Children mimic the behaviors that are modeled for them.

Children, to an excruciatingly acute degree, mimic the behaviors that are modeled for them.

Kids are new to this world, trying on different phrases, actions, and identities, and their frame of reference is limited to their frame of exposure: their peers, the adults in their lives, and the people in the books they read and television and films they see. These are their examples of how to be in this world. The more prevalent a given behavior, the more likely it is that they will mimic it.

Children will often come home from school and, much to their parents’ dismay, try out new four-letter words they picked up on the playground. Older siblings will put their hands on their hips and reprimand their younger brothers and sisters using the exact words that they have heard from their parents. Children at play will take on the roles of characters they like or people they know, experimenting with new mannerisms, modes of speech, and even responsibilities, as doctors or soldiers or magical beasts. I remember seeing the movie Mighty Ducks as a kid. Immediately following the film, and for days afterward, I wanted to play hockey. There was a new type of experience in my ever-expanding frame of reference, and I wanted to explore it.

This process of absorption and mimicry is a key component in growing up. Children start their lives as empty vessels and logically piece together the tapestry of their own identities out of the patchwork of their own experience. It is a fascinating process, and an essential one, and it can and does create an infinite number of possibilities and variations among all who undergo it.

The problem is this: what if a child’s frame of reference is exclusively negative? What if their peers, the adults in their lives, and the fictional characters to whom they are exposed are largely dishonest, unreliable, short-tempered, and violent? What if they live in a world where the behaviors that are modeled for them on a daily basis are deeply destructive? What if the principles underlying those behaviors are the pervasiveness of hopelessness, the raw power of violence, and the inevitability of failure?

Well, then, that’s what they will mimic.

That is the problem I am facing.

My students are surrounded by negativity on a scale I did not, until recently, know existed outside of the world of fiction. They are exposed to gang violence, corporal punishment, gross disrespect, drugs and alcohol, unemployment, and failure—every day. They are 10, 11, and 12 years old. They are threatened by teachers and hit by security guards. A mother of a seventh-grader came in drunk to a parent-teacher conference earlier this month. I called in one parent to deal with a challenging student and she screamed in her face and threatened to beat her in front of the whole class.

The results: students roam the halls threatening teachers. There is a pregnant eighth grader across the hall from my class who is carrying a baby as a present to a boy who is in jail. There is a sixth-grader two doors down who supports his family by dealing drugs and comes to school high.

In my own classroom, there is very little respect. Students talk throughout lessons, yell at me and their peers, steal things, throw things, simply walk out. They tease each other, threaten each other, fight each other. I never know on any given day whether we will be able to learn something in this building that is still referred to as a “school.” My despair at the lack of respect comes into sharper focus when I see how much worse things get when a substitute is in the room. It would appear that they do ‘respect’ me, after all… relativity has become a coping mechanism.

There is a pervasive and sinister belief lingering in the whispered depths of the teachers’ lounge and the front office and the graduate school classes and the conventional wisdom in general. It states that ‘these kids’ must be treated differently from ‘normal kids.’ They need, essentially, to be dealt with harshly. That is what they know. That is what they ‘respond to.’ Otherwise they won’t ‘take you seriously.’

I hate the phrase ‘these kids.’ It stinks of repulsion and otherness and comes attached to a racially driven superiority complex most recently brought into the public eye by John McCain’s reference to then-candidate Barack Obama as “that one.” It is a separating mechanism, and I have spewed its hypocritical venom more than once. It is an excuse.

To argue that ‘these kids,’ by which we mean poor minority students, need to be dealt with differently is not entirely untrue. In fact, all students need to be treated differently. All teaching should be culturally responsive. All students deserve to have their experiences and frames of reference taken into account by their teachers.

To argue, however, that we must yell at them in order to gain their respect, is idiotic. To argue that our effectiveness hinges on our ability to mimic the oppressive structures under which they struggle on a daily basis is barbaric. It is an idea fraught with logical fallacies, because the truth is that while it is “what they know,” it is certainly not “what they respond to.” They may shut up for a minute. If this is the goal, then we have solved the problem. But if this is not the goal, then we have not found a solution, because after being pounded into submission, students will rise again, with startling resilience. And they will once again test the boundaries of disrespect. The reason for this disrespect?

It is what they have had modeled for them.

It is inherent in virtually every interaction they experience.

Children mimic the behaviors that are modeled for them.

This is the ugly truth behind the state of urban education.

Students are simply responding to their world. They show us what they have been shown, every day. It is all too easy to take it personally, and virtually impossible to move forward with understanding in the heat of moments that we never thought we would experience.

But it is true.

And it is devastating.

And it is the clearest reason I can come up with for the utter destructiveness with which they go about their days.

* * * * *

If I have learned anything over time, however, I have learned that the surest way to prove the truth of something is to prove the truth of its opposite. This situation is no different.

While this pattern of modeling and mimicking may lie at the epicenter of the problem we face, it also presents an obvious, dare I say simple, solution.

If children mimic what they see, we must change what they see.

We must model what we want them to mimic.

For some students, it may take days or weeks or months to sink in.

For some students, it may take years.

For some students, it may not work.

However, to treat ‘these kids’ in the way that ‘they are used to’ is to perpetuate the cycle that has brought them to us as bent and broken innocents. They arrive in our classrooms years behind their higher-income peers in their academic and emotional growth, yet decades ahead of pretty much anybody in their exposure to negative worldly experience. To treat them as they have been treated—to mimic, in the end, the behaviors that we see them model for us—is to infantilize our own intellect and accept defeat. If that is the path we choose, we can sit down now, for it will take us no effort and lead us nowhere. We can simply throw in the towel and await our pensions.

Or, we can try something.

We can try to show them what it is to be respected. Rather than demand their respect, we can try to earn it. Not earn it by disrespecting them, but earn it the only way true respect can be earned: by showing it. Honestly.

Why not combat violence with non-violence, impatience with patience, negativity with positivity, feelings of failure with feelings of success?

Certainly, our sphere of influence will be limited, and we may be a few voices among many. But we’ve already got a foot in the door. We see them every day. And if children really do mimic what they see modeled, then it will only be a matter of time before they mimic what we model.

So we need to model wisely.

We need, also, to allow them to inspire us. They are resilient. They show up again and again and again. They try again and again and again. They cope. They have not disappeared. Helen Keller said, “Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.”

Rather than survive by perpetuating, let us overcome by changing.

We won’t succeed every day.

But if we are not willing to try, then we are willing to fail. And if we are willing to fail, we have no business being their teachers.

I need to block out the same negativity with which they cope all day long. I need to buck the conventional wisdom and refuse to accept, as one teacher down the hall brilliantly put it, that “what I’m seeing is the truth.”

What I’m seeing is simply mimicry.

And they are still young enough to mimic something new before they cement their ways.

Let us give them a new type of experience in their expandable frame of reference that they can explore.

Because they are, after all, children.

And I am, for better or worse, their teacher.

Blame George Clooney

Every three years during the Bush administration, America was presented with the slickest and most appealing of Hollywood fare: the Ocean's Eleven series. In 2001, and then again in 2004 and 2007, we were treated to lots of attractive, famous people in fancy clothing surrounded by colorful lights and engaging in witty banter... while stealing unfathomable sums of money. The films, as all heist films do, relied on the simple lie inherent to the genre: the thieves are the good guys. And everyone watched eagerly as they siphoned off millions for themselves.

It is almost as if these movies were designed to enforce a decision made on Capitol Hill two years prior to the first installment: the passage of the Graham-Leach-Bliley Act. Let's set the scene:

* * * * *

The year was 1999, and, just as in the Ocean's movies (those to come and the original of long ago), the story featured a bunch of Rich Men in Nice Suits who wanted to be richer. They came into town looking for the largest casino they could find, hoping to score big.

Now, in the films, Andy Garcia runs the casino, and he at least tries to, you know, stop the thieves from thieving. Similarly, for the last seventy years, the gatekeepers of the nation had stood firmly in the way, upholding regulations such as the Glass-Steagall Act which essentially insured that the casinos of American finance would stay manageable in scope: if one did get robbed, the Strip would not disintegrate into a starry memory overnight.

For some reason, though, Congress, in 1999, did not get this gatekeeping memo. They had no interest in playing the Andy Garcia role, assuming that nobody likes a party-pooper, and managing casinos is boring, not to mention the fact that everyone wants to be Frank Sinatra/George Clooney, or if they can't, they at least want to be his friend, or if they can't, they at least want him to like them. So, our trusty representatives not only welcomed these Rich Men in Nice Suits, but they said, "hey, you know what, let's get rid of that old Act and pass a new one, because, you know, we know what you guys need: a bigger casino. Here, take America."

And they did.

And they had a field day.

The Rich Men in Nice Suits took and took and took, and gambled and gambled and gambled. Now, a lot of the suspense was gone, since there were no guards to fool, no cameras to disable, no, you know, security to, you know, stand in their way.

And everyone got rich.

It was very glamorous.

And it seemed to be working. And lots of people thought they were doing pretty well for a good, long while.

And George Clooney kept coming into their movie theatres and showing them how sexy it was to gamble. And they loved it.

The thieves were the good guys.

There were lots of thieves.

* * * * *

The problem, of course, as we now know, was that people weren't really getting rich. Some were: those who were consistently cashing out and stashing their winnings. But a lot of people were just raking in the chips, and putting those on the line, and then raking in more. They came up with fancy names, like "credit default swaps," which were when a lot of people were borrowing chips from other people, who in turn were borrowing chips from other people, to cover their own lending, without ever discerning whether they could be paid back. Chips were borrowed so many times over that everyone lost track of everything. Another fun thing they did was construct "collateralized debt obligations" out of "sub-prime mortgages," which is a fancy way of saying that chips were loaned out to millions of people who could not afford them, and then other people decided that they would invest in the future paying-back of those chips.

All of America was a giant casino, full of noise and life and color and lots and lots and lots of chips.

Not money. Just chips.

Chips, of course, are not money. And eventually, it turned out that the country, as a whole, was not well-suited to be a casino. All of a sudden, people went to cash in their chips, and found out that they weren't worth anything at all. Too many people had found too many ways to get too many chips, which was absurdly easy, because their were no rules.

The chips had no value.

The casino shut down overnight.

Now, in hindsight, we realize that these people on Capitol Hill had a very, very bad idea. We also realize that George Clooney's movie was a movie, not a lesson. (He does make movies that are lessons, for example, Good Night, and Good Luck, but these are largely ignored by the decision makers.)

So, here we are, duped by the Rich Men in Nice Suits. America spent ten years thinking it was the star of a heist movie; in this movie, thieves became good guys, and everyone was happy.

Nobody stopped to think about the fact that movies end.

Also, re: The Press Conference...

The Times points out that foreign policy was virtually untouched at the press conference. Similarly, Obama appeared on Leno on the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq--and this fact was not mentioned in the interview.

I understand that we are in the midst of a domestic crisis. But we spent most of the Bush administration looking outward, only to find out at the very end that things had fallen apart here at home. We can't afford to make the opposite mistake. It's a big world, and we're a small part of it.

Obama's Second Primetime Press Conference

Overall, a pretty strong performance as far as clarity and demeanor.

However, the President's first answer, to a question from Jennifer Loven of the A.P. regarding Secretary Geithner's request for more control over financial institutions, contained a gaping hole in logic that strikes me as both out of character and extremely dangerous. Consider the following statement by Obama:

"Now, understand that AIG is not a bank. It's an insurance company. If it were a bank and it had effectively collapsed, then the FDIC could step in...

I think a lot of people understandably say, "Well, if we're putting all this money in there, and if it's such a big systemic risk to allow AIG to liquidate, why is it that we can't restructure some of these contracts? Why can't we do some of the things that need to be done in a more orderly way?"

And the reason is, is because we have not obtained this authority. We should have obtained it much earlier so that any institution that poses a systemic risk that could bring down the financial system we can handle and we can do it in an orderly fashion that quarantines it from other institutions."

The response is what we have come to expect from Obama: professorial, intended to teach, easy to follow. But, contrary to his usually high standard of logic, this response makes very little sense. First of all, as Obama himself explained on Leno last week, AIG is not simply an insurance company; it is a financial behemoth of nearly unfathomable size and scope. And secondly, his proposal for solving the problem of a company that "poses a systemic risk that could bring down the financial system" treats said company as a given. Obama is offering band-aids, antibiotics, and preventative care as solutions for combating a fatal epidemic; I, personally, would prefer eradication.

What he is basically saying is the following: "We need to be able to regulate too-big-to-fail companies."

What he should be saying is: "We can no longer tolerate the existence of too-big-to-fail companies."

Matt Taibbi drove the point home on Rachel Maddow's show just hours after the above comments were made. He explained in plain terms just how and when insurance companies, investment banks, and commercial banks were allowed to join into unified mega-conglomerates (and choose their own regulators). He outlined what was, in essence, the moment in time when Congress decided it would allow companies to become too-big-to-fail: the passage, in 1999, of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933.

This Act must be overturned.

I know that Obama's administration is filled with financial insiders whose histories and abilities and affiliations are being questioned. I want very much to give him the benefit of the doubt on said insiders. But it is truly baffling to me how a man of his intellect, no matter what received wisdom is being whispered in his ear by Geithner and Summers, can fail to see the crucial point here: no one company should ever be too vital to fail. It is not enough to try to control these companies. They must, as Taibbi argues (and he cites precedents, too), be disbanded and forbidden from ever again existing.

To allow them to go on is a recipe for further disaster: speculation will always occur; greed will always drive Wall Street; to imagine that the lessons learned today will be remembered tomorrow is foolhardy. We should never knowingly put ourselves in a position that leaves us vulnerable to being held hostage as a nation: not by terrorists, not by hostile foreign governments, and certainly not by our very own companies.

Following Through

Is it just me, or is President Obama, on the whole, doing what he said he'd do? Today's announcement on the end of combat operations in Iraq is but the latest in a series of steps (closing Guantanamo, cutting taxes, investing in health care, etc.), which have not gone unnoticed, that seem designed to... well, to do the things he was elected to do.

I Don't Get It

I'm all for seeing multiple sides of an issue. I would love to see two or more parties having a free and fair discussion in which competing relevant ideas are expressed and debated. I wish this was what the GOP was offering right now, because by doing so, they could seriously contribute to moving this country along... unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case. I've been stunned this week by what seems to be a new nation-wide tactic. It may or may not more harmful than the simple nay-saying strategy they so cherish, but it is far more baffling. It seems to be... mean-spiritedness.

- The as-of-today no-longer-in-operation Rocky Mountain News reports here on a Republican State Senator's opposition to a bill requiring HIV testing for expectant mothers (which would give doctors the opportunity to treat the babies against the virus' transfer). Senator Dave Shultheis said he "can't go there" because the disease "stems from sexual promiscuity for the most part." The article goes on to describe more of his remarks which are too hateful and depressing for me to reproduce here, in which he outlines his justification for condemning the unborn to living with AIDS. (I personally didn't have the stomach or the patience to read the article in its entirety... it also quotes one of Shultheis' Republican colleagues in a separate debate, in which he compares homosexuality to murder by referencing them as sins that should not be condoned... he backs himself up with quotations from the Bible.)

- Meanwhile, CPAC is underway in Washington, D.C., and the racist "Obama Waffles" cereal is on display (and Joe the Plumber gave a talk). Two big laughs so far from the gathered crowds have been in response to 1) an implication that our President was not born in America and 2) a remark by John Bolton about the possibility of a devastating nuclear attack on the city of Chicago... wow... hilarious...

- Sean Hannity had a poll on his website earlier this week asking which of three possible forms of violent revolution his listeners favored.

Most of the above came to my attention by way of MSNBC, which, I realize, is a network with a clear political bias. But they did not make these stories up, they simply shared them. Any one of these instances, on their own, might be taken as the mouthing-off of the radical fringe or, if we wanted to be really, really generous, as badly-calculated political missteps. But these are not simply rogue agents. The people responsible include a Republican State Senator, an Ambassador to the United Nations under George W. Bush, and one of the country's leading right-wing pundits.

The comments, taken together, are stunning in their spite and devastating in their hatefulness. If this is the new Republican Party, then I'm becoming less and less worried about "bipartisanship." These people can dig themselves ever deeper into a hole of hate and when they get to the bottom, they will realize that such a hole is dark and cold, and that the rest of us have forgotten them as we continue to seek the light up above.

I don't get it.

Spring Training Opens

Yankees and Cubs are getting underway today... that means the real Spring has to come soon, too!

Responsibility

Glad to see that just about everyone felt the way I did about Jindal's response. As for his rejection of government intervention, I don't think it carries much water with anyone anymore. As Roger Simon says, it's pretty clear that the government has been complicit in these crises from the very beginning. There is a line to be drawn between letting the markets be free and letting them run wild; there is a line to be drawn between standing by our values abroad and cramming them down the throats of others. There are tough decisions that need to be made, every day, on health care and energy, education and taxes, and many other issues. Those decisions have been put off, brushed aside, and this is where we are now. President Obama spent the evening talking about fixing those problems. The sputter of a Republican response, though it claimed to center on the idea that "Americans can do anything," seemed to be: "Don't look at us. We place our trust in you."

This is classic buck-passing, and subtly, but supremely, disingenuous. It sounds great to say "we'll spend less of your money and get out of your way," but that doesn't get near the truth. The truth is, the "American people" at large do not possess the tools to get credit flowing again, or to reform health care, or to force investment in green energy. That is why we elect people to represent us. If the Republicans don't want to be trusted with our problems, they should not be running for office. If they find it irresponsible to try to find solutions, they have no business at the table. They want us to think they are reaching out a hand when in fact they are stiff-arming progress.

There is another fundamental problem with their response. At its heart lies the standard conservative "answer" to the economy: "we must be fiscally responsible. Smaller government. Less spending." Now, I'm all for fiscal responsibility, but I do not think it can exist in a vacuum. What I would hope for is that all aspects of our government's actions be governed by responsibility. Now, when I was growing up, I was taught that an indispensable part of being responsible was the willingness to take responsibility. And that is what we are asking for now. Congress can not turn its back on the mess it has helped to create; instead, it must recognize the simple precept we all learn in kindergarten: when you make a mess, you clean it up. You do not stand around claiming that cleaning it up would be irresponsible.

Barack the House

President Obama nailed it tonight. In his first Presidential address to a joint session of Congress, he was calm, cool, and collected, with his trademark blend of style and substance. He took President Clinton's note to heart, mixing sobriety with hopefulness, not being too much of an economic Debbie Downer, and he provided something we haven't seen from a President before Congress in a long time: an ambitious domestic agenda guided by logic and by a desire to re-boot this country. (Also note the lack of fear-mongering, although Bobby Jindal threw in some in his rebuttal--shocker.)

It was also impossible to ignore Obama's clear rock-star status during his entrance and exit. I was reminded of a Salon.com article on Rachel Maddow's sex appeal--probably seems totally unrelated, but in it, Judy Berman argues that it is Maddow's intelligence and authenticity that make her so appealing to so many. Barack's mega-watt smile and well-tailored suits certainly don't hurt him, but it is his substance that has endeared him to the American people.

As for Bobby Jindal's response... pretty awkward. First, he tried the "I'm just like Barack" tactic with his back-story, but he just doesn't have the delivery. Michael Steele, Bobby Jindal... the GOP keeps trying to find a Barack equivalent. (Maybe they should be taking cues from his aforementioned substance, not his surface.) Anyway, Jindal sounded like the owner of a car dealership on a low-budget local commercial, with a dash of second-rate second-grade teacher reading a story aloud to her class: all false smiles and condescension. We'll see how stiffing his constituents of their stimulus dollars in last-time-I-checked-not-so-rich Louisiana affects his popularity. The whole thing was such a clear power grab ("I'm a possible nominee in 2012! Look at me! Look at me!") that it was mostly just uncomfortable to watch.

Again, though, great work by President Obama. I'm still not quite buying what he's selling when it comes to his claim to be anti-torture. I'm also sure he knows that the only thing out-pacing his popularity rating right now is his ambition, and he's got a lot to follow through on. Still, he's setting things in motion. From his notable denouncement of high-school dropouts to his referencing of everyday heroes, he showed a willingness to both lead and listen. The combination is refreshing.

Civil Discourse

I thoroughly enjoyed reading George Packer's intelligent reflection on the President's early initiatives and the response they've received from the opposition. Packer brilliantly points out that the scope of Obama's agenda is not being set by ideological opportunism, but necessitated by an inherited set of well-documented and wide-ranging failures (let's not forget, as he says, that "Facts drove the Republicans out of power").

Packer's article is, in part, a response to David Brooks, who gives a refreshingly civil and insightful response from the right. Brooks expresses concern, and rightly, that "we are operating far beyond our economic knowledge." Unlike many of his ideological counterparts, though, Brooks expresses a cautious optimism in the administration, a desire that his criticisms be proved wrong and that the country be set on the right path, even if it is not his recommended path. He is insightful, measured, respectful, and intelligent--a true breath of fresh air.

It seems to me that, considering our current state of affairs, we can neither afford nor tolerate the abundance of baseless accusations and posturing that seek to criticize without justification or the offering of an alternative; nor can we disdain and ignore criticism and rush forward unilaterally. Both must be avoided at all costs if we are to have a fruitful and ongoing debate.

If I remember correctly, I think that's the point of democracy.

First Steps into Virgin Snow

I've just moved to Chicago, and I'm in the process of constructing a new life here, just a few blocks from the Red Line, the only 24-hour L and my gateway to the world. I find myself surrounded by new streets and faces, new friends and places, new challenges, new opportunities, and lots and lots of new snow. It seemed only fitting to create a new blog to help document and sort through all of this newness...