What the Sequester WILL Cut and What it WON"T

The word "sequester" or "sequestration" is now, it seems, on everyone's lips, as we prepare for the automatic cuts that the federal government is likely to put in place unless Congress acts specifically to stop them.

Today, there was a piece in the New York Times about how poor people are largely protected from the effects of the cuts. It is true that the following programs will remain untouched by the sequester:

• Social Security
• Short Term Unemployment Benefits
• Veterans' Benefits
• Medicaid
• Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP)
• Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)
• Supplemental Security Income (SSI)
• Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP - Food Stamps)
• Earned Income Tax Credit
• Child Tax Credit

But I am quite worried about the automatic cuts that will directly affect a highly effective nutrition program for low-income women and children called WIC (Women, Infants, Children). Formally known as the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, this program provides nutritious food and nutrition counseling to women and their children. The program also helps to make possible referrals for low income children and their mothers who are in some way at nutritional risk. The cuts will eliminate at least 600,000 participants from this program. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says that this program is "widely regarded as one of the most effective of all social programs."

It simply makes no sense to cut such an effective program so severely. Let's all press our legislators to make a special effort to protect this superb social program, which should be treated, given its reputation, as one of our government's budget priorities.

Social Security Retirement Benefits

Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI)

Unemployment Insurance (short-term)

Veteran's Benefits

Medicaid

Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP)

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)

Supplemental Security Income (SSI)

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP Food Stamps)

Earned Income Tax Credit

Child Tax Credit

- See more at: http://www.massresources.org/sequestration.html#sthash.H5qGvE8Q.dpuf

Social Security Retirement Benefits

Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI)

Unemployment Insurance (short-term)

Veteran's Benefits

Medicaid

Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP)

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)

Supplemental Security Income (SSI)

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP Food Stamps)

Earned Income Tax Credit

Child Tax Credit

- See more at: http://www.massresources.org/sequestration.html#sthash.H5qGvE8Q.dpuf

Why Can't More Republicans Think Like Sheila Bair?

Why can't more Republicans think as Sheila Bair does, the FDIC chair from 2006-2011, appointed by President Bush? See her op-ed in today's New York Times here.

The Rabbit Hole of Books

I was rereading Alice in Wonderland and especially struck by Lewis Carroll's vivid description of Alice's seemingly endless fall down the rabbit hole when I realized that for me that bottomless rabbit hole is the realm of books and the chaotic careening that occurs when you leave one good read and reach ravenously for still another.

Something like this happened to me this weekend. You see, in the building where I live in Manhattan, there is a shelf in the laundry room where people discard books they don't want any longer. Occasionally, this shelf becomes a dumping ground for worn-out textbooks or volumes that have been the victims of misuse or bad weather and probably should have been left for recycling pick-up. But far more often the books that end up on this modest shelf are a wonderfully diverse lot.

For instance, and this is one of only dozens of examples I could cite, a couple of months ago, someone put a paperback version of Betty Smith's "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" down there. Although I knew the movie made by Elia Kazan pretty well, I had never read the book. I proposed that Karen and I start reading it aloud. We were hooked. The movie remains a brilliant and concise distillation of the themes from the book, but the book is much, much richer in characterization and especially in capturing the feel for turn of the century Brooklyn. Truly, we have laughed, cried often, and been a bit astounded by her portrait of the deep prejudices of that period.

Well, anyway, this weekend, someone decided to unload their C.S. Lewis collection on this laundry room shelf. I found myself skimming through almost everything, from "The Abolition of Man," his work on Christian education, to some of the volumes from the Chronicles of Narnia series to his personal narrative of being converted to Christianity called "Surprised by Joy" to an intriguing volume called "Four Loves." I read through them all, somewhat desultorily, until I encountered "Mere Christianity."

Now, I am no Christian and had no expectation of being impressed by a book trying to make the case for a life devoted to Christianity, but I couldn't help myself. I could not put the thing down. 

Two things struck me about it. One is Lewis's notion of the self. That we gain a strong sense of self only by giving up our focus on the self. And two, that heaven is not a final resting place, not an eternal paradise, but a site of growth and struggle where we have gained a clearer sense how to support and nurture our best possible selves.

As you can tell, I'm not a Christian and I certainly don't believe in heaven, at least not in any sort of conventional sense. But you also never know what you might discover about the world and yourself when you let yourself freefall through that ever present rabbit hole of books.

The Non-FRAC Diet

Karen and I are off our FRAC diet for now, the one that involves spending about the same amount on food that Food Stamps recipients are allowed. This amount is slightly more than $4 a day. We stayed on this diet for 3 days and will take it up again from Wednesday through Friday, another 3 day period. 

Why for only 3 days at a time? Because we're not sure we have the fortitude to do it for longer. It's tough living on $4 a day, which by our count, especially if we try to stay healthy, allows us to eat only about 1300 calories daily.

The other rather strange and somewhat ironic reason has to do with the surprising frequency with which we enjoy access to free food. Here we are, well off, even affluent people, who are regularly offered free pizza, free hors d'oeurves, free wine, and a variety of other such treats, including, by the way, an almost constant barrage of quite delicious cookies. We can't in good conscience say we are staying on the FRAC diet while consuming these unpaid for delicacies. And it happens so often that it is not really possibly to turn down this largesse for long. Three days rarely pass without some opportunity to grab another gratis treat. Funny, huh? We can afford to be well fed in any case, but the free food just keeps on coming. In the meantime, I am guessing that poor people rarely, if ever, get to partake of complimentary food. Why is this anyway?

Remembering as a Moral Act

Dr. Samuel Johnson once said: "People need to be reminded more than they need to be instructed." To the extent that Dr. Johnson was right, teaching is the art of stimulating the memory, not filling the mind with new material. It has a lot to do with education's original meaning of drawing forth what is already within. For those of you who want to delve deeper into the sources of this point of view, you might want to consult Plato's great dialogue "The Meno," which is perhaps the most famous example of a teacher drawing forth what is already known.

For me, however, this conception of the mind and how it works works best with respect to the moral realm, that area of knowing and acting which has to do with our obligations to one another and the world we inhabit together. We acquire or simply have (!) a lot of knowledge about the good, about how we should behave in order to build a better world. Often we don't follow through on what we know, but when our memories are stimulated, when the right thing to do is brought to our attention, it is startling how often people see the light of what is right. Which is why I think virtually any ethics course is as much an aid to memory as anything else. We can do a lot of ethical analysis about what philosophers have learned about what the right thing to do is, but a simple story, which acts as a reminder, will do the trick again and again.

On a related note, this point about the importance of remembering came up again for me the other day when I was attending a workshop on race. As a white, heterosexual male who is highly educated and enjoys enormous freedom to do what I want as a full professor in an institution of higher education, I have tremendous privilege that relatively few others enjoy. I know this and I am very sensitive to the freedom allowed by my privilege when I remember it. But you see because I'm white, I don't have to remember it; I am not confronted by it on a daily basis. Only people of color in a racist society are constantly reminded of their racial position. For white folks, race matters only when they are prompted to think about,  only when they are reminded of it.  So if you're white and you care about undoing racism, you have to remain mindful. You really have to force yourself to think about it. Thus, in a very real sense, disciplining ourselves to remember often helps us to act on those obligations that matter most.

FRAC Challenge Update

Here is an update at the beginning of the third day of the FRAC challenge. You may recall that FRAC stands for Food Research and Action Center, which is a national non-profit collaborative fighting hunger and undernourishment throughout the United States. On its website, FRAC encourages those who working to combat hunger to take the SNAP challenge, which entails getting by on about $4 worth of food each day, roughly the same amount that is allowed by Food Stamps or SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). Beginning on Wednesday, Karen and I decided to engage in the SNAP or, as I am calling it, the FRAC challenge.

Here is what I have been eating. Prunes (5), one cup of coffee, a bowl of oatmeal, hard boiled eggs (2), and a bowl of pasta with spaghetti sauce. And, of course, plenty of tap water.  The total cost for this diet is right around $4.31, slightly above what SNAP allows. Last night, Karen traded in her two hard boiled eggs for a small glass of wine (wine worth slightly more - 5 oz. out of a box). I joined her, having already eaten my two eggs. So even after two days, I am cheating, albeit slightly.

How am I feeling? First day was fine. No side effects. A good part of the second day I had a dull, slight headache and felt marginally weaker. By the end of the second day, my headache was more bothersome, and I almost never get headaches. This is probably attributable to consuming less caffeine than usual, but I expect to adjust soon.

Final thought: Imagine a strapping, fifteen-year old male trying to get by on this diet. If I were his parent, unable to afford more, I would feel angry, frustrated, ashamed, bordering on hopelessness. And yet there are people all over this country who have to make do with less. No one should have to live that way.

FRAC Challenge

Today, Karen and I begin the FRAC challenge. FRAC stands for the Food Research and Action Center, a leading national non-profit group, working with a variety of regional partners to eradicate hunger and undernutrition in the U.S.

The FRAC challenge is to try to get by on $4.00 a day per person in food costs, which is the equivalent of a food stamp or SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) allotment for one day. We will be doing this for the next three days and then again in as many subsequent weeks as we can manage.

The point is not to attack SNAP. In addition to raising the minimum wage, it is the best strategy we have to end hunger. But SNAP, which has roughly an 80 billion dollar federal budget, is likely to be cut by Congress and cut severely unless citizen concerns are heard. And even though 80 billion sounds like a lot, it translates to a little over $4 a day per person for the 50 million people who take advantage of SNAP. Do the math. 50 X 4 X 365.  That's a lot of people who need just a little bit of support so that they can get on with their day without being overwhelmed by hunger.

What is Civic Engagement?

One aimless Sunday afternoon I randomly asked people on the streets of Manhattan what civic engagement is. Here are some of their responses.

"The peaceful prelude to a stormy marriage."

"Voting."

"Doing something more than just voting."

"I really have no idea."

"Can't say, nor do I want to stand here with you talking about it."

"Civic what??"

"Knowing enough to do more good than harm."

"An agreement to meet at the Civic Center."

"I know what civic is, sort of, and I definitely know what engagement is, but when you put the two together, I'm lost."

"Serving people who need help, whether it's in a soup kitchen or participating in an organized walk to fundraise, or something else to add value to life in the community."

"Doing anything in the public sphere to promote the public good."

Peter Levine on Higher Education and its Civic Mission

Peter Levine may be America's most thoughtful commentator who regularly writes about civic engagement. His blog is required reading for all people interested in such things. Go here to read this especially insightful post from February 13 defending higher education and its civic mission.

Fighting Inequality vs. Creating a Business-Friendly Environment

I find myself torn between the perspective on inequality and how to fix it offered today in Today's Times by Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobelist and author of "The Price of Inequality," and the ever-moderate and even-tempered Thomas Friedman. Stiglitz wants entitlements expanded, early childhood programs to be fully funded, and higher education to be far more affordable through government financing. Friedman urges the President in the same Times' Opinion section to adopt a set of policies that would maintain basic programs like Medicaid and Social Security that protect middle and working class people from neglect and abuse, while also cutting the GROWTH of these programs so as to encourage the business community to more readily invest, innovate, and engage in productive risk taking.

As you know, people like Stiglitz and Paul Krugman rarely talk about creating an encouraging climate for business investment, and people like, say, Grover Norquist, who has had great success promoting the no-tax pledge for years now, NEVER talk about protecting the people who depend on programs like Medicaid and Social Security.

Somehow, Friedman wants to keep both groups happy, which seems almost impossible, though he does suggest that if the President could find the right framing to bring moderate conservatives into the fold, this might solve the problem and once and for all show up the radical conservatives for being the crazies that they are.

Yet, it still seems as if the ledger is so heavily tilted toward support for the rich in getting richer that it would also send the wrong message to the American people about what our priorities are. 

What Friedman and other moderates don't talk about nearly enough is finding the money to address inequality without raising taxes. Where? Our bloated military budget. If we let the sequester that is due in March to go through just for the military, that would give us 50 billion annually to fund programs that would primarily support low-income people without asking the rich and well off for one additional dime. What do you say everybody? Let's make good on the sequester solely for the military and cash in the savings to support poor folks that will, in the long run, help everybody big time. 

James Heckman and Universal Early Childhood Education

There is a Nobel Prize-winning economist named James Heckman who has been at the University of Chicago for many years during which time he has labored mightily to make the strongest possible case for the economic and social value of Universal Early Childhood Education. He led the team that reanalyzed the data of a famous longitudinal study called the Perry Preschool Project which originally seemed to show that high quality early childhood programs didn't make much of a long-term difference, especially when relying on cognitive measures such as IQ. But what Heckman found using econometric tools he created is overwhelming evidence that early childhood education is correlated with long-term changes in such positive social behaviors as persistence, focus, and collaboration that lead to much higher than expected economic success, family harmony, and vocational stability.

Heckman has convincingly demonstrated that:

High quality Early Childhood Education is strongly correlated with positive social behaviors that lead to economic success.

The poorest families have the least access to high quality Early Childhood Education.

By increasing the availability of high quality Early Childhood Education to children from low income families, the return on investment from economic growth and in reduced costs for special education and incarceration is at least 7 dollars for every 1 dollar spent. 

With the support of high quality Early Childhood Education, very young children can better develop key aspects of their characters that include: drive, cooperation, attentiveness, self-discipline, and delaying gratification. When these qualities are combined with nurturing key cognitive abilities, children not only do better in school, they do better in life.

In other words, early childhood education pays big dividends. The evidence is therefore more than strong enough to support President Obama's proposal to make Early Childhood Education a priority.

All of which leads indisputably to one conclusion. We have a wonderful opportunity to invest in our future by fully funding Universal Preschool Education. If we do it, the result will be one of history-making proportions. If we don't, we will be destroying the futures of many of most vulnerable children and in the process losing an important chance to create a society that as Jimmy Carter used to say is worthy of the generosity and compassion of the American people at their best.

More evidence for the irrationality of the gun debate

I wrote the following before I saw today's NY Times editorial which pretty much mirrors my post below. Here is the Times link.

The New York Times reported yesterday that having guns in your home makes your home more dangerous. It's pretty straightforward evidence. If you are a male suffering from long-term or short-term depression and there is a firearm in your house, you are at much greater risk of turning that firearm on yourself to commit suicide.  In fact, suicide attempts with pills are about 2% successful. Suicide attempts with guns are about 85% successful. The differences are that stark. Now, of course, most people are not desperate enough to resort to suicide, but if their depressed feelings take a sudden turn for the worse for whatever reason and a gun is available, death is much more likely because of the availability of that gun.

Some people say, reflecting on the tragic circumstances of a family suicide, that if a gun had not been available, then the victim would have found another way to hurt himself. Which appears to be true. What is also unassailably true is that they are much less likely to be successful in killing themselves if a gun is not available.

But gun owners remain unconvinced. Why? Because they love their guns beyond all reason and I suppose they also doubt that in their own individual case they are jeopardizing their safety. The evidence suggests they are terribly wrong. Firearms are used in almost 60% of male suicides and part of the reason for the high incidence of suicide in these cases is that unlike, say, suffocation through hanging (another fairly common means for committing suicide), guns can be used quickly and impulsively. At the very least, it follows that if you must keep guns in your home, the prudent thing to do is to keep them locked up. Of course, if they're locked up, then they won't be available when you need to fight off an assailant. But as we know, the likelihood of successfully using a gun to repel a criminal is so tiny as to be non-existent. Maybe we can't legislate against all guns, but we should launch a major public health campaign about making guns in the home as inaccessible as possible.

Love

Paulo Freire said it, Jane Addams focused on it, Studs Terkel interviewed countless people about it. It is the answer to why we commit ourselves to doing work in our colleges and in our communities to help people learn, grow, and develop their own commitment to supporting others. The it is love and unless our civic and democratic engagement efforts are based in love for each other and for helping to create a more loving community overall, they are sure to fall short. With love as our foundation, hope endures for bringing about real, substantive, meaningful change that is mutually beneficial to all.

Amazing Safety Record

It has now been four years since a commercial airline last suffered a fatal crash. This is an amazing and unprecedented accomplishment. And, as the February 12 New York Times reports, it is, in part, due to increased communication and collaboration among pilots, airlines, and regulators who have gotten much better at sharing information regarding flying hazards. Apparently, back in the mid-1990s when there was a series of commercial airliner accidents, the F.A.A., airlines and pilot organizations began to participate in a concerted process of sharing safety concerns, with the idea that this sharing would be entirely open and would be conducted solely to promote safety, not to discipline airlines or pilots. A web-based system eventually followed, which incorporates information from virtually all commercial airlines.

The lesson, it seems to me, is simple: the more information the better. Allowing all the voices to be heard and creating a mechanism for organizing and acting on all those voices is making a tremendous difference. This is another example of democracy at work.

You may be aware of the groundbreaking work of the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, who won the award in 1998, primarily for his work claiming that famines do not happen in functioning democracies where two phenomena, in particular, are at work. First is the fact that leaders and public officials must be accountable to their constituents and so cannot afford to let widespread hunger persist. Second, and more important, is the argument that democracies allow information to flow more freely than in non-democracies, which means that democracies are better at getting the food to people who need it.

Is the claim flawed? Of course. For instance, we know that food insecurity continues to plague the U.S., but the reasons have more to do with a lack of political will than the availability of information about where hungry people reside.

The principle, nevertheless, holds true. Democracy, a free flow of information, and multiple and unrestricted outlets for sharing information are one of the keys to solving our most daunting problems. The current safety record of the airline industry is a shining example of this.

Legislative Breakfast on Hunger

Wagner College was proud to host last Friday's Legislative Breakfast on Hunger sponsored by Project Hospitality, Staten Island's largest social service provider. This was an exciting event because it brought together in one place many of Staten Island's most dedicated activists for a hunger-free community. Significantly, the meeting also attracted representatives from the offices of leading legislators at the local, state, and federal levels who seemed to be sympathetic toward many of the reforms and initiatives discussed. Unfortunately, at this point, Staten Island, especially the North Shore of Staten Island, is far from being free of hunger. This is not, however, for lack of trying. There are dozens of food pantries and soup kitchens on Staten Island eager to serve all hungry residents without question.

Still, as this Legislative Breakfast made clear, even a hundred more food pantries would not solve the problem of hunger on Staten Island. The only way to do this is through legislation, both at the State and Federal levels. In particular, there are three or four initiatives that must receive the full support of our lawmakers. Probably the most important of these is the full funding of SNAP, the new acronym for Food Stamps, which stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. This program feeds many millions of people each day and for many it is the difference between having enough to eat and going hungry.

One of the interesting issues about SNAP that was raised relates to alleged abuse. First, there are strict guidelines about what can be purchased through SNAP. No alcohol, no cigarettes, no drugs. Second, where there is abuse, in part, because of small commercial outlets that covertly permit illegitimate purchases, the number of such cases is infinitesimally small. This tiny amount of abuse simply does not warrant cuts, especially when the program does so much for families, including the 25% of children who are food insecure.

A second piece of legislation that always comes up around fighting hunger is the minimum wage. The current minimum wage is too low, especially for people in New York who have high rents, and who also have families to feed. Raising the mimimum wage even a few dollars would make a huge dent in hunger and would contribute directly to consumer spending. People who are on minimum wage spend everything they make, by necessity.

Third is SNAP-ED or nutrition education programs. Programs such as "Just Say Yes" and "Cookshop" that can be found in many public schools really do help kids make better choices when it comes to food. And it's pretty obvious that better choices lead to healthier lives and, need I add, lower medical costs.

Finally, the issue of universal school meals continues to come up. The idea is simple: eliminate income qualifications for free school meals. Let every schoolchild at both breakfast and lunch eat free. Why? Because the paperwork to qualify is confusing, burdensome and off-putting. And even more because for older children, in particular, there is a stigma associated with being from a low-income family. Teenagers do not like to go public about their family's financial need. And there is no reason to. The resources are there to make schools meals available to every child. But here's the statistic that really got to me from the Legislative Breakfast. Children in elementary school who qualify for free and reduced meals because of their family's income level actually take advantage of the meals in 83% of cases, but only 37% of such children do so in high school. Chalk that up to the stigma, but consider the impact on the highschoolers' well-being. Going hungry makes it harder to concentrate, to study and to learn and the long term toll on one's physical health is enormous. Let's take the next step. Universal School Meals should be a federal law, so that every child can eat without shame or stigmatization.

The Geometry of Hope

A few years ago there was a remarkable exhibit at NYU's Grey Art Gallery focused on the abstract art of mid-20th century Latin America called "The Geometry of Hope." I remember being struck by how creative and playful this show was, but also how upbeat and optimistic it seemed to be. It was inspired by the geometry of urban areas really, with all of the vertical lines and grid-like patterns we associate with cities. As the curator of the exhibit noted, the works were "structured around the city as the unit of context. The City," the curator observed, "is where ideas circulate, where different voices and intentions collide in the same physical space..." To get an idea of how thrilling the works from this exhibit were go here.

Cities are places full of both enormous possibility and debilitating despair. This, too, is reflected in this exhibit. The belief in the idea of progress is constantly being pitted against a stubborn sense that poverty can never be eradicated. This back and forth between the grand potential of modern cities and the seeming hopelessness of ghettoized, marginalized environments is also part of the geometry of hope. Struggling to overcome those patterns is where the audacity of critical hope comes in.

Audacious, critical hope is different from optimism in that the purveyors of this kind of hope make no assumption that tomorrow will be a better day. In fact, it is likely, they say, that tomorrow will be just as grim as today was. But their inextinguishable hope for a better tomorrow derives from two understandings: 1)The challenges ahead are enormous and the odds are against us. We should never underestimate how hard it is going to be bring about positive change. 2)The only way to have any chance of overcoming the obstacles resulting from past racism and entrenched poverty is to struggle and to strategize and agitate for a better world. To encourage people to work together and to use every incentive possible to remind them that bridging the gap between a dark past and a bright future is entirely a function of how committed ordinary citizens are to holding their leaders accountable. When people are willing to raise their voices and tackle the hard challenges that confront them everyday, then hope which is grounded, realistic and critical can produce a difference that mere optimism could never have achieved.

Fighting Poverty and My Unprinted Letter to the NY Times

On Thursday, Robert Greenstein wrote to the New York Times in response to a column by Nick Kristof about fighting  poverty. Greenstein's letter, which became the basis for the Sunday Dialogue in the Week in Review section of the Times, wrote what immediately follows. Farther down, after Greenstein's letter, is what I wrote to the Times as a response. My letter, as usual, was not printed. You might compare my reply to what others wrote here. 

To the Editor:

Nicholas D. Kristof is clearly right: Too many young children from poor families face diminished opportunities by the time they’re just 2 years old, and we should do more to help them overcome the formidable obstacles before them (“For Obama’s New Term, Start Here,” column, Jan. 24). But his portrayal of today’s safety net deserves a broader look.

Noting that the “official” poverty rate is no lower today than in the late 1960s, Mr. Kristof said our anti-poverty programs largely address symptoms of poverty without reducing poverty itself.

But the official poverty measure considers only cash income in determining whether a family is poor. It counts cash welfare payments, which have fallen dramatically since the late 1960s, but not benefits like food stamps and the earned-income tax credit, which provide much more assistance now than then.

The government’s more comprehensive poverty measure that counts these other benefits shows that safety-net programs now cut the number of poor people nearly in half — by more than 40 million — compared with where the nation would be without these programs.

Moreover, numerous studies show that key safety-net programs do more than reduce poverty. Children who had access to food stamps in early childhood were healthier as adults. Medicaid coverage is associated with better health, lower mortality and less household debt. The earned-income tax credit substantially increases work among poor single parents and leads to improvement in children’s school performance.

Still, as Mr. Kristof argues, for too many poor families, existing programs aren’t sufficient. Unfortunately, there’s no silver bullet. So we should move aggressively to identify, test and evaluate a variety of new approaches and to institute and spread effective initiatives, to help more poor children advance and poor adults surmount barriers to success in the labor market. But as we do so, we shouldn’t lose sight of the safety net’s considerable accomplishments or the progress that has been made.

ROBERT GREENSTEIN
Washington, Feb. 4, 2013

The writer is president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Steve Preskill's unprinted response to Mr. Greenstein:

To The Editor:

In his letter about fighting poverty, Robert Greenstein says there is no silver bullet, but he also comments extensively on the positive impact of such safety-net programs as food stamps and Medicaid. I agree with him about the value of these programs, but apparently am much more worried than he is about their being cut or eliminated altogether. Fighting for and finally securing full funding for food stamps, Medicaid, and perhaps most important, universal early childhood education, could turn out to be the silver bullet after all.

Stephen Preskill

Yin and Yang of Learning: Leonard Bernstein on Education

The great conductor, composer, pianist, writer and educator Leonard Bernstein once said that "teaching is probably the noblest profession in the world--the most unselfish, difficult, honorable profession. It is also the most unappreciated, underrated, underpaid, and underpraised profession in the world." In the same interview in which he spoke these words, he emphasized that education is related to the Latin educere - "to bring forth what is within."

It is this last comment that feels especially arresting to me. I have often heard that education is derived from the Latin "to draw forth" or "to lead out," but it was the additional words "from within" that stopped me. What does "from within" add to our understanding of education? 

Well, for one thing, there is this sense that pent up inside of us, not easily brought forward, is the passion to divulge who we are, to connect with likeminded others, and to use what is shared to create new and powerful collaborations.  This is utterly different from the predominant and passive view of education in which new knowledge is imparted, or even deposited in us by scholars and teachers who are said to possess the wisdom of the ages. In this view, it doesn't matter a whole lot what is inside us.  But in the view of education articulated by Bernstein, success is dependent on active engagement by learners and a probing exploration of who we are and what we bring to the educational setting. The only way to make the most of this opportunity is to create an opening for self and group reflection that is democratic, creative, and constructively critical. Only then, are we capitalizing on the abilities and talents of the people we have convened.

In addition, we need strategies to loosen people up and to unleash their creative and imaginative capacities.  Thoughtful use of music or theatre or dance may be one way to do this, but, in any case, it must include an approach that encourages people to feel more deeply as well as think more incisively, to dream more expansively and to anticipate in a highly practical way the obstacles that may block progress. 

Education, then, is, in part, a process of taking in, but it is even more significantly a way of drawing out what we already know from experience, from the broader culture, and through reference to some notion of a moral imagination. You might almost call this taking in and drawing out the Yin and Yang of meaningful learning. 

Snow - A Leading Cause of Civic Disengagement!

As predictions hit the airwaves of a huge blizzard for the Northeast on Friday evening and Saturday morning, scholars who focus their research on the correlates of civic engagement are once again directing attention to the understated links between bad weather and lowered participation in public life.

J. Grady Lowman, Associate Professor of Civic Enthusiasm and Community Partnerships at Warren Gamaliel Harding University, recently mused: "Of course, when Robert Putnam wrote in Bowling Alone that television and certain generational trends have the largest long-term impact on the level of civic engagement, he was almost certainly right. But what Putnam neglected to take into account were the short term effects of snowstorms, floods, and hurricanes. When these events and other natural disasters occur, our data clearly indicate that even the most civically engaged individuals retreat from the public sphere."

The effect is not long lasting, Lowman pointed out, but it is statistically significant and directly proportional to the severity of the natural disaster. Lowman held up a graph that demonstrated clearly that when 15 or more inches of snow fall, the level of civic participation plummets. "Notice here," Lowman said pointing to the data represented on his graph, "before any high intensity storm, the number of civically engaged individuals tends to hover around 120 per thousand, but as soon as a major storm hits this number is reduced to near zero." Dr. Lowman went on to say that this impact on civic engagement in particular localities is consistent in virtually every instance of a heavy snowstorm or natural disaster.

When asked if there is anything that can be done to maintain a high level of civic engagement in these instances, Dr. Lowman shook his head and grimaced slightly. "There really isn't. You just have to wait out the storm, so to speak. We have found that once the snow has been cleared or the damage from a flood has been addressed, civic engagement returns to its former levels. That, of course, is the good news. The bad news is that when the next natural disaster occurs, there is nothing that can be done to forestall diminished civic engagement, at least not until the effects of the event have ended. I am working on a book about this, sort of taking an arrow from Professor Putnam's quiver. The working title is: Shoveling Alone: The short-term impact of natural disasters on civic engagement.

Where's Frederick Douglass?

There is a kind of silly but also funny YouTube video of an actor pretending to be Frederick Douglass critiquing the Spielberg/Kushner Lincoln movie. I am already on record as a fan of the film, but as this video notes it does seem downright absurd that in a film documenting the legislative acts that led to the end of slavery in America, there is hardly a Black face to be seen. Frederick Douglass, as we know, was one of America's greatest and most eloquent abolitionists, as well as a runaway slave, who helped to shape Lincoln's thinking about slavery as the true cause of the Civil War and the end of slavery as the War's most important purpose. The fellow dressed up as Douglass, as clownish as he is, sharply satirizes Douglass's complete absence from the film. As I said in a post back in early January, it would have been both enlightening and appropriate to insert a flashback, showing Lincoln's most important meeting with Douglass and how much Lincoln respected Douglass and was influenced by him. That previous post is here: http://democraticengagement.blogspot.com/2013/01/lincoln-and-civic-engagement.html. And the YouTube is here: http://youtu.be/Gjd3atGnd5o.

Civic Disengagement

The father of all recent discussions about the civic disengagement of Americans is Robert Putnam, the political scientist who seems to cover all the relevant bases in his celebrated and aptly titled book "Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community."

His famous claim is that civic engagement - or activity in the public sphere (that arena which is exclusive of both our family lives and our work lives) - has dramatically declined, at least since 1965. This decline is also marked by a severe drop in the creation of what he calls "social capital," or the connections among individuals and social networks that augment the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness. Although social capital can be exclusionary and an obstacle to the creation of public good, it is, for the most part, a positive result of widespread civic engagement that encourages "mutual obligation and responsibility for action." Communities in which social capital is common are more likely to practice forms of social cooperation that emphasize and seek to foster each community member's well being.

Putnam argues that four factors have contributed most to this decline in civic engagement. 1)Economic pressures, especially those arising from the increased need for two-earner families. 2)Suburban sprawl and the spreading out of local communities. 3)Television and other screen-focused activities contributing to people becoming more home-bound. 4)Last, and most mysteriously, a broad-based generational loss of interest and commitment to the public sphere and an increasing reliance on private interactions as a primary form of amusement and stimulation.

Putnam discounts race as a contributing factor to the phenomenon of civic disengagement, but I think he underestimates how fearful many white people have become about participating in public settings where there is a great deal of diversity. This apprehension about venturing into diverse settings is pretty widespread and has become especially common since 1965, when many communities have undergone significant desegregation. Since the 70s at least the trend has been that white people are reluctant to contribute to discussions and deliberations in communities that they have come to regard as alien. 

I should add that such apprehension is almost invariably the result of unfounded fears that are not borne out by actual experience in such communities, so the main challenge is finding ways to expose people to the hospitality and kindliness of these communities.  At Wagner, our experience has been that students who are wary about Port Richmond at first become enthusiastic about being active members of that community once they actually log a few hours there and get to know its compassionate and friendly residents.

Joy

In spite of myself, I wept yesterday afternoon at Carnegie Hall as all the instruments and voices of the final movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony came together in one grand swell of sound and exaltation. You probably know what I'm talking about. After Beethoven has toyed with us, offering bits and pieces of the Ode to Joy theme, sometimes loud, sometimes soft, sometimes just the orchestra, other times just the chorus of 100 voices that he insisted be incorporated into this final movement, after we have heard this ode in a dozen different variations and volumes, we finally get the entire company of musicians and singers joining together in a giant tsunami of glorious harmony. It is the very essence of joy and it took me by surprise to feel the tears rolling down my cheeks so voluminously.

This Ode to Joy that comes from the Schiller poem is for Beethoven no ordinary joy. It is so much more than a feeling of gladness or happiness. It is so much more than the sense of individual rapture that some of us are lucky enough to experience with delightful regularity. This joy is about the sense of solidarity we feel when people come together for some great cause. This joy is more than eros (romantic love) or philia (familial love). It is the joy of agape, the celebration of universal sisterhood and brotherhood, of the sense that all of us are united by similar needs for affection and safety and freedom and growth and sustenance and well being. And that when we acknowledge these needs in one another and do what we can as a collective to make sure these needs are, in fact, met for all, we all end up better off.

Beethoven understood this about joy and meant for his final symphony - with all the different voices joining together in a final crescendo of harmony - to be a metaphor for active, universal, unconditional love. It is a work that is designed to bind people together. In many ways, it is more than a great work of music. It is a call to us to become our best selves and in so doing to help all others realize their full potential as well. From the pen of the completely deaf Beethoven comes this titanic plea for us to hear each other's inner cries for connection. It is at our peril, Beethoven seems to say, that we fail to listen.

President Obama - Gun Lover!

It was revealed yesterday that President Obama likes to shoot guns - a lot. One of his favorite things to do, it turns out, is to go to Camp David and while away the afternoon, wielding his favorite 12 gauge shotgun shattering clay pigeons. The New York Times reports that the president's entire birthday party celebration last August 4th was devoted to this pleasant and harmless pastime during an extended stay at Camp David.

The President's new chief of staff told the Times that it is sometimes hard to wrest Mr. Obama away from the skeet shooting range. "Back in October," Mr. McDonough recalled, "we were at Camp David and I had a lot of important policy papers for him to read, but he just couldn't get around to perusing them because he gets such a kick out of blasting away at those clay pigeons."

When Mr. McDonough was asked to say more about this, he smiled wryly and conceded that the President likes to gather his aides together to play a game in which each of the clay pigeons is a leading member of the Republican Party and the first one to knock the House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor, out of the sky wins the game. Sometimes, Mr. McDonough added, the President substitutes sitting ducks for the clay pigeons, in which case he enjoys making Rand Paul the primary target. Either way, Mr. McDonough concluded, the President gets a lot of satisfaction out of the game and so far has never lost.

Spokesmen for the National Rifle Association questioned these stories about the President's passion for skeet shooting but suggested that until he starts hefting an assault rifle with a high capacity magazine and uses authentic outlines of human being as his targets, he can't really be taken seriously as a gun lover. When the President starts to take advantage of recent concealed gun legislation and regularly packs a .357 Magnum as his weapon of choice, the NRA insisted, he can finally be affirmed as our first true gun toting chief executive since Teddy Roosevelt. The President's team refused to comment on the NRA's claim, though some observers witnessed Mr. Obama standing with an aide on the North Portico practicing his quick draw, periodically muttering, "go ahead, Wayne (a possible reference to the NRA's Executive Director Wayne LaPierre), make my day."

Still Another Civic Engagement Joke

The Quip: My colleague, Samantha Siegel, was recently talking about a friend of hers who is highly allergic to certain foods. She noted that just touching these foods triggers a severe reaction. My response was that the same thing happens to me when I rub up against Republicans.

The Analysis: To the extent this is funny at all is really a function of the use of the word "Republicans" versus, say, substituting the word "conservatives" or "right-wingers." I don't know why exactly, but I do know that the specificity of the word Republicans and even the historic image of Republicans (think Nixon, Spiro Agnew, George W. Bush) makes this quip marginally funnier.

The Apology: Let me add that this is a completely inappropriate joke for this particular blog. I therefore apologize for sharing it. Part of the point is to model openness to many different points of view, and putting down all Republicans in this preemptory way is, well, entirely unjustifiable. In fact, it would have been somewhat more appropriate and accurate to substitute the word conservatives or right-wingers, for this is the group that actually triggers the negative reaction in me. But, as I have already established, it's also not quite as funny. And sometimes you've just got to be willing to sacrifice all your principles to go for the slightly better joke.

Beethoven's 5th

Enjoyed a rather hectic night out at Carnegie hall on Wednesday. Hectic, because we had to rush from a meeting on Staten Island, count on the ferry to be precisely on time (it was a couple of minutes late), catch two different trains, and then run from the 55th Street exit (poor planning) of the R Train to the front door of Carnegie Hall on 57th Street. To top it off, Karen misplaced her ticket, so we had to ask for another one (they couldn't have been nicer about this) before climbing ALL of the countless steep steps leading to the uppermost section in this most magnificent of theatres. If I were prone to nosebleeds, I would have been leaking all over my grey suit, but fortunately my schnozz cooperated. Not only that, so did the Orchestra. As we slid, or in this case, struggled into our seats (restricted legroom), the distinguished conductor Daniel Barenboim appeared, and the first of four Carnegie Hall Concerts featuring all of Beethoven's 9 symphonies began with the energizing notes from the first movement of his first symphony.

Perhaps you are wondering why the uppermost section and why the restricted legroom (Thursday we were treated to an obstructed view)? Because such tickets are cheap and because both Karen and I have decided that hearing a symphony isn't so much about seeing the muscians play as it is about hearing the sound a great symphony can produce. And take our word for it; it was a great sound. Furthermore, it is Beethoven, and for us there just isn't anything that compares symphonically to the great works of this greatest of all composers (outrageous to assert this but couldn't help myself).

Wednesday night we heard the 1st, the 8th, and the 5th symphonies. For my money, the 1st is better than the 8th, though Karen's preferences are exactly the reverse. But it's the 5th I want to talk about for a moment. And not so much that grand opening - da, da, da, daaaaa - that some have likened to fate knocking on the door - but the utterly exhilarating 4th and final movement that seems to embrace life so triumphantly, boldly turning away any further thoughts of death. Indeed, it is Beethoven's love affair with life, his unbridled passion for engagement with the world, in spite of all his troubles and suffering, that I want to emphasize.

Of course, I'm no musician. I have no musical training, no profound insights into how great music weaves its unique spell. But I do like to listen. And when I listen to Beethoven I hear someone struggling with titanic emotions who uses music to penetrate the mysteries of his own life and how that life relates to others, both near and distant, far less talented than he to be sure, but with the same yearning for purpose, significance, and even transcendence.

The late movement of the 5th symphony strikes me as a reflection of Beethoven's own aspirations for transcendence, for something that takes us beyond the pettiness and absurdities of everyday life and into a realm of pure being and unbreakable human connection. This Beethoven of the last movement of the 5th symphony is on the verge of finding a happiness, a sense of well being that is wise, both about the things that matter and the things that merely waste our time and drain our energy.

From a musical point of view, this is all rather absurd. The techniques and strategies and artistic risks that make such musical possible are the proper subject for a discussion of someone as incomparable as Beethoven. But I guess all I can say is how I feel and what I take from his music. And for me, the last movement of the 5th symphony, like the final movements of the 7th and the 9th, but in a manner that is perhaps less bombastic than these others, has a power to touch the human spirit and the human heart that gives me hope and fills me with irresistible joy.