On Saturday This American Life had some stunning interviews. Some were Studs Terkel’s from when he was working on memories of the Depression. Black people and white people, but all of them working people. (Not even Studs got around to red people.) The program, to prove that being rich won’t save your soul, added a woman whose family fell from prosperity because the father got “over-invested” in being a big prosperous lawyer -- to the point of embezzlement. I was surprised at how many among the interviewed people talked about uprisings, rioting in the streets.
But the real stunner was a man who remarked casually, “When I was sixteen, I was not afraid to die. But these kids today who are sixteen are not afraid to kill.” In my experience, this is true.
I think this is because our culture has shifted from being group-focused, “all in this together,” to being every person for himself. We’ve gone from feeling that the strong should give a hand to the weak (maybe die for your buddies, military-style) to feeling that the only thing that counts is to be the last man standing. Only fools enlist. Winner take all. Number one. A young man sneered at me, “anyone who can’t drive as fast as I do in a car as good as mine doesn’t deserve to be on the road.” He meant it. He meant me.
Besides the Depression and Studs Terkel, This American Life reflected briefly on Obama, a quiet man who is not afraid to die for his country. (We’re afraid to talk about it much.) He DOES think the strong should extend some protection to the weak. That doesn’t mean stripping the rich in order to feed the poor. One way to discredit anything -- one of the principles that used to be in English textbooks and now survives in election rhetoric -- is to exaggerate to the point of becoming ridiculous. So I won’t do that to today’s sixteen-year-olds, portraying them all as “not afraid to kill,” though at seventeen -- assuming they join the military -- that’s what we’ll want from them, isn’t it? The same as the Middle Eastern teenagers are not afraid to kill. Nor afraid to die.
We’ve just passed the 70th anniversary of Kristalnacht when crowds raged through European cities, killing and smashing. At that time things were also mighty tense in the USA because the Depression had destroyed so many lives. They had nothing to lose. One person told about traveling just outside Oklahoma City and seeing a Hooverville ten MILES by ten MILES -- isn’t that a hundred square miles? -- crammed with people living in piano boxes, car bodies, cobbled up shacks as we’re used to seeing in Africa or South America or Afghanistan. Someone confided that at that time we were just a blink away from mobs running in the streets and, of course, we HAVE had them. Detroit. Watts. Grant Park. (Some people were VERY worried about Grant Park this time, but it went fine.) Another person said that the vivid memories older people have of those eruptions is one of the forces driving us to DO SOMETHING now about money, but NOT run into the streets setting fires.
Jim Stebbings sent me the Studs Terkel pages from the Chicago Tribune. Studs only got a couple of paragraphs in the Montana papers, but we can all Google him. The gravelly voice. But more than that, the relentless emphasis on what is justice, what keeps people going in hard times, who are the brave examples, and where are the rewards. Never cynical, never bitter, always emphasizing what survives, what is uniquely human and exemplary in the person sitting at the microphone with him.
I was thinking about the difference between the reservation sixteen-year-olds and the Cut Bank sixteen-year-olds. As far back as the Sixties the programs of renewal began in Browning: Headstart, Peace Corps, community service lawyers and doctors right out of school. When I thought about Headstart, I realized that today’s Blackfeet sixteen-year-olds are Head Start graduates whose parents were also Head Start graduates. Decades of talk about making friends, working together, being creative, has given them a distinctive style as clear as that of the early 20th century mission-educated grandmothers who held families together through two world wars and a Depression.
Browning has had a steady influx of Catholic workers, liberals, Methodist work camps, hippies, veterans and so on -- often in the schools as teachers or lately as whole “charter schools.” There were two eloquent and peace-making voices in the recent debacle in Cut Bank. Mike DesRosier, whose son is a happy grad of the Piegan Institute’s Blackfeet Immersion School, and Calvin Tatsey, who attended Bill Haw's tribal “Blackfeet Free School and Sandwich Shop” in the early ‘70’s and says it changed his life.
The Browning kids nowadays are totally different than the kids I taught: consider that I used to have to FORCE them to do any public speaking, but now they consistently win prizes. They have voices and they use them. What’s interesting is that when I talk about the “old days,” meaning the Sixties, they are fascinated and sigh that “now everything is just boring and regular.” They want to hear about the day the high school students closed down the classes and Bill Haw, the counselor, got up on the stage to talk them through the revolution.
It occurs to me that over the years Cut Bank has become more rigid and right wing. The Cut Bank kids went to paid day care, which seems to have consisted mostly of loosely supervised play. Cut Bank got stuck. Browning moved forward. There were exceptions. Some Cut Bank kids, esp. on ranches, worked hard as part of the family team. One doesn’t find them in bar fights. But also they tend not to get into political matters, preserving the peace through avoidance.
Eric Newhouse bravely wrote an editorial in the Great Falls Tribune today -- brave because he published his name and photo, which editorial writers don’t always do. He reported that he and Gary Moseman, the managing editor, had been reflecting and searching about whether to allow commentors on this story of the bar fight to post without using their real names. In the first place, it’s impossible to confirm who really made the post, even knowing the url of the Internet connection. In the second place, wouldn’t the newspaper forum be a better context than some flaming blog site? Or even a inflammatory radio call-in show? Isn’t it better to get issues out on the table where they can be dealt with?
In 1962 I opened an English classroom unit on discussion by asking for topics the sixteen-year-olds really wanted to discuss. They wanted to talk about cops who beat them up, a practice they could prove and that was pushing them to the edge. When we began to deal with it, the chief of the tribal police showed up at my classroom door to write me a ticket for libel. Because in those days, one dealt with controversy by suppressing it.
We went to the superintendent, who pointed out that the defense for libel was proof that the statement was true, which they probably could provide, and the chief of police withdrew. The violence did subside. I got a stiff lecture on not stirring the pot. Right. It didn’t stick. I want sixteen-year-olds to deal with the truth and to feel that they will be listened to. Then there will be far less need for them to die or to kill, either one.
Showing posts with label schools. Show all posts
Showing posts with label schools. Show all posts
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Monday, January 21, 2008
A FERAL NATION
“Lack of Supervision Noted in Deaths of Home-Schooled
By JANE GROSS
Published: January 12, 2008
Ten states and the District of Columbia, where Banita M. Jacks was charged on Thursday with four counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of her four daughters, have no regulations regarding home schooling, not even the requirement that families notify the authorities that they are educating their children at home.
The lack of supervision of the home-schooling process, some experts say, may have made it easier last year for Ms. Jacks to withdraw her children from school and the prying eyes of teachers, social workers and other professionals who otherwise might have detected signs of abuse and neglect of the girls.
Instead, the children, ages 5 to 17, slipped through the cracks in multiple systems, including social services, education and law enforcement. Their decomposed bodies were discovered earlier this week by United States marshals serving eviction papers on the troubled family.”
This story got me musing about whether this nation is becoming “feral” in the way domesticated animals that escape from human households are “feral,” meaning that they have gone wild, meaning that they have escaped human supervision and the uses of the culture which they were meant to serve. This particular case was pretty clearly due to mental illness on the part of the mother which would have been addressed if she hadn’t managed to slip out of the main civilizing influence in our culture -- now that the church is pushed away -- leaving the public school in that role.
Subcultures -- including church-based ones -- have managed to change the laws in most states so that they not only can keep their children at home but are not required to meet any standards, whether it’s making sure the kids can read and figure or acquainting them with the shared history of the nation. The justification for this is both that the mainstream culture is far too rank and violent for children, and that the mainstream culture keeps butting in. Shadowing and justifying these positions is the idea that people “own” their children. They “make” them so they have the right to “use” them. Of course, this is dressed in much nicer rhetoric about parental rights.
But it is certainly an echo of our understanding of domestic animals: I “own” them, they are for my own “uses” and therefore only my own “business.” Everyone else can butt out. And if an animal normally kept as domestic (pigs, goats, cats, dogs, horses) manages to escape ownership, then it is feral. It has NO use, it is unowned and therefore can be grabbed by anyone -- animals cannot belong to themselves. If they have no use, they are taking up valuable resources and should be eliminated.
We used to think of Indians that way -- no nation (ownership), no uses, no self-determination, therefore expendable. Luckily, Indians paid no attention to that. Because “feral” people or animals are not any of those things, their lives are simply patterned in some other way than the dominant culture, maybe good and maybe bad. Illegal immigrants, alcoholics, religious dissidents, non-English speakers, hogs gone wild, and urban dog packs all devise or evolve their own culture -- they’re still organized, just not to the purposes or liking of the authorities.
Feral cat populations, for instance, turn out to have their territories and pecking orders all marked out. If they are removed, sterilized, and returned, they go on with this quite regularized little mini-society. They don’t allow strange cats to move in and they may kill extra kittens. They remain an ecology. But on islands where cats are brought de nouveau, in order to control mice, they become exterminators of birds. And, WAIT! We WANTED those birds!!
Usually a community has a number of “cultures” in layers and interlocking puzzle pieces. Some, known and tolerated, do the dirty work -- like “wetbacks” hoeing row crops in California, or the criminal work like supplying illegal drugs. The criminal element relieves pressure from needs not met in polite society. I’ve often suggested that the “gang” culture on the reservation, which enforces its will with violence -- even death -- could be eliminated in a week if there were money for proper law enforcement. But it suits some people’s uses to keep the reservation a dangerous, disreputable place. (People selling alcohol and drugs, for instance, or simply hiding behind the confusion.) Almost every family has a feral hostage to the existing system.
In a strange way, the college-educated person who leaves either small white ag town or reservation resort town also is “feral” when he or she returns -- no longer obedient to the rules of the community and therefore a source of anxiety if not fear. They are regularly squeezed out of local ecologies. A gay or lesbian must come home to secrecy. During WWII it was the German-heritage people who had to hide their origins -- except for the Jews, who had to hide in Germany. Whether or not such things are despicable and unjust, they represent the loss of a lot of ideas and energy.
I’m a Sunday devotee of the short stories read aloud on “Selected Shorts” which this week included the title story of the book called,
“St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves: Stories” by Karen Russell. (Review at: http://www.powells.com/review/2006_09_09.html) It’s a fabulist version of the experience of having to give up one culture (it’s fabulist because the girls are portrayed as real wolves) and learn another, which is something we all have to go through even if it’s only moving from a child’s culture to that of an adult. “Missionizing,” converting, sophisticating, educating -- this story is a brilliant illustration of the grief and inevitability. It’s a bookend for that fabulist and beloved story about cheerleaders out West gone feral, living joyfully in the wild where their cheers can be heard faintly in the distance.
It strikes me that it’s this painful and often clumsily done change that causes so many people to have sympathy for a family culture like home-schooling. Or maybe it’s that our culture is doing such a poor job of using education to enable and lift people. Ironically, the example of what education COULD be often comes from youngsters home-schooled by properly prepared and energetic parents. Around here it is often the home-schooled child who comes out at the top of the national exams and the mainstream classroom domesticated kids who are left behind.
So are we becoming a feral nation? The mainstream countries of the globe seem to think so.
By JANE GROSS
Published: January 12, 2008
Ten states and the District of Columbia, where Banita M. Jacks was charged on Thursday with four counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of her four daughters, have no regulations regarding home schooling, not even the requirement that families notify the authorities that they are educating their children at home.
The lack of supervision of the home-schooling process, some experts say, may have made it easier last year for Ms. Jacks to withdraw her children from school and the prying eyes of teachers, social workers and other professionals who otherwise might have detected signs of abuse and neglect of the girls.
Instead, the children, ages 5 to 17, slipped through the cracks in multiple systems, including social services, education and law enforcement. Their decomposed bodies were discovered earlier this week by United States marshals serving eviction papers on the troubled family.”
This story got me musing about whether this nation is becoming “feral” in the way domesticated animals that escape from human households are “feral,” meaning that they have gone wild, meaning that they have escaped human supervision and the uses of the culture which they were meant to serve. This particular case was pretty clearly due to mental illness on the part of the mother which would have been addressed if she hadn’t managed to slip out of the main civilizing influence in our culture -- now that the church is pushed away -- leaving the public school in that role.
Subcultures -- including church-based ones -- have managed to change the laws in most states so that they not only can keep their children at home but are not required to meet any standards, whether it’s making sure the kids can read and figure or acquainting them with the shared history of the nation. The justification for this is both that the mainstream culture is far too rank and violent for children, and that the mainstream culture keeps butting in. Shadowing and justifying these positions is the idea that people “own” their children. They “make” them so they have the right to “use” them. Of course, this is dressed in much nicer rhetoric about parental rights.
But it is certainly an echo of our understanding of domestic animals: I “own” them, they are for my own “uses” and therefore only my own “business.” Everyone else can butt out. And if an animal normally kept as domestic (pigs, goats, cats, dogs, horses) manages to escape ownership, then it is feral. It has NO use, it is unowned and therefore can be grabbed by anyone -- animals cannot belong to themselves. If they have no use, they are taking up valuable resources and should be eliminated.
We used to think of Indians that way -- no nation (ownership), no uses, no self-determination, therefore expendable. Luckily, Indians paid no attention to that. Because “feral” people or animals are not any of those things, their lives are simply patterned in some other way than the dominant culture, maybe good and maybe bad. Illegal immigrants, alcoholics, religious dissidents, non-English speakers, hogs gone wild, and urban dog packs all devise or evolve their own culture -- they’re still organized, just not to the purposes or liking of the authorities.
Feral cat populations, for instance, turn out to have their territories and pecking orders all marked out. If they are removed, sterilized, and returned, they go on with this quite regularized little mini-society. They don’t allow strange cats to move in and they may kill extra kittens. They remain an ecology. But on islands where cats are brought de nouveau, in order to control mice, they become exterminators of birds. And, WAIT! We WANTED those birds!!
Usually a community has a number of “cultures” in layers and interlocking puzzle pieces. Some, known and tolerated, do the dirty work -- like “wetbacks” hoeing row crops in California, or the criminal work like supplying illegal drugs. The criminal element relieves pressure from needs not met in polite society. I’ve often suggested that the “gang” culture on the reservation, which enforces its will with violence -- even death -- could be eliminated in a week if there were money for proper law enforcement. But it suits some people’s uses to keep the reservation a dangerous, disreputable place. (People selling alcohol and drugs, for instance, or simply hiding behind the confusion.) Almost every family has a feral hostage to the existing system.
In a strange way, the college-educated person who leaves either small white ag town or reservation resort town also is “feral” when he or she returns -- no longer obedient to the rules of the community and therefore a source of anxiety if not fear. They are regularly squeezed out of local ecologies. A gay or lesbian must come home to secrecy. During WWII it was the German-heritage people who had to hide their origins -- except for the Jews, who had to hide in Germany. Whether or not such things are despicable and unjust, they represent the loss of a lot of ideas and energy.
I’m a Sunday devotee of the short stories read aloud on “Selected Shorts” which this week included the title story of the book called,
“St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves: Stories” by Karen Russell. (Review at: http://www.powells.com/review/2006_09_09.html) It’s a fabulist version of the experience of having to give up one culture (it’s fabulist because the girls are portrayed as real wolves) and learn another, which is something we all have to go through even if it’s only moving from a child’s culture to that of an adult. “Missionizing,” converting, sophisticating, educating -- this story is a brilliant illustration of the grief and inevitability. It’s a bookend for that fabulist and beloved story about cheerleaders out West gone feral, living joyfully in the wild where their cheers can be heard faintly in the distance.
It strikes me that it’s this painful and often clumsily done change that causes so many people to have sympathy for a family culture like home-schooling. Or maybe it’s that our culture is doing such a poor job of using education to enable and lift people. Ironically, the example of what education COULD be often comes from youngsters home-schooled by properly prepared and energetic parents. Around here it is often the home-schooled child who comes out at the top of the national exams and the mainstream classroom domesticated kids who are left behind.
So are we becoming a feral nation? The mainstream countries of the globe seem to think so.
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