MAP 150

Last Tuesday I was in a car accident in Minneapolis. It wasn’t my fault, and it wasn’t serious, but it was interesting. It happened next to Bob’s Java Hut in Minneapolis– my car was parked there at the stop sign in the picture.
I went in to buy a cup of coffee, and the kind person behind the counter said that the coffee was on her. Really?? Yes, she replied, these accidents happen here all the time. Same time of day? Yes– (I happened to be at this corner because I needed to go south on Lyndale from Lake, and left turns are prohibited from 4-6; this was the first path back to Lyndale)– lots of school buses restricting vision and my guess, lots of traffic winding through from the prohibited left turn.

Turns out lots of people at Bob’s Java Hut were aware of the frequent accidents. They also knew that it would take the police an hour or more to show up– “they have more important things to attend to.” It would seem to me that paying attention to what these folks know in a coffee shop could reduce accidents and help the police attend to more critical matters. I didn’t even bother to ask whether anyone tried to contact the city about this though. I think I know the answer.

As a post script, there were three cars involved. One was driven by a young African American. Apparently the police asked whether he had anything on him (after an hour or more of waiting, you’d like to think he would have gotten rid of it if that were the case.) His girlfiend complained that she sees this all the time. Being Iraqi, she gets it too. She didn’t want to call it racism, but clearly she thought it was. I said, call it what it is.

As I was leaving, she motioned to the driver of the first car and said, “Those damn Somalis, They come to this country and they don’t know how to drive.”

I attended the popular (and always well done) Policy and a Pint “Health Care Handcuffs” event last Tuesday. However, I had the same feeling of unease that I usually do at events like this. Something’s missing…what is it?

It seems that whenever “experts” get together to talk about issues, no matter what the issue or how sociable the expert, there’s this something more that people are looking for. The experts may have the technically correct answers, but they don’t seem to have the societally correct ones…and this is what we’re looking for. Fundamentally, I think people want the right thing to be done.

For example, when asked why health care costs were increasing so much, one of the presenters said that that’s what wealthy societies spend their money on. Health care has replaced other sectors such as transportation for its role in driving the economy. In fact (he said)…health care might beome 25% , maybe even 50% of our economic output, and would that be a bad thing?

I know that people around me at the event were thinking this: Bad for whom? I know this because they chucked when the speaker made his point. It might be a great thing for the economy, but for people who have trouble affording health care, costs that rise at twice the rate of inflation is not good news under any circumstance.

People have a sense that the common good is not being served. So when they hear the usual technical or theoretical arguments, their natural response, is “But wait a minute!” A recent New York Times survey fund that two-thirds of Americans favor providing health care for the uninsured over lowering costs for everybody. 60% are willing to pay more in taxes for everbody to have access to insurance, and 49% are willing to pay $500 or more.

How do we refocus on the end goal– on what needs to happen– and away from all the reasons we’re told it can’t?

I see MAP 150 everywhere I go– in almost every news story, conversation, public problem. I’m referring to the power of regular people (virtually unused at this point) to help solve public problems.

I’ve been trying to pay attention to how “stuck” things are in old, habitual ways of thinking. For example, a Pew Survey shows that more than three-quarters of school superintendents think that the low academic standards in their local schools are not a problem. Yet, in a just-released survey by the University of Indiana, two-thirds of students (81,000 from 26 states!) say that are bored every day in school.

Pundits and school administrators will quibble that these are two very different questions. Yet there is no mistaking that students and superintendents have very different ideas about what is happening in schools. How can we possibly expect the “experts” to improve education when their views are so different from students– and the students are the ones who have the ultimate decision-making authority over whether or not they will learn?

Here at home we have the bruhaha over North High. Kudos to Don Samuels for being brave enough to raise the issue. It matters less whether he’s right or wrong, and much, much more that he’s calling attention to the need for improving education. It’s clear that there are differences of opinion on the quality of North High…just as there are differences of opinion on the quality of education more generally. We need to be able to confront these differences, to have civil discussions about what we want from education, to bring in those who are at the receiving end of policy decisions, namely the students.