Archive for May, 2007
In yesterday’s New York Times, Gary Bass, associate professor at Princeton, reviews a book by economist Bryan Caplan. Caplan argues that voters are “biased, irrational, manipulable and plain ignorant.” Bass writes:
“Of all the people who deserve blame for the debacle in Iraq, don’t forget the American public…the two sides (doves and hawks) implicity agree that the public has been dangerousy unsure, or easily propagandized, or ignorant.”
This just gets my blood boiling. Congress authorized the damn war, and surely they had access to far more unfiltered information than the American people. Rather than viewing Americans’ turnabout on the war as people being weak minded, how about giving them some credit to paying attention to what’s going on? Yes, there was some information to the contrary leading up to the war, but if I recall these people were being called traitors and unpatriotric by the Administration. Congress bought the war hook, line and sinker, and they, the Administration and the media sold the war–there was no public discourse. Hey, the New York Times apologized for missing the boat on the war. Just where is the American public supposed to get its information if it can’t trust the media or the people it elects?
The lack of public discourse on Iraq compelled me to create a web page on Iraq. I guess it’s my own personal MAP 150 experiment. I wondered whether the outcome might have been different if we had all chimed in at the time. Many argue that the outcome was inevitable. Perhaps so, but you never know what an honest discussion will produce.
I do have to give Bass credit. He wonders at the end of the review whether it’s the politicans letting the voters down. Amen, hallelujiah and the like.
The New York Times carried a story today that’s a sad, sad reminder of what’s wrong with our public school systems. In Little Rock, which bore the shame of the nation as it refused to integrate its schools, a new also ugly battle has broken out. Its black superintendent is embattled as he streamlines the district. White parents and city leadership support these efforts; black school board leaders do not, for it is black middle class jobs that are being lost. And so the two sides fight.
While this may be a particularly stark example, this same dynamic is being played out around the country: adults fighting for their interests and turf, seemingly indifferent to the effect on students– the ostensible reason any of them have jobs in the first place. There’s a simple question in Little Rock– what do the students think? Are their schools better or not?
In collaboration with policy fellows from the Humphrey Institute with ties to the community, we have started a place to allow students to lead a community discussion of what’s happening in their schools. The Minneapolis school district, and its community, are going through a painful process of closing schools. Enrollment is down. But why? It’s not just demographics. As adults we can wonder all day long about what’s causing students to leave. But we’ll never know for sure until we bring students into the discussion – and ultimately find a better role for them in this process.
In the short week of the website’s launch, we’ve found students to be insightful (closing schools will just lead to more students leaving); open-minded (does having a relationship with your teacher benefit learning? does it benefit the teacher?) and responsible self-awareness (impatience with learning colors and fruits in an English Language course led one immigrant to fail to pay attention, which made dropping out to help with the family income an easier decision).
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