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

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

Republican (Empty) Rhetoric

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In recent elections, the Republican hate word has been “liberal,” or “Massachusetts,” or “Gore.” In this election, it has increasingly been “words.” Barack Obama has been denounced again and again as a privileged wordsmith, a man of mere words who has “authored” two books (to use Sarah Palin’s verb), and done little else. The leathery extremist Phyllis Schlafly had this to say, at the Republican Convention, about Palin: “I like her because she’s a woman who’s worked with her hands, which Barack Obama never did, he was just an élitist who worked with words.” The fresher-faced extremist Rick Santorum, a former Republican senator, called Obama “just a person of words,” adding, “Words are everything to him.”

by James Wood, New Yorker, October 13, 2008

We all have this tendancy to say, “politicians are politicians,” which means, roughly, that politicians as a class will generally say anything if they think that it will get them elected. We like to think, too, that this is a non-partisan complaint pointed at Democrats as much as at Republicans. To some extent, that is true, but I think this election offers a startling contrast.

It’s true that both sides are getting ugly, but the McCain side has begun to draw on a deep well of the ugliest sorts of political rhetoric, actually stooping to accusing Obama of associating with terrorists, if not being one himself. McCain’s crowds are yelling bloody murder, literally, and the candidate is either unaware, or unwilling to challenge them.

I think Wood might have a good explanation for the deeper sources of the McCain campaign’s slide into emotionally charged, even violent rhetoric and xenophobia. (They’ve starting using Obama’s middle name at rallies again, as if to suggest that he is “foreign,” or alien in some way.) For one thing, as I heard a Pundit say the other night, it’s an old political adage: if you don’t have ideas, pick a fight.

Even more profoundly, though, McCain has had to attack the very idea of logic, of words and reasoning and debate, since the start of his national campaign. If people think their way to the election, rather react, he’s lost. That means his rhetoric has to be as dramatically Orwellian as any I have every seen, and as utterly empty. It’s all fists in the air and meaningless chants: drill baby drill!

Posted in: Economics, Language

Sarah Palin’s (Empty) Rhetorical Style

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The heart of Sarah Palin's appeal is —

Wait, did you see that? There! She did it again: wrinkled up her nose in a way that either looks like a sneer or is adorably reminiscent of Samantha from "Bewitched." Depending on whom you talk to.

Style: Examining Sarah Palin’s Rhetorical Style. Libby Copeland, Washington Post

Governor Palin reminds me of a boss I once had. He was good looking, always ready with a smile, and on the surface supportive and helpful. He seemed the ideal academic administrator. Over the course of several years, however, the bright surface seemed more and more like a flashing mirror distracting you from his real goals. He demanded total control over his little kingdom.

Eventually, I came to realize that he was a profoundly immoral human being; a particular type of tyrant that is all too common. I don’t think you can call him manipulative in any substantive sense, because the link between appearance, the public face, and the private power, the authoritarian control, is so close. It’s what success looked and felt like to him: to be powerful is to fool people.

He did some awful things, too, ruining lives in both petty and serious ways and undermining the ability of teachers to do their jobs. He could never be held responsible, though, because on the one hand he had that smiling face, and on the other hand he had a gun under his coat and he was not afraid to use it. We all thought he would certainly become a dean.

My partner is livid that Palin is the “type” that now represents successful women– successful politics– to so many. It particularly galls her that so few seem to even want to try to see behind the flashing mirrors; it’s as if the substance is irrelevant, and nothing matters but the performance. We point out the wink, but then, in effect, we wink in return: isn’t that adorable!

It’s exactly like my old boss. In fact, I think we in academia have had a hand in promoting a way of thinking, so well represented by the Washington Post article, that empties out the content of rhetorical analysis. Maybe it’s because it’s so important to a successful career in the American university. There’s ugliness behind that cute little nose wrinkle, though, and we ignore it at our peril.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Language, Professional, Writing