We just had another math meeting today.
And I have to say that I am convinced that Federal regulation means that noone has to ever take responsibility.
We have mandates on performance on state assessments built into the No Child Left Behind Act that come from the Feds. All of the district energy is spent pleasing the feds. All of the school energy is spent pleasing the district, and the feds.
The problem is that the feds have no intimate involvement in the situation at all. So when teachers say, "I don't think getting this particular thing done is realistic," or "we can't possibly do several of these goals all at once within this limited time frame," noone is around to listen. Because everyone is just trying to please the feds. And the feds are 2000 miles away.
So when the feds live with the illusion that they can force the kids to perform better than they will or can (at this particular moment) -- which they don't have to come to terms with in the same way teachers do because they don't have to work with the kids every day -- there's no reality check for them. They're just passing legislation under the very complex and highly pressurized environment of Washington politics.
And at the end of the day, noone has to be responsible.
Blame games ensue. Noone is responsible. People are threatened and pushed and cajoled. Noone is responsible. People are fired. Noone is responsible. People are unelected. Noone is responsible.
It's very much like the Iraq War. People keeping saying the same dumb repeated theme. Put the screws to people and they'll do what you want. Even if it doesn't work. And even if it is counterproductive. And even if it isn't sensitive to actual capacity. Even if it ignores all of the real and important people and logistical variables that are necessary to get the work done.
Noone is responsible.
It's the total irony of the situation and reflects the degree to which our rhetoric overwhelms our reason. Good intentions persistently get confused and defended as the same as good results.
And noone is responsible.
You know what drives me most crazy? It's journalists and policy thinkers and academics and activists and politicians and a whole host of people who have no intimate knowledge or involvement in schools -- and in most institutions they regulate -- who create support for these mandates. And when it goes awry, noone is responsible.
It's so goddamn foolish.
So when we get to the end of this foolish goddamn political period where getting tough is confused with getting smart and communicating and engaging people and understanding their sitautions and listening and responding and being more generally responsive to their concerns and getting to resolution rather than always picking a fight and trying to force others to do our bidding...
My question is...
Who will take responsibility?
And you know what my bet is?
Noone.
Not until we all grow up a little bit and learn that responsibility comes from understanding and commitment, not from force. Force is something we have to use as little as possible on the road to building understanding and commitment. My very real and persistent experience is that those kids who are the least responsible are the ones whom have parents who use far more force than parents with kids who are better behaved.
And the supreme irony to me is that all of the toughest situations in the world, right now, demonstrate this principle far more effectively than the experiences of teachers with the No Child Left Behind Act, right now, but the tough people who are making recommendations around international affairs, right now, are just too stubborn to admit the failure of the principle.
I don't know why.
I just listened to Stephen Biddle from the Council on Foreign Affairs make recommendations on NPR last night around pressuring Iraqis in ways that their Prime Minister and popular opinion has consistently indicated was out of touch and, they and I think, arrogant and ignoring how overwhelming the responsibilities that were being imposed really were.
And I thought, "This is what Lord Acton meant."
What Lord Acton meant by power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, I think -- or at least the way I see it playing out -- is that power can begin with all kinds of good intentions. But then people with power become convinced that their use of power was what was responsible for any of the good that happened in the world during their tenure or that their pressure or influence made it so. They develop a relationship with people based on creating enough fear to compel their will. And then they ignore the frustrations of those they compel out an arrogant belief that they could not possibly know what is good for themselves.
And often, in democratic societies, popular opinion leads to this kind of abuse of power. The current political situation arose out of an popular attitude that America and the world hadn't gotten tough enough about its problems, rather than smart enough or communicating more effectively or setting limits more effectively through greater efforts at creating understanding, when possible, and force only when necessary.
America should at least have the balls to do what Palestinians and North Koreans and Syrians and Cubans never seem to be able to do: to admit that its' our fault.
I can share some blame in that. I advocated the No Child Left Behind Act before it was enacted into law. I believed that good intentions would lead to good results before I understood the problems more thoroughly. I believed more, at one point, that you could force your way to progress. That's why I identified more, at one point in my life, as a more conventional liberal. I thought guns could be cleaned up with tough gun control and campaign finance could be cleaned up with tough campaign finance laws. I was wrong. In a big way. I'm totally clear about that, today. But I believed those things in good faith.
And the NCLB is very similar.
What's scary to me is what our society looks like with people not willing to take responsibility for the failure.
How long do we keep running with this failed policy before we give it up, I wonder?
How long do liberals continue to see the splinter in the eyes of the Administration and Republicans and conservatives on this one but ignore the big ass beam in their own eye around the same principles?
"We can't force democracy abroad, but we can force democratic outcomes at home," liberals seem to be saying, if they would square their rhetoric on this one.
But they haven't thought this one through enough to call this a thorough philosophy. It's not a philosophy, in the sense that liberals or conservatives have really thought through all of the consequences from this idea. It is a political slogan that is being confused with a more thoroughly developed idea.
And the scary part for me is when do we give it up?
How long does it have to fail before we begin to face its failures and limitations?
How long do we ignore the concerns of those being forced upon before we acknowledge the corrupting arrogance that power breeds?
Never, is what many policy thinkers and journalists and politicians and activists seem to be saying, right now.
If they complain, you just make clear that their lives will be made miserable if they do not comply.
It's policy made mafia-style.
And noone seems to be recognizing the logical conclusion of this road.
Which is exactly what made the Soviets and the Nazis so scary. Because their political heads and true followers and even not so true followers kept making clear that they had no intentions of ever letting up on force as the means of promoting their vision of progress. Ever. And if anyone had a problem with that, then they would face death or imprisonment or ostracism or many very bad things before that would ever change.
It definitely inspires fear. The question is, "Is is progress?" And, "Does it inspire progress?"
The real answer to both of those questions is clearly no to anyone who cares more about genuine progress and about freedom and democracy than about getting their way.
The truth is that there is an awful lot of people right now who are much more interested in getting their way than in principles like freedom and democracy and progress, because they're convinced that the stakes are too high for them to take high ideals too seriously.
Which means they'll sacrafice the things that really matter to get what they want right now. And when it comes to the highest stakes situations, no fear is too small to rationalize that ugly abuse of power.
And that is exactly what Lord Acton meant by that phrase.
That maximum power in the name of alleviating fear is an excuse that has no end, even as it often creates more fear and more danger than it actually alleviates.
Our great hope, right now, is the war in Iraq, where people can see more clearly that forcing our way to progress has clearly been counterproductive, no matter how you try to rationalize it otherwise.
The question is can we see that this is true almost entirely across the board when it comes to forcing our way to progress?
Things looked bleak to me in 2003 when we first initiated that invasion. So maybe we can get it right, at some point.
But the trick will be that to do so will mean that we cannot scapegoat President Bush or Don Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney or the Republican Party.
The trick is that the American people, or at least a substantial number of them, will have to look themselves in the mirror and say, "I created this mess. I asked for this. I demanded this. And they gave it to me. Because I demanded it. And I am responsible."
The trick on this one is that the people most responsible for the major policy messes that we are in will have to take responsibility for them.
And the people most responsible...are all of us.
Love,
Ben
