Education and Class

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So let’s break for a quiz: Quick, what’s the source of America’s greatness?

Is it a tradition of market-friendly capitalism? The diligence of its people? The cornucopia of natural resources? Great presidents?

No, a fair amount of evidence suggests that the crucial factor is our school system — which, for most of our history, was the best in the world but has foundered over the last few decades. The message for Mr. Obama is that improving schools must be on the front burner.

One of the most important books of the year is “The Race Between Education and Technology,” by two Harvard economists, Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz. They argue that the distinguishing feature of America for most of our history has been our global lead in education.

Obama and Our Schools – NYTimes.com – Nicholas D. Kirstof.

Kirstof is splitting hairs here, suggesting a contrast between fixing schools in poor neighborhoods and income redistribution, but he has a good point. Our culture is founded on the progressive ideals of education and these ideals created the materiel basis of democratic society in the United States.

We set up a system that allowed for a wide dissemination of cultural capital through the public schools and that took an enormous commitment of monetary capital as well. It was a very self-serving notion, of course, that helped to ensure a certain stability in the class system.

At least most of the time. The first group of working class kids to get an education in the late 1940s raised the kids who rebelled so dramatically in the 1960s. So the price of stability– those soldiers returning home from war had some serious demands– was a later instability.

This later instability– a demand for change, to use the current term– was finally fought back, and even reversed, starting in the Reagan administration. In the last thirty years the system has been eroded, from cheap tuition and student loans to good inner city schools. It has to be fixed.

Posted in: Economics, Language, Professional, Writing

Patriot Post, Post Patriot

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Today, at least 55,805,197 Americans are concerned for the future of our nation’s great tradition of liberty. Some 63,007,791 Americans have been lulled, under the aegis of “hope and change,” into a state of what is best described as “cult worship” and all its attendant deception.

One of our editors, a Marine now working in the private sector, summed up our circumstances with this situation report. It aptly captured the sentiments around our office: “It’s been tough, fellow Patriots; tough to stomach the idea that more than half of my fellow citizens who vote, have booted a genuine American hero to the curb for a rudderless charlatan. What a sad indictment on our citizenry that some are so eager to overlook his myriad flaws — his radical roots, his extreme liberalism, his utter lack of experience or achievement. Barack Obama is the antithesis of King’s dream: He’s a man judged by the color of his skin rather than the content of his character. If it’s God’s will that Barack Obama is our next president, then so be it. We Patriots will pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and wade back to the war front, intent on liberty or death.”

This battle is lost, but the war is not. Let’s roll.

Mark Alexander, Publisher, “The Patriot Post.”

Especially in recent weeks I’ve felt like I am constantly arguing with my relatives about politics. That’s not really the right word, though, because they seem to be caught up in a kind of horror story narrative that has little to do with politics as I understand it. I’m sure this comes from right-wing radio and from newsletters and blogs like the Patriot Post.

It’s a strange but seemingly effective strategy. Turn everything upside down and then repeat it over and over again until it starts to sounds true. Senator Obama did everything right by all of the old standards. He worked hard, got good grades, contributed to his community; by all accounts he’s a great dad and husband. He’s a poster child for traditional values.

Yet listen to the Patriot Post: “Obama is the antithesis of King’s dream: He’s a man judged by the color of his skin rather than the content of his character.” There’s a kind of doubled cowardice here. First, is the way the writer puts these words into a no-doubt fictional Marine. Just as importantly, is the bad faith of the poor looser: if my team didn’t win, it’s becuase your team cheated.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Economics, Writing

Brains are Back

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“When I was watching Obama's acceptance speech (Tuesday night), I was convinced that he had written it himself, and therefore that he was saying things that he actually believed and had considered,” says Jane Smiley, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “A Thousand Acres” and other fiction.

“I find that more convincing in a politician than the usual thing of speaking the words of a raft of hack speechwriters. If he were to lie to us, he would really be betraying his deepest self.”

“Until now, my identity as a writer has never overlapped with my identity as an American — in the past eight years, my writing has often felt like an antidote or correction to my Americanism,“ says “Everything Is Illuminated” novelist Jonathan Safran Foer.

“But finally having a writer-president — and I don't mean a published author, but someone who knows the full value of the carefully chosen word — I suddenly feel, for the first time, not only like a writer who happens to be American, but an American writer.”

Authors regard Obama as a peer – TODAY: Book news – MSNBC.com.

Maybe it was just the rush of the moment but I really was impressed by Obama’s writing skills on election night. What stuck me was the way he took his campaign catch phrase and turned it on its head. Instead of a call-and-response affirmation, he made it sound like a quiet prayer. It was nice bit of theater, but it showed a writer’s sure hand too: yes we can.

The larger hope, for me, is that we will finally leave behind the era of the frat-boy President. (I hope too the failure of Caribou Barbie is another good sign.) So much attention has been paid to his race or age or lack of experience that his intellectualism, anathema to so many Americans, slipped right under the radar. This might prove as important as anything.

Posted in: Composition, Language, Professional, Writing