The secret to school success and school reform, I think...and a society committed to everyone's success, out of that...

This second time around at my Master's in Special Education has helped me see something really important, I think:):)...

You know what I think the secret to school success and school reform is, I think?...

Letting people fail...and not making a capital case out of it...just letting them fail and learn from their failures and adjust our expectations to support their success, rather than trying to coerce/force/harm them to try to make them succeed...

Any other way doesn't allow them to internalize the lessons of either failure...or success...

And both are two of the most important lessons for kids and adults to learn as they move into adulthood...

We are so intent on preventing failure and achieving success...that we will rationalize almost anything in its name, sadly...

And the saddest facet of this is that what we think is success often isn't...

And what we see as failure is often just lessons learned and opportunities opened up...

If we can open ourselves up to those possibilities...
And kids and adults, alike, need more opportunities to open up to those possibilities and to credit school as a place where they learned it...

Much of the ambivalence that many even very educated adults have towards school (Dick Cheney, a Ph.D. in Political Science, comes to mind, here) is around how they credit their successes in life despite their school failures and the ways they believe (correctly, often) that schools failed them...

My dad is one of those people...my step-mom is too, to some degree...

Many, many people are, is the truth...

And therein lies the complicated relationship that so many Americans and so many people have with school, education, and their successes and failures in life...

Schools can fix that...

But they have work to do to get there...

In the meantime...the current failures of school...are the exact ones that my very good graduate advisor, Tom Skrtic, identified in his now infamous 1991 Harvard Educational Review article, "The Special Education Paradox: Equity as the Way to Excellence"...

A commitment to equity is a more realistic and genuine commitment to the needs of all students, including top students, who get better, not worse, the more we account for the needs of all students, especially the students who struggle and fail...

Schools need to honestly recognize failure...

But they also need to make room for failure so that students can be ultimately successful without all of the obstacles to success that we create for them when they experience failure...including and especially the bitterness they often feel that they've been abandoned by people who promised to stand by them...

Whether adults want to acknowledge it or not...

It is not a few bad apples that are responsible for much of school failure...

It is the failure of all of us...students, parents, and teachers...
And in each case...our most important failure...is not having the courage the recognize that failure...our bigger failure around not maintaining a strong enough commitment to everyone's success...

That is true in schools and in the society, at large...
And it is our elitism, not our equity commitments...our harshness, not our decency and humanity...our toughness, not our thoughtfulness...

That makes all this so...

The truth is that we are all so goddamned mean to one another...and we just can't ever seem to take responsibility for that...and all the consequences it has on our lives, the lives of our neighbors, and, most importantly, the sorry-ass legacy that we leave our children, as a consequence...

The secret to a society that is committed to everyone's success, which is the only society worth having, is doing exactly what has created all of our progress over the course of human history...

To treat each other better...not worse...

We'll make progress on this one...just slowly...

And the biggest obstacle...is each of us having the courage to admit our failures to promote that progress:):)...

Have a great week, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

How complicated is life?...incredibly complicated...

I'm doing classwork for one of the special education classes I'm taking this summer...

And it's beginning to occur to me just how incredibly complicated this work and life, generally, are...

Even special education:):)...

I think I've gotten underneath something that really big with this work...especially with the principles of least possible necessary aggression...

But the world and life is just so damned complicated...I can barely believe that we navigate it at all, much of the time...and I'm much more sympathetic to why so many people have such a hard time navigating it, much of the time...
Because it's so damned complicated...and if you don't believe that, it's because you're not seeing it...

An important reason that we should make it easier for people to navigate, not harder...

And an important reason for why we should have more compassion for peoples' struggles navigating it, not less...

Though, ironically, the people who navigate it most successfully are often the people who have the most compassion for others' struggles in navigating it:):)...

Anyway:):)...check out the Dixie Chicks' new album when you get a chance:):)...it's really good...though Home, their last album, was one of my all-time favorite albums, period, nevertheless country...

Also...you might check out Robert Redford's new movie, An Unfinished Life...a brilliant little movie about moving on and growing up:)...and check out March of the Penguins, The Crazy Stranger, Vodka Lemon, Dick, Nothing, and Soldiers in the Army of God...

I finally sat through the entire Lord of the Rings' movies and while I wasn't nearly as impressed with this triology than most of my friends and the rest of the world, apparently, I was much more mildly entertained than the other million times I've tried to sit through that thing, it bored me so:):)...I loved watching the first one with my family and when I made Melissa sit down and watch it with me, I enjoyed it much more for what it was, a movie that everyone could watch together...I became less of a movie snob, this weekend, and embraced the Lord of the Rings triology, despite my belief, still, that The Return of the King winning Best Picture in 2004 was utter and total bullshit:):)...

But then again, as Maslow wisely observed in the Farther Reaches of Human Nature, humanity so rarely does always match rewards with merit:):):)...but we do it enough that we can trust us... as far as we can trust us, that is:):):)...

I've got work to do:):):)...

Have a great week, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

Having a moment...

I was having a moment, tonight...at a point in my life when I feel more settled than I've ever felt before in my life...I'm at a point in my life when I feel like I understand my parents and my teachers and older folks in my life better than I ever have...I'm just feeling like I'm growing up, I suppose...

I was having a moment, tonight, where I was really missing old friends...friends from school and from forensics, in particular...close friends...my best friends...

It's funny how I spent 4 years studying my Ph.D. in special education policy (and a Master's in adaptive special ed) and another year before that studying for my Master's in gifted education...all of which I abandoned when I left grad school...

And how a lot of my closest friends in the world I made while I was in undergrad...

Brandi was the closest friend I ever had...we met the year after I finished forensics...

But all of my other closest friends -- other than Melissa, my ex-girlfriend, Jenny, who I'm still relatively close with, my best friend in high school, Angela, and my best friend before that, Mike Coupland -- have been from that time I spent competing with the Wichita State University forensics team...

Bond Benton...Carson Brackney...Scott Wells...Brian White...Mike...Kate Cady...Tommy Patrick...Rachel Miller then Jorgenson now Asbury...Jeremy Pankratz...Jim Harrell...Skippy Flynn...Zach...Travis...Jessica...Kevin Keplar...

Jas Abramowitz -- who I met during that same time since we competed at sister schools -- and Dolly and Dave and Blick and the rest of the gang and I were close...we had a falling out...and I haven't known how to approach it without feeling like I'm gonna suckered again by the whole thing...

It's crazy, isn't it?...it feels kind of lame...

But I just haven't made friends as closely as I did during that time (though I just started at my job, and that could change over time)...

My friend Kenny and I were fairly close while I worked at Amarr...as with my friends Josh and Kevin and Deway...my friend Jesse and I got close while he and his girlfriend, Melissa, lived here at 6th and Michigan:)...I made many friends in the jobs I worked...Brent McCall, who I need to get back in touch with...our mutual friend Matt, who I see when I head down to Liberty, the independent movie store here in Lawrence (Brent and Matt are aspiring directors:)...and Jenny Thunder, who I dated, and Raimi, who was my roommate for awhile...my friend Bill, from the Honors Department at Wichita State, and I were good friends...

And of course I can't forget the EMU Theater folks, here in Lawrence, who I have a very similar bond with...that we do theater for fun and to put on a great show...but we're mostly just there for one another...Andy and Rachel and Jeff and Honey and Joel and Julie and Gwetholyn and Claven and Dean and Melissa, of course:)...and everyone at EMU:):)...

But there's something about competing with the same group of folks for years together...hanging out together in motel rooms and student unions and van rides and such...without the threat of being fired or cast aside or otherwise being ostracized (not seriously, anyway) hanging over your head...that just brings people together, I suppose...

I made plenty of friends when I was in grad school...but it was a really intense, hypercompetitive environment, much of the time...there was a genuine sense of community, as well...a really strong sense of community, at times...

But it just wasn't quite the same thing, I don't think, as hanging out with a bunch of people with whom you don't have to impress...you don't have to be politically correct (that is for damned sure when I think about that common bond for our team:):):)...you don't even have to win or be successful to feel that togetherness...

You just have to be together...a lot...and be working for common goals...

And tonight I just found myself missing them...

I guess because anytime I ever catch up with any of them I am totally reminded of how strong a bond we shared with one another...more out of just being together than out of working together, I think, after doing grad school with more work-oriented relationships and as I work with people where the threat of losing your job is always looming over people...

I think other than Brandi it is the closest that I've ever felt with other people in my life, outside of my family, of course...

And I'm just missing them, right now, I think...

And that feeling that I belonged to something just because...no proving myself necessary...

We need more of that in the world...a lot more of it...

And I am reminded of a time in my life when I felt it...and it was something special...

Hope everyone has a great week...

Love,
Ben

Force versus freedom as a means...

For everyone who is unconvinced of how force undermines a cause, I would highly recommend Soldiers in the Army of God, the brilliant HBO documentary on the most violent wing of the anti-abortion movement...

It's amazing how these folks can seem so normal in every other way except in their willingness to rationalize the most serious violence and force and harm to accomplish their ends...

Most people wouldn't go so far, I imagine...

But how sad that any of us would measure ourselves as just less extreme than such fanatics...

Or any fanatics, for that matter...

The most serious mistake in free societies, I think, is how we will rationalize the primacy of being right on any particular issue over the freedom of people to choose without being imposed upon...to make judgments out of their genuinely free will...

There are many, many times that I doubt whether this is the course that humanity will choose...or whether they will continue to rationalize all the hurt and pain and threats and fear that they impose on one another...

And then I remember Bobby Kennedy's impromptu eulogy for Martin Luther King... "My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote: 'Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God'...

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country...

Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world."

The natural course of humanity...

To tame the savageness of man...and make more gentle the life of this world...

Love,
Ben

A quiet confidence...

I haven't felt this feeling in a long time...

This feeling I've been feeling, lately...

This quiet confidence...this total certainty that I have quite the future ahead of me...

I don't know what's it's been...maybe it was the Mark Twain...reading A War Prayer and Letters from the Earth, late at night...knowing what it's like to know in your heart that your fellow man needs to make important course corrections...and to feel helpless to steer the ship except to try to give better directions...and to know that the ship will only change direction very, very slowly...

"Trimtabbing" as my friends at RESULTS would say...

Or if it's been being successful, again, in school...and having all arrows point in the direction of a very, very bright future...

Or if it was my birthday...and have more people, among them my dad, my Grandma Miller, Angela, and my Grandma Sutherland, especially -- who is a special light in my life, right now -- remember, this year, than ever before:)...

Or maybe it was doing this annotated bibliography and knowing intuitively and quickly that the first books or people I recommend are people with big ideas...and slowly feeling the quiet recognition that I would be among the ranks of people that others will recommend soon enough...

I don't know what it is...

But today has been a good day, as Ice Cube would say...

I haven't had this feeling in a long time...

Since I was in school, quite a long time ago...when Brandi and I were in D.C., together...when I had everything I could ever want, and I didn't even know it...

That quiet confidence that comes when you're in love with life, and you don't even know the difference...

I guess it's because I just know that I'm on the right track, at this point...

And it's been a long time since I've been this sure:):)...

You ever wonder what it's like to live a dream?

I think I'm getting a glimpse:):)...

Have a great week, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

Fresh ideas...

I have so much I've been thinking about and need to share...reading some Mark Twain, who is one of my all-time heroes and one of the most brilliant men of his time...coming to terms with some imperfections of the world that may or may not change by the end of my lifetime...

But one of the most interesting reflections I have had is about fresh ideas...

How stale old debates about ideas get...how in policy discussions, conservative and liberal romanticism of their ideologies as right and wrong, as with sectarian religions of the past and still today, is a long stale discussion unlikely to reap benefits greater than the benefits of looking for the strengths and weaknesses in various ideologies and ideas and applying ideas with the greatest strengths...

And how, as my advisor at Washburn has said, fresh blood does seem to freshen the outlook of people who have been in the field awhile...

How much people cling to old ideas because they reflect a stale position that they don't recognize for its dead ends...
And how so many people are engaged in older and less meaningful debates because they think that at the end of the rainbow will be the pot of gold they've been looking for all along:

That they were right...and others were wrong...

When really...people just learn from us what they have to learn from us...and they leave behind what is less useful...

No matter who we are and what ideas, new or old, we have to offer...

As Pat Riley says in his interview at the end of Glory Road...we are all just making footprints in the sand...and no matter how lasting our footprints might be, there are always new civilizations to be built and ours will always be but a whisper in the ears of future generations...

Hubris, the Greeks whisper to us, today...

Hubris...

It makes all people overestimate their importance...and the importance of their decisions and stay here on this planet...

Though passivity makes us slaves...

I've got to get to class:):)...

Have a great week, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

Cynicism and self-fulfilling prophecy...

Melissa and I rented Date Movie, tonight:)...

It was a lot of predictably dumb fun:):):)...it's a lot of stupid gags and some curiously poignant social commentary about our unrealistic expectations about love and romance, our cynicism as a consequence, and a needed affirmation that even though love doesn't always look like a movie, that doesn't mean that people have to settle for less:):)...

I have to say that I do understand much of the disenchantment that many of the folks from around the world that I chat with and discuss stuff with on the internet have with America, right now...

This is the single most cynical period that I remember living through in this country in my lifetime...

Now, that may and is likely because much of my time in this country has been as a kid when adults shield you from the ugly realities of life only to bash you over the head with them as you get older to snuff out any remaining hope that you might have that people can be better:):):)...

And what I loved about Date Movie is how it makes fun of both of these sentiments when it comes to love...

Our innocent romanticism of love without pain or frustration or all of the less than pretty realities of relationships...

And our simultaneous and resulting cynicism about what love can never be:):):)...because we never did the work involved with reconciling our ideals with reality in a way that realizes ideals with a sense of groundedness in the world of the living:)...

It's so ironic, to me, that so many people have such sentimentally romantic views of life and how it should be and simultaneously nasty, ugly, cynical views on that same life...

The whole thing just seems so immature to me...so foolish...

Most of us are like this, truth be told, at some level...

But the sad thing is how we use our fears about how life might be unfair or how life might gip us or how we or someone we love might be hurt or how life might not give us the best deal...

And we use that fear to rationalize just how fucked up life might be without enough willingness on our parts to accept ugly realities and to take responsibility for improving them and correcting them with as much love and acceptance in our hearts, as possible...

There is much about the world that is wrong...there are terrorists and gangsters and power-hungry politicians and political groups and money-hungry businesspeople and investors...and all kinds of bad stuff in the world...

But the sad thing is that when we take a step back from all of it we might see that the saddest consequence of all those terrible realities that we can't control (no matter how much we try)...

Is what Pogo said about us 60 years ago...

"We have seen the enemy and he is us"...

Obviously we have to deal with serious threats and problems that face us...

But what has gone wrong in America in the last 5 or 6 years or so is not partisan or unique to any individual...it's not a few bad apples...it's not President Bush...or the Democrats...

What's gone wrong is that we've let our fears and our cynicism get the best of us...

And we've become this sad, fearful, pale image of our best selves....

What I loved about Date Movie was how it pokes fun at both sides of this tendency of ours...

The tendency to imagine the world as far better than it really is...and ourselves as far better than we really are...

And simultaneously to get lost in our cynicism which is the consequence of our failure to reconcile our dreams of how much better we can be...to each other and to ourselves...with the realities of the world and our own efforts that are persistently falling short...

It is the flaw that the Greeks held up as humanity's worst so many years ago...

Our hubris...to think that we can face problems that humanity has faced for millenia...and think that we can correct them with more of the uglier practices that we've been engaged in for a millenia...it's insanity...the thought that we can do the same thing over and over again and get the same result...

Except this time the insanity is the context in which we think about problems...the cynicism that undermines any serious effort to solve serious problems that we face...

The last few years...particularly post-911...have been a pretty bad case of that...for America...and for the world...

For America...as we persistently look like a sad, unrelenting version of Network, the 1970's era drama about news anchors losing their heads "mad as hell and not going to take it anymore"...finally going to put an end to all this terrorism and corruption and greed and incompetency by bringing down the hammer and making sure that everyone knows who's boss...it's not just Iraq...it's everywhere...it's baseball and steroids...it's gay marriage...it's calling Bush a war criminal...it's life and hard time sentences for every crime we think, foolishly, that we're going to end with such nonsense...

America looks like a land of hypocrisy and like a country that can never quite accept it's and it's citizens' falls from grace...

And an international community with cynicism enough to fan the flames...

And the sad reality of the whole thing is that it will go on...until we begin to better reconcile who we wish people were...and who they are...

Including ourselves...

The cynicism and power-hunger and retribution and and greed that has so openly animated American politics and American culture in the last few years, in particular, will not go away by trying to identify the few bad apples that let the rest of us pretend to be better than we really are...

That cynicism will only go away when we do the really tough thing that so many people seemed bound and determined not the do...

To take responsibility for it...

To own it...and to recognize how much the cynicism creates so much of the self-fulfilling prophecy that we say we want to end...

But which we persistently make excuses for why we don't give it up...

Moments like these when so many institutions in our culture seem to have eroded their trust with the publics they serve and so much of their credibility...

Eventually...if that is to change...

People have to step back and take responsibility for their part in the great big mess we've created for ourselves...

The truth is that it is not only that we are cynical because the world is so afoul of our expectations...

It is that the world is so afoul because we are so cynical...

And the only people we have to blame for that...

Is ourselves...

And what I loved about Date Movie...was that around one little small and so important area in our lives where our cynicism undermines our intentions...

Love...

That we can take a moment...and laugh...at just how foolish and dumb we can all be:)...

I guarantee everyone that I have ever had this conversation with on this one...

There is only one way out of the great big mess of a world that we have created for ourselves, at this point...

And that is by treating each other better...

And doing so means looking at ourselves more honestly...

And acknowledging our own personal responsibility...for what insanity that we all so often engage in when it comes to dealing with the most serious problems that the world has to offer...

That can only happen with more freedom, not less...

But the world will still be a mess...

Until we both take the personal responsibility involved with our role in cleaning it up...but it also involves leaving people with more responsibility and trusting them, more, to care for problems that until now we have fruitlessly put our trust in others to do for us...
And in the meantime...we might as well relax...and learn to appreciate ourselves and one another...for all of our less noble and impressive qualities...as we do for our more noble and impressive qualities:):):)...

Joe Nye is right...that the thing that matters most in international policy and politics...is how much our ideals and our living up to our ideals reflects something to which others want to aspire...

But it's more than that...there's more than a touch of cynicism in Joe's and so many peoples' focus on how we are perceived to be living up to their ideals...

Rather than how much we ARE living up to those ideals...

And when our children...and our neighbors...and our friends...and our international neighbors...

When they watch us living up to our ideals...

They have something to aspire for...

The problem is that everyone...everyone...well, almost everyone...is simultaneously cynical about both the ideals and the freedom that is needed to achieve them...

And that cynicism, right now, has been weighing on us...

It has been focussing our visions downward on what we think is so wrong with ourselves and with one another...

And not up and outward to who we can be...and reconciling that, better, with who we are now...

The importance of idealism is that amidst our honest reflections on how disappointing the current reality can be...

That it creates a vision of how much better that reality can be with thought and effort... But mine, at least, is definitely not a messianic or even quasi-messianic vision of how some leader...some politician...some celebrity...some drill seargent...some teacher...is going to make people be the people they dreamed of being...

Because such visions are false ones...they don't exist...Jesus or Buddha or King or Ghandi can inspire us to be better people...but they can't make us be so...

We choose to do that or not...

And neither can law enforcement, political parties, church communities, bosses, parents, or teachers or anyone make us be better people...

We either choose to be...or not...

And once we make peace with this fact of life...then we can affect change on it in a way that is genuinely realistic...and not just some romantic
cynicism about some image that the world never lived up to...

When we choose to be ugly to face ugly realities of the world...

We become part of the ugliness...and there is no way around that...

Than to take responsibility for it...

And noone can make anyone do that until they are willing to face it in their own hearts...

I'm going to try to sleep:):)...have a great night everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

The glory road to education reform...

I think I've decided that I'm going to show Glory Road the first day or first week of the school year in my two math classes next year...

If you haven't seen Glory Road, yet, I highly recommend it...it's very nice to see this trend in movies like Glory Road, Munich, and Capote of soft lighting and unobtrusive costume choices to focus audiences on the story...and it's a marvelous story...

It's the story of the 1965-66 Texas Western Miner basketball team, coached by basketball legend Don Haskins, who fielded a team of 7 black and 5 white players to improbably win the 1966 NCAA Basketball Championship...

It's a story of a group of guys, most of which nobody expected to go to college nevertheless play basketball, defying all doubts and expectations and a college basketball game very much tainted with the stain of racism...a game dominated by white coaches, journalists, and boosters who had a million excuses for why black players couldn't compete...with Texas Western, a small, modestly-funded little mining school in West Texas (now the University of Texas - El Paso) being the first team to start 5 black players, and to do so in the Championship game...and winning it all...

It is a story of an underdog team from a little known school accomplishing the impossible when noone thought they could...

And since that is exactly what my kids and I will be doing this next year and every year afterwards:):)...

I want them to get a feel for what it looks like to overcome all odds and everyone's doubts about what you can and cannot do...

I don't know how many times I hear people talk about all of the things that my kids can't do...

So we're going to build on our successes from this year and starting showing everyone what they can do...

And this movie should be inspiration for overcoming all the doubt and skepticism that these kids can do a hell of a lot more than people give them credit for...if they have teachers and coaches and parents and adults who expect and inspire more out of them...

Did I mention that I love being an underdog?...I wouldn't ever have it any other way:):):)...

I just started summer classes at Washburn University, by the way, in Topeka, Kansas, to finish my Master's Degree in special education...

My plans during and after the summer are to change the face of education, public education, and special education with the help of my kids...

And to start working on this book and go on to change the face of policy, psychology, economics, education, criminology, international relations, and really anything else I can get my hands on during this too short life...

What are your summer plans?:):):)...

Have a great week, everyone:):):)...

Love,
Ben

The central problem for humanity: control...

I've got two classes I'm taking this summer...and so many things I have going on this summer...and so many things to write/blog about...

Including a very good movie called Veronica Guerin which, quite unintentionally, (much like my experience of Bowling for Columbine, which led to stop supporting gun control and to advocate gun responsibility in the context of gun rights) illustrates to me so clearly the tragic folly of the drug war...how even the most violent elements of the organized crime element in the drug culture clearly the consequence of its illegality...

How drug dealers and lords (unjustifiably, but nevertheless) generally turn to violence to both intimidate for money as a function of an underground economy and to avoid prison, as well as all of the other petty reasons that people turn to violent crime, of course...an issue I've decided to take on squarely in the book, with a genuinely open mind to how I might be wrong and a thorough engagement with the best empirical evidence I can find on the subject...

When I look back...the thing I regret most in my relationship with Brandi was the control issues and the fighting...Brandi and I shared mutually on this problem, but it just looks sad and foolish in retrospect...and I also regret not just respecting her choice to leave and be with someone else better...I really did try...hard...harder than anything I've ever done, I think, except try to earn her back...

I worked through some really profound jealousy and all kinds of ugly feelings to be friends...but, in retrospect, I very much wish I would have done better by her and by Greg, her husband and boyfriend at the time...I just didn't know how to understand or deal with all of the feelings that I was going through at the time...that's always true, isn't it?:)...but in this case, it meant pushing away my closest friend, quite unintentionally...

If there's one thing in my life that I regret most, it's that one...

And if there is one most important lesson I learned from my first year of teaching, that was it...

That the single most important mistake that we make with kids is trying to control them so much...or, really, trying to control them at all...which we can't do in any meaningful way...only temporarily, and with huge costs that come with it...costs in the form of serious interference within and disruptions of our relationships with kids that undermine many of the very good intentions and purposes we have in guiding them into adulthood...

And costs to them, in the form of limits on their learning and growth and maturity, which extend long into adulthood, if you notice how many adults never really take more mature, responsible relationships with others nearly seriously enough...and others who only do so when they can control others, which just starts the cycle all over again...

You can spot a really serious control issue a thousand miles away...

Charles Krauthammer has a serious control issue...David Horowitz does too, and is the common denominator between his radical left-wing days and his radical right-wing days...Hillary Clinton has a serious enough control issue...as does Bill to a much lesser degree...Ralph Nader is a good example of someone on the left with a serious control issue...

Three people that Melissa and I just watched on this Inside Deep Throat documentary, have serious control issues: Charles Keating, Larry Parrish, and Roy Cohn (in his own deeply hypocritical and dysfunctional way...it was something of an open secret that Roy was a homosexual, arguing on public airways for Harry Reems, the male star of Deep Throat, to get 5 years in prison for his role...all the while, Roy was engaged in homosexual sodomy that was both illegal longer than pornography and far more obscene to the Americans revolted by Deep Throat)...

You can see it in peoples' faces, actually...you know that look like they're persistently in battle with people?...that look of both personal suppression and like they're just persistently furious with the world?...lots of suppressed anger...and lots of unrealistic ideas and expectations of the world...

Fred Phelps, the God Hates Fags preacher from Topeka, Kansas...serious control issue...

Most politicians, even those with better intentions, often have more or less serious control issues...

Hitler had that look...as did Stalin...as does Fidel Castro...Kim Jong Il does as well if you get past that wry little smile...

Brandi and I were different in the sense that we didn't suppress our anger...which was healthy...we expressed it all the time...whatever was on our minds, typically, I think (when I reflect, the honest truth is I have no clue about how much Brandi was sharing or holding back with me...but I assume that she was sharing most of the time)...

We just needed to learn healthier ways of expressing that anger...and perspective on what was really an important issue to have conflict about...and what was more minor...and, as I've learned with Melissa, how to just let go of control issues altogether, as much as possible, since it's completely fruitless to try to control someone else who always does and always will make their own choices and decisions...

I very much regret all of the ways that I took Brandi's and my relationship/friendship for granted...most of all because she's opted, at this point, for an all-or-nothing gambit...no relationship and no friendship...she, at least, has my blog, I suppose...I have absolutely no clue what's up with her -- except that she's frosted her hair...I saw a picture on the internet:) -- since she doesn't really share anymore...one of life's minor tragedies for me:):)...

There's so much learning as a part of the living and being human...and I've experienced so much...

And if the long-term trends tell me anything its that my relationships keep getting better...the more I learn the deeper, most important lessons...

I'm looking forward to a romantic relationship with someone that has passion and has minimal if any control issues...with conflict that is constructive, generally, and challenging in a supportive way rather than in a controlling or hurtful way...

But what I'm looking forward to, most of all...is having a family where issues can be worked out closer to the way that so many of us wish they could be worked out...reasonably...decently...with better communication and more thoughtfulness rather than with more force...

Why, commentators keep asking, is America growing, economically, but we don't seem to be feeling it?...

I think this is it...and how miserable it makes us feel...how much it limits our learning and growth...and how much we rationalize it, even as we persistently complain about being micro-managed and controlled...

It's the single biggest bitch that people I know have about their work, their relationships, their families, and just about every interaction with others that they have...

And it's something that we've all been romanticizing, as of late...as much out of worry for our children as anything else, I'm sure...

And, sadly...it is generally counterproductive...

And that, more than anything else, was what I had very much reinforced for me, this year...

I always say and I very much had it reinforced this year, that if you are convinced that more punishment or more control makes kids smarter, more responsible, less trouble, nicer, more decent, less self-centered...check out the relationships between parents and kids in special education (especially for those without clear, rigorously-identified disabilities other than being behind their peers, academically, as a matter of a maturity, and/or having more serious behavior issues)...you will generally find parents who punish their kids more, control them more, and otherwise seriously undermine their maturity, learning and value for education, generally...

Most if not all parents that I've encountered love their children and want the best for them...

But some parents (and teachers) are more persistent in making foolish mistakes over and over again with their children...and reap the consequences in their children's choices and behavior...

I hope I'm learning a way out of that trap...

And I'm learning a lot about kids and people, in the meantime...

I've got homework and cleaning to do:):)...have a great week, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

Ideas...

I was just perusing Time Magazine's readers' poll of influential people and ideas...

http://www.time.com/time/2006/time100/walkup/

And I'm becoming clearer and clearer that I plan on writing over the course of my life for the sake of sharing thoughts and reflections and ideas...not for influence...

It's funny...I've lamented, at times, that stronger thinkers aren't consulted about important matters of policy...Francis Fukuyama rightly shows up on the list of those who pollsters consider for their influence...but Joe Nye and Benjamin Barber and Amartya Sen and a whole slew of others don't...

And I'm just clearer, now, that it really doesn't mean anything since most people, generally, have no clue who has better ideas to offer...though the inclusion of Fukuyama is hopeful (if not temporal, since Fukuyama came out with a book more recently than any of those other folks I cited)...

The whole thing...watching the spectacle of Washington and international politics...watching the spectacle of the national and international media...and even having a more inside look at scholarly ambitions for career success and influence...

It's all led me to want to write and teach with very little thought given to profile, at all...

I want to write the way I hoped that folks like Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Jacques Rousseau, John Dewey, Friedrich Hayek, Charles Darwin, and even Joe Nye and Amartya Sen and Francis Fukuyama and Benjamin Barber wrote...it's probably just a hope...but I always hoped that these folks would write with some detachment from the insanity and popular passions of their day...

And just write from their hearts...and minds...

I don't know what I'm going to do with this book...

I just know that I have no interest in a high or any other kind of profile...I want to write...I want to teach...I want to have a family and raise my kids...and I want to have a grounded, down-to-earth life where I write and share my ideas...and live my life in peace, as much as possible...

And I want to write about what's on my mind and heart...about deeper truthes that so many ignore in their quest for short terms advantages...I want to write from conscience rather than from personal calculation...

And as much as possible...I want to live a fairly peaceful life...with people I care about and who care about me...and to myself, much of the time, since I can so rarely rely on people to be as thoughtful and decent as my own company about the things I care about...

I've got work to do, to be sure...

But I'm much more clear, now, that there is no hurry...that there is so much interference in the marketplace of ideas around what ideas really matter...that I can make this a labor of love and wait to see if others find the ideas to make as much sense and have as powerful effect as I have...

The most important ideas are the ones that influence far beyond the moment...and unfortunately that means that many serious mistakes and with sometimes tragic consequences have to occur until the most powerful ideas take root...

Iran and what it says about America's international policy...

Due to technical difficulties with Blogspot, check out my other blog for today's latest installment...

http://benfrankln.tripod.com/bensutherland/

Iran...

(Please see my Tripod blog -- http://benfrankln.tripod.com/bensutherland/ - to get a copy of this post with links in tact:)

The Bush Administration has not only kept military options on the table around Iran, but Charles Krauthammer is explicitly asking Europeans to get out of the way should the Administration decide on a military route...

Say No to Tehran's Gambit...Charles Krauthammer...

The Economist encourages world leaders to "be tough now to avoid a nuclear conflict"...

Last ditch diplomacy to stop a nuclear Iran...

And offers what it thinks are the lessons of soft power in European dealings with Iran...

Playing soft or hard cop...

Krauthammer is just wrong -- as the May 12th, 2005 editorial by the Economist illustrates...

Iran and North Korea: Return of the axis of evil...

There are many, many problems in the analysis of the first three of these articles that the last Economist, in part, understands better...

The reason why threats of military action are so wrong, as the Economist editors illustrate in their May 12th article, is because those threats -- along with the invasion of Iraq which no doubt intentionally gives credence to them -- have clearly accelerated Iranian nuclear ambitions (and accelerated North Korea's nuclear ambitions, before the South Koreans stepped in with their more successful diplomatic efforts) for any objective observer...

Meaning...North Korea and Iran didn't pursue their nuclear programs -- as ambitiously, anyway -- until the United States started threatening them and Syria with similar action as what occurred in Iraq if they didn't concede to American demands...

And what is bothersome about the swagger on this issue by hawks like Krauthammer is the almost zero ackowledgement of any serious responsibility in this way...

It's as if Charles' conceit that hawkish efforts are always better can always dismiss bad consequences from those efforts as the fault of someone else, while folks like Charles simultaneous preach responsibility to the world and to Americans and never seem to take any...it's very much like watching Roy Cohn go after Deep Throat actor Harry Reems with the threat of a five year prison sentence for his role in the movie all the while simultaneously hiding his secret of homosexuality and all of the hypocrisy that goes with it...

Take responsibility, says, Charles to his fellow Americans, but don't expect me to...

And that really is the rub...

As long as Americans continue to rationalize their more hawkish and forceful and brutish efforts to solve all of their problems, international and domestic, rather than more thoughtful, proactive, and less threatening approaches when immediate danger is not eminent -- though it does seem that the more hawkish amongst us can always rationalize eminent danger whenever it tickles their fancy -- then we never have to be responsible for when those efforts fail...if I don't acknowledge responsibility, the theory goes, there's no responsibility for me to take...

And it's bullshit...

The Economists' article on the lessons of soft power ignores the earlier lessons it draws from the threat of military force on North Korea's and Iran's nuclear ambitions, seems to argue for something akin to "let's not go too far with the hard power threats," and then rationalizes the Administration's threats of military power -- which the Economist acknowledges is likely responsible for so much of the mess that we find ourselves in at this point -- by offering up a compromise with no real principled direction that our diplomatic, economic, political, legal, or military efforts should take...

Thus allowing the Administration to keep the most serious threats on the table to leverage for tougher action, whether such action is constructive or counter-productive or not...
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fisher makes a very sensible case for this very kind of thinking in today's Washington Post...

The Case for Bargaining with Iran...Joschka Fischer...

What we need is more of the discussion that Joschka Fischer offers up in this article and that the Economist offered up in the 2005 article about whether these efforts might actually be creating the current crisis in many ways, rather than curing it...

Noone wants a nuclear Iran to bully it's neighbors, especially Israel...

But neither should we want a nuclear America to bully it's neighbors when imminent danger is not present, no matter how much hardline conservatives in America may persistently rationalize all of their worst fears...

Bullying a bully does not work if your goal is to persuade a bully to stop being a bully, and not just the short term opportunity to scare one, very temporarily, into submission...

The Economist's article on the lessons of soft power are too simplistic to be useful...anyone interested in studying soft power should reads Joe Nye's book of the same title...
Joe is not just talking about diplomacy, though diplomacy is an important part of dealing with the current situation in Iran...he is talking about American culture, education, entertainment, and liberalizing values...the American economy and free trade values, generally...all of such values and opportunities that allow for exchange and learning between cultures and for mutual appreciation between cultures...he is arguing, rightly, that they are attractive to the peoples of many developing countries even as they are similarly easily scared by hardliners in their own country afraid of the decadence and un-Godliness that they fear that such values and elements of freer Western cultures demonstrate...just as hard-liners in our own country treat the outside world with fear and dread...

And what angers me most about the whole deal is that it is all such people who are so hostile to more freedom and more liberalizing values -- in America, in Iran, among Al-Queda, and all over the world -- that keep fucking it up for everyone else...

Everyone wants a bully on their side to protect them against other bullies...

And I, for one, have no interest in rallying any bullies to my side...

Joe's work is has far more depth to it than the Economist article gives him credit for...and even Joe could dig deeper, I think, and my work is an effort to do so...

The least possible necessary aggression means that we consider objective efforts to deal with such situations with a presumption for less aggressive efforts, first, and aggression is only justified when danger is clearly eminent and not rationalized by our perpetual fears of its eminence...

Anyone who has ever worked with gang members and school bullies knows that they are perpetually rationalizing fears as being more eminent than they really are...and our international policy efforts, right now, are very similar...and need much grounding in less heat and more light to understand them as such...

The principles of least possible necessary aggression lead me to believe that the fundamental problem with the way that the situation with Iran is being carried out is that the most serious threats have been made up front in a way that has seriously distorted the conversation...there is no room for disagreement in this conversation on the part of the Iranians, a pretty important element of democratic discussions that the Administration professes to want to better emulate for Iran -- isn't the reason that the Administration believes, implicitly, that America should be trusted, more, in this entanglement is because it is more democratic and respects basic freedoms more than the Ahmadinejad and the Iranian government? -- and there is very little serious room for such discussions to occur without the threat of miltary, economic, or political action that is ultimately undermining such efforts, right now, I believe...

If you are having any conversation with someone for any purpose -- diplomatic, business negotiations, political discussions, personal discourse and/or disagreements -- and you put a gun on the table while you are discussing, you must assume that there will be a change in the tone of the conversation...and when you do so and the conversation turns sour, at what point do you take responsibility for how the presence of the gun affected the tone and effectiveness of the conversation?...

This is the question that the Administration needs to answer for itself, right now...and that honest conservatives, liberals, independent, political, and non-political folks need to be asking the President, right now...it is a question that the Economist and Joschka Fischer have put to the Administration, but neither the Administration nor its apologists, like Charles Krauthammer, have bothered to answer, too sure are they of their own correct worldview with no need for questioning or challenge or correction as they face these terribly complicated issues...it's a conceit that undermines the goals that America and the world shares of a world with less nuclear proliferation, especially among governments that are often hostile to democratic freedoms and responsibilities...

What is so terribly frustrating about this conceit is that it so ignores so many of the very important lessons of the cold war...there is not much of an argument at all, I don't believe, that the Soviet Union let go of its very forceful hold on Russian and Eastern European peoples because of nuclear weapons pointed at it from the United States...the capacity to defend oneself in case of attack is an important capacity to develop, to be sure...

But the most serious histories I have seen and read on the matter point to the impressive diplomacy between Ronald Reagan and Mikhael Gorbachev, as the two negotiated arms and discussed more generally the various merits and problems of communism and capitalism and democracy...it was Gorbachev's announcement of plans for perestroika and glasnost which began to open the Soviet Union up to more democratizing and decentralizing and self-determining forces, not threats of nuclear war from the West...it was internal changes in the Soviet Union, with the breaking down of the Berlin Wall and the breaking away of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, and the democratic election of Boris Yeltsin which helped to democratize and open up the old Soviet Republics, not threats of war from the United States...

And the Soviets, then, represented a far more credible threat to American strategic self-interest and self-defense than Iran does today...

But American hawks just can't seem to let go of their fears of world that is outside of American control...

And, ironically, it is American control that much of the world -- including Americans, like myself -- has much reason to fear, as much as Iranian pursuit of nuclear weapons...
International security has clearly been undermined by so much of the breast-beating, hypercharged, far-too-forceful international policy by Americans and the Bush Administration...which is having all kinds of consequences for Americans on the world stage...

Not the least of which is that the American dream and promise of democracy and freedom is parodied by an international policy that seems to respect neither, much of the time, except on terms that a overzealous Administration believes that it can leverage to its advantage...
It's not the ideas that matter, so the thinking goes...it's the power...

And that really is the problem...

Last day of school...for me...

I've still got tons to do today to get cleaned up and checked out...I still have to enroll for classes this summer and some other important deadlines in my life, right now...

But I did want to post something until I get a moment to reflect on my first year of teaching...

So I'm offering out my end of the year Scavenger Hunt which I gave to the kids for the summer that reinforces all kinds of great school stuff while offering the kids some fun for the summer, as well...

It's kind of geeky, I warn you:):)...but if you have kids or know people who might be interested in doing some fun/educational activities this summer, this is an opportunity:):)...

Have a great week, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

Scavenger Hunt

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to complete all 3 parts of this very exciting and dangerous hunt.

First, is to find as many of the materials listed below from various institutions in your community that have something to teach either about valuing education or about having fun over the summer.

Second, is to read one great book. And watch a great movie of that book, as well, if you’d like. At least one. Librarians, teachers, and other such adults are usually really good about helping you find the really good ones. Sponge Bob is a fun time. But I also want you to find one great book that has something important to teach about the world. Attached is a list of such great books.

Third, to complete the interview with the adult in your life that you respect the most about what it means to achieve excellence in life and in school. If you completed it before the end of the school year, spend some time with that person getting to know them and how they do those things that they do so well and what kind of person they are, as a consequence. And if you haven’t completed the interview, complete it. And spend time with that person getting know what is it that makes them great and what qualities you may want to emulate.

Scavenger Hunt
Find 10 of the 20 items below. And spend some time in the places where you find them either for purposes of fun or to learn something about the opportunities they offer for our learning and for our futures. All students who collect and present 10 items for inspection will receive a candy bar of their choice.

A library card from the Kansas City, Kansas Public Library, any of its branches, the UMKC university library, or any local or out-of-town public, university, or other lending library.

A brochure from Science City.

A ticket stub from the Kansas City Zoo.

A bookmark, book, or receipt from a local or national chain book store.

A ticket stub or brochure from the Negro League Baseball Museum or the Jazz Museum.

A ticket stub or souvenir from the Natural History Museum or the Spencer Art Museum at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas.

A ticket stub or souvenir from the Kansas History Museum in Topeka, Kansas.

A signature from a professor after visiting a class (with your parents, of course) at University of Missouri, Kansas City, Rockhurst University, or any of the universities in the Kansas City metro area; the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas; Ottawa University in Ottawa, Kansas; Baker University in Baldwin, Kansas; Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas; Wichita State University in Wichita, Kansas; Emporia State University in Emporia, Kansas; University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri or any of the University of Missouri schools; University of Missouri, St. Louis, St. Louis University, Washington University, Webster University, or any of the area universities in St. Louis; Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kansas; Bethel University in Newton, Kansas; Pittsburgh State University in Pittsburgh, Kansas; Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas; Kansas City Community College in Kansas City, Kansas, or any of the various community colleges in Kansas, Missouri, or wherever you happen to be this summer.

A brochure from the Harry Truman museum in Independence, Missouri; Abilene, Kansas’ Eisenhower Museum; Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, where Winston Churchill gave his famous Iron Curtain speech; or any other such Presidential or head-of-state museums, landmarks, or places of significance.

Some evidence of having visited your parents’ place of work and what you learned there.

Any evidence of attendance at any museum, library, school, university, science center, or other exciting learning adventure that you may take this summer.

…and for fun…

An in tact set of swimming rules from a local or not-so-local swimming pool.

A receipt or report on a movie rented from a local video store.

A signature from a local recreation center.

An game or advertisement from a local video games or other games store.

A CD, tape, album, receipt, or free literature from a local music store.

A code of honor or behavior from a martial arts school.

A brochure or other evidence of visiting a local motorcycle or car shop.

A hair styling picture, comb, or other evidence of visiting a local hair salon or barber shop.

A receipt or advertisement from a local pizza shop.
Great Books (and Movies) List

The Great Gilly Hopkins

To Kill A Mockingbird

Charlotte’s Web

Lord of the Rings

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (the Chronicles of Narnia)

James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,
The BFG, or anything by Roald Dahl

The Best Christmas Pagent Ever

Mary Poppins

The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

The Little Prince

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

Dear Mr. Henshaw or any book by Beverly Cleary

Island of the Blue Dolphins

Matilda

Black Stallion

Where the Red Fern Grows

Fudge-a-Mania, Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing, or anything
by Judy Blume

The Indian in the Cupboard

The Mouse in the Motorcycle

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

Stuart Little

The Best School Year Ever

Brother Eagle, Sister Sky, a Message from Chief Seattle

Encyclopedia Brown

How to Eat Fried Worms

Go Free or Die, a Story about Harriet Tubman

Ramona Quimby, Age 8

Sarah, Plain and Tall

Amelia Bedelia

The Giving Tree, Where the Sidewalk Ends, or anything by Shel Silverstein

Anything in the Juny B. Jones series

Anything from the Winnie the Pooh series or by A.A. Milne

Anything from the William Allen White lists from any year

…or visit: http://www.educationworld.com/summer_reading...

…or various summer reading lists that you can find at your local library or on the internet…


Interview

This interview is for you. So ask the questions you want you know. Interview the person you respect most in your life and find out something about them.

What are the people who you respect the most in life excellent at?
How did they get excellent?
What values or habits or thinking or practice was/is involved with being excellent?
Who were their heroes or mentors or teachers or models? Why is excellence, doing your best, being the best possible at your work important?
What qualities are most important to excellence? Leadership? Loyalty? Passion? Determination? Education? Commitment? Courage? Responsibility? All of the qualities from our survey (the kids and I gave out a social science survey to teachers and adults in their lives to rank the most important qualities of excellence in school and in life).
Who are good examples of excellence in life?How does school fit into excellence in life?
What qualities are important for excellence in education?
Why is excellence in education important?

Munich...

Melissa and I rented Munich tonight...

It's a remarkable movie...for anyone wanting to understand terrorism and counterterrorism efforts, our efforts and their consequences...this is an excellent tutorial...

You also might check out one of the best documentaries I've ever seen, One Day in September, which documents the same events with real life commentators and more historical analysis than dramatic representation as with Munich...

But Munich is remarkable, in its attention to historical detail, it's terribly powerful script and performances, choices around softer characterizations and soft lighting and modest costuming that I think, like Capote, very much focus audience members on a very powerful story of Israeli assassination policy after the kidnapping and murder of 11 Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics...

I must say that before this film, I felt much more agnostic about the Israeli policy of assassination largely because of the complications of bringing people to justice in a militaristic environment with those responsible for terrorism being protected, often, in lands and by people sympathetic to terrorism...

This movie made me very much rethink that agnositicism...

Spielberg's goal is to promote discussion and he introduces the film on the DVD with an express purpose of wanting audience members to engage in dialogue about the Munich killings, the assassination of the terrorists, and Israeli, American, and other policies about counterterrorism, generally...

But the story is clearly one of not only assassinations where operatives are very unclear about the guilt or innocence of those they are assassinating...but where their efforts are clearly counterproductive by any fair observation of the responses and consequences of their assassinations...many more Israelis are killed in response to the assassinations than Palestinians assassinated by Israeli operatives...and the security situation is clearly made far less safe by the policy, in terms of civilians killed, in particular, than a reconsidered strategy...

A recommitment to the peace process is the only realistic way out of bloodshed in Israel and Palestine, today, even with a Hamas leadership that there is much reason to mistrust, including and especially their rationalizations of recent suicide bombings in Israel...unilateral withdrawal has clearly not achieved its objective...and military options have been terribly counterproductive up until this point...

Palestinians must hold their leadership accountable for its failed leadership, domestically -- as Palestine grapples with critical capital and resource shortages prompted by the failure of Hamas' leadership -- and for its failed leadership in promoting a violent and hostile relationship with Israel rather than the stumbling but real path to peace that Mahmoud Abbas continues to lead along with Israel, the United States, the United Nations, the European Union, and Russia and those committed to the road map for peace...

And Israelis must do the same, expecting a genuine commitment to a peace process from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert or voting for a leadership that will bring to the peace table a genuine commitment to peace...

Revenge -- the title of George Jonas' historical novel about the assassinations of Palestinians following the Munich murders from which the screenplay of Munich is drawn -- sums up much of the problem with the assassination policy...the desire and rationalizations for revenge...and its all-too-tragic and counterproductive consequences...

Though work by people like Joe Nye around soft and hard power, Amartya Sen around universalizing democratic values, Benjamin Barber around decentralized participatory democratic engagement, and Francis Fukuyama around multi-multilateralism all have important roles to play in this on-going tragedy, Munich will play a unique role in providing a broad-based opportunity for dialogue, discussion, and reflection on terrorism, counterterrorism, and the pursuit of ideas and polices that will deal most effectively with each...

I do sincerely hope that my ideas around least possible necessary aggression will also contribute to those ends...or that if my ideas are wrong that my thoughts and ideas might help contribute to the all-too-important end of developing effective policies to end terrorism, bring terrorists to justice, when possible, and kill only in self-defense over the course of that effort, and any and all proactive peace efforts that might effectively end terrorist campaigns...

Peace is an option in Palestine as it was in Northern Ireland and other pockets of terrorism where self-determination and therefore sovereignty and democratic representation are at stake, I believe, but not possible with Al Queda where such issues are not at stake, though Al Queda members must be brought to justice, I believe, when possible, and killed only in self-defense in the course of that effort...

We need far better collaboration between military, intelligence, and law enforcement efforts to make that possible...we make moves in that direction, though the persistently failed effort to create stronger authority within and among those organizations rather than better collaboration and coordination between them along with flatter, less hierarchical organization -- very smart advice that policy researcher Paul Light has been offering for quite a while -- will need to be faced honestly if we are to make our efforts effective...

Each terrorist campaign must be addressed independently insofar as they act independently, I believe...maximum force against all terrorist activities is a good faith and still unrealistic, foolish, and failed effort that must be rethought for our efforts to be effective, I believe...

And Munich provides a look at why and how policies of blunt force without a commitment to peace, democratic justice, and thoughtful reflection on each are both rationalizations for revenge and why such rationalizations and policies based on revenge fail as a matter of realpolitik as much as a failure of our strongest values and thought...

Munich was the best picture of 2005 that I've seen, thusfar...Capote was my pick up until tonight...but Munich transcends the remarkable humanity, beautifully subtle acting and and equally subtle movie-making (with nods to lighting and costuming, in particular) in Capote to touch on an on-going and important issue of policy and the human heart with remarkable clarity and an invitation to open-ended discussion...

Crash was sensationalistic, sentimental, myopic, liberal propaganda around the issue of race that never should have been nominated for Best Picture nevertheless won, as far as I'm concerned...that fifth slot should have gone to Walk the Line, I think, though there are many other really terrific movies from 2005 that could have been nominated well before Crash, I'm sure...

But Munich offers us something that films would do us well to do more of...which is provide us with an opportunity to discuss and debate and reflect on important policies like counterterrorism and international policy, generally, with a realistic portrayal of the consequences of policies past...

I highly recommend Munich to anyone who cares about terrorism and its impact on humanity...our individual humanity as much as on the lives that it ravages and impacts...

And for those responsible for the development and carrying out of counterterrorism policy in Israel, the United States, and elsewhere...I highly recommend that we begin to take seriously the very thoughtful recommendations of the most esteemed international policy experts -- people like Joe Nye and Benjamin Barber and Francis Fukuyama and Amartya Sen -- and the rest of the most thoughtful among the scholarly and practicing international policy, practicing and retired military leadership and military historians, intelligence and law enforcement officials and scholars, and the general scholarly and practicing policy community...to take seriously the idea that careful thought is far more necessary to develop more effective counterterrorism policies than simply more force...

That thought matters...and that the deepest thought matters most...even when we might doubt that reality...out of hubris and unthinking...

I guess I better get to bed...I'd see the movie when you get a chance...to clarify the human issues involved with our responses to terrorism and difficult policy issues, most of all...

Have a good night, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

Jack Handy's Deep Thought for the Day...

Do you know why a realistic idealism is the only and best form of realism?

Because it's the only thing that lifts our sights to envision something better than the current situation...

And everything else is just one long cop-out for why we didn't take up that all-too-important responsibility...

Have a great weekend, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

A better day...

Today was a much more laid back day...

It's the end of the year and most teachers just want to make it through quietly and peacefully to the end...there's a quiet effort to get kids to take Monday -- the last day -- off so that the last day is as quiet as possible...

And I'm learning to make some peace with the fact that adults are just kind of foolish, much of the time, when it comes to kids...

Most adults, myself included, I'm learning, completely forget what it's like to be a kid...how complicated growing up can be...how different it is for each kid...and how much they are often very much like ourselves when we were their ages, if we would take the time to reflect and remember our own experiences at their ages...

Most adults want kids to grow up far too quickly, as many teachers and adults commented today to me...which is so, so, so true if you've ever worked in a school before...it's sad and crazy all at the same time...we often want kids to be things that they cannot be...at least as quickly as we want them to be it...

And we forget, often, what's it's like to be in their shoes...

I have a kid in 2 classes I work in who refuses to do work for me and for all kinds of teachers...often he will do far more work for me and when he competes with his peers than we will when teachers and adults want him to do independent work...

But today I think I may have just been pushing him a little too much...I was just honest with him...if he decided to fight me and his teachers and refuse to do work -- as he's been doing, of late -- then he would just take the grades he gets...

I would bet that he's scared that he can't do the work...and that he just gets discouraged easily, much of the time...and that he's being kind of snot, probably because of too much pushing of him at home and at school...and it's just his quiet, passive-aggressive protest against the far too aggressive adults in his life who push him to do work that he is not ready to do...

I've been modeling for the kids to just learn how to manuever around their teachers' shortcomings rather than always making it a fight...

But I have to admit that I get frustrated with their (teachers') shortcomings as much as the kids do...

And then I remember that though this kid definitely dragged his feet working with me, today, as well...he definitely works more for me than other teachers report...but I have my own shortcomings to overcome:):)...

One of my biggest shortcomings -- though it reflects a conflict of priorities, much of the time, that I think I have a better handle on -- is accepting teachers and students for all of their shortcomings, lack of serious thought about the biggest picture being the bigger one for many of my colleagues and for the kids...

But today was a good day for me to see that...because the teachers were not driving themselves or the kids as much, today...which was good...because they're much more decent people when they do that...even when it's not quite exactly up to my own standards (I want the kids to be working more seriously, right now, than many of the teachers are doing...but working seriously in my class involves a lot of games and fun, too, so it's a little different in other teachers' classrooms, I imagine)...

I'd much more appreciate if teachers would accept themselves and their own strengths and weaknesses a little more and not be so driven to try to make up for what they feel that they lack and so aggressively push themselves, me, and the other kids...

But teachers are constantly afraid that they're not smart enough or tough enough or so many things enough...and then they end up going so overboard (like so many people in politics and life) trying to prove themselves to be what they are afraid they are not:):)...

It's so funny...genuinely tough guys can sometimes be far too aggressive, I have to admit...but often guys who are more comfortable and confident about their tough side aren't nearly as aggressive because they don't have anything to prove...

I'm very much like that...I feel fear in the moment, like anyone else...but I face any challenge, physical or otherwise that comes my way...

I'm definitely one of the more ballsy teachers on staff here at Eisenhower...as one of my students says, "Mr. Sutherland doesn't punk out to anyone"...which is true...I don't scare easily...which was my ill-gotten reputation at my warehouse job at Amarr Garage Doors before I started teaching, since I backed down to no fight, no matter how much it might have looked like my little ass might have gotten beat...we were all dealing with far too much pressure on the warehouse floor there at Amarr...so our conflicts were totally in the context of friendship...every guy who I came head to head with at Amarr was a close friend and we were just proving our worth in a tough guy department...

But I don't go around looking for a fight...and I avoid petty and unnecessary conflicts as much as possible...and all conflict I engage in is as constructive and civil and decent as possible...I don't like losing my temper with people...but I'd rather lose my temper with them than keep it all bottled up inside or spend my life afraid of confrontations...I'm a lover more than a fighter...but I'm not a scared little bitch, either...

But so many teachers are so afraid that they're not tough enough...or we're not tough enough...or society isn't tough enough...very much like politicians and political commentators and news people and just everyday citizens...

We're all just a bunch of scared little bitches...wetting our pants and wanting the world to be perfect in a way that is not possible...not doing enough to proactively, constructively deal with problems in front of us...and counterproductively creating so many other problems in front of us...and crying all the fuckin' time about just how much more we need to get tough...it's pathetic, really:):):)...we really need to stop being such fuckin' babies is the truth:):):)...

And teachers are no different:):):)...in fact they're often worse than other folks...but school is a much more humane place, overall, than are most other places I've worked and spent my life...and they and the world should get more humane and decent and kind and more laid back and less stressed out...not more tough and stupid...

As I told Ms. King, our science teacher, today...I'll never forget my 9th grade teacher, Mr. Fluke, who was hard as nails and ignorant as the day is long...he knew then and probably knows today chemical bonding and valence theory better than I did and do...but he didn't know shit about people...and he was teaching people...he was only teaching about energy levels in molecules:):):)...

And today was a day when more teachers slacked up on the kids and themselves...and you can just feel how much easier it is to learn in that environment than in a tense, threatening one...we -- meaning adults -- are often just too afraid to create the kind of environment that will really make learning easier, funner, more effective, and more likely for kids to learn in...because we all get so wrapped up in our constant and perpetual fears that we're not tough enough...which we only believe because the truth is we're just not smart enough to let that fear go...

What we need in schools is many more days like today...

Days when we remember that it is kids and students and people that we teach...and only academics that we teach about...that the people...the kids...the students...come first...and that learning about them is as important if not more than learning our subjects...

And the people who don't believe that are people who just don't know enough about kids and people, frankly...and who need to get on the schtick and stop making excuses for their sorry asses:):):)...

So many of the world's problems -- now and since the dawn of humanity -- are caused by our stubborness and foolishness and stupidity and our lack of understanding of people...because of so many personal defenses and social barriers that we've often put up, ourselves, that undermine such an understanding...as well as just lack of motivation and ambition to get underneath what it is that makes each of us tick:):)...

It's time for us to move on from that too sad, too needlessly tragic, too stubborn legacy...and to affirm one another and what is fundamental to all of our natures...

Our freedom...

Including and especially our freedom to learn and discover about one another and about ourselves...

I've got IEP's to do:):):)...

I hope everyone has a great week and a great weekend:):):)...I have 2 more school days and a few more work days before I get to look forward to taking classes with the district and with the university to finish up my certification...I'm so looking forward to taking classes again I think I could wet myself:):):)...I'm thinking I might audit a poli sci or history class, in the meantime:):):)...I've got to take all education classes this summer, as far as I know:):):)...but I figure I can make some time for checking out a political science class, I'm sure:):):)...
The book has a third part, now, as well, by the way...

Section 1 is the namesake for the book, The Limits of Power...it's an empirical review of case studies in domestic and international policy where force and aggression are useful and where they are counterproductive and undermine our goals...

Section 2 will now be a work of political and moral philosophy, exploring the fundamental nature of humanity -- free will -- and the means and functions it serves for our lives, our survival, our growth, and our learning as human beings...

And Section 3 will be the theoretical exploration of the principles of Least Possible Necessary Aggression (I only capitalize the terms to make sure that people know which 4 are the most important...I promise not to do that throughout the book or this blog...I find it kind of pretensious, really...I just want people to be clear about which terms are the important ones and why I chose these 4 terms, in particular, to capture the essence of the idea:):)...

...the theory behind the principles and applications of them in practical contexts...and the legacy that they build on in such ideas as Joe Nye's Soft Power, Benjamin Barber's decentralized participatory democracy, Francis Fukuyama's multi-multilateralism, Amarta Sen's development as freedom, Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of values, Adam Smith, Alexis DeToqueville, Fredriech Hayek, E.O. Wilson, Stephen Jay Gould, John Dewey, John Stuart Mill, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Jacques Rousseau, Alexis DeToqueville, Mary Wolstencraft, Paul Peterson, Terry Moe, John Chubb, Carolyn Minter-Hoxby, Bruce Biddle, David Berliner, and so, so many more...

And some references, I'm sure, to Ice Cube, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, Metallica, Dar Williams, U2, The Crash Test Dummies, Arrested Development, Dixie Chicks, Toby Keith, Indigo Girls, Tracy Chapman, Stephen Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Nora Ephron, indies of all kinds, maybe some political folks and some historical figures...

And much, much more:):):)...

Have a great week, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

A life non-political...

My principal just announced a new get-tough-on-drugs policy she's adopting...an issue on which I am completely, without a shadow-of-a-doubt clear getting tough is unequivocably counterproductive for all the things that people say that care about...

And I'm thinking about maybe choosing a non-political life, of some kind...

Teaching is definitely one of the more political careers I've been a part of...

And I'm thinking that maybe I should get into a scientific career of some kind...something meaningful but more low-key... I just get tired of the disappointment in watching us constantly taking backward steps on issues...without much thought about what takes us forward...

I have much to write on important policy issues...but I'm just not all that convinced that anyone agrees or is terribly interested...and there's just not much use in being an obscure academic if you're wrong...it only makes sense to do that kind of work if you're right...if you know what you're doing...I think I do...but if it's all just for naught because we stubbornly cling to policies no matter how counterproductive they might be or if somehow someone has some persuasive arguments for why they are productive that I've just not heard yet, then I begin to think that it might be better to just do something where I can be more productive...

I'm tired...it's been a long week...

And I'm tired of fighting battles where no meaningful discussion takes place...where the constant refrain is "Getting tough is good because it's not soft" or "not naive" or whatever stupid fuckin' new excuse people have for why it hasn't worked up till this point...

I'm tired of having a discussion where people can't be honest about the failures of their policies because the policy has become more of a sacred cow than the solution to the problems the policy was meant to create...

Maybe I can find something cerebral where I can stay away from people...who really kind of fuck up their own and each others' lives plenty enough to need my help, I think, most of the time...

I've got to get some sleep...

Have a good week, everyone...

Ben

Exhausted...

It's the last week of school...and maybe the most exhausting weeks in my entire life...the kids have been out of control (though they've been better today)...I'm tired and sore and out of patience, right now...

And I'm wondering why I do any of this work, today...

Why do I take a stand of conscience and out of just being more seriously thoughtful for the use of the least possible necessary force or least possible necessary aggression around a whole host of issues that is so unpopular in so many circles?...

Why do I work on behalf of kids and parents who are perpetually ungrateful and take the opportunity of education so for granted the way they do?...

Why do I set myself up to be thought of as "soft," which is code for "unmanly" or "not tough enough," neither of which is there any satisfaction for and neither of which are genuine concerns about anything except how people are perceived...

When I think about it, the biggest reason is because the idea that arguments would be won by intimidation and muscle rather than by a genuine concern for truth and better ideas is just repugnant to me...and should be to everyone...except many if not most people would rather get their way, often, than subject their opinions to a more genuinely open-ended discussion and debate about whether they are good or the best ideas or not...

And because that way of engaging arguments and ideas just seems cowardly to me...and I just can't stand for cowardice...no matter how tired and worn out I might be...

I can hardly believe, really, that such cowardice gets confused so readily with more genuine courage...

But then Melissa and I rented Lord of the Flies, last night...
And I was reminded of just how easily people are fooled into believing that tough equals good...

And I just look over the course of history...to see all the places...where force justified by the need to be tough rationalized all of the worst attrocities of the 20th century, alone, if not the history of humanity...

And I think...someone has got to have a conscience amidst that kind of rationalizing...

But right now I just want some sleep...and for this first year to be over with as soon as possible:):)...

Have a great week, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

My team comes through...

I've had a really shitty day...

The kids have just been outrageous today...disregarding teachers...disregarding school...just out of control in a major way...

And I am just so exhausted with everything, today...

And I'm wondering why I do this work...

And then I have this really great meeting with my team...

A really strong sense of belonging...for all of us...

After a really shitty day of nastiness and exhaustion for me...

I need some serious sleep tonight...

And just a couple hours away from spoiled, ungrateful bastards that are my students...

God bless 'em:):)...

Love,
Ben

The last days of school...

These are the days when you wonder why you took up the education profession...

It's the end of the school year and kids don't want to work at all...

We've got two sets of parents threatening legal or political action if we don't accomodate their really pretty whiny demands for their children...

And all the while all of us have been forgiving all sorts of disrespect and insults and all kinds of nasty behavior from the kids...

And it all does make you wonder why you do it...

I guess the only answer to that, for me, is that it's the only work I know where I feel like there's the strongest hope for resolving all kinds of issues that persist in our communities and societies...in a world where we constantly ignore efforts that fail or are counterproductive to our goals...education, generally -- meaning K-12 and university and post-high school education -- is the one place where there is such substantial hope that people can be better...

Because it's the one place where they do the thing that is most likely to make them better people...

Learning...serious learning...

I want so badly to get back into a college course...and just study, again...for its own sake...completely independent of work I may do in the world...

It's one of the most satisfying feelings in the world...
And I just feel so sad and angry and frustrated that so many kids and so many adults never have that feeling because they so persistently take for granted the institutions and opportunities that make that experience possible for them...

I've got a meeting I have to get to...

Have a good week, everyone...

Ben

Learning to love and be patient with folks not quite giving their all to life...

I had a great Mother's Day weekend...

My great aunt Katie, my grandmother's sister, had a major heart attack last week and I went down to Wichita to make sure she was ok...she seems to be doing better, which is good...and it's always nice to get down to see the girls...my grandma, my Aunt Kathleen, my Aunt Katie, Kathy (a family friend), and Kathy's mom, Ruby...they're a great bunch to hang out with and to get to know better:):)...

My grandma still frustrates me every time I go down...I love her to death, but she does seem to have a fetish, sometimes, for telling me what to do all the time and controlling my movements which was tedious when I was a kid, nevertheless as a 32-year-old...

But it was a great weekend to have a greater appreciation for the fact that though I get really frustrated with how foolishness dominates so much of mine and everyone's life...professional life...political life...personal lives...that I still love people despite the foolishness...and just wish they'd stop trying to control me all the time...and wish they'd take deeper thought more seriously...though I'm learning much more patience for the fact that they don't...
I so appreciated coming home at the end of the weekend...because Melissa, for all of her faults, has one really important thing going for her...she doesn't try to control me, as a general rule...and I very much appreciate that...

I vented for at least an hour about my frustration that institutions with such low standards for thought and reflection dominate so much of American and democratic life...mass-audience magazines like Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and lowest common denominator TV like Primetime Live and 20/20...as much I also find much in each of these news sources that I very much appreciate and learn from, as well...they're just not that terribly thoughtful or deep-thinking in their analysis...

And my perpetual frustration that smarter news and entertainment -- C-SPAN (though C-SPAN does have a really big and broad audience, thankfully), the Economist, the Washington Post (the best American daily, as far as I'm concerned), Foreign Affairs, etc. -- and other elements of the culture are not treated more seriously by more people...

And then I was ok...

I'm just making some peace, I think, with the fact that so many people neither take serious thought seriously nor aspire...and with the fact that such people have much to share that those of us who do can learn from...

But as my Chinese fortune cookie this weekend said:

Wise people learn much more from fools than fools learn from wise people...
That pretty much sums it up, I think...

And that's how most serious policy questions turn, I think...

My participatory dialogue work would seek to include many more people in a much higher level discussion, featuring people who are strongest at having those discussions and everyone else having a place in the dialogue, though with substantial respect for those who know best what they're doing and what they're talking about...scholars, people working in the field, citizens with relevant experiences or understandings in an open-ended, constructive, and as on-going as possible participatory discussion of major policy issues...with education for everyone being a central focus of all discussions...

The bottom-line is that all people need to get more involved...

But some people just know what they're doing better...and those discussions need to facilitate that highest level learning among those who know, best, what they're doing, as much as include and educate and give lay people an opportunity to voice they're own opinions, as well as teach a thing or two to their more expert colleagues...

And this weekend gave me much more patience for such endeavors...

I love my family...they frustrate me when they talk about any important policy matter because they have these terribly strong opinions about issues that they know so very little about:):):)...
But I'm learning more patience for their's and my learning as we engage one another about important matters of public policy and just every day life:):):)...

I'm learning that though I think I have a more mature and serious outlook on most policy and just life issues than many if not most of the people I work with and live my life with...
That we're all on this ride of life, together...so we might as well learn to live it and work at it the best we can with one another...and all get better at it, together...
I've got an IEP to work on:):):)...

But that was an important bit of work and reflection from the weekend:):):)...

Have a great week, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

Building a Better World

Yesterday was a terrible day...

And then I have a great day like today...when a colleague who's been simultaneously a stickler for rules and authority...and someone who frequently chaffes at authority...

Talked about the need to follow the spirit of the law...rather than the letter...

And colleagues I work with being much more humble, lately...
I have these really awful days...when kids...or colleagues...or the world at large...just seems to resist every value or idea that makes any sense to me, at all...

And then I have these really incredible days, like today...

When I really feel like I make a difference...

And every time I have a day like this...

I miss Brandi...

I guess it's because she was the last person who shared all these moments with me more fully...experiencing the lows along with the highs along with me...

Melissa listens...patiently...but she's not so terribly enthused about the work as Brandi was...part of the reason, I think, that Melissa and I are better as friends...because I have this passion for life and for purposeful work that she's still working on getting some fire from...

Maybe there just isn't anyone who would want to share all this passion with me...given all the lows that come with the highs...the moments of weakness that come with the strength and love...

But I gotta believe that that isn't true...

She's out there...

We just haven't made that connection, yet...

I would asked out my principal long ago, had she been single...

But, alas...she's married...

So it's me and When Harry Met Sally...until some greater love affair comes along...

All I know is that if I meet a woman with even half of the passion I have for being a great teacher for these kids...and working to strengthen communities and institutions and democracy and thought with better ideas and thinking and engagement as I am...

I'll fall madly in love, I'm sure...

And if it's half as magical as before...

I know I'll have found a soulmate, I hope...

Only this time, with lots of study and the school of hard knocks, I'm far better prepared to be a better man for her...
Now that I'm getting all indications from everyone that they'd like me to stay next year...

And I watch us change lives, one at a time...and a school at a time...

It'd be nice to live out this dream with someone who shares similar commitments...

And who can help develop more and better ideas for doing so for as long as I have during this too short life...

I have work to do:):)...

Hope everyone's having a great week:):)...

Love,
Ben