What I want to be when I grow up...

I've decided that tomorrow...the last day of classes before the winter break...I'm going to give grades out...which are all pretty good, really...and then I'm going to skip the homework we haven't graded, yet...and only grade it if it will improve folks' grades...

And then we're going to talk and write about what we all want to be when we grow up...me included...

I decided that I'd much rather have the kids thinking about their own dreams over the Christmas break...than fractions...which are, really, only a small part of life...compared to that much bigger question...

You know when were my favorite times in school when I was a kid?...those unstructured times...when we just kind of hung out, together...in a classroom that was otherwise a lot of bustle and effort to get stuff done and still get some social interaction with peers in under the watchful eye of our teachers...

Three of my all-time favorite learning/school moments are:

1) Sophomore year, high school...we're reading To Kill A Mockingbird in Ms. Hudson's Honors' English class...and I stay home...sick...I drink several milk cartons full of water in hopes of peeing out whatever it was that I'm dealing with...and I spend the whole day in bed reading what turns out to be my favorite novel ever...I finished To Kill a Mockingbird, that day...and its not an understatement to say that it changed my life...

2) Junior year, high school...late one night...on a weekend, maybe...but maybe even on a school night...I can't remember...I stay up all night over the course of a week, I believe...I can't quite remember...reading Henry David Thoreau's Walden...and commit myself to transcendentalism...did I mention that I love Henry David Thoreau...

3) Senior year, college...I've finished forensics...and I've met this brand new really great friend to transition me into a more primarily academic-focussed life (though...truth be known...only known to me, now years later...I was far more academically focussed than most people my age, forensics or not)...she and I study together in the political science/liberal arts and sciences building at Wichita State University...both writing papers...I re-write a Latin American microenterprise paper I've had for awhile into some bullshit anthropology final paper (and get an A)...she's doing something much more legitimate...but it's just nice to have the company of someone who takes the learning seriously, too...

And some more...

4) Sixth grade...Mrs. Legg's class...after being previously informed in the year that to "assume" makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me," I'm already much-impressed with my very pretty and wise sixth grade teacher...then...one day...she takes the class out to the playground...to sit underneath a tree...and to either read a book or just initiate the most frank and respectful discussion of sex that I have had with a teacher up until that point...it was so sweet...so unexpected...and such a beautiful thing for a teacher to do...

5) Senior year, college...my 4th year of school...my last year of forensics competition...Bond Benton, my best friend at the time, and my parliamentary debate partner, and I, go up to Willamette University in Oregon, that year, to compete at the National Parliamentary Debating Association's National Tournament...we travel with Bond's mom and her best friend up the coast of Oregon, Northern California, and Washington, making a trek, for the sake of his mom's friend, to see all of the covered bridges along the Northwest coast...they are beautiful...I pick up a copy of a National Parks' book with writings from famous conservationists like John Muir, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson...and I write poetry, while visiting the Redwoods in Northern California, about coming to terms with my father...who he is, versus who I fantasized him to be...Bond and I unexpectantly get knocked out in octafinals (Bond and I were very competitive that year)...we very disappointedly continue our trip along the coast...and take solace in the beauty of our surroundings...

6) Senior year, college...post-forensics (I had several seniors year...three, to be exact:):):)...I have several one-on-one meetings with my favorite professor, David Ericson...my modern political theory class...I wonder if Dr. Ericson knows how much he influenced me with that class and with those meetings...Dr. Ericson is my primary advisor on a very good senior thesis on the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917, the first federal legislation in America touching education below the college grade, that I never submitted to a committee...Dr. Ericson and I spend several weeks talking about the nature of politics in democratic countries that profoundly affect the way that I think about politics...and touch me...that this brilliant man would spend so much time talking with me and helping me develop my own intellect...

7) Brandi and I spend 3 months in Washington, D.C., learning about politics...about love...and about the world...all at once...it was a total coming of age for both of us...and I learned so much, I can hardly count all of it...we go see Cornell West and Eugene Rivers, on Brandi's prompting, speak about race and poverty...we see just about every artsy theater movie that comes out within our vicinity...two very gay-friendly young kids from Wichita, Kansas with not a ton of experience with gay culture spend time just kind of absorbing D.C.'s gay district, Dupont Circle...we go to a gay bar where the patrons sing musicals, only to find very few people singing...but plenty of gay men to chat with...Brandi is the first girl that I rent pornography with...we work together...we live together...we take the metro back and forth, each day, together...I learn more about people in three months than I ever have before in my life...with one of the most people-savvy persons that I have ever met in my life, other than me...and I learn what it means to be deeply in love...an experience that I have yet to duplicate still today...

I think that last one takes the cake, really...and all of the subsequent learning Brandi and I do together...

8) Senior year...grad school...it's getting clearer for me that I'm starting to develop original ideas...the idea of which, itself, is exciting enough...not quite realizing, yet, just how much potential impact these ideas might have...I'm still very much mourning losing Brandi, but I'm getting stronger...and her leaving has prompted a flurry of study of every relationship/psychology/people book I can get my hands on...I read Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Abraham Maslow's Farther Reaches of Human Nature, and Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom in that year, as well as a million other books...none of which are on a class reading list...all of which profoundly transform my thinking about people and the world...

9) December 2002-December 2005...I leave grad school to work on my original work, independently...frustrated with a relationship with an advisor that has begun to feel like an imposition and an obstacle to my education...I work several average joe jobs...learn about poverty, first hand, involuntary...learn a lot about the world outside of school, which I have been in for the last 12 years of my life...and write more independent, more original, more personal, more profound work than I have ever written in my entire life...Brandi's ghost never totally leaves me...but her cutting off all communication makes it clear that she is renigging on her promise to remain friends, no matter our relationships...I'm getting used to Brandi making the switch from always considering my feelings, because we were best friends, to never considering my feelings, because we were once lovers...an arbitrary change that I have no real control over...and I begin to depend less and less on friends and more and more on myself for final calls about my life...subsequent friendships only reinforce that trend...

10) 2005...Hurricane Katrina...I finally understand Joe Nye's caution that we take security for granted until it is gone...and I finally understand Hobbes...security and freedom are no longer abstractions for me...and Hobbes becomes my new best friend...though I'm still wedded to Mill and Locke and freedom...for good reason...because they are what all that security is for...

There's more...debate and forensics tournaments with Conrad Jestmore in high school and with the Wichita State team in college...my junior year Honors' English class with Elizabeth Taggart, as a beautiful liberal counterweight to the libertarian influence of Mr. Jestmore...Billy Budd and my senior year with one of my favorite teachers of all time, Zenobia Washington, for A.P. English...

And a million others, really...

All my best times have been either in school...or around learning and education, really...structured or unstructured...

My favorites are clearly unstructured...but it's much clearer to me, now, how, just as my freedom is only assured with adequate security...so are my more freely-explored educational experiences only made possible or as strong by my more structured educational experiences...

People who say that they're educations didn't matter...or that school didn't matter...to their lives...to their success...to their experiences...

Are bullshitting themselves...pure and simple...

The world doesn't turn out as well as schools because so few people really aspire to make the world that good...

But the world gets better...because of schools...and because of our time spent there...I'm sure of that, now...

I know my life was made better...

And thank you to every teacher -- formal or informal -- who made that possible...

Love,
Ben

Why rules and deference to authority are bound to fail...

As I've been reflecting on my own use of authority, in the last couple of weeks...and the use of authority by folks who I trust with it more...teachers...

I think I've finally figured out why rule by authority is kind of withering away, even as it is in its last throws of demanding legitimacy...

Because authority is used -- as a rule, not as an exception -- arbitrarily...

Meaning...though the people who are charged with authority often try to use it in a way that is responsible...

As a rule...authority gets used arbitrarily...based on the moment to moment whims of those with authority...

And as more people with authority recognize that...the more, I hope and know, at some level, that they will make allowances for that fact...

But in the meantime...the recognition of this fact by those who authority is used over...which is all of us, at some level...the more people begin to ignore authority...as it becomes clear just how arbitrary its use is relative to the realities that authority is charged with governing...

Rules only work if they work...and its not their enforcement that ultimately decide if they work or not...it's the reality that we all live with...and the less they work...the more they'll be ignored...

Rules and authority are already ignored, to a great degree, by those they are imposed upon, as a rule...the real question, at this point, is whether those with authority will begin to relax their imposition...and as authority figures reflect on this, there really is only one conclusion they can come to, at some point...they have to relax their imposition...else be so out of sync with reality...to be not taken seriously at all...and people who aspire for positions of responsibility do not so aspire to not be relevant...they aspire, generally, to make a positive impact on life...and most of them know better than to believe that they can only do so with impositions of authority...in fact...so much so...that, as a rule...among those with authority...at least in the situations in which I've worked and in most democratic societies, I think...those who use authority most meticulously...are those who are least respected among their colleagues with authority...

Because it is becoming fairly clear to me...that the places where I am most effective as a teacher...are the places where I refer to my relationships with students as human beings...rather than as an authority figure...

Meaning...if I'm frustrated with how I'm being disrespected as a human being...appealing to that relationship is far more effective in dealing with the behavior than is asserting my authority...as a rule...

In situations where authority looms over me...it is so clear...it's use is often completely arbitrary to the realities I am dealing with...

And when kids appeal to me for similarly reasonable rationales...all I can say to them is...they'll have to get the issue resolved with the specific person that they dealt with at the time...I have to back up my colleauges...and in the meantime...I work with my colleagues to persuade them to relax their more arbitrary uses of authority...by demonstrating by example how doing so improves relationships with students...accomplishing more of our purposes...both in improving behavior...and in improving academic focus and accomplishment...and my class, generally, is a pretty good example of that principle...yesterday was an exception, largely because I, personally, was off my mark, feeling very ill and overwhelmed and out of energy...but as a general rule, my special education class -- where students are often, for good reason, sent for behavior problems, as well as academic problems -- is, generally, better behaved than many general education classes where students, generally, behave better of their own accord and without teachers having to remind them to do so, as much...

And I can tell that the places where I'm least effective...are the places where I have undermined that relationship with more arbitrary uses of authority that are really pretty typical for teachers...places where I'm tired of wrangling with students over their behavior...tired of reminding the same students to be more respectful of me and one another...and places where I act to get some resolution...places that are completeful forgiveable...but that prove to some students that all teachers are alike...and that they all just want to control you...which is ironic...because all teachers, on their better days, feel just the opposite...all teachers are striving to have students be responsible for their own behavior...so that teachers don't have to deal with it...and so that students can learn to be more responsible for their own behavior as they grow into young adults...

And I like most teachers and parents and adults and authority figures -- the good ones, at least -- try to reflect on this use of authority to use it less and less arbitrarily...and to still be effective in helping to raise young people...who are responsible for their own behavior and their own lives...

Only to prepare the more responsible of them...like me...for a world which is often arbitrary with its use of authority...no matter how responsible a person is...

A fact that I will just hope that authority figures in the adult world...are reflecting on, as well...

I trust that they are...

Because there is no major movement to relax rules in the adult world...

And yet...it is slowly, very slowly...happening...

Evidenced by the perceived need by the less reflective among us...to defend rules that have already been passed...

Melissa and I listened to a commercial on a Chiefs game being broadcast over the Dillons intercom system...for maintaining 21 as the drinking age...

And I'm thinking, "I don't recall any major push to remove 21 as a the drinking age"...so who are they defending the law against?...

And the reality is...that they are defending the law against all the people who are, quite reasonably, now and in the past, ignoring that law...opting, instead, to teach young people to drink moderately and responsibly with adults present...rather than undercover and less responsibly...outside of adult presence...

Quite illegal to be sure...but a very responsible decision that many parents have been making with their children for quite a long time, now...for good reason...it means more responsible drinking among young people...and parents who do it have come to terms with what parents who often live in a lot of denial around alcohol use and abuse often avoid...that the best recipe for alcohol abuse...is alcohol prohibition...and if you doubt that...go watch the children whose parents prohibit alcohol use...once their out on their own...it's generally not pretty...

The truth is...that luckily for all of us...responsible people don't stop being responsible just because the law says different...

In fact...responsible people often and regularly ignore the law to be responsible, when doing so is more responsible...

It was the foundation for the modern civil rights movement...it was the foundation for developing more freely-chosen sexual mores in the twentieth century, which, on-balance, has been a very good and responsible thing...and it is the foundation for good parenting...

And the most irresponsible fact of modern life...is that we have not squared this more responsible living...with the law...because the least responsible among us...have been busy trying to scare younger and older people, alike...into responsibility...that many of them -- I have some friends here in Lawrence I'm thinking of, right now -- don't practice themselves, so lost are they in their denial of this obvious reality...instead of having younger and older people alike...choose greater responsibility...which, today, as for most of the history of modern life, has involved not only not obeying laws, always...but often disobeying them...generally, quietly...and at times -- as with the civil rights movement -- openly...

But I'm not just advocating a more open reconciliation of this fact with the use of authority...

I'm predicting it...

I'm pretty clear, at this point, that this is the side of this question that will prevail...

Because no other conclusion would allow for as functional living by free and responsible adults...in a world of freedom and responsibility...

It is the presence and interaction with people we trust that promotes responsibility...not the more arbitrary uses of authority...

And the latter will always remain a serious dysfunction of contemporary life in free societies until and as we let it go...

And we will let it go...

Because there is no other way out of this one...

Not just as a fact of free societies...

But as a fact of life...

My greatest reassurance on this question...is that there is no other way around this one...no matter what obstacles those who resist this trend throw in its way...it is a fact of life that no political activism or wrangling will ever be able to remove...this is direction that people are taking and will take more in the coming decades...because it's the direction most conducive to their more responsible natures...and it is a fact of life that all political activism and wrangling will have to square themselves with...because there's no turning back on it...

A pretty safe prediction at this point, actually, if you ask me...

Free peoples want more freedom...as a fact of life...not just as a fact of politics...and they will and do want more, yet...

Have a great week, everyone...

Love,
Ben