Category / American Politics

by nflanagan

Do Core Democratic Values Belong in Schools? Some Say No.

I try, when thinking about the path this nation is currently on, not to immediately jump to worst case scenarios or inept comparisons. The uptick in the language of fascism shouldn’t be ignored, however—comparing certain people to Hitler or bemoaning the loss of democracy might not be overkill in the political soup of 2024.

It’s been sneaking up on us, like the proverbial frog in hot water. When looking at curricular change over the past five years—immediately preceding the onset of the COVID pandemic—it’s easy to see that there were plenty of precursors to the anti-woke, book-banning, teacher-punishing mess we find ourselves in as we slowly recover from that major shock to the public education system.

The scariest thing to me about the abuse teachers are taking, across the country, is its impact on curriculum. Here’s the thing: you really can’t outsource teacher judgment. You can prescribe and script and attempt to control everything that happens in the classroom, but it doesn’t work that way.

Several years ago, my school district brought in a Big Famous Ed-Presenter to do an August workshop on lesson design. Because she was expensive, surrounding districts were invited to send interested teachers, those who wanted to learn how to craft engaging lessons and units with aligned performance assessments and instructional strategies. All the teachers would be creating their own curriculum using the MI Grade Level Content Expectations—the standards documents issued by the MI Department of Education.

Once we had been seated in rounds by subject area, the presenter asked us to come up with a common, overarching topic to turn into age-appropriate instructional sequences. We at the humanities table quickly settled on ‘Core Democratic Values’ which were part of the MI Social Studies standards. We then went around the room sharing our chosen topics.

The presenter held up a hand when she heard from our table. No—you’ve misunderstood, she said. I meant something like “Westward Expansion” or “Industrial Revolution”—a topic that’s a key concept in your state Social Studies standards. We all believe in core values, of course, but this is about disciplinary content.

All the K-12 teachers in the room hastened to assure her that Core Democratic Values were indeed a key topic in the state standards, pulling up documents and published units to prove it. The presenter conceded, saying that she did this work all over the country and had not yet encountered such a broad concept—open to a range of interpretation and uses in instructional practice—anywhere in the country.

It felt like a point of pride, really, having these core democratic values as an anchor in the Mitten State standards. I’m not even a Social Studies teacher, and I could think of a dozen ways to insert the core values into lessons in the band room.

Here’s the official definition: Core democratic values are the fundamental beliefs and Constitutional principles of American society, which unite all Americans. These values are expressed in the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution and other significant documents, speeches and writings of the nation.

And here’s a list of those identified values: Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, justice, the common good, equality, truth, diversity, popular sovereignty, and patriotism.

Things we all agree on, right?

Not so much, anymore.

Speaking of precursors, when Michigan was updating its Social Studies framework, back in 2018, there was a major kerfuffle over Core Democratic Values (and a bunch of other hot-topic stuff):

References to gay rights, Roe v. Wade, climate change and “core democratic values” have been stripped from Michigan’s new proposed social studies standards, and the historic role of the NAACP downplayed, through the influence of Republican state Sen. Patrick Colbeck and a cadre of conservatives who helped rewrite the standards for public school students in kindergarten through 12th grade. “They had this term in there called ‘core democratic values,'” Colbeck said. “I said, ‘Whatever we come up with has to be politically neutral, and it has to be accurate.’ I said, ‘First of all, core democratic values (is) not politically neutral.’ I’m not proposing core republican values, either.”

This wasn’t only about rhetorical confusion between ‘Democratic’—the party—vs. ‘democratic’ (the time-honored. foundational principle of our government), although that’s the first thing that comes to mind with the protestors. In fact, reading the article would be a great classroom exercise for older students. The assignment might be: Read and discuss the diversity of opinions shared here, in a representative democracy with a free press.  Who should determine what students learn in a public school?

The proposed conservative edits went deep. They were about redefining concepts like equality, diversity, justice, the common good—and truth. ‘Civil rights,’ for example:

A high school standard about the expansion of civil rights and liberties for minority groups cut references to individual groups, including immigrants, people with disabilities and gays and lesbians. The new proposal includes teaching “how the expansion of rights for some groups can be viewed as an infringement of the rights and freedoms of others.” Colbeck told Bridge he added that phrase.

Surely, most public-school social studies teachers aren’t down with suggesting that not everyone deserves equity and civil rights, because granting those rights might infringe on someone else’s beliefs or “freedoms.”

After months of wrestling over these—yes—core values, the State Board adopted new Social Studies Standards in 2019. The changes they made were reasonable—you can compare the old and new. And core democratic principles and values are woven throughout the curriculum. Surprised that this story turned out OK? The battle is far from over.

The original definition and explication of core democratic values Michigan schools adopted were spot-on, nested in that most traditional American ideal: a free, high-quality fully public education for every child. One that would prepare them for active, informed citizenship. To become good neighbors, stewards of our collective environment, smart consumers and engaged voters. Community builders.

Aren’t core democratic values just about the only thing worth fighting for, in 2024?

by nflanagan

Woke/Not Woke

A few years back, in 2016, I read a blog post from a national teachers’ union leader, a white woman, proclaiming that she was now woke. I’ve met this woman a few times and have no doubt that she is sincere and well-meaning and totally on the right side of social justice issues, but the blog, about her aha moment, struck me as tone-deaf.

Most of the time, white educators who care about justice are working on opening their minds, at being better humans. Maybe the best white people can do is increase their understanding and awareness of all the injustices that are built into living in the home of the brave. Closer to woke, maybe, but always gazing at justice and equity from a layer of privilege. Doing their best until they can do better, etc. It’s not for us to decide, yup, we’re woke now.

When I read that blog, however, I never anticipated a US Governor would proclaim that his state is where “Woke goes to die.”  As a campaign strategy, no less—a campaign based on freeing people of privilege from any guilt about exercising their biases, discriminatory actions, and outright bigotry against everything from Gay Days at Disney World to telling high school students ugly truths about Black history.

And now, Florida lawmakers are moving full-speed ahead to push minors off social media. They’ve empowered schools to ban cell phones, remove books and limit history lessons, with more restrictions on the way.  Students interviewed in the linked article are incensed—they understand that it’s their learning that’s being limited, not their social lives. They don’t feel protected—they feel cheated.

How did we go from striving for more equity and inclusion as a nation–to proudly announcing that the last thing we want our children to feel is responsibility for the well-being of others? What was the turning point?

Spoiler alert: It’s no coincidence that the Governor who wanted to excise woke-ism thought that strategy would resonate with a particular group of American voters. Having stirred that Group4Liberty up, Desantis is now reaping the consequences, politically, in Florida. Bad ed policy will always catch up to you, with increasing teacher shortages and hollowed-out libraries. And so many headaches and complaints.

When you’re stirring the pot, to get political mileage out of parent anger, you’re doing a grave disservice to the foot soldiers who are teaching in your state, the ones who are trying to put together functioning classrooms full of diverse kids–and then teach them something worth learning.

And, as Peter Greene points out, succinctly: It’s a great thing to have an administrator who will have your back, who will stand between you and the latest flap (and for administrators, it’s a great thing to have a teacher who will take the steps needed to make defending them easier). But it’s a luxury that many teachers don’t have.

Stripping critical topics and materials out of the curriculum because they may be interpreted as ‘woke,’ makes that curriculum sterile and empty. Trying to keep students from accessing their own answers on the internet is futile. And attempting to control teacher behaviors via professional development is downright creepy.

Teachers who are experiencing all of these anti-woke procedures can feel isolated and angry, understanding that the very reason they chose to become teachers—building the next generation—has been abandoned by school leaders with feet of clay.

There are a lot of ways to interpret ‘woke’—but it’s a factor in every school building in America: Who accepts whom? Who is comfortable and able to learn? Who is expected to do well—and who is given short shrift? How do we get along, and respect each other’s differences?There are systems of oppression, however subtle, in every school, public and private.

Woke is defined by the DeSantis administration as “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them,” according to DeSantis’ general counsel, as reported by The Washington Post.

Denying that there is systemic injustice, instead substituting the systemic practice of avoiding unpleasant truths, ducking issues that cause conflict and barring critical thinking by students, is the worst possible basis for making education policy.  Instead, ed policy is now based on chasing test scores, cutting economic corners, and presenting a mendacious view of the world to our future leaders.

If anybody needs to pursue wokeness, it’s school leaders and education policymakers. Because—guess what—there ARE systemic injustices in American society. And one of the purposes of American public schools has traditionally been forming a more perfect union through education. Carol Burris:

In the beginning, the purpose was to create a literate American citizenry to be able to participate in democracy. Our founders realized that if they were going to give citizens the ability to actually shape government through elections, they had to have some knowledge base on which to make decisions.

Returning to the critical question here—how and why did wokeness become something to sneer at, to stamp out of school discussions and materials?

I keep thinking about the video shot at a middle school in Royal Oak, MI right after the 2016 election, with students chanting “Build that wall!” Or the lawsuit filed in 2022 against another Michigan middle school for suppressing the first amendment rights of students, by forcing them to take off their “Let’s Go Brandon” hoodies.

Add in a pandemic, which tilted many perspectives—equity, safety, privilege—and it’s easy to see how the past eight years have caused a political abyss to form. Teachers who forthrightly proclaim they are woke, in 2024, risk being fired.

It’s time for action. Step one: voting.

by nflanagan

Do Public Schools Suck?

Some years ago, John Dubie, then a high school senior in Vermont, posted a very personal, autobiographical blog entitled “Big Picture Saved My Life.” John meant that statement literally—the Big Picture curriculum and program at South Burlington HS was the thing that kept him going when he was thinking about checking himself out.

I was stunned by the aftermath of the piece, which was picked up, reprinted and dissected in a number of other blogs. I was especially surprised by those commentaries that suggested John’s life was saved by leaving traditional public school.

The irony? Dubie spent much of the blog describing the first eight years of his education in a Catholic school, where he was generally seen as a disruptive loser by the faculty. And– the Big Picture Learning program he credits with making all the difference was housed in a traditional public school, in Burlington, Vermont,

Because I was the person who suggested John tell his story in public, this re-interpretation of his autobiography made me see red. I said as much, in the comments, noting that his generosity shouldn’t become a cheap excuse to slam public education again. I said: What I’m worried about here is protecting a young man who graciously shared a deeply personal reflection having his story–and his face– used to promote the idea that public education sucks.

The response I got: Seriously? Of course public education sucks.

Do public schools suck? Is that the conventional wisdom, the reflexive, global response these days? Do we have to start with the conviction that public education has failed, before we can transform or improve, regenerate or revitalize a fully public system?

I say no. In fact, the best time to change public education is now, while its strengths, resources and merits still exist.

What questions should we be asking about public education, before reflexively tearing it down? What facts shape the argument that public education, as a concept, is well worth saving?

  • All governance models–public, chartered, independent, parochial—have produced exciting schools and disastrous schools. There are plenty of students who thrive under direct-instruction, highly structured, traditional content-delivery models. And others who learn best through self-directed exploration of ideas and subjects that interest them. There is no one best way to learn.
  • Public education remains the Big Kahuna of governance models in the U.S. Why would you tear down the considerable and historic infrastructure of a system that has educated–however imperfectly–generations of (successful) Americans, instead of updating it, repairing its cracks and flaws and outright malfunctions? Other nations have retrofitted their public systems, using both research and imagination. Why wouldn’t we?
  • When and where public education is not meeting the needs of students, why is that so? Public education has been radically re-shaped in the last two decades, driven by “reform” policies and experiments that clearly aren’t yielding the expected results (and that’s a very sanguine assessment). If public schools suck, we certainly haven’t found the magic formula to fix them. Probably because the answers involve hard work, multiple strategies and serious investment.
  • Public education is the only “choice” when other options are exhausted, so public schools are filled with our poorest children, those whose parents cannot provide transportation or uniforms or help with algebra homework. Some of those schools are creatively addressing problems, building communities and family relationships, persisting even if testing data remains low. Do they suck?
  • Who’s saying that public education sucks–and why are they saying it? For some parents, the fact that their child doesn’t get a custom-tailored learning experience or enough attention is reason enough to believe that all public education is substandard. For others, there is a knee-jerk assumption that the only good education is a series of competitive-admission, high-ticket private schools. Much of the anti-public education drumbeat springs from a politicized, media-fed conviction that public schools have failed, based on testing data alone. You have to ask: What’s in it for the most vocal and persistent public school critics?
  • You don’t really know what a particular school or classroom is like until you’re there. We’ve all read the polling data that shows parents generally think the schools in their community are pretty good; it’s the schools in other places–scary urban places, or maybe just the next district over, or public schools across the nation–that are terrible. I’ve been in plenty of classrooms in Detroit Community Schools where there was order, curiosity, learning–and joy (and usually, about twice as many kids as there should be). In the middle of poverty, there are pockets of triumphant accomplishment.

Shouldn’t we be shoring up public education, as America’s best idea? Shouldn’t we be investing in repair, enhancement, innovation? Let’s stop with the facile pronouncements on the failure of public education–they reveal failure of imagination and democracy.

by nflanagan

Ever Had a Student Like Taylor Swift?

Ever had a student like Taylor Swift?

The question I’m asking is not “Did you ever have a student who turned out like Taylor Swift after they were a full-grown adult—unbelievably well-known and well-off?”

It’s this: Did you ever have a student you felt was full of promise? A kid for whom you could foresee a big future—in any number of arenas, from business to politics to entertainment?

A kid who looked and acted like Taylor Swift in this video, when she was 16 and a sophomore at Hendersonville High School? You can see the talent, drive and ambition from a mile off, and you think the student will end up doing something remarkable with their one wild and precious life.

In the video, however, we see Taylor pledging allegiance, solving a math problem and sort-of mouthing off to her mom. Her comments on camera reveal an atypical mountain of 16-year-old self-confidence, something that can be annoying in a classroom. As it happens, the video was shot near the end of her time actually attending high school, as her career took off, and she finished high school via homeschooling. A practical solution. And, I have to say (quoting Paul Simon), her lack of education hasn’t hurt her none.

My follow-up question: What happened to your student like Taylor Swift—the ultimate prize-winning science geek, the creative senior whose novel you expected to buy in the future, the talented trumpeter headed off to Julliard? Did they rise to greatness? Fizzle? Run into a roadblock and blow all that talent and potential?

Speaking only for myself, I would say that of course some students show enormous promise, but nobody’s future is guaranteed—or even predictable. I have had many former students end up in positions of leadership and acclaim, even fame, in varying fields—just as their teachers expected. And others who made a wrong turn someplace, sometimes disastrously.

What’s more interesting to me is those students of whom little was predicted, who leapfrogged over a lackluster secondary school presence into a successful adulthood. I had a student in my 7th grade math class whose homework was perennially missing, and whose test scores were abysmal. We had tons of meetings around this kid with his beleaguered parents—how to get him to focus on schoolwork, benefit from extra tutoring, knuckle down and pass the seventh grade, etc. etc.

You know what’s next, right? By the time he was 21, Mr. Anti-math was a million-dollar real estate salesman, back when selling a million dollars’ worth of real estate meant something. His little headshot, with its cool haircut, appeared in every edition of the local news. Presumably, he had someone else doing his taxes, and drawing up contracts.

I also know that many of my middle school students’ future goals were centered on riches and fame. You don’t often meet a pre-teen who hopes to live their life humbly, in service to others. Self-effacement and altruism are difficult when you’re not really sure of who you are, to begin with. Besides, aiming high will please your parents and your teachers.

Celebrity, however, is not all that it’s cracked up to be:

When a celebrity is that prominent, they are always in danger of becoming the figurehead of cultural and societal frustrations. Which is one of the many reasons celebrities periodically recede from the public eye: no matter how many people love you, there comes a point when the structure of a star image cannot shoulder the weight of the star’s meaning and import. The history of celebrity is filled with examples of people who did not or could not protect themselves from this scenario — because of their youth, because of addiction, because of others’ greed, including our own as consumers and fans — and careers and lives that imploded because of it.

Taylor Swift’s ‘meaning and import,’ in 2024, have made her the target of a whole segment of American society:

She’s doing too much, except when she’s not doing enough, and she’s always doing it wrong… a pretty blonde dating a handsome football player should, at least for white people of a certain age, evoke all the simpler bygone vibes (Friday-night lights, milkshakes with two straws, letterman jackets) that conservatives could want. Except — oops! — the pretty blonde endorses Democrats. And Travis Kelce, the football hero, appears in commercials for vaccines (bad) and Bud Light (somehow worse).

And why does she hog the spotlight at his games? She’s Yoko Ono-ing him and jinxing his team, the Kansas City Chiefs, except when she misses a game — and is still, somehow, jinxing the team, which made it to the Super Bowl anyway, proof right there, somehow, of a vast left-wing conspiracy.

Taylor even gets people like the execrable Jesse Waters claiming she is a left-wing asset.  And worse.

Here’s the thing about Taylor Swift: she is a genuine talent, who writes her own material. As a life-long musician and music teacher, that fact alone elevates her above many, if not most, popular music superstars, to me. Of all the amazing things she’s accomplished, I most admire her reclaiming her own music by re-recording albums released when she was younger, and under the thumbs of record producers whose goals centered on promotion more than artistry and message.

That makes her a role model for all girls who want to speak with their own, authentic voice.

And that’s a goal that teachers can get behind, with all their students. Wealth and glory are often fleeting, but knowing who you are and what you stand for can be accomplished by all students.

The picture below was shot at the Musical Instrument Museum in Scottsdale, AZ, one of my favorite places on the planet, eight years ago this month. If you go on a weekday, you are likely to run into a field trip in progress. And even though there were Chinese drums to pound, and John Lennon’s Steinway (on which he composed “Imagine”) to reverently view, where were the students clustered? In front of Taylor Swift’s sparkly dress and banjo, mouthing the words to her songs.

Those kids are probably 20-something now. Let’s hope they’re claiming their own voices.

by nflanagan

I’m Not That Kind of Christian

I was eager to read Tim Alberta’s new book: The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism. I follow Alberta’s magazine pieces, in the Atlantic and Politico, his appearances on cable and mainstream news and podcasts. I read his previous book, American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump, and found it well-written but disappointing, an overly detailed defense of country-club Republicanism that missed the ugly underpinnings of how we ended up with President Donald Trump.

But—cutting to the chase—The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory is a fantastic book. Highly recommended, even though the burgeoning Christians-are-what’s-wrong-with-this-country crowd may be irritated by Alberta’s persistent, conservative choir-boy insistence that the church is a force for good.

I should mention here that I had a front row seat for the rise of the Cornerstone Evangelical Presbyterian juggernaut in Brighton, Michigan (nothing like your mainstream Presbyterian, btw). We moved to Livingston County around the same time as Richard Alberta, long-time pastor at Cornerstone and Tim Alberta’s father. When we were looking for a church, we heard repeatedly about the great things going on at Cornerstone, which was just a few miles down the road—the rapid growth of the congregation, the inspiring sermons, the youth group with 100 members. Pretty soon there would be a school, too—ultimately, there would be six major building expansions in 30 years.

One Christmas Eve, we decided to give Cornerstone a try. My son was three or four at the time and had zero capacity for quiet behavior in a strange place. When heads began turning, my husband took him out into the narthex. After the service, he was holding our coats and standing by the door. We’re not coming back here, he said.

Out in the car, he pulled a fistful of brochures and monographs out of his pocket, collected as he chased our son around the lobby area. Take a look, he said. There were predictable anti-abortion pieces—but also literature supporting capital punishment, and the usual Old Testament scourges against divorce, dark (Harry Potter) magic and homosexuality. We’re not exposing our kids to this, we agreed. We found another church.

But Cornerstone, which eventually grew to 2000 families, held a lot of power and influence in Brighton. Richard Alberta enjoyed stirring up local controversy—when a downtown coffee shop put a tiny rainbow sticker on its door, he wrote a letter to the newspaper, suggesting customers who were willing to order coffee in such a sinful place consider going to “Sodom and Gomorrah” (his too-clever name for Ann Arbor, 25 miles south), instead. The shop closed a few months later.

At Christmas time, when many churches collected gifts for needy families, he declared that there really was no excuse for being needy in well-off Livingston County. Instead, his church filled up a semi-truck with evangelical goods and household items and shipped them to Russia, to support struggling Christians there.

Alberta broke up the Brighton Ministerial Association because he refused to meet with a local gay minister. He brought in “security” specialists when my church, St. Paul’s Episcopal, called a Black rector, claiming that criminals “from Detroit” (code language) would now be getting off I-96 and endangering congregants in Brighton churches’ parking lots.

He went after my church, probably the most liberal mainstream congregation in town, repeatedly and viciously —in the newspaper and any other media outlets he could find, pre-social media. When a reporter at the local newspaper asked for an in-depth interview, he had a putting green set up in his office, and spent the interview nonchalantly practicing his short game, as she sat and took notes.

Many of my students attended Cornerstone and went on mission trips to save the unchurched of West Virginia or wherever. One of my band students’ father was an associate pastor at Cornerstone; at Parent-Teacher conferences, this pastor asked me to call the fees for his son’s upcoming band field trip a “donation” for tax purposes. He came with a typed-up statement for me to sign (I didn’t).

There’s much more, but you get the picture.

Tim Alberta’s book begins with the death of his father, in 2019, and his surprise at learning formerly dedicated congregants were leaving Cornerstone for more MAGA churches. Funeral attendees criticized Tim for his openly non-MAGA thinking (a well-deserved potshot at Rush Limbaugh). Followed up, of course, with the righteous assurance that they were praying for him to see the real truth.

My thought: The Buddhists were right about karma. You reap what you sow.

Which is, bottom line, where Tim Alberta is going in this book. He takes the reader through right-wing congregations, colleges and organizations around the country, a wide-ranging array of appalling examples of religious malfeasance. Mercedes Schneider posted some hot quotes from the book in her blog, if you want to get a sense of the flavor of his writing, and the practices he explores and condemns.

Alberta is careful to note that Trump was merely an accelerant, a permission-giver for bad behavior in the name of the Lord, not the root cause of what has happened to the Evangelicals. But he pulls back the curtain on some distinctly repellant, un-Christian conduct and people, both the globally famous and the local yahoos in Brighton.

He resists passing judgement on more inclusive, mainstream churches, although his conservative perspective is never hidden. He also has the scholarly and personal background to dissect theological and biblical questions raised by the commercialization and politicization of the spiritual. He writes with great confidence and clarity, relishing the opportunity to counter every lazy iteration of “Well, the Bible says…” He spends a half-dozen pages on abortion that are well worth reading.

I learned a great deal from the book. For starters, I began to understand where MAGA and its tribal beliefs and actions come from, how conservative Christians moved rightward—the triggers, the entitlements, the power-hoarding. This was personal for me, too, a look at how all the nice white kids from nice white families in my school district shifted their world-framing and let casual racism, sexism and xenophobia emerge.

It was also clear how the pandemic was a huge political trigger, dividing congregations that wished to protect their more vulnerable members from those who saw vaccines and restrictions as the state trying to control the church, and COVID deaths as God’s will.

Alberta ends the book with some signs of hope—the most convincing of which, ironically, come from women who have been sexually abused and actually fought back—Jennifer Lyell and Rachel Denhollander. Aside from Paula White, Trump’s hottie “spiritual advisor,” the main characters in this book’s framework are men. White men. When Alberta travels, as research, he visits men—genuine pastors, scoundrels posing as clergy, insufferable jerks, the egomaniacal, the greedy and the scheming. Women take a subordinate role in all of the churches and organizations. This is so obvious, in all 500 pages, that it feels like a blind spot. He thanks his wife for essentially raising their three boys in his absence, in the acknowledgements, but it feels like an afterthought, the cookies and coffee after the meat of an intelligent sermon.

Nonetheless, Alberta seems to have had a religious epiphany, taken a well-researched and critical look at what evangelical Christians have become, and bravely wrote about what he’s observed. When I read about mega-churches, pastors living in mansions and castigating their fellow citizens who believe differently, as the donations roll in, I always think “Not all Christians are like that.”

And, lo and behold, there’s a FB page for that: Not That Kind of Christian. There are think pieces—“We Were Wrong”– and bricks and mortar churches where the focus is on doing good and building community, not accruing political power. The traditional church may be fading, as it definitively has in Europe, but it isn’t dead yet.

I am certain that Tim Alberta holds out hope that we’re on the crest of a religious revival. In the meantime, he was harrowingly honest about what he saw. Everyone—believers and non-believers should read the book. Five stars.


by nflanagan

My Twelve Best Blogs of 2023

Every December, sites and services that spend the year hoovering up personal information spit out a summary of users’ activity. Call it the year-end quantification-industrial complex. The trend isn’t new. But especially since Spotify hit word-of-mouth marketing gold with its shareable Spotify Wrapped feature, companies of all kinds have been delivering year-end nuggets of data to their users, whether personalized or in aggregate.                                                             Atlantic, December 23, 2023

The year-end quantification-industrial complex. I like that phrase. I really do like Ten Best columns and Biggest Stories and even the Time Person of the Year. There’s something gratifying about a year’s worth of anything, be it books, movies or (my personal favorite), Most Important Trends in Education.

It’s nice to think: Well, that was then, but now we have a clean slate, a fresh start. Even when we know, deep in our brains, that next year will be largely composed of the same old sh*t, plus some disconcerting new sh*t and perhaps the occasional good news. Which means that columns about education policy and practice are, if not evergreen, enduring.

Here are what I think are the best dozen education-related blogs I wrote in 2023. Not necessarily the most popular or most-read—but the ones deserving another look:

I Had a Dream about the First Day of School    actually was one of my most-read blogs. I was wading around in teachers’ August complaints about bad professional development, endless and pointless staff meetings and all the unpaid work involved in classroom re-organization and wrote the blog in about 20 minutes. It struck a nerve.

Sometimes, you know, going in, that a blog will sink like a stone. But you write it anyway. In the case of Girls. Period., the trigger was being asked by a friend, a school social worker, to donate pads and tampons for the middle school girls she served. Bad policy in Florida makes an appearance in this blog, as well. I’m sure some readers found it distasteful. But it applies to girls, half our population. Just saying.

Almost every edu-blogger wrote about book-banning this year, some with photos of empty shelves. My personal take explores the use of the word ‘pornography’ to describe books that have changed students’ lives, and my own first encounter with actual porn.  I Know It when I See It.

The Absolute Folly of Standardization:  ‘The trouble arises when we use the tools of school—instruction, curriculum, assessment—to compare the students in our care, to label them, to sort them into standardized categories when they are very young. To essentially assign their potential. To show contempt for the wide range of human talents.’

Here’s one about the school where I used to teach, after a student filed a lawsuit against school leaders for not protecting her from overtly racist speech and acts. Are Schools Responsible for the Racist Behaviors of Students? What do you think?

Speaking of racism, and charges of “CRT”—Who is Indoctrinating Whom? A reflection on the impact of teachers on our lives and beliefs, for better and worse.

How many times have we heard teachers grumble about education policy that should have been run by teachers—who could have disabused legislators of the notion that they knew something about the way schools work? This ‘teacher at the table’ idea isn’t new: Thinking about Teachers at the Table.

Where the Boys Aren’t: Why is Teaching Still a Female-Dominated Profession? A question that is endlessly fascinating to me, as a woman who embarked on a largely male sub-profession: band director. Blogs about women in education don’t usually draw lots of readers, but this one has statistics and receipts.

Most of the blogging I’ve seen on the (faux) Science of Reading feels like it was created by SOR bots, claiming that they never learned anything about phonics in their teacher training. (Seriously?) Some thoughts about media baloney re: reading instruction. Learning to Read in Middle School.  

I spent most of my career teaching middle school. And I have some thoughts about the rather amazing capabilities of middle school students: Middle Schoolers—the Myth and the Reality.

In a year when unions appear to be making a comeback, teacher unions are still straw-men bad-guys in the war on public ed: Teachers or Teacher Unions? Or Maybe Neither?  Some clear-eyed observations on why we still need teacher unions.

Here’s another heartfelt reflection that went nowhere, but that I think summarizes the heart of successful teaching: being committed to your students, and even fond of them. Almost All You Need is Love.

It’s my sincere hope that you’ll take a look at one or two of these. And if you really want to make my day, subscribe—it’s totally free and easy—to Teacher in a Strange Land.

Happy New Year!

by nflanagan

The Problem with Jingle Bells

If you follow various chat groups and Facebook pages of music educators, this time of year is rife with the Great Christmas Literature Discussion, centered around whether to schedule a concert in December and, if so, what songs to play, while avoiding stepping on anyone’s cultural traditions.

I have written, often, about this conundrum—honoring the festive spirit of seasonal holidays (which is evident absolutely everywhere, in December, from the grocery store to TV ads) vs. avoiding any mention of Christmas at school, because it’s inappropriate to preference one religious celebration over others, in a public institution filled with diverse children.

From a professional education perspective, it’s thorny. You can play a Christmas-heavy concert, sending parents home in a rosy glow—some parents, anyway. You can try to recognize every winter/light holiday with a tune—or rely on “classical” pieces like Messiah transcriptions. You can try to take Jesus out of the equation, and end up with a lot of junk literature. Or you can avoid the whole thing and schedule your concert in January.

Increasingly, I’ve seen elementary music teachers bowing out of anything directly related to Christmas. They can articulate good reasons for this, distinguishing between music students are fortunate enough to experience at home and with their families, and what belongs in a solid music education curriculum. For teachers who are under pressure from administrators or parents to put on a holiday show, there are winter weather songs. Enter Jingle Bells.

A couple of weeks ago, Peter Greene reprinted his blog entitled The Jingle Bells Effect and the Canon. It’s a bit of brilliance comparing 30 different versions of Jingle Bells, 30 ways of taking a small collection of notes and rhythms and turning them into something unique and different.

It’s like literature, Greene says—there are multiple ways to teach a concept, theme or historical era through the same medium: the printed word. He makes the point that teachers should always be able to offer a cogent answer to the question: Why are we learning this? I agree.

And for many years, I found Jingle Bells a handy instructional tool. The chorus uses only five notes, so the tune appears in virtually every beginning band method book, just about the time kids are eager to play real songs. The lyrics are thoroughly secular—no mention of Christmas—so when kids are singing about a one-horse open sleigh, it’s kind of like the Little Deuce Coupe of its day.

It’s also one of those three-chord songs, simple to harmonize. Add some sleighbells and voila! First concert magic. For years, my middle school band (some 200 7th and 8th graders) played Jingle Bells in a local Fantasy of Lights parade. Because when you’re trying to get 200 young musicians to march and play at the same time, you need something easy.

As awareness of the racist roots and language in some of our most beloved folk and composed songs began to grow, in recent decades, elementary and secondary music teachers rightfully started pulling certain songs out of their teaching repertoire. Scarcely a week goes by without an argument about this trend, on music-ed social media sites. Do songs that sprang from minstrelsy, performed in a different era, for example, have a racially negative impact today? Or are they just tunes? A valid and important question.

I find these skirmishes encouraging, an example of teachers discussing–with some conviction–the beliefs that shape their own professional work. And sometimes, seeing things in a new light. As Maya Angelou said: ‘Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.’

I’ve read dozens of these “is this racist?” discussions on-line. And music teachers, given the chance to re-think the cultural value–or lack therof—in certain pieces of music, often are willing to choose something else, or share the origins of the work, the outmoded and biased thinking reflected in the lyrics, as an opportunity to teach cultural history associated with music. People will adapt.

Except when it comes to Jingle Bells.

Back in 2017, a professor at Boston University , Kyna Hamill, published a research paper, suggesting that Jingle Bells was first sung in minstrel shows. Research papers are not generally the subject of teachers’ lounge chat, but this one caught fire, and pretty soon, there were teachers arguing that the composer of the piece, James Lord Pierpont, was a fervent Confederate, and therefore a supporter of slavery. Out with Jingle Bells!

Pierpont was not a household name, in his own time. He was a struggling composer, organist and teacher. His father was an ardent abolitionist and Unitarian minister, as were his two brothers, all in Massachusetts. But Pierpont took a position as organist in a Unitarian church in Georgia and was there when the Civil War broke out. He wrote music and sold it to support his family—including songs that supported the Southern war effort.

He also enlisted in the Confederate Army and served as a clerk. His father, the Reverend John Pierpont, was a Chaplain in the Union Army—one of those families split by a tragic war. There are plenty of families in the same situation right now, in this country—split by politics, influenced by cultural context. Something to think about, as we evaluate and banish Pierpont, 150 years after he wrote his most famous sleighing ditty.

Even Kyna Hamill, arguably the genesis of the anti-Jingle Bells movement now says this:
My article tried to tell the story of the first performance of the song. I do not connect this to the popular Christmas tradition of singing the song now. “The very fact of (“Jingle Bells’”) popularity has to do with the very catchy melody of the song, and not to be only understood in terms of its origins in the minstrel tradition. … I would say it should very much be sung and enjoyed, and perhaps discussed.”

There are teachers and schools that have taken Jingle Bells out of the curricular mix—and good on them for having that thoughtful discussion in the first place. And there are teachers who have decided they have bigger curricular fish to fry than banishing the bells on bobtails—they’ll save their firepower for songs with overtly racist lyrics and intentions.

Again– these are valid and important questions. The trick is to keep the conversation going, and refrain from condemnation of well-meaning peers.

Are those sleighbells I hear?

by nflanagan

What Happens When “Choice” Schemes Mature

Story from 1993:

I am finishing my year as Michigan Teacher of the Year, a whirlwind of heart-warming honors, random opportunities to speak, and learning just how ed-related organizations will try to co-opt The Teacher Voice. I am attending a 3-day music education conference in the summer, a gift from the Michigan School Vocal Music Assn, staying in a college dorm and actually having a blast, learning useful things and singing great literature, when I get a call from my husband. Yikes.

No cell phones or email at the time, so this is one of those scary moments—the central office crew at Alma College sends an emissary to the rehearsal hall, with the message: call your husband immediately. I take a handful of change and find a pay phone, heart pounding.

Nothing’s wrong at home—but my husband took an urgent call from the MI Chamber of Commerce. They need to speak to me. Today.

Turns out the MI Business Roundtable wants to shoot a TV commercial promoting a campaign to fix public education.They want me, the Teacher of the Year, to star in this commercial. The language, of course, is aspirational—our kids are our most precious resource, yada yada—but one of the aspects of the multi-prong campaign is offering families more choice.

They have set up a classroom, in an elementary school about 30 minutes away, where the filming is to take place. Someone will pick me up— this afternoon—and return me to Alma by dinnertime. They have already cleared this with the Department of Ed; one of my (unpaid) jobs as Teacher of the Year is serving as spokesperson for the Department and the Governor.

So I don the most teacher-like outfit I have on hand—your classic denim jumper—and get into the car with the Chamber of Commerce guy. He has to move his Bible and some Christian study materials to the backseat; he’s been listening to their inspirational cassettes on his long drive up. He’s unfailingly polite and appropriately grateful that I interrupted a summer workshop to film a commercial. He’s also really geeked about this campaign.

It’s not about funding, he says. It’s about freedom. Freedom for families to choose the schools that best fit their kids. But, I say–we turned down a ballot initiative to establish vouchers in Michigan back in 1978, two to one. The people have spoken on this issue. Haven’t they?

No, wait, he says. This is about sending your child to the PUBLIC school you want him to attend. Public schools will be open to all Michigan residents. Doesn’t matter which district you live in—your child can attend the public school of your choice.

Whoa. A half-dozen reasons why this is messy pop into my head. What about Detroit families who want their kids to go to Grosse Pointe—how will that work? What about transportation—if you don’t have a car and driver available every morning, how will your kids get to school? What about families only interested in scouting for the best sports teams? How will administrators plan for enough classrooms and teachers? And what about the value of neighborhood schools, serving as a community center?

Destabilizing those communities and significantly impacting their revenue streams doesn’t even occur to me at that point.

Chamber of Commerce Guy has already figured out that I’m probably a Democrat and union member and believer in public education for all, for better and worse. He’s grinning.

Wouldn’t you like to send YOUR kids to the school of your choice, he says. I note that we already have, by moving to the community where I teach. But what if you couldn’t afford to live there, he replies—if this campaign is successful, every child could attend the school where the Teacher of the Year works her magic. He raises his fist, chuckling—“Free the people!”

I was gobsmacked. I don’t remember much about shooting the commercial, except that it was in a first-grade classroom like those in the ‘50s, with a Palmer method letter border and a framed portrait of George Washington. We adjusted the camera angle to get the American flag in the background. I was holding an apple (which I got to keep, since I missed dinner). The script didn’t mention letting kids in poor schools choose wealthy schools, if they can get there, of course. It was more happy talk, children are our future, blahdy blah.

Mercifully, I have searched repeatedly and have been unable to find a copy of the commercial online, although I have a copy on videocassette buried in a box in my garage.

That was thirty years ago, when school choice was a sexy market-driven idea, whose ultimate ramifications were not well understood by parents or, frankly, by advocacy organizations like the Chamber, or by legislators or bureaucrats. People wanted the “freedom” to choose schools—who doesn’t value freedom?

Today, one in four Michigan children attends a school outside his/her district boundaries.

 The spread of choice statewide has accelerated as Michigan’s public-school enrollment has declined 11 percent to 1.38 million in the past decade, prompting competition among some districts.

Michigan law allows districts to open their doors to students from surrounding districts. Most of the state’s 540 public districts participate in some form, though several do not, including Birmingham, Grosse Pointe and Dearborn schools in metro Detroit. Districts can participate with all schools in their intermediate school district, typically their county, or more broadly with any district.

This article illustrates the consequences, especially for small and struggling districts, threatened by the law. It includes a district-by-district comparison of students lost, gained, and attending school outside their district zone. The winners and losers, in other words. Many of the examples are heartbreaking. Schools must compete—or die, literally. And a lot of the factors that draw in parents are unrelated to academic excellence, outstanding programs or a strong staff.

In fact, when asked, lots of adults defend choice for the sake of… choice. The individual trumps the commons. Caveat emptor. And we’re not even talking about vouchers or religious schools siphoning off money intended for public education.

Has any of this resulted in improvement, to any metric of school success—from parent satisfaction to unreliable-to-meaningless standardized test scores? No.

So why are we so stuck on the freedom to choose?

by nflanagan

How Old is Too Old?

I remember distinctly when Joe Biden, running for President in 2019, suggested that he might be a ‘transitional’ president, serving for one term to calm the nation down after the abuse it suffered at the hands of The Former Guy. He was 77 at the time, and while he was hale and fit, it seemed like a reasonable idea, four years and out. In fact, although Biden came in way down on the list of my preferred candidates at the time, that suggestion—that we just needed somebody with deep experience to get us out of the Trumpian quicksand—carried weight with me.

I took a lot of grief over a blog in which I said, essentially, that I was OK with Joe Biden.

What is striking to me, four years later, is how good a job Biden has done. And—yeah—maybe credit goes to the qualified people he selected to handle the business of the presidency, but the man himself has gone here, there and everywhere to move the country forward and make the nations of the world see us, once again, as a reliable ally.

I give Biden high marks, far higher than I would have expected, back in 2021, when he was inaugurated, two weeks after an insurrection. His job—patching the nation up after a global pandemic and economic collapse, and undoing the damage wrought by Trump—has been beyond challenging.

He’s made some missteps, but not many. Obama was vigorous and articulate, but no friend to public education, and too cautious in rebuilding the economy that Bush II crashed. America is great at seeing leaders through a haze of partisan nostalgia, however, and really bad at discerning what is fact and what is something you just read on Facebook so it must be true.

I know better than to wring my hands over polls. Those focus groups that the NY Times assembles—He’s too old and I feel poor!-– are a reminder that people seldom vote on policy questions, hot-topic issues or an accurate record of the incumbent. They pick the person they like the best, the guy they’d like to have a beer with, the one who looks most like their neighbor or friend. The one whose promises they’d like to believe.

Boots—or flipflops? Or old-man bedroom slippers?

Ronald Reagan, our oldest president before Biden, was formally diagnosed with Alzheimer’s five years after leaving office. I remember thinking he was too old to be president—but I was a lot younger then.  

So how old is too old? And what are the disqualifying parameters that come with old age? Heart attack? Concussion and subsequent, obvious cognitive failure? Being 95 when you leave office?  Traveling around the country spewing crazy talk? Tom Nichols put it like this:

Biden is a competent politician who sometimes stumbles or goes off the rails in his public statements. Trump is a disturbed, emotionally disordered person who, in Liz Cheney’s words, is “the most dangerous man ever to inhabit the Oval Office.”

That sums it up for me. I wish Biden were younger. Or—I wish he’d followed through on his suggested agenda, and announced that he would, in fact, bow out after one rather amazing term. But wishes aren’t horses, and the best we can do is hope that Biden maintains his health and his marbles for another five years.

I thought I would ask my friend Julia how she feels about Biden’s age. Julia is coming up on her 97th birthday (for which, she’s asking for a donation for a local group dedicated to equity and the environment). She’s already a decade beyond the age Biden would be, at the end of his second term, and she’s one of the wisest and most grounded people I know.

In response, Julia sent this poem. Enjoy.

These Old Men, each played one,

Both are now too old to run!

Knick Knack Paddy Whack Give the dogs a bone

and send the Old Guys limping home.

Find a woman, maybe two,

Someone who’ll know what to do!

Knick knack paddy whack, find somebody soon…

Before we all head for the Moon!

by nflanagan

Dark Headspace—and Teaching

From a great column, by Darrell Ehrlick, on paying attention to the news, in the Michigan Advance:

 I understand the dark headspace a person can occupy after consuming a steady diet of news that seems to indicate a growing danger of authoritarianism; of a broken political system that continues to perpetuate dysfunction instead of listening to a public hungry for cooperation and solutions; of one global crisis after another; and of a global climate catastrophe so profound it threatens the very existence of the human species.

Yeah. That dark headspace.

For several years, since retiring, we have temporarily escaped harsh Michigan winters, spending the month of February in Airbnbs in Arizona. None of them had cable TV packages, so news-watching was limited to MSM, and sometimes, not even that. And eventually, we began to notice how agreeable it was to avoid what was happening in the Trump administration, dodge endless outrage over the January 6th insurrection, and reduce the non-stop anxiety of COVID spikes and variants.

No news, apparently, is good news.

Ehrlick’s point was—as you may have guessed—that it’s now incumbent upon all comfortable Americans to pull their heads out of their sulky discontent over restaurant wait times and gas prices and re-engage with civic responsibility. A republic, if you can keep it, and all that. The title of the piece is: Democracy is on fire. Consider this your wake-up call.

We’re seeing this wake up! language everywhere, lately, and not just in rabid, perennially anti-Trump commentary. As we round the corner into 2024, and the Election Where Nobody Wins gets closer, our obligation to choose wisely looms. Ehrlick is right—when the former leader of the free world is calling his enemies “vermin,” and pre-planning his political revenge tour, and the Speaker of the House can’t distinguish between facts and lies,  we’re in a bad headspace, indeed.

What was once considered hype, rhetorical overkill, playing the fascism card, etc. etc. is beginning to feel important and very credible. To political writers and news analysts, like Darrell Ehrlick—but also to invested citizens, like me. The old saw about being condemned to repeat a past one can’t remember is newly fresh and relevant—and omnipresent in the media.

And—surprise!—our older students are impacted by the same real and important political instability, as well. I think a whole lot of the ugly blah-blah promulgated by Moms for Liberty types is generated by parents’ wishes to keep their children from experiencing that dark and questioning headspace. There are plenty of “cultural chaos agents” ready and willing to help helicopter moms with that goal, then cash in after the election. It also helps to explain why the most zealous M4L acolytes are those with the most to lose by pursuit of diversity and equity. Keeping calm and carrying on while trying to solve problems that impact us all is not a way to preserve privilege.

All they have to do is convince anxious parents that the K-12 sky is falling. That their kids can’t read competitively by age eight, because their instructors are incompetent. That environmental science is promoting clean energy, undercutting the fossil fuel industry. That elementary school teachers are urging first graders to reconsider their gender, when the curriculum actually prescribes a foundation of respect and understanding for other people. That it might be a good idea to totally defund public education, and throw in public libraries and museums as well.

So many manufactured crises. So much to lose.

And although teachers are my favorite people on the planet, I have to admit that a lot of us are also inclined to—cliché alert—close our doors and teach, as policy and negative media opinion swirl around us. I get it. I am intimately familiar with the most pressing concern for teachers, especially novice teachers: What am I going to do tomorrow? And how will it prepare my students for their diverse futures while keeping their standardized test scores up?

Mostly, this is a matter of limited human time and energy. We are firefighters, dealing first with the urgent, and later with the important and long-term issues. Studying worst-case news and opinion—the dark headspace in education—can lead to a kind of paralysis for educators.

Things like choosing the perfect books to expand students’ minds and imaginations– see Mandy Manning’s photo illustration, a mélange of horror books, light and love–become minefields. If we’re not letting our students safely wrestle with the idea of a dark headspace through literature, history, drama and current events, how will they learn to cope?

Shortly after No Child Left Behind (the law to permanently fix all our public schools) was passed, I took a sabbatical—a perk in our local contract—to work for a national non-profit. While there, I spent a lot of time dissecting the new law, and its impact on highly qualified teachers, both the ones who were labeled highly qualified under the law, and the teachers who actually were exemplary, according to their school leaders, parents and students. I went to D.C. and spoke with folks in the Education Department, who were trying to figure out the laws’ outcomes, as well.

When I returned to the school where I taught, I was in a union meeting where the local Communications VP was cluing members in on the new legislation, which he called the ‘Adequate Progress’ law. But don’t worry, he said. Our contract prevents administrators from transferring us because we don’t have the right credentials. I raised my hand and gave my colleagues a quick summary of NCLB—the HQ teacher part, the adequate yearly progress part, the testing part, and more.

Our good contract won’t protect us from requirements of federal law, I explained. There was silence in the room. The idea of federal law mandating testing as early as 3rd grade, of tests determining a teacher’s value, of a district losing control over who is best positioned to teach a grade or subject, of national curricular standards—those were new and terrifying ideas.

Ideas, I might add, that teachers have pretty much absorbed in the intervening 20-odd years. Which ought to be a cautionary tale.

Living in a dark headspace is a call to action.