaur unless, in the sole opinion of the editorial staff, evaluation or commentary is appropriate in the case of a manuscript being considered for publication. 

8. This Competition is void where prohibited or restricted by law. 

*It is important that you submit your manuscript as early as possible. Our judges are volunteers who are extremely busy with their primary concerns, and it is inevitable that your submission will get a more careful reading if the judge does not have to contend with a flood of last-minute entries. However, it is not necessary to send it the most expensive way. We judge on-time delivery by the post-mark or equivalent, not by the date the judge receives the manuscript. 

Good luck!

Chimurenga Vol. 15: The Curriculum is Everything
(may '10)

What could the curriculum be – if it was designed by the people who dropped out of school so that they could breathe? The latest issue of Chimurenga provides alternatives to prevailing educational pedagogy.  Through fiction, essays, interviews, poetry, photography and art, contributors examine and redefine rigid notions of essential knowledge.

Presented in the form of a textbook, Chimurenga 15 simultaneously mimics the structure while gutting it. All entries are regrouped under subjects such as body parts, language, grace, worship and news (from the other side), numbers, parents, police and many more. Through a classification system that is both linear and thematic, the textbook offers multiple entry points into a curriculum that focuses on the un-teachable and values un-learning as much as its opposite.

Inside: Amiri Baraka waxes poetic on the theoretics of Be-Bop; Coco Fusco flips the CIA’s teaching manual for female torturers; Karen Press and Steve Coleman instruct in folk-dancing; Dambudzo Marechera proposes a “guide to the earth”; Dominique Malaquais designs the museum we won’t build; through self-portraits Phillip Tabane and Johnny Dyani offer method to the Skanga (black music family); and Winston Mankunku refuses to teach.

Other contributors include Binyavanga Wainaina, Akin Adesokan, Isoje Chou, Sean O’Toole, Pradid Krishen, E.C. Osundu, Salim Washington, Sefi Atta, Ed Pavlic, Neo Muyanga, Henri-Michel Yere, Medu Arts Ensemble, Aryan Kaganof, Khulile Nxumalo and Walter Mosley amongst others. Cover by Johnny “Mbizo” Dyani.

Get your copy.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Kola Speaks: “The Rap about Gold diggers”

Egyptian-Sudanese-American novelist and poet Kola Boof has been an agent for Sudan’s SPLA and was the National Chairwoman of the U.S. Branch of the Sudanese Sensitization Peace Project.  She has written for television and her many books include, “Flesh and the Devil,” “Long Train to the Redeeming Sin,” “Nile River Woman” and “Virgins In the Beehive.”  She blogs at Kola Boof. com

As the wife of a Black millionaire, bestselling author and mom Kola Boof lets it rip about gold diggers and the Hip Hop community’s double standards on denoting who is and is not one. 
___________________

Everybody’s been in Kim Kardashian’s mouth.  Just as Ray J. stated in a recent television interview, that’s her claim to fame.  And Kim Kardashian’s men, Black as they want to be, have to be rich enough to afford her—yet there’s no song on Black American radio that disses and degrades her.  To the contrary, she’s written about as though we’ve been descended upon by Elizabeth Taylor.

O.J. Simpson’s famously dead wife, Nicole, was an uneducated “waitress” that he purchased Breast Implants for—then married and put in a five million dollar mansion. But there was never any song castigating her for being a skank and gold digger. Jennifer Lopez rose from a Solid Gold dancer and got all her breaks in life by sleeping with successful Black men who could further her career (Keenan Ivory Wayans, Sean Puffy Combs)…at which point…she took her “stardom created by the Black Community” over to White man Ben Affleck, then to her Puerto Rican husband’s bed; mission accomplished! Kimmora Lee Simmons, a rather pretentious phoney that I “viciously” slapped in the mouth several years ago—supposedly because I’m jealous and bitter about her Cabbage-Patch Face; Bread Box Shaped Body and don’t forget—her spectacularly flat ass, girdle-controlled tummy and butt pad supported photo shopped Ebony magazine layouts—started her gold digging in the African-American community, where she knew her failed Chinese model status would command top dollar.  No Black officials greeted her with the words “skank” and no rappers berated her skin complexion or accused her of being a gold digger—as they did the singer Usher’s dark skinned self-employed Black millionaire wife. 

Kimmora married Black hip hop Tycoon Russell Simmons, declared herself a “black woman” (as anyone in America can do at will; the Black Americans are ex-slaves and have no standards) and eventually launched a clothing line using Russell’s money he made off the Black Community (purporting this to be a “talent” in Essence Magazine); then after being dumped by Simmons for a more exotic even less Black-looking bombshell; tacked herself onto Djimon Hounsou (who, of course, I’m jealous that she stole from me; sarcasm intended).  For this new gig, Kimmora had a baby despite the fact he wasn’t about to marry her—and, in my opinion anyway, dutifully produced the “lighter baby with good hair” as a holiday mascot for his skin-bleaching minions back in Benin, West Africa.

Fuck Kola Boof! (Oh he will sugar, he will).

Of course—nobody in the “Hip Hop Culture” refers to women like Gary Coleman’s White wife or Kobe Bryant’s video hoochie turned wife—or Kobe Bryant’s “rape accusing” Blond in Colorado with the SPERM of three men on her panties—as “bitches, Ho’s or gold diggers.”  Black men just don’t disrespect the White Man’s Mother like that.  

A few years ago, Kanye West and Jamie Foxx had a huge hit with a song about Gold diggers. This caused, at last, a music video that focused on beautiful child-bearing age Black women—the Black Man’s mother. At the end of the song Kanye announced, “I’m going to leave you for a White Woman!” And all of Black America and the White Pop music world laughed, applauded, cheered and drove the song to #1 on the charts—despite the fact that almost none of today’s rich and famous Black men being exploited for their money are getting bilked by Black women.

It was a totally different reaction than Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable and Lauren Bacall got for starring in the 1950’s gold digging blockbuster “HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE”—an all blond Hollywood celebration of beautiful women’s right to be paid “at the altar” just for being bombshells.  And there’s tons of other films that cheer and celebrate the entitled White gold digger from “GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES” to Sigourney Weaver and Jennifer Love Hewitt’s affectionate comedy “GOLD DIGGERS”—to all those celebrated Larry King Live and Anna Nicole Smith tabloid weddings. Amazingly, no one ever writes songs berating these types of women for marrying ugly rich men old enough to be their ancestor.

For beautiful Black women who want to be the rich man’s bombshell wife, however, it’s a whole multitude of double and triple standards.

Thirty years of rap stars, Black, White and Latino have singled out the Black man’s mother as “an innately born gold digger” and “nagging shrew” unworthy of love or respect as a woman.  The message on nearly every single CD is that Bitches and Ho’s (which is how the Black Man’s mother is openly referenced on the public radio or at cookouts in the back yards of Black households in the United States) are to be used as sex mules; suitable for freaky sex, preferably discarded afterward and routinely impregnated.

You’re just a punk (according to many in Hip Hop culture) if you even think about taking her to a candle lit dinner or reading poems about her majestic dark shimmering face. 

If you study songs recorded over the years by T.I., Polow da Don, Young Berg, Dr. Dre and even Jay Z…the lightness or darkness of said Black female’s skin is what these men encourage young boys to use for measuring how soon said Black Woman is to be discarded after receiving her 2-Live-Crew inspired beast fucking.  On those same CDs by artists like Polow da Don, T.I., Young Berg and even early Jay Z, you’ll find songs celebrating Mixed-race Brazilian girls; the prized “Biracial” beauty; the European Hottie—but the slutty things these women do in the lyric are related with affection and not rapped about in a contemptuous hateful manner as when the subject is a “brown girl” or “Sista girl.”  Even the “Red Bone” songs are no longer complimentary.  High Yellow-skinned Negro women who once denied Colorism, benefitted from it and looked their noses down at Real Black Women are now beginning to get the Dark girl treatment in lieu of the White or Mexican fantasy she was always the “stand in” for in the first place.  But skanky whorish gold diggers or not, the White and White-like colored women are promoted by Black men as “wife” material.

Whatever you think about me writing this commentary; I’ve already heard it. I’ve heard it all my life. Dark skinned women like me deserve to be on the bottom of the food chain and we’re just “bitter and jealous” if we dare raise issue with the double and triple standards.

It simply isn’t true.

I’ve had the most wonderful Black Man on earth love me, marry me and give me two beautiful sons (granted, he’s not American, but he’s still a Black Man).  My ex-husband became a millionaire five years after we married, and we were together for ten, so no one can claim that I was a gold digger. Additionally, I’ve dated my own share of rich and famous Black Men.  So I know that beneath the veneer of California’s Colorstruck sun-brine, the phenomenon of Black on Black love defiantly exists.  I’ve had a plethora of interracial relationships as well. Yet still, most often in my life in America, I experienced what the majority of Black women experience; a kind of “color coded target practice”—Black men asking me if I’m dark skinned or light skinned over the telephone…Black men hyping me up to think I have a chance with them; taking advantage of our eagerness to love them, which many times includes food and living space by way of working class and inner city Black girls who often financially support and harbor unemployed Black men for years.  And of course the endless Camel Shit about how being enslaved and raped hundreds of years ago by White invaders was in fact a “love affair” that Black (slave) women enjoyed and not the result of a brutal slave culture.  Therefore, the attitude goes that modern Black women don’t deserve to heal and be happy and that they owe Black men a supernatural loyalty based on all that power and freedom these nappy Cotton patch goddesses wielded and shared with the White man back in the Black Queen’s good old slavery days.

A friend of mine on Twitter named Shine (@nativenotes) claims that it’s not fair to make this case regarding “Black men’s tolerance of Non-Black Gold diggers” using high profile Black men—“they’re not us” he claims. But I know multitudes of Black male Waiters, Lawyers, bookstore owners, Professors, Afrocentric gurus, traffic cops, bus drivers, security guards, bankers and dentists—and it’s the same story on every class level—they break their backs to wine and dine anything that’s lighter than Tapioca while disparaging, exploiting and publicly condemning any woman who looks like their Mother, or symbolically, the Black man’s mother. We won’t even get on the African-looking woman; our real true blood berry and original Mother.  The hatred turned on her “deep dark skin, thick features and nappy hair” is proof positive that more than half of Africans worldwide has a grave waiting for them in hell.  There’s no way that God created a whole race of women to be scorned, hated and lied on like this. There’s also no way that Black people can rationally “explain away” or “look the other way” any longer.

White women think that I hate them. But I honestly don’t.  I idolize and love dozens of White women. I have love and support from many of them in my real every day life. There are several that I call family and am grateful for.

But in a general, National sense—there is also enormous justified resentment on my part. And I have the right to that resentment; to honor and respect it.  Anyone who disagrees can get on their knees and ask God if I give a damn (there’s a good chance you might not get back up).  Because I do not ask permission to feel what I know is true.  Unlike the majority of Black American women I know, I feel enormous “entitlement”—the same sense of entitlement that White, Other and Biracial women seem to naturally exhibit. I am beautiful, brilliant and powerful.  I expect to have the best and to be treated equally.

So when White women make the claim that we are “Sisters”—then deny that Colorism exists or that they benefit from White Supremacy often more than White males do; or that Black men have a specialized historical contempt for their Blackness which translates to an epidemic rejection of his own seed—that’s when I know that we’re not sisters. When White women, Latino Women, Asian women and all other “light brite flowing haired” so called Women of Color join in applauding National images of Black men spitting on the image of their own mothers—then I know that we are not sisters.  When White Women say that it’s not important that Black children be born, that mixed babies are prettier and more valuable than Black babies and that “any child” can be Black—that’s when I damned sure know that we’re not sisters.

When all you can do in the face of my degradation is “feel sorry for me”—then I know that we’re not sisters.  That is no part close to God—feeling sorry for someone. Either you believe in justice and equality or you don’t.  And the fact is most females are selfish and just as greedy and self-serving as men are; so in the midst of the White Feminist “sisterhood” speeches, the Black women’s sassy cum intelligent Oprah-like passivity and the White and “Other” women’s soothing “sympathetic” blank stares—nothing ever changes; the hierarchy stays the same.  The biracial woman is sent forth to act as a kind of “less threatening” Black image, but in reality, regardless of what she wishes to exhibit, her light image ends up reiterating that Whiteness is superior by virtue of her being something other than Black.  In other words, no matter what the society says, she’s not really Black.  She’s an “extraction” of Blackness (like Vanilla extract or Rum extract)—an extraction that Whites/Others can claim credit for whenever it’s convenient for them.

Biracial American women take this as a rejection, but it’s not a rejection of them.  It’s just the truth about Post-Colonial/Post-Slavery society and how, ultimately, their lightness is used against authentic Black women. 

Worse than all that—Black American women mistakenly think they have a stake in the establishment here.  Though they have nothing to lose by completely rebelling against the social boxes (Christianity; our sons; her slave history; sexism’s male privilege; Islam)—they actually lose more and more of their genetic authenticity with each passing decade, because they’re still serving the larger plantation. As much as the Black woman is hated, she’s the one upholding and passing on the stereotypes about her inferiority and lack of human reproductive value.  She doesn’t know how to fight back, and despite being famous for a “smart mouth,” she’s too intimidated to rock the boat…or compete. Her main obstacle is the Black man, because in general, he doesn’t give a shit what happens to her and she doesn’t have the courage to kill him off and giving birth to him over again—she’s no longer the Tulat Queen.  And since she’s never cultivated and demanded her own unique physical “right to be” (a completely Black; un-mixed aesthetic)—she is unable to assert or have anyone (including Black men) back her image as a viable competitive brand amongst the rest of America’s garden.  She only challenges the gaping lie that she is inferior via “sound bites” and “rants”—rarely significant tangible action.

What would be “significant tangible action”? Ten thousand Black women throwing “saved bloody tampons” at BET headquarters and chanting “Kill BET!” would be tangible action.  Ceasing to purchase hip hop music that even suggests you aren’t being affirmed and celebrated would be tangible action.  Ceasing to support videos and films that don’t perpetuate and flatter our public image would be tangible action.

The Black American woman is big and bad enough to shank me, her adopted African daughter, but not brave enough to SHANK the Black Man and White America.  She makes excuses “Well it’s not all of them”…”I don’t want to be seen as bitter and evil”…she can fight for the Black Man to be respected as a man…or fight for her “son” against racist police…but it’s too painful for her to fight only for herself or her daughter’s image when those same sons casually spit back in her face or dismiss her valid complaints as bitterness.  

Many Black American Female Scholars, Writers, Feminists and Public figures have a serious problem with Kola Boof. They feel that I’m obnoxious, out of control and that I exhibit a threatening attitude. To them, I’m an Uppity African woman—a flamboyant attention seeker.  And I say Camel shit!  What I speak…is pure fucking truth.  And I speak my truth for the love of these Black American women (symbolically, daughters of my womb, Africa); I speak it on behalf of my own womb; my people’s authentic African beauty and my children’s right to exist and exist as themselves—Black children. I speak my truth because….I am not a Nigger.  White America and Black America can take that however they want—but truly; you cannot dismiss truthful people as merely “bad attitudes,” “Angry,” “frauds” and “jealous nutcases” just because the breath of God is upon you.

And though quite a few Black American Scholars, Writers and Feminists will not be able to accept the following admonition…I say it anyway and I say it loud…I don’t have to be nice!

That’s a huge part of the problem, the silencing of the rage in Black girls by elder Black women who basically instruct us to stay in our places as we wait for change to come…and from where, I don’t know.  It damned sure isn’t coming from Oprah Winfrey, the Church or nice, safe apologetic India.Arie.  “You don’t want to be seen as angry”…”you can’t act ugly and expect people to care about you” (we won’t be cared about anyway, so where is the loss?)…but we never told Martin Luther King or Malcolm X that shit.  Men have a right to rebel against their oppression and mistreatment.  The room gets silent with respect when males refuse to be demeaned and hated on.

Somehow, I don’t believe that Harriet Tubman or Joan of Arc would tell me that I have to be nice about the color-based double and triple standards that pervade American culture.  Standards that are now, slowly but surely, are infecting African culture.   Just this week, we’ve got Gary Coleman’s White Wife (who looks like a life sized Chuckie Doll; not an angelic White savior) pimping his death by selling hospital photos and pitching a T.V. movie before there’s even been a funeral. Let’s see if the Hip Hop community will produce a rap song about that typical trick-ass White bitch!  And let’s see how many White women purporting to be our “sisters” will cheerfully dance to it.

Yes, America. My Egyptian Sudanese-American ass is out here in sunny California producing Black babies and teaching them all kinds of “Kola” nut wisdom.  You have to admit, I’m as hard as any rapper you’ve got—so how come you don’t like bopping your head to my profane Kola messages?  Well, as we say in Sudan….bana/banu! (I came to stay).  And whenever you feel like you want to kick Kola Boof’s ass—just get in line, take a fucking number and wait your turn.

The Questions Education Reformers Aren’t Asking

http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/questions_education_reformers_arent_asking_20100318/

Posted on Mar 19, 2010

By Mike Rose

Flickr / eschipul

 

Education is moving to domestic policy center stage. The first round of competition for federal “Race to the Top” funds is over, and that competition generated a flurry of school reform activity across the nation. Fifteen states and the District of Columbia were selected and are now preparing for a winnowing round two.

In addition, the Department of Education just released its proposal to revamp the important Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which is up for reauthorization. (Its last incarnation brought us No Child Left Behind.) This proposal is already fueling local and national debate about the particulars of school reform: how to assess teacher quality, for example, or the promulgation of charter schools, or how to remedy failing schools.

So far, our discussions and debates about education have been focused on these particulars, frequently sparking more heat than light. But there seems to be little alternative thinking in the approach to school reform itself. And both elite and mainstream media have pretty much fallen in line with the reigning policy talk about the problems with our schools and how to fix them. As well, no one in power is asking the more fundamental questions like: What is the purpose of education in a democracy, and are our reforms enhancing—or possibly restricting—that purpose?

I wrote the following essays over the last year to address some of these broader questions.

 

 

Part One: Education ‘Miracles’ Don’t Survive Scrutiny

Despite a childhood of incantations and incense, of holy cards and stories of crutches being tossed, I don’t believe in miracles. So it is with less than wonderment that I watch as a language of miracles—along with a search for academic cure-alls and magic bullets—infuses our educational discourse and policy.

We started off the new century with the Texas Miracle, the phenomenal closing of the achievement gap and reduction of dropout rates through a program of high-stakes standardized tests. (The Texas Miracle would then spawn the federal No Child Left Behind Act.) Politicians and media-savvy administrators have also found the miraculous; the governor of my state, Arnold Schwarzenegger, referred to an Oakland charter school as an “education miracle.” And the pundits have appropriated the lingo. A recent New York Times column by David Brooks on the charter school of the Harlem Children’s Zone was titled “The Harlem Miracle.” And so it goes. 

Upon closer examination, some of these miracles turn out to be suspect, the result of questionable assessments and manipulated numbers. The Texas Miracle didn’t hold up under scrutiny. And some, like the Harlem Children’s Zone—which is a commendable place—gain their excellence through hard work along multiple dimensions, from teaching and mentoring to utilizing outside resources and fundraising. There’s nothing miraculous about their successes.

Along with talk of miracles, we have the belief in educational wonder drugs and magic bullets—single-shot solutions to complicated problems: high-stakes testing, standards, charter schools, small schools, alternative teacher recruitment, slash-and-burn CEO management and so on. Each of these solutions has potential merit. Standards can bring coherence to a curriculum; small schools can result in increased student contact; alternative recruitment and credentialing bring new blood into the teaching force; some districts need the serious administrative shake-up that managerial housecleaning can provide. All good. But for these efforts to work, to increase the quality of education, other factors have to be present as well.

The structural change that leads to the small school needs to be accompanied by a robust philosophy of education, a set of beliefs about ability, learning, knowledge and the purpose of education. As well, you’ll need a decent teaching force with opportunity built in for ongoing development. And what about curriculum? Or a set of ideas on how to connect school with community? The structural move of creating the small school may be central in all this—truly important—but, at its best, it will be a necessary but not sufficient condition for educational renewal. As small-schools pioneer Deborah Meier once said, you can have crappy small schools, too.

Research on charter schools—most recently a comprehensive study from Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes—demonstrates the kind of variability you would expect if you didn’t believe in miracle cures: Some charters are terrific, some are average, and some are awful. The same set of issues I raise for small schools applies here: What you do within the new school structure matters immensely.

The kick-ass-and-take-names managerial cleanup that we’ve seen in places like Washington, D.C., and New Orleans has indeed disrupted the status quo, and I’ll leave it to those who know those districts well to judge the legitimacy of the shakeup. But what interests me is what happens once the new broom sweeps clean. Then the same weighty questions emerge, questions involving curriculum, teacher quality and development, remediation, school-community connections and the like. To address these crucial issues, the school manager will need knowledge of human development, of teaching and learning, of the wisdom of the classroom. Because few of the new CEO types possess such knowledge, you have the rush to the magic bullet.

Let me consider one more magic bullet, since recently it has been making its way through opinion pages and commentaries: alternative teacher recruitment, most notably Teach for America. (See, for example, Thomas Friedman’s April 21 New York Times column or the “NewsHour With Jim Lehrer” for July 7.)

I admire Teach for America and the public service spirit that drives its recruits. In the early ’90s, I met with founder Wendy Kopp and participated in TFA summer training in Los Angeles, and I’ve taught students who have gone into the program or came out of it. Furthermore, my own introduction to education came via an earlier alternative program, Teacher Corps. So my concern is not with Teach for America itself but with the way it has been defined as yet another wonder drug, the ingredients of which are the idealistic energy of youth and an elite education. Sadly, Teach for America has become a weapon in the education wars, rather than a laudable vehicle through which young people can contribute to the education of a nation.

I’m all for idealistic, hardworking enthusiasm, and I welcome into the nation’s classrooms these graduates of fine schools. But most of them teach for two years (and possibly a third) and then move on to the careers they went to college to pursue.

I’m troubled by two more issues related to the magic-bullet discourse here. First, many who champion TFA seem to affirm an idiosyncratic model of professional development: that these young people’s elite undergraduate educations and their energy trump extended training and experience. There is no other kind of work, from styling hair to surgery to the pro football defensive backfield, where experience is so discounted. No TFA booster, I’d wager, would choose a med student fresh out of a cardiology rotation over a cardiologist who had been in practice for 15 years.

I also want to consider the assumptions about knowledge and teaching here—or more precisely the use of the status of one’s undergraduate institution as a proxy for being able to teach what one knows. Knowing history or chemistry or literature is essential to teach these subjects, but—again this is common sense—knowing something does not mean you are able to teach it, as countless undergraduates who have sat through bad lectures can verify.

Let’s consider this elite-school proxy for pedagogical expertise from one more perspective. I went through two books that profile first-rate teaching: my “Possible Lives” and Karin Chenoweth’s new “How It’s Being Done.” I also looked at the Council of Chief State School Officers’ National Teacher of the Year program. Only a handful of these top-flight teachers got their bachelor’s degrees from institutions typically defined as elite. A number hail from state universities. And a considerable number come from small local colleges with teacher education programs. Expertise in teaching is more than a function of one’s undergraduate pedigree.

What miracle talk and magic-bullet solutions share is the reduction of complexity, of the many levels of hard, creative work necessary to make schooling successful in the United States.

More so than many other domains of public policy, education is bedeviled by a binary polemics, a tendency to define an issue in either/or terms and then wage a pitched battle over the (exaggerated) differences. So we have the math wars, the whole-language versus phonics explosion, the knowledge versus process clash, and so on. These are fierce battles in which each side reduces the other’s argument—often to the point of caricature—and then assails it.

The miracle/magic-bullet discourse plays right into this state of affairs, and both emerges from and contributes to it. Part of believing in this single-shot causality requires a simplification of difficult issues and a dismissal of other possible variables and remedies. If you have the single truth, then everything else is a target.

There’s one more concern, and that has to do with failure. What happens when the miracle fades, when the magic bullet doesn’t cure the disease? For some who are ideologically inclined, there is despair, a throwing up of the hands and retreat to the dismissal of public education that we’ve witnessed over the past two or three decades.

I propose that we leave the holy cards at the schoolhouse door, that we admit that educational excellence is achieved through dedicated effort along multiple dimensions—structural, curricular and pedagogical—and that we call a moratorium on the demonizing either/or polemics that create more heat than light. Unfortunately, that moratorium would probably require a miracle—but it’s one I’m ready to pray for. 

Continued: Business Goes to School

Part Two: Business Goes to School

This is an excerpt from Mike Rose’s book “Why School? Reclaiming Education for All of Us.”

Before the emergence of high-stakes accountability systems—and then developing in synergy with them—American business has been a major player in contemporary school reform efforts. The motivation is straightforward: to urge the preparation of a skilled workforce. Different segments of the business community have been involved in curriculum reform via blue-ribbon reports, or have fostered ties with schools leading to internships, or have donated money and equipment. Some, like the Gates or Broad Foundations, have launched major philanthropic initiatives aimed at creating particular kinds of schools. And some have donated and lobbied for overtly political causes like school vouchers.

Though each of these responses is distinct, they can all be seen—and are framed—as attempts to improve American education and create opportunity for young people. And many of them do. The language of business involvement often includes a criticism of (mostly public) schools, some deserved. But the tables are rarely turned. What might the business community’s culpability be for the state of American education? And what else would a more comprehensive discussion of the school-business connection need to include?

I remember the occasion when these questions crystallized for me. It was early in 1991, and a friend, another teacher, showed me a photograph in the Los Angeles Times of financier Michael Milken standing before a blackboard in an inner-city school. He was teaching a math lesson to two African American youngsters. Milken is known now for his admirable philanthropic work in medicine and education, but at the time he was a bundle of contradictions: a financial innovator convicted of securities fraud, reborn after prison as a philanthropist. His visit was part of a “principals for a day” program that brought prominent business leaders into schools, so they could see classroom realities firsthand. Such field trips are common, then as now.

Schools are frequently the site of this brand of photo-op for the powerful: a politician reading to kids, a business executive conducting a lesson. What is telling to me is that we don’t see this sort of thing with other professions. A presidential candidate tours a hospital, but isn’t a “urologist for a day.” A philanthropist visits a women’s shelter, but doesn’t lead a counseling session. As a teacher all my adult life, I can’t help but be bothered by the familiar implication that anyone can teach. The symbolism of such events would be more on target if visitors did things in line with their expertise in finance: sat in on a budget meeting, or had to count out and distribute the servings in the free lunch program, or went door-to-door trying to convince fellow citizens to vote for a school bond.
Still, there’s nothing inherently wrong with business-school alliances, and a lot in favor of them. Many schools need dollars, materials, and repairs that business can provide. School-business alliances can lead to enriched internships and various kinds of mentoring relationships between promising kids and female and minority employees who could serve as role models. Beleaguered, low-status schools benefit from having the support of powerful community figures. And as we’ve seen over the last decade or so as billionaire philanthropists have become players in broad-scale school reform, business can spark major educational initiatives.

There are also reasons for skepticism.

Some businesses have a direct financial interest in matters educational, from textbook and test development to the delivery of goods and advertisements to classrooms. Less obvious is the fact that donations from business are tax-deductible, so, as policy scholar Janelle Scott points out, considerable tax revenues are diverted from the public fund and toward business-certified causes. These causes might well be laudable ones, but the channeling of revenue affects public policy and yet is not open to public deliberation.

A not-unrelated concern is the model of instruction and assessment that business involvement can foster. The 1910s and 1920s, another era of strong business influence, provide a cautionary tale. In an attempt to maximize educational productivity and efficiency, some districts advocated measuring teacher effectiveness by counting the number of arithmetic combinations or grammar exercises a student could perform in one minute. We haven’t gone quite that far, but industrial conceptions of productivity are spread throughout our educational policy, certainly in some high-stakes testing programs. And a number of big cities have adopted CEO models of the superintendency. Also, in one report and press release after another, business advocacy groups have been defining the purpose of schooling in economic terms. Kids go to school to get themselves and the nation ready for the global marketplace, and this rhetoric of job preparation and competition can play into reductive definitions of teaching and learning.

There is a tendency in all of this that is worth exploring, one rooted in the technocratic-managerial ideology that drives both business practice and policy formation of many kinds, from health care to urban planning to agriculture: the devaluing of on-the-ground local and craft knowledge and an elevation of systems thinking, of finding the large economic, social, or organizational levers to pull to initiate change. In the case of education, pedagogical wisdom and experiential knowledge of schools are dismissed as a soft or airy distraction. A professor of management tells a class of aspiring principals that the more they know about the particulars of instruction, the less effective they’ll be, for that nitty-gritty knowledge will blur their perception of the problem and the application of universal principles of management—as fitting for a hospital or a manufacturing plant as a school.

Though “qualified teachers” are praised in public documents and speeches, teachers are often pegged as the problem. And classroom knowledge is trivialized. Teaching or running a school is characterized as just not being that hard. And the field of education in general is bemoaned as bereft of talent. I’ve heard these phrases. The sad and astounding fact is that at the state and federal level there is little deep understanding of the intricacies of teaching and learning involved in the formation of education policy.

Now, we all know that there are a lot of mediocre and downright awful teachers out there, and a number of schools and school districts are in desperate need of managerial shake-up and rebuilding. No question: perspectives and procedures from the world of business can be valuable here. But once you’ve swept clean, what will you put in place? Here is where pedagogical knowledge is essential. The reform superintendent in a district whose story I’ve been following addressed the terrible problem of dropping out by creating a special school for young people who have failed repeatedly—a continuation school of sorts. Classes are small; there’s a good ratio of adults to students; and there’s increased counseling. These are good moves. But the curriculum is deadly, a repetition of the skills-and-drills approach that these students have encountered for years, and without success.

Teaching and learning are not simply a management problem. Reformers need to incorporate rather than disregard the rich wisdom of the classroom, for the history of policy failure is littered with cases where local knowledge and circumstance were ignored.

In all the public discussions I’ve heard, the focus of school-business alliances is solely on the problems with the schools and what it is that business can do to help remedy those problems. The discussion never seems to include business’s contributions to the conditions that have limited educational achievement. And it’s here that the image of Michael Milken before the blackboard begins to take on powerful added meaning.

Milken is a financial genius and a major philanthropist. He also represented, in his earlier incarnation, an ongoing, damaging trend in American business that pushes short-term interests over long-term prosperity and the social good. Although clearly not representative of all American business leaders, figures like Milken bring into stark relief a fundamental contradiction in American business practice: its mix of boardroom rapaciousness and public generosity.

Business must examine this contradiction if it wants to affect educational reform in any comprehensive way. It is a good thing for business to give money to the schools, but the schools also need business to consider broader issues of economy and culture.

To take one point, various elements of the business community lobby, litigate, and proselytize against tax increases, minimum- or living-wage laws, and a whole range of policies that would help poor and working-class families better prepare their children for school through decent housing, health care, and educational resources. Just think of what regular eye exams and proper glasses alone would do for academic achievement.

Instead, what we have is an erosion of broad-based economic support and growth and, in its place, a selective philanthropy—which, I’ll be the first to admit, is better than a selfish, opulent capitalism. But such generosity is targeted and partial. There has been a dramatic increase in the involvement of large, private foundations in school reform. And some of this foundation involvement drives a particular ideology that might not mesh with the general public good.

If business is to help inner-city schools and schools in depressed rural and transitional areas, it will have to understand school failure within a socioeconomic context. It will have to ask itself hard questions about the way national economic policies and local business decisions have limited the development of communities, and the effect these policies and decisions have had on schooling. Schools in a number of cities have deteriorated as decisions by major industries have devastated their local economies.

The hope of a better life has traditionally driven achievement in American schools. When children are raised in communities where economic opportunity has dramatically narrowed, where the future is bleak, their perception of and engagement with school will be negatively affected. We must ask whether, for example, donating a slew of computers to a school will make kids see the connection between doing well in the classroom and living a decent life beyond it when all they feel is hopelessness the moment they walk out the schoolhouse door. From what I can see, after surveying the position papers of advocacy groups like the Business Roundtable, the business community, perhaps because some of its members so cherish a Horatio Alger mythology, has not thought deeply about the profound effect economic despair can have on school achievement.

The business community needs to take a hard look as well at its apparent willingness to create virtually any product and marketing campaign that will turn a profit and at the negative influence business interests exert on entertainment and news media. So many of the commercially driven verbal and imagistic messages that surround our young people work against the development of the very qualities of mind the business community tells the schools it wants the schools to foster. Our new economy, we are told, requires people who are critically reflective and can make careful distinctions, who can troubleshoot and solve problems, who have an interpretive, analytic edge, who are willing to stop and ponder.

Yet young people grow up in an economy of glitz and thunder. The ads that shape their needs and interests champion appearance over substance, power over thought. Their entertainment, by and large, makes easy distinction between right and wrong, the effective move and the blunder, and it trivializes intellectual work, from medical science to archaeology. The news they see highlights glamour and poise over knowledge and blurs fact and “simulation.” And all this is crafted from the titillation of quick movement.

Such tactics make money in the short run, but what effects do they have on youth culture over time? The relationship of mass culture and individual habits of mind is complex, to be sure. But there is a significant disjunction between the kind of youngster business says it needs from the schools and the kind of youngster one could abstract from the youth culture that is so powerfully influenced by business interests.

If business truly wants to have a positive effect on the education of our children, the discussion must extend beyond the problems with our schools to the economy and culture in which those schools try to do their work. Business-school alliances will not result in fundamental, long-range educational change if the terms of the alliances essentially have the powerful passing judgment and bestowing dollars on beleaguered classrooms. A more complex and self-critical discussion will have to evolve. We’ll need more than the one-directional reforms symbolized by a billionaire standing before a blackboard.

Copyright © 2009 Mike Rose. This excerpt originally appeared in “Why School? Reclaiming Education for All of Us” by Mike Rose, published by The New Press. Printed here with permission by The New Press.

Continued: Blinded by Reform

Part Three: Blinded by Reform

It’s gotten lost in the splashier news, but big things are going on at the U.S. Department of Education.

Following on the unprecedented federal reach of No Child Left Behind, the Obama administration is extending further and putting serious money behind its education initiatives, inviting states and districts to compete for federal dollars. The department wants to increase the community college graduation rate. For K-12, it wants to stimulate the production of better state standards and tests, measure teacher effectiveness, turn around failing schools and increase the number of charter schools. Through a third initiative it wants to spark innovation and scale up the best of local academic programs.

This is a moment of real promise for American education, from kindergarten through college. It has even created the season’s oddest political couple: With the Department of Education’s blessing, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and the Rev. Al Sharpton are about to tour the country for educational reform.

Reform is in the air. But within many of these reforms are the seeds of their undoing.

For example, the Education Department is putting a lot of stock in charter schools as “engines of innovation”—in fact, it will not consider a state’s proposal if the state has a cap on charters. Yet a number of research studies—the most recent from Stanford—demonstrate that charter schools on average are no better or worse than the regular public schools around them. Some charters are sites of fresh ideas and robust education, but so are magnet schools, and career academies, and—we seem to have forgotten this—regular old schools with strong leadership and a critical mass of good teachers. But the reformers’ overvaluation of charter schools seems to dim their view of these varied manifestations of excellence.

Another example is the department’s attempt to link evaluation of teacher quality to student performance. (Merit pay could also follow.) And, again, the department will not consider a state’s proposal if the state outlaws such linkage of evaluation and student performance.

This linkage has a common-sense quality to it, especially what is called “value-added” analysis: that is, the degree to which a class’ test scores improve from the beginning of the school year to the end. Yet among experts in educational testing and measurement, there is a good deal of disagreement over the legitimacy of using these techniques to judge teacher quality. There are a host of factors that can affect scores: the non-random mix of students in a class, the students’ previous teachers, the lobbying of senior teachers for higher-scoring classes or the assignment of such classes to a principal’s favored teachers. There are also technical issues with the analysis of the test data. And there are significant conceptual concerns about exactly what the tests are measuring. In fact, the National Research Council, the prestigious, nonpartisan government agency, has just issued a statement reinforcing all of these concerns.

The Department of Education champions “evidence-based” and “data-driven” practice. Why, then, does the department espouse approaches that warrant scrutiny?

I think there are three interrelated reasons.

Given the immense pressure in politics for a quick result, there is a tendency in social policy toward single-shot, magic-bullet solutions, solutions that are marketable and have rhetorical panache but are simplified responses to complex problems. Charter schools will transform American education, or the linking of student test scores to teacher effectiveness will pressure teachers to change the way they teach and their expectations for what students can achieve.

This magic-bullet thinking is enabled by the paucity of schoolhouse-level knowledge of teaching and learning in the formation of educational policy. Not many policy analysts have taught school and, with few exceptions, those who have taught spent only a youthful year or two in the ranks. More troubling is something I have witnessed over the years: On-the-ground, intimate knowledge of teaching and learning is not valued, and is seen as an imprecise distraction from the consideration of broader economic and management principles that lead to systemic change. It’s like setting up a cardiology clinic without the advice of cardiologists.

The third element involves the rhetoric of reform. The advocates of the current model of test-based accountability have been very successful in depicting their critics as “anti-reform traditionalists,” as “special interests” or, the kiss of death, as members of the “education establishment.” 

There is a lot to say about the accuracy of this depiction, for many who are tarred as establishment traditionalists have a long history of challenging traditional school practice and working to change it. But for now I want to focus on the way this demonizing rhetoric can jeopardize the work of the reformers themselves.

Take, for example, the concern expressed by teachers’ unions about linking student test scores to teacher evaluation. It is easy to characterize these concerns as special-interest pleading, but some of the evidence cited by the unions comes from researchers with no vested interest in teachers’ bread-and-butter issues. (One such researcher is a member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.) When legitimate concerns about reform techniques are easily dismissed as “anti-reform,” then you have a closed policy system, one shielded from self-correction. 

It is good news indeed that school reform has become a top national priority, that the ways schools are structured, children are taught and teachers evaluated have become issues worthy of federal attention. But for reforms to be effective and sustained, they need to be grounded on the best we know and examined carefully and from multiple perspectives. 

Continued: 21st Century Skills: Education’s New Cliché

Part Four: 21st Century Skills: Education’s New Cliché

In all the current talk about school reform, there is one phrase that you will hear in every proposal, whether it comes from the president or the local school board. That phrase is 21st century skills. Provide students with 21st century skills for a 21st century economy. The label is a powerful one, heralding a new era, high-tech and prosperous.

But like so much in education reform, an idea that has some merit can quickly get reduced to a cliché. In one document I read, the phrase 21st century skills was repeated 25 times in less than two pages. And once you make your way through the cant, the 21st-century-skills approach has some troubling implications for education.

What are these skills? There are a number of definitions and lists, some running up to nine pages. Here’s a summary drawn from the Southern Regional Education Board. Twenty-first century skills include the ability to use a range of electronic technologies to access, synthesize and apply information. The ability to think critically and creatively and evaluate the products of one’s thinking. The ability to communicate effectively and collaborate with others, particularly in diverse and multicultural settings.

The range of skills is admirable, as is the intention that they apply to all students—an equity imperative. But what’s new about them? They sound like the skills one would have gotten from a good 20th century education—or from a lot further back than that.

You’ll find discussion of evaluating evidence or communicating effectively in Aristotle. The exception would be the emphasis on electronic media, but even here the underlying competencies—evaluating sources, synthesizing information—are good old-fashioned ones. 

Why begrudge the 21st-century-skills advocates their use of the politically effective mantle of newness?

The characterization of these skills as new implies that they haven’t been taught before. And this characterization plays into the inaccurate claim—popular in some conservative reform circles—that America’s schools have failed on a grand scale. This dangerous claim keeps us from drawing on what we already do well, and creates a false separation between one educational era and another. The rhetoric of the new plays into our easy dichotomizing of “old is bad / new is good” and our fetish for the next big thing—the examination of which ought to be a 21st century skill.

Of broader concern is the philosophy of education embodied in this reform.

As extensive as some of the lists of 21st century skills are, there are topics you won’t find: aesthetics, intellectual play, imagination, the pleasure of a subject, wonder. The focus of the lists—even when creativity is mentioned—is overwhelmingly on utility and workplace productivity. 

The irony is that a rich engagement with the subjects that are central to this skills-based reform—mathematics, science, electronic technology—involves for many young enthusiasts (not to mention experts) these same imaginative and aesthetic qualities. But the utilitarian concentration of the lists on production precludes these less tangible, but intellectually important, aspects of a good education.

The 21st-century-skills philosophy of education is an economic one. The primary goal is to create efficient and effective workers. Twenty-first century skills for the 21st century organization man and woman.

The economic motive has always figured in the spread of mass education in the United States, but recently it has predominated, edging out all the other reasons we send kids to school: civic, social, ethical, developmental. Even those 21st century skills that do deal with the civic, such as cross-cultural understanding, are expressed in terms of workplace effectiveness. 

Take, for example, these items drawn from the advocacy group Partnership for 21st Century Skills:

• Understand, negotiate and balance diverse views and beliefs to reach workable solutions, particularly in multicultural environments.
• Leverage social and cultural differences to create new ideas and increase both innovation and quality of work.

These are worthy, and we certainly could benefit from their spirit of cooperation. But the focus is very much on getting something done in the workplace. There are other important educational and civic goals related to interacting with others of different backgrounds and beliefs. For starters, there is knowledge of cultural practices—of the very notion of culture—along with the appreciation of our common humanity. There might be nothing immediately “leveraged” from such understanding, but it has great civic and personal value.

This is a promising time for education. Reform is a priority in a number of states, and the federal government is about to infuse an unprecedented amount of money into the schools. All this is happening at a time of great anxiety about the economy, so a focus on the workplace has understandable appeal. But we need to be careful to not let that anxiety narrow the purpose of education in America, regardless of what century we are in. 

Continued: Race to the Top of What? Education Is About More Than Jobs

Part Five: Race to the Top of What? Education Is About More Than Jobs

The race is on. Forty-one states have just finished the mad dash to submit proposals for the Obama education initiative, Race to the Top. Now that the first round of competition is over we should be asking the basic questions that got lost in the flurry: What is the true purpose of all this reform? What should it be? Why do we send our kids to school? 

The answer given for decades, from the national to the local level, from Democrats and Republicans, is that education prepares the young for the world of work and enables the nation to maintain global economic pre-eminence. There is an occasional nod to the civic purpose of schooling in No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, but that goal pales next to the economic justification.

To be sure, economic prosperity has long provided a potent incentive to fund and improve schools in the United States, but it is only one of multiple goals of education in a democracy. The architects of public education knew this. In a landmark report to the Massachusetts Board of Education in 1848, state Secretary of Education Horace Mann did make the economic argument—original at the time—that education is the great equalizer, fostering social mobility and national prosperity. But this economic goal was embedded in a celebration of the physical, intellectual, civic and moral goals of schooling. 

We need to reclaim that broader vision, for we have terribly narrowed our thinking about school. Our tunnel vision is dangerous because the reasons we give for education affect what we teach and how we teach it. Vocational education provides a cautionary tale of what a strictly economic focus can yield.

When vocational education was being formulated in the first decades of the last century, some proponents had an egalitarian conception of a curriculum that integrated the manual and mental to foster intellectual, social and civic development. But as VocEd materialized, much of that ideal was lost to a strictly functional job-training curriculum that, ironically, wasn’t very successful at preparing students for the new work of the day. A major effort of recent reforms of vocational education (now called career and technical education) has been to recapture some of those earlier goals. The best education for work is one that is broader than job preparation, that emphasizes literacy, quantitative reasoning, problem solving, creativity—and that gets at all of this through a range of human expression, from mathematics to the arts. 

Economic preparation is a primary goal of every nation in the world today, repressive societies included. Shouldn’t education in a democracy have a richer set of goals? Even if our policymakers seem to lose track of this broader purpose, students and their parents on the whole do not.

I’ve taught for 40 years—kindergarten to graduate school to adult literacy programs—and one thing that has become very clear to me is the multiple purposes and meanings that education can have for all involved. To be sure, even young people are aware that school will affect their chance of getting ahead. “Math will take you a long way in life,” a middle-school student tells me. But there are many other reasons that people take to education. It provides intellectual stimulation (“She’s teaching us new things that we couldn’t do before,” another middle-schooler observes). Students enjoy the protected social setting and the connections they establish with adults. Many people, young and not so young, discover a passion. Our worlds get bigger. School is one of the primary institutions where we define who we are.

What is telling is that even in programs explicitly targeted to economic advancement—community college certification programs, for example—there is typically much more going on than job preparation. Students report that they are going back to school to be better able to raise their kids, or to feel better about themselves, or to open up new options—economic options, but intellectual and social ones as well. In fact, one of the things that strike me about working with adults returning to school is how often the experience leads them to re-evaluate themselves, to see themselves in a new light.

The way we express the purpose of schooling shapes our collective definition of the educated person. If we want our youth to thrive and stay in school, the goal of all current school reforms, then we need an education policy that embodies the full range of reasons people go to school in a free society.

In Search of (Grass)Roots

 

The New York Times’ most recent story about Haiti summarizes the current situation of growing dissatisfaction and impatience with the little progress that has been made five months after the earthquake. This atmosphere that political scientist Robert Fatton describes as a period of “perilous stagnation,” has descended upon Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas is highlighted by people’s increased frustration with the Haitian government and major non-governmental organizations. Among the organizations that have dominated coverage of relief work are The Red Cross and the United Nations both of which has received thousands in donations towards relief work.

Yet untold numbers of grassroots organizations are also at work in Haiti, some that were created long before and some that have sprung up since, organizing locally since the earthquake. Mainstream media sources in the United States have rarely mentioned this type of local organizing initiated by activists and every day Haitians. Despite this inattention that we find in conventional news sources, there are many examples of people organizing as individuals and in groups and using their networks to do so. I am devoting this post to looking at a few of these in the hopes that people will follow the work that they are doing and look for more information about the different types of organizing taking place on the ground.

As an organization that addresses the issue of violence, KOFAVIV the Commission of Women Victims for Victims, is a coalition of survivors of different forms of violence who have joined together to advocate for victims of violence and affect change by educating and preventing future violence. The group, which lost about 300 members in the earthquake continues to organize out of dire necessity. Members have taken the protection of women and girls in the tents into their own hands, setting up watch in the night or accompanying people on their way to the latrines. This type of intervention has become necessary due to the lack of protective measures and the ineffective procedures offered by the police and MINUSTAH. Today Malya Villard-Appollon, a member of KOFAVIV, will testify before the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva along with lawyers from MADRE and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. As she herself has stated, Villard-Appollon heads to Geneva with the following goals: “We want to tell the Human Rights Council that the systems for protecting women in the camps are broken. We get no protection from the police, or the peacekeepers. We feel we do not have access to the rooms where decisions about our safety are made. We need the support and commitment of the international community.”

Papaye Peasant Movement (MPP), based in the Central Plateau, is a peasant movement for a sustainable economy and participatory democracy. Since the earthquake MPP has been instrumental is responding to the vast numbers of people leaving Port-au-Prince to resettle in more rural areas. Among the efforts they have taken on since the earthquake, there is the provision of food for people in the hospital in Hinche as well as the provision of food to assist peasant families taking in survivors, and the creation of a shelter to be run out of the Papaye training Center. Because MPP has a long history of grassroots organizing they have been well positioned to respond to the new needs coming out of the earthquake. 

Many of these groups have a history of local organizing that precedes January 12, 2010, while others have been formed in response to post-earthquake needs. Biwo Doleans Sosyal was started by the staff of Bibliothèque Soleil in Carrefour-Feuilles. Bibliothèque Soleil is a community library that was started by Haitian author Pierre Clitandre and his daughter Nadège Clitandre, in order to empower and invest in the youth of Carrefour-Feuilles. The purpose of Biwo Doleans Sosyal, which emerged as an outgrowth of Biblotheque Soleil, is to offer emotional support to those in the Carrefour-Feuilles area who lost loved ones in the earthquake, as well as provide them with other types of assistance. Most notably, this Biwo Doleans has initiated a documentation plan, creating oral histories by documenting the stories of what people were doing as the earthquake happened and what they have been doing in the aftermath. This important step demonstrates how solidarity can translate into the creation of history.

Similarly, the students of the Ciné Lekol in Jacmel, have also turned to history making—using their training to document the footage of the quake as well as the stories of people affected by it. The Cine Institute Recovery and Reportage Blog is devoted to using visual imagery and cinema to document the devastation from the earthquake as well as the reconstruction process. The work of Ciné Institute highlights the role of art as a form of advocacy and memory preservation. Through the use of film, the Institute has gone from being a center for education to becoming a movement for educating others in the aftermath of the earthquake.

Another group of women that have joined together in Port-au-Prince to create change is Plateforme des femmes citoyennes, a coalition of women’s organizations whose goal is to lobby for the inclusion of women’s needs in the rebuilding process. The coalition carries on intentionally in the spirit of the work begun by Myriam Merlet, Anne-Marie Coriolan, and Magali Marcelin three Haitian feminist leaders who perished in the earthquake. This group is a reminder of how devastating loss can transform into new opportunity. By harnessing the energy of those committed to honoring the legacy of what was lost, Plateforme des femmes citoyennes is a reminder that women’s movements did not end with the earthquake.

There have also been transnational efforts likewise centered around women such as Poto Fanm + Fi , a global solidarity initiative made up of women’s rights advocates from Haiti and in the diaspora in order to “to support the needs, voices, and leadership of Haitian women and girls, and grassroots organizations in Rebuilding Haiti.” Poto Fanm was responsible for creating a “Gender Shadow Report” of the official PDNA in order to account for some of the gaps concerning women and girls and to offer solutions for how to account for their future needs in the reconstruction process as well as to advocate for women’s leadership and incorporation.

The grassroots nature of Haitian activism goes as far back as the Revolution (1791-1804) when slaves organized themselves to topple slavery and begin a nation from the bottom up. In many ways grassroots are an integral part of our Haitian roots. The wide-ranging responses by both established and newly formed organizations demonstrates Haitians' ability and constant commitment to effecting change in innovative ways. Besides these organizations there are countless individuals who organized in their neighborhoods to pull people out from underneath rubble, to establish places for shelter from the rain, to provide for medical, health, and food needs of those around them. Indeed, grassroots organizing at its best simply means taking matters into one’s own hands to get something done from the bottom up.

RMJC

 

Publié par Tande à l'adresse 10:46