Trouble in paradise...

The teachers are slowing showing signs of war with administration...

In meetings and situations with administrators...they bicker, they villify, and they're showing serious signs of being pissed about having decisions forced upon them...

These are the same teachers, by the way, who begged to have decisions imposed school-wide, district-wide, some of them statewide and federal-wide (though federal impositions are being opposed more and more, thankfully, by teachers)...and definitely imposing all kinds of stuff on kids...

It's not even particular issues...it's just being bossed around all of the time...

Which is natural...if people would get honest about this whole foolish, romantic political period they would realize that noone likes to be bossed around...so imposing on people will quite naturally result in all kinds of foolish conflict and soiled relationships...

But what do I know?:)...I'm just a second year special education teacher:)...

Tensions are running high in meetings...so high that I can't navigate them with humor and cooling people off anymore...and the failure of teachers, in particular, and administrators, secondarily, to face the failure of the logic of all of their advocacy of imposition and force is kind of baffling, sometimes, as I persistently watch them buck the very impositions that they so romanticize in the abstract...

Very bizarre behavior, indeed:):)...

In the meantime...it's making life uncomfortable, these days...and it means that teachers and administrators both follow the failed and foolish logic on this, which just escalates the tensions and conflicts...and that they all persistently engage these discussions failing to be sensitive to the position of one another...to listen to one another...and to resolve conflict, rather than just trying, foolishly, to win them all the time...

The best hope is that, paradoxically, it is administrators who are typically much more on the ball about this issue...and are learning, at times, to navigate conflicts much more easily...
And the other hope is that you just can't keep being foolish forever...eventually you got to face up...or at least most people have to face up...and if you can't...things will just keep getting worse...

I have to say that I am amazed to what lengths most people will go to not have to face up to their failures of logic or just failures, period...

And these are dark days for honest acknowledgement of responsibility, I have to say...

Kind of ironic, huh? That this is supposed to be a period pushing for responsibility...and yet so few people will take responsibility for the clear failures of policy and logic and action, these days?

Can you remember the last time you heard someone say, "I was wrong" or "I'm sorry" for something important in the world?

I can't...

Responsibility is for the weak, apparently, is the logic of those who would strong-arm to get their way rather than face the failure of their thinking...it gives the impression to the other side that maybe you don't know what you're doing...

And here's the real kicker...

Maybe folks don't know what they're doing...

Maybe the reason why the Administration does not want to face the failures of these last 6 years in international policy circles is because they really don't know what they're doing...maybe that is the reason why social conservatives don't want to admit that it is likely the culture war that has so dramatically lowered the standards of the culture, as of late...that a culture war was declared, and that social conservatives have clearly lost that war, if the cultural indicators mean anything...if anyone would just take a moment to look around at the baseness of the dominant pop culture in America and the world, right now...

Maybe the reason why Democrats claim the "high ground," as I just heard Senator Charles Schumer from New York claim today without ever having earned it to my mind (what are Chuck's ideas for improved international policy? I haven't hear them...though I've heard him talk plenty during this period) is because it is easier to make a claim on higher ground than to actually earn it...maybe Democrats have confused criticizing a position with developing a better one...maybe Democrats just don't know how to come out with it and say, "I don't know how to improve international policy over the current Administration...because I've been too busy trying to figure out win power and haven't spent even a fraction of that time trying to figure out how to develop more constructive policy"...and maybe that will be kind of embarrassing for us if we do win power, because we won't know what to do with it once we have it...and we will find ourselves subject to similar criticisms that we make as a part of the opposition"

Yeah...some people just don't have the guts to admit when they may not know what they're doing...when they may be wrong...

Most people really...

But we can't just keep fucking up forever...eventually you have to face the failure...or just keep experiencing failure...

What a sad, arrogant period we are going through, right now...

What a sad failure of conscience and honesty we are experiencing, right now...

If we just don't admit how scared we are that we don't know what we're doing...maybe we just won't have to face that fear, we reason...

All the while...failing to resolve problems...many times over...
If I were a kid in America or the world, right now...who would be my hero? Who would I look up to? Who would inspire me?
Democrats? Republicans? Liberals? Conservatives? Teachers? Administrators? Parents?

Maybe that kid who has the guts to admit that he doesn't know how to read and but who gives his honest effort to learn rather than persistently act as if it doesn't matter...

Maybe that's who Hillary Clinton and George Bush and Republicans and Democrats should look to for inspiration, these days...

The kid who can admit that he doesn't know what he's doing...so that he can study and learn...

And who can admit that is matters to know what you're doing...even if you've studied it...but your efforts are failing anyway...

My experience is that people who have studied something are often the ones who have the easiest time admitting when they're wrong...

Because they didn't study to fail all of the time...they studied to find a better way to succeed...and once one path has run itself dry...

Eventually...you have to find a better way...

Love,
Ben