"I wouldn't put up with that for one second."

One of the great songs from the Great American Songbook is "My Funny Valentine" by Rodgers and Hart. Every time I hear it, I think of the woman whose response to hearing the song or to someone's making a reference to it or something was that she "wouldn't put up with that for one second."

For those of you who don't know, the lyrics --- like so much of Rodgers and Hart --- are a gently ironic but wholeheartedly sentimental expression of love; love not because the subject of it is handsome or brilliant but because he is loved. In the words of the song, "Every day is Valentine's Day."

But for some, maybe for many, and especially these days, the way the song gets there is unacceptable, not a way that self-sufficient, no-one-pushes-me-around, in-charge types can tolerate:

      "Your looks are laughable,
     Unphotographable.
   
     Is your figure less than Greek?
     Is your mouth a little weak?
     When you open it to speak
     Are you smart?"

The irony is that the woman in my story is a heart-breakingly pretty, reasonably smart, highly competent person with a compelling personality, a born leader, whose fortunate combination of characteristics has helped make her a great success in the world.

Which gets us to the point. As is true in so much of Rodgers and Hart, we are reminded that no one is perfect and that love is not earned but given.

No one is perfect, not even the smartest or the prettiest or the wisest or the most athletic or the most talented: No one gets everything.We all have strengths and weaknesses. We all have flaws, no matter how wonderful we are. We all possess wondrous characteristics no matter how flawed we are.

I don't know if it's true that making a list of desirable characteristics is an activity that is more common among women than among men. It's certainly true that in movies, it is much more often portrayed as an activity of women. But whoever is doing it is making a mistake. Desirable characteristics may logically lead us to make practically beneficial decisions, including advantageous or pleasurable marriages, but they have nothing to do with how and why we give our hearts.

Which gets us back to the song. The singer says, "Your looks are laughable, unphotographable. But you're my favorite work of art." After asking her rhetorical questions, the singer says, "But don't change a hair for me, not if you care for me, stay little valentine, stay! Each day is Valentine's Day."

We are not loved because we have earned it but because love has been given. Despite our desire to control our lives, there is precious little we can do to ensure that someone else will love us. And despite our desire to control the lives of other people, it is absolutely wrong to work at making other people become what we think is lovable.

What an amazing blessing that anyone would think of any of us this way, as "my favorite work of art." To know us in all our pain and foolishness and selfishness and still say "don't change a hair for me, not if you care for me."

That would be, you know, like awesome.

And devoutly to be wished.








,

Neomastadonianism

Which can be read as a call to a radical new political philosophy or as a bunch of aphorisms:

Knowledge matters and some knowledge is more important than other knowledge.

Mullets, goatees, scruffiness, and other hirsute affectations are pronouncements of self-importance and should be avoided

It is wiser, healthier, and happier to believe in something far more powerful and far better than oneself.

We are all flawed and suffering and deserve compassion; and we are all obliged to live up to the highest moral principles and deserve the consequences when we do not

All institutions --- political, religious, and academic --- exist for the betterment of people, not to achieve, maintain, and increase their own power.

Having a rich mental library which allows one to make and to understand a variety of appropriate cultural allusions is much better than not having one

Precise vocabulary, correct grammar, syntactical clarity, and logical thinking are personal and social goods, not arbitrary impositions

Freedom is neither license nor conformity; it is a burden and must be chosen

Much in the natural world is beautiful and can be inspiring; but much is cold, implacable, uncaring, and violently hierarchical, which we should not emulate

Marriage is a social contract, not an individual choice, with obligations to the community, especially to one's children, that take precedence over personal preference

We owe kindness, generosity, and patience to one another; and we have the right to defend ourselves against physical, psychological, and emotional abuse

Not all that is wrong is illegal

It is possible and preferable to have a principled aesthetic; Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms are superior to Chuck Berry and the Beatles, and the reasons can be known and articulated; we are not limited to liking and not liking

The deepest wisdom about the human condition is expressed within the great traditions from around the world and we ignore them at our peril

Trustworthiness is a far more effective social bond than the law

Technology is always and everywhere a means, not an end; a neutral; a tool the uses of which must be chosen

Judgments of other should be based on competence and character, neither of which is predetermined by race, ethnicity, or cultural background

Loyalty to the right thing is a virtue; courage in the service of the right thing is a virtue

Any speech or action which is meant to call attention to oneself or to claim superiority to others should be avoided

Content and Character

I teach a class for undergraduates who are on their way to teach in public elementary schools. Last week, the Director of Curriculum and Instruction for LAUSD came to talk to the class about the new Core Content Standards, an attempt to create --- against all odds --- a set of national standards. She gave an excellent presentation which was well-received by the students. It was, obviously, all about the content --- the what --- of teaching.

This week, I spent the first half of class going over the 10 most important points that I took from her presentation: backward-design, text-based interpretation of literature (rather than reader response), evidence-based writing with a purpose (rather than merely responding to prompts), teaching clusters of standards within a subject and clusters of standards across subjects, and so on.

In other words, my students had experienced a full class-and-a-half of presentation and discussion about the importance of content, how to think about it, how to plan for the presentation of it, and how to help students learn how to grapple with ideas rather than just taking in information.

After the break, we turned to a discussion of the reading which led, in a not entirely linear way, to my asking them about the teacher(s) that they really remembered. Several volunteered stories about those teachers they remembered, all of them with a kind of enthusiastic fondness. Then I asked them what characteristics seemed to be common in all these stories; the answers came quickly; about this they didn't have to think: warm, caring, happy, enthusiastic, energetic. In other words, all strictly personal characteristics.

Not a word about mastery of subject or skill in the techniques of delivery; nothing about either content or method.

What they cared about had nothing to do with content and everything to do with character.

Those who do not live in the world of public schools and who don't pay much attention to public schooling as a political issue will not be aware that ever since the publication of the federal pamphlet "A Nation at Risk" in 1983, the several states and later the federal government have devoted tremendous amounts of time, money, and human capital to the process of defining what the content should be. First the individual states defined their own academic content standards and now, with the new Core Content Standards, there is something very close to a set of national academic content standards.

How to reconcile this very focused emphasis by all those responsible for creating legislation regarding public schooling with the very real life-experience of my students?

How to reconcile my own stated and oft-argued position that not only content but a very specific version of content is necessary for the development of good individuals and good citizens with my students' implicit position that what matters is the person of the teacher?

Mostly I'm going to leave this as a question, but I will say this. I think my students may be in tune with a deep truth: that elementary schools teach reading, writing, and computing, at various levels for various students; and that secondary schools provide a place for individual development by providing reasonable safety, by providing opportunities for participation in academic and other activities, and by otherwise staying out of the way. Outside of that we may have far less control than we like to think we do.

Just in case someone wants to take this as a rejection of the importance of the academic and the intellectual, I will make clear that it is not. By temperament and training, my interest is in helping students to think for themselves which requires real knowledge, not just information but deep understanding. I'd like to see much more of this than there is currently.

But imagining that we can define curriculum and then get certain predictable results --- a la the industrial model --- is, I have come to think, foolish.

But being the kind of person who touches the hearts and minds of young people, touches them with warmth and kindness and caring and enthusiastic participation in their lives at school, is not only wise but priceless.

Humiliation and Humility

I belong to a group of professional and semi-professional philosophers who meet every 6 weeks or so to discuss something read in common. The last time we met, we had read an article by a political philosopher who was arguing for more and better social democracy. As part of his argument he contended that a guaranteed income would be better than the current system of social services because of the "humiliation" suffered by those who depend on various versions of the dole.

This was one of those statements that was made with such rhetorical smoothness and such a strong sense of authority that the tendency was to accept it and go right on. But there was something about it that caught my attention. Because we didn't discuss it at the meeting, there was no chance for me to pursue whatever this brief flash was, but I think I now know what it was.

There is something intuitively obvious in a claim that those who are dependent on services provided by the state would inevitably feel humiliated. And yet my experience undermines this contention. Ever since having been "downsized" out of regular work, I have been to some significant extent dependent on a variety of services provided by what Peter Sagal wryly refers to as "the great socialist paradise": Social Security, unemployment insurance, Medicare, and a more-or-less union-guaranteed teaching job at a local university.

There is much about this situation that I don't like. I have never been good at following orders and have spent most of my life, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, trying to be embraced and affirmed by the institution without ever really buying into the conformity that is always and inevitably demanded by institutions. The services I refer to are provided by huge, faceless bureaucracies, in which nothing really matters except the rules, the forms that demonstrate that the rules have been followed, and the schedule which has to be met in submitting those forms. For someone with my temperament, this is difficult.

And yet the reality is that I have never felt humiliated. Annoyed, certainly; put out that I have to fill out another one of these damn forms, absolutely. But never humiliated; not even embarrassed or patronized. In fact, the few times that I have dealt with an actual person, either face-to-face or on the phone, the transaction has been pleasant and efficient.

I think that to some extent the reason for this is that I have achieved, here in my dotage, a measure of humility. I am righteously angry about what was done to me but I also know, in some deep and meaningful sense, that bad things happen, many of them much worse than what happened to me. So I don't feel much temptation to throw a tantrum, stamp my feet, and hold my breath 'til I turn purple. For this I am grateful.

But there's something else to be found in the un-packing of this situation. In some very real way, all these services are the modern, mass society version of our providing for one another in times of need. We don't live in villages anymore or even in small towns. We don't all know one another and aren't in the habit of caring for one another in the way that small, intimate groups used to do. Instead, we have organized and rationalized the mechanics of care: people need money or food or medical care, we have created institutions to provide what is needed. We all contribute through taxes and we all can draw on these services.

A faceless bureaucracy, yes, and an imperfect one. But when one stops taking it for granted, or focusing on its imperfections, and thinks about what a remarkable, unlikely thing it is, gratitude is the only appropriate response.

One of the opening bits at the recent Democratic convention infamously said that "government is the only thing we all belong to." If the people who see the world that way are ever able to put it into effect in practical ways, we are in terrible trouble. But it is also true that in a country with a population of over 300 million people, most of them concentrated in huge urban centers and participants in an economic system which is dependent on dynamism and its inevitable disruptions, only government could provide the services that our local, state, and federal governments do. And for this we should all be grateful.

Tolerating Intolerance

I have been teaching college undergraduates since 1997. Almost all of them have been nice people and many of them worked hard, but not very many of them were interested in what these days we call "critical thinking." The ones who were willing to work hard did the assigned work and expected that that would be the end of it. When asked to consider opposing ideas, or to make an argument for one position or another, or to evaluate either the validity or the truth of a logical proposition, more often than not they were surprised and sometimes even offended. There was a rule, a common understanding, that I had broken. I think you could even say that, in their eyes, I had broken faith with them. My understanding of what education should be and theirs were very different.

They were also convinced that a kind of soft moral relativism was the proper attitude to have; that making judgments about the beliefs or practices of other people was not nice, and that niceness was a kind of ultimate moral standard. (I remember a bumper sticker from several years ago that read "Mean People Suck": it seemed obvious to me that "mean people" meant those who made judgments about other people. My sense was that all moral categories had been reduced to "nice" and "mean.")

And yet they were doctrinaire about one thing. They had been convinced that the proper moral position was not just to be tolerant of difference, not even just accepting of it, but to be affirming and celebrating of difference. In the otherwise secular and value-neutral university, this was doctrinal orthodoxy. Questioning it was beyond the pale and meant that you did not have the proper "dispositions" to be in the community; even bringing it up in a purely theoretical and hypothetical way ran the risk of one's being branded a racist. Faculty could not be hired, or once hired could be denied tenure; students could be denied entrance to programs or be denied the license or credential they were pursuing.

I describe this not to address the basic issue of whether this is a good thing for the university but, rather, to bring up a difficult philosophical and political question that is implied by this position.

Are all things to be tolerated? All those students who saw themselves as moral relativists quickly withdrew from that position when asked about murder and rape. These were wrong. Period. But the point is not that they were not really moral relativists; the point is that when asked about less obvious examples of questionable behavior, they were deeply conflicted.

I taught people who were on their way to be teachers so the examples we examined were examples from the classroom. "What would you do," I asked, "if you had students in your classroom who were verbally or even physically abusing other students because it was part of their cultural heritage? Boys from cultures where girls and women were inherently inferior? Members of opposing tribes or clans or ethnic groups whose parents had brought their feuds with them when they immigrated?"

Some students had no problem with this dilemma because their attitude was that if people chose to come here they should obey our rules, be the way that we believe people should be. This, of course, is as mindless a position as is absolute tolerance. The students who were willing to grapple with the question, on the other hand, were willing to admit that they were deeply conflicted: on the one hand, they had been taught that all differences were to be celebrated but on the other hand they intuitively realized that such behaviors were unacceptable in the classroom. How to reconcile this?

I raise this because this is a vital and reverberating question in our current politics. To some extent domestically but especially in foreign policy, what is the right position to take toward intolerance and how should that position be put into action?

To put it another way, if a person believes in tolerance toward others, does that rightly include being tolerant of those who are intolerant?

There is a current bumper sticker that says "Coexist" with a variety of religious symbols on it. I think it's accurate to say that most of us in the modern West believe in coexistence, believe in tolerating those whose beliefs and practices we disagree with in the interests of the greater good, the common good.

But what do when confronted by people whose most basic and profound belief is that they are not only right but that those who do not believe and practice the same things deserve to die?

We believe in tolerance, in coexistence. What do we do when we come face-to-face with those who do not?

Presidential Politics and Public Schools

Way back in the Summer and Fall of 2000, then-candidate George W. Bush campaigned on the importance of public schooling. Although he had not coined the phrase, he was quite forceful --- and quite right --- in calling public schooling the key civil rights issue of our time. Then two things happened which drastically changed the calculus: the first, of course, was 9/11; the second was No Child Left Behind.

The events of 9/11 removed any possibility of by-then President Bush's concentrating on domestic issues generally and public schooling in particular. Instead he successfully pushed for the Federal legislation that came to be called No Child Left Behind, a top-down, bureaucracy-laden, rewards-and-punishment program of tremendous pressure for public schools to conform to specific demands for content and for measures of accountability.

Rather than an on-going process of grappling with the difficult questions regarding the purposes of public schooling, how those purposes could best be achieved with a mass population in overly large schools and overly large classrooms, what the best content would be, what the best methods would be, and so on, NCLB was meant to be a kind of machine that, left on its own, would ensure better public schooling.

The result was that the "standards movement," which had great potential for improving teaching and learning, was hijacked for the narrow purposes of scoring at prescribed levels on standardized tests. Rather than encouraging their faculties to improve student learning, principals all over the country hectored their faculties to raise test scores. Those of you who are not teachers will have to take my word for it that the psychological, pedagogical, and epistemological differences between the two approaches are huge.

In short, the "standards movement" had resulted not in improvements in teaching and learning but in a kind of mindless passing of information to ensure better test scores. What had originally aimed at better teaching had succeeded in almost eliminating good teaching altogether.

Why does this matter? And why is it important that no politician on any level that I know anything about is talking about the importance of public schooling during the campaign of 2012?

In a number of profound ways, public schools are public institutions: we all pay for public schools and --- all public budgets taken together --- we spend more on public schooling than on any other category; because the state requires that children be sent to school, and because in any given year, between 90% and 95% of all school-age children are in public schools, it is very close to a mandate that everyone goes to public school; and the policies and programs in place in public schools are defined by popularly elected legislators, at the state level and at the local level through school boards.

The point is that we are invested in public schooling whether we ever think about them or not. What do we want from them? And why? And how should that be achieved?

The answers to these questions are not obvious. As a profoundly public issue, it is inevitable that a pluralistic and diverse public will have differing, and sometimes opposed, views.

The problem --- at least I think it's a problem --- is that no one among our leaders and would-be leaders has anything to say about these questions or seems interested in addressing them now or in the near future.

Our children are --- in fact --- the future. And public schools have been seen as an essential foundation of a mass democracy since the early years of the 19th Century. As Thomas Jefferson famously said, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

Public discourse here in the early Fall of 2012 is dominated by talk of jobs, growth, entitlements, scandals, and accusations, while one of the truly important issues of our time goes ignored.

"Look to yourself, Anthony"

Recently, I have been indulging a fairly severe case of weltschmerz. As is often the case, simply realizing what was going on was a big step toward getting out of it. In that odd way that things sometimes work, the diagnosis came from an unexpected source; not a spiritual director or a self-help guru but a physical therapist and her intern. I was complaining of fatigue, sluggishness, ennui, malaise --- a lot of who-cares-ness. My PT listened to this both sympathetically and empathetically and then called in the intern, who was passing by, briefly explained, then asked young Ashley what she thought was the problem. "The world," young Ashley said without hesitation.

It was so true, so clear, so wonderfully innocent that I almost laughed myself off the table. It was, indeed, as simple as that. Things are not right and the reminders of that are, if one is paying any attention, non-stop, in your face 24-7.

(By the way, the fact that "in your face 24-7" is now accepted as not only correct but as a fairly high level of discourse is itself a reminder that things are not right.)

What to do about it? The answer is, of course, obvious, although profoundly counter-intuitive: Stop paying attention to the world.

But for those of us who have grown up with a deep sense of responsibility to others, this feels not only practically impossible but morally reprehensible. One would have to choose consciously to avoid the political battles, the natural disasters, and all the silliness and heinousness that humans are prone to and that make such fascinating stories. This is so far from what we have been taught, so far from what we are used to, so far from what the engines of "the media" want us to do, that even imagining it is psychologically nearly impossible.

So let me help.

There is a story that the greatest of the Desert Fathers, St. Anthony of the Desert, told on himself and that I have always thought contained a profoundly important lesson for us all. Anthony had been looking around and had become ever more aware that the virtuous suffered and the vicious prospered. As the old hymn goes,

          Tempted and tried, we're oft made to wonder
          Why it should be thus, all the day long;
          While there are others living about us
          Never molested, though in the wrong.

Anthony was getting more and more angry and as he wandered and wondered he cried out to God something along the lines of "How can you let this happen?" One imagines that he ranted at some length, quite possibly becoming more and more self-righteously angry. Eventually, God spoke to Anthony saying "Look to yourself, Anthony. These things are not for you to know."

One doesn't have to be what we now refer to as a "control freak" to imagine one's response to that as some version of "But....but.....but....." We have been taught --- one might say conditioned --- to pay attention to everything, to have an opinion about everything, to do not only the right thing but the best thing. Ignorance may be bliss but should still be avoided at all costs.

But God's admonition to Anthony is not unique. Alcoholics Anonymous counsels its members not to concern oneself with anything outside one's own "hula hoop." Keeping it simple, as AA preaches, requires giving up control over the things one cannot control.

But this is a negative counsel; that is, it is advice about what not to do. What is the positive version? I believe that it is to pay attention to one's own being, whether that is through meditation or contemplative prayer or long walks or listening to Bach cantatas.

This has its own dangers, of course. Paying attention to oneself can slide into solipsism. But the dangers of being sucked into the world, into a maelstrom of imponderable and uncontrollable phenomena, is a sure path to world-weariness.

The duty of the poet

"The duty of the poet is to bolster the nation's courage," said Professor Sullivan to our Chaucer class in the Spring of 1962.

Almost 50 years --- and how many cultural revolutions --- later, this seems not only odd, not only a contradiction to what we know to be true, but an actual affront to our deepest and most important sensibilities.

The artist has a duty??!! What nonsense.

Well, perhaps. Perhaps the current wisdom that each of us is responsible only to himself; that self-actualization is the only goal that matters; and that art and perhaps all of life is about self-expression only --- perhaps these currently conventional truths are true. Perhaps there is nothing more than "It's all about me."

Frank Sullivan believed something different and was using Chaucer, his work, and the time he lived in to make his point.

We were studying "The Canterbury Tales," a series of stories which, one after another, reveal the vanities, self-delusion, cupidity, venality, and self-importance of the tellers. But Chaucer never condemns his characters. They are presented to us as flawed --- they're human, after all --- but still understandable, enjoyable, and lovable. Humbly laughing at our own foibles and failure is the goal.

The "Tales" are never anything but life-affirming because of Chaucer's deep affection for his characters.

Professor Sullivan contrasted this attitude with the attitude of most of 20th Century literature: the Theatre of the Absurd, the "angry young men", the "slice of life" dramatists, and the rest. Their response to the difficulties and dangers and horrors of the 20th Century was to give in to despair and then to inflict that view on the rest of us.

But Chaucer lived in a time of danger and horror, too, the time of the Plague, which had killed a third of the population of Europe, nearly emptied the cities, and inhibited social, cultural, and economic progress for a century or more. Sullivan's point was that people in Chaucer's time were just as afraid of the Plague as we were of the Bomb.

(Six months later, many of us spent a lot of time in the Chapel, praying that the nuclear standoff over the missiles in Cuba would not lead to the end of the world. Our fear of the Bomb was a very real thing and the comparison was rich.)

Chaucer, and Sullivan, believed that in times of trouble it was the duty of the poet --- the singer of songs, the teller of tales --- to tell stories that reminded us that life was worth living, that there are deeper meanings than the merely material, that courage and steadfastness in the face of adversity are admirable. To be reminded, as Aragorn says in Lord of the Rings, "There is always hope."

But in the last almost 50 years, the tellers of tales --- the makers of music, movies, and television --- have, for the most part, described the human condition as absurd and hopeless; all are greedy and selfish, it is "the war of all against all," everyone is in it for his own gain, and anyone who contends otherwise is either a naive fool or is working a scam.

We have gone beyond irony to post-irony, where mockery and ridicule are taken to be the proper response to anything and everything.

This is, without question, an understandable reaction to the horrors of the 20th Century which had no precedent in human history. Many of the smartest, best-educated, and most thoughtful among us concluded in what seemed like nothing but mere rationality that the whole Western project had been a delusion and that we were --- and there was certainly plenty of evidence to support such a conclusion --- nothing but cruel, vicious beasts barely held in tenuous control by the forces of society. Cynicism, nihilism, and pessimism then became not a failure of nerve but a courageous facing up to reality.

An understandable reaction, but wrong.

There are millions of people who see their lives as meaningful and live accordingly, without much help from the "poets" of our time. But how much better off we would be if the tellers of tales, the keepers of the informing myths, were to remind us that honor, nobility, sacrifice, and decency are not only possible but necessary; if the teachers, the clergymen, the musicians, the writers of fiction, and the makers of movies consistently reminded us of the deeper meanings of our lives.

The great chief Tecumseh is quoted as saying, "When the legends die, the dreams end; there is no more greatness." Or, from another tribal culture, The Book of Proverbs says, "Where there is no vision, the people perish."

In After Virtue, the philosopher Alisdair Macintyre refers to our time as a "new dark age" one in which "the barbarians are no longer waiting outside the gates but have been governing us for quite some time." He concludes the book by saying that "What we need is another, doubtless very different, St. Benedict." (See also.)

What we also need is another, doubtless very different, Geoffrey Chaucer.

An education for freedom

A liberal education is preparation for human maturity. It is a multifaceted concept which encompasses such things as the introduction into what is best in the culture; the preparation for responsible citizenship in a free society; the fostering of independent, flexible, and creative thought; the encouragement of informed and principled decision-making; the cultivation of leadership; the acquisition of significant knowledge; and a deep appreciation of core ethical values."

Or, to put it negatively, liberal education is opposed to indoctrination into either religious belief or political ideology and opposed to mere training for the sake of performing a function.

The goal of a liberal education is to free persons from the prisons of their ignorance and prejudice, not to confine them in new and better prisons of our design.

There are four reasons to strive for a liberal education, even though the marketplace presses for professional preparation.

The first is that it is the economically utilitarian thing to do. Our graduates will live in a world of global pluralism and a dynamic economy that demand innovation, creativity, and flexibility. They will interact with people from all over the world in ways that we can scarcely conceive today and the prediction is that they will probably have as many as 9 changes in career.

The best preparation for this kind of life is not a narrow technical training (much less an indoctrination into a particular belief system) but rather an immersion in the best that has been written, composed, and created over the course of human history, with nearly unlimited opportunities to think about, write about, discuss, and converse about.

The best preparation for intelligent, principled interaction with people different and yet the same is knowledge, thoughtfulness, and an understanding of the nearly infinite variety of human experience.

The second reason is that it is the politically expedient thing to do. If things continue the way they are going, our graduates will live in a world that is ever more democratic --- in the definition of popular culture, in how the news and the commentary on the news are disseminated, in how political candidates and office holders are known and judged.

In this kind of hyper-democracy, it is unimaginably important for the participants to be able and willing to read, write, listen, and speak with clarity, honesty, insight, and effect. The development of skills may get one a job, but it does not provide these abilities; liberal education does.

The third reason is that it is protection against manipulation, the only way to protect ourselves against the incredibly powerful and effective economic and political propaganda machines. We must be able to deconstruct, to analyze and interpret, to understand human cupidity and the temptations of wealth and power.

The fourth reason, and I think the most important, although the least directly utilitarian, is that it is the best preparation for freedom. Human beings were created to be free, and freedom requires making informed, principled decisions; that is, freedom requires taking on the burden of making one's own moral decisions, based on knowledge and understanding and using the tools of honest, logical thought. We were not meant to be mere performers of functions or mere political or religious toadies; we were meant to be free. And only a rich, complex mental library gives us the wherewithal to embrace that freedom despite its terrors.

21st Century Skills

One of the most basic truths about the school business is that there are always those who are absolutely sure about what public schools should be doing. They represent that phenomenon that religious writers refer to as enthusiasm, a "rapturous inspiration, an overly confident or delusory belief."

It is a sign of our foolishness as a species and also of our innocence that we are capable of embracing very different and even contradictory enthusiasms over time. The key is never to be too precise or too coherent about the logic of one's enthusiasm, neither the first premises, nor the called-for practices, nor the ultimate purposes. If one has been at it long enough, he or she could have been an enthusiast for the open classroom, for going back to basics, for whole language, for self-esteem, for school choice and vouchers, for the standards movement, for professional learning communities, and so on.

Another key is that the enthusiasm must be, in some obviously recognizable way, pertinent to the current situation, just enough so that people can immediately and easily see the connection between what is, what's needed, and what is being proposed.

Lately we have heard many cries from many sources that public schools should be giving students "21st Century skills." Conceptually, this phrase is a disaster: No one could possibly give a clear, coherent explanation of what it means. This vagueness is part of the attraction for people who traffic not in careful thought but in slogans.

It may be a conceptual disaster, but politically it's effective, for who could argue against students leaving their K-12 experience with anything less than those skills appropriate and necessary to leading a successful life in the 21st Century?

But what are those skills? I wonder what the answer to that question would have been in 1911. Would anyone alive 100 years ago have been able to imagine, to predict the explosion of innovation and creativity that has occurred during the last 60 years? Most people in 1911, if asked to define "20th Century skills" would have described those skills necessary to factory work.

We have every reason to believe that the process of innovation and creativity will only continue to produce a rate of change the specifics of which are impossible to predict.

The second problem with "21st Century skills" is that it assumes that the only important thing --- or, at least, the most important thing --- is skill, the ability to do something.

This emphasis on doing is both deeply modern and deeply American and it has served us well. But the emphasis on doing has often led to a neglect of knowledge, clear thinking, and wisdom.

It isn't just that "21st Century skills" is mere cant; it's that it ignores what is really important --- the acquisition of knowledge, the development of understanding, the training in how to think, and the careful evaluation of the perennial questions in order to acquire wisdom.

Circumstances change but human nature does not change. However the circumstances of the 21st Century change --- and there is every reason to believe that those circumstances will continue to change drastically --- human beings will still need what they have always needed: the ability to evaluate, to make judgments, to make informed, principled decisions.

Rather than embracing the current enthusiasm, those of us who are involved in schools should be asking, "How can we best help students learn to lead fully human lives?"

(Here is an expression of the more conventional view: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-steinberg-education-20101225,0,3381488.story )

The light shone in the darkness and the darkness grasped it not

For the 400 years between the Council of Trent and the 2nd Vatican Council, the concluding event of the Mass was the reading of the Gospel According to John, Chapter One, verses 1 - 14. There John says "the light shone in the darkness and the darkness grasped it not."

In a religious and spiritual and theological context, this is St. John describing in metaphorical terms what it meant for Jesus to come into the world, bringing the light of salvation, bringing "life, the light of men."

And the darkness of the world could neither understand nor enclose the light.

Like much in the pre-Vatican II mass, this was powerful because of its symbolic description, even though one would have to reflect on and grapple with poetic lines like this for a lifetime and probably still not fully understand.

I want to go sideways with this idea and treat not the theological nor the mystical levels of meaning but to consider how it might inform our own day-to-day practice in our circumstances.

This is, despite all the bright lights, a dark age. For those of us who pay perhaps too much attention to the manifestations of this darkness, it is salutary to consider those who every day in all their dealings manifest the light.

It is easy to pay attention to the signs of the darkness for we are reminded of it all the time: in music and movies, in the news in all its forms, in "reality" television and the various forms of Jerry Springerism, in "the spiteful, the stingy, and the rude" that we encounter every day.

What we have to choose to notice is the reality of millions upon millions of people who quietly choose every day to live with kindness, generosity, and patience. The teacher who never stops working at improving her craft and who goes to meet her students every morning full of optimism and hope. The coach who never gives up on his players (and never cheats to win). The nurse who treats the vulnerable with gentle kindness. The businessman who is not only honest in his dealings but considerate of the welfare of those with whom he does business. The skilled workers --- the plumbers and electricians and carpenters --- who take pride in their work and live up to the promises they make to their customers. The parents who wisely put the best interests of their children first, always, even at cost to themselves.

These are the people who are living in the light and, as always, the darkness doesn't get it.

Teaching and Baseball

Teaching is a lot like baseball. Both are games of mistakes, of nearly constant failure, of a kind of foolish faithfulness.

It's a cliche that baseball is a game of mistakes. The hitter who succeeds 3 times out of 10 is a star; 3 1/2 time out of 10 and he's a superstar. The pitcher who allows "only" 3 or 4 runs every 9 innings can have a long and successful career. And no fielder goes through a season without making an error. To play baseball is to be imperfect just as a matter of course.

(The Hall of Fame 3rd Baseman George Brett has a personalized license plate that says "E5".)

Teachers, too, are engaged in an activity of such complexity and such subtlety that it is almost impossible to get through even a single class without making some kind of mistake. Most are minor, many are not even noticed, but mistakes they are. A piece of paper forgotten, an assignment not clearly described, a student's name misspoken, a lecture mistimed, a meeting missed, a key piece of information left out --- a game of mistakes.

Maybe it's not so much that teaching is like baseball but rather that teaching and baseball are both a kind of art and the artist --- especially the performance artist --- never gets it exactly right, and every failure is an opportunity to hone one's craft, to do it better.

But to pursue the baseball analogy, what can we learn about how to teach?

First, always hustle. Play hard all the time. Come prepared, fight through failure, and give it your best.

Second, never lose sight of the fact that your teammates are depending on you. Be ashamed to let them down.

Third, lead. Lead by example if that's what suits you; lead by saying what needs to be said, in private or in public, if that's what suits you. But lead. Volunteer, suggest, take responsibility, for your own work and for the work that someone else didn't do.

Fourth, and this I think is the most important part of this, support your teammates when they fail and praise them when they succeed.

This is where the baseball analogy is most informative. If a baseball manager criticized every player who made a mistake, his team would not trust him very long and he would not be able to lead. Players know that baseball is a game of mistakes, that they are playing hard and doing the best they can, and that mistakes are made despite their best efforts. From their manager and from their teammates, they need a pat on the back, a "hang in there," to help them take a deep breath and get back to it.

Teachers, too, from one another and from the administrators they work for, need the understanding that we're all on the same team, we're all working as hard as we can and learning as much as we can, and that mistakes are made despite our best efforts. Like baseball players, teachers need a pat on the back, a "hang in there," a reminder that they are trusted.

But there should be praise, too. There should be real praise, not the canned, formulaic obligatory "compliments" that no one means and no one believes, but real praise.

For example, during the 2010 baseball season, Roy Halladay of the Philadelphia Phillies threw a perfect game during the season, threw a no-hitter in the playoffs (only the 2nd no-hitter in post-season baseball), and won the Cy Young award in the National League. He dominated.

During the playoffs, the N.Y. Times ran a long piece on the catcher for the Phillies, Carlos Ruiz. Within the story, several players were quoted saying very positive things, but the line I liked best was, "Carlos is the Roy Halladay of catchers."

Like catchers, teachers labor mostly in obscurity. But there is much that teachers do that is worthy of praise, real praise. They will seldom be praised in a long feature piece in the N.Y. Times, but they deserve to be praised by their colleagues and their administrators.

A pat on the back and a sympathetic "hang in there" when things go badly, and a quiet "Great job" from a fellow professional can go a long way.