Well-Served

The recent college admissions scandal has touched many nerves.  Those of us who have spent a good deal of our lives working with high school students have smelled rats for a very long time.  What's so troubling, aside from the ability of those in powerful positions to offer and accept bribes, is that the mythology of attending an "elite" school persists.  We know better.  We have always known better.  So why validate the notion that some schools offer a better education than others?
Excellent teachers are everywhere.  This is a claim that is easy to prove.  Evidence abounds.  In fact, many have known for years that the so-called elite faculty at many top universities never even teach undergraduates.
I was dismayed to see UCLA mentioned as one of the schools involved in the scandal.  Stands to reason, though, the faculty, campus location, and overall reputation of the school make it one of the more desirable choices.  Still, I hate the fact that my alma mater is involved in this kind of unethical behavior.  Even if  these questionable students get into a top college, straying there is another matter.  Unless they are buying grades or tampering with transcripts I shudder to think how some of these privileged students fare doing college coursework.  Make no mistake, doing well in college takes hard work, perseverance, and setting academic priorities.

So what do we do now?  Easy.  Change the system and get the word out about community colleges.  Because of a financial crisis in the state of California, I was forced to begin my college education at my local community college.  I don't know which was worse, having to wait 6 months to attend a state university (after having been accepted) or actually starting college on time at the community college.  In those days, they called the community college a "high school with ashtrays."  Truth be told, it was far more interesting and complex than I expected.  I found not only older students with varied experience but also professors who had taught everywhere from Ivy League schools to international universities.
Case in point: Mr. Prismon.  His reputation preceded him.  Some liked the fact that he didn't use a standard textbook.  No multiple choice tests, essay questions and term papers based on index cards.  Prismon's text was a volume called The People Shall Judge.  It was an anthology of primary source documents like the Magna Carta, Declaration of Independence, and U.S. Constitution.  The course was what we now call a document based curriculum.
I chose his class because I wanted to see what studying history was like without selecting A. B. C. D. or all/none of the above.  I wasn't disappointed.  Prismon was a gifted lecturer who knew what he was doing.  The foundation I got from that course served me well as I pursued my degree a few years later at the big University. 

Golden

I'm about to head to a reunion.  Not the school variety, I'm over those.  This one is different, and in many ways a bit more significant.  It's a big one, as reunions go.  50 years.  Just saying that gives me pause.  I'm going back to Austin, Texas for the 50th reunion of the VISTA project in South Texas that I was a participant in so many years ago. (anyone interested in reading my memoir can find it here:
http://lifeandtimesofvista.blogspot.com/

VISTA, you might recall was similar to the Peace Corps, only in this country.  In 1969, the U.S. was involved in two concurrent wars.  The one in Vietnam and the "War on Poverty" right here at home.  I chose the local war and fought it with all the conviction and courage I could muster. Volunteers applied, were accepted and went to training and finally were either selected or de-selected and went home or serves in many of the poorest neighborhoods in this country.
That was then.  Now, however, I've been thinking about the last 50 years and as you might expect some of the similarities and differences between those days and these current days that seem so troubled.  To paraphrase Dickens, they were the best times and the worst times.

Best: The Beatles, Dylan, Donovan, Stones, Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin and Big Brother, The Blues- B.B. King, Albert King, Big Mama Thornton, Taj Mahal, Buddy Guy/Junior Wells, and many more...100,000 people in the street, Love-ins, Human be-ins, teach-ins, Moratoriums and Mobilizations, gas @35 cents a gallon, VW bugs, bell bottoms and boots, incense, "grass" VW microbuses,  the Black Panther Party, paisley, and placards.

Worst: Vietnam,  Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara, the draft, racism, political assassinations- (John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King), Richard Nixon, Kent State, police brutality, the "scoreboard" (the weekly death count from Vietnam presented every Thursday night on the CBS Evening News), the 1968 Democratic National convention in Chicago, George Wallace and Lester Maddox, FBI's cointelpro, Draft cards and literacy tests.

Certainly a very full and rich time.  A divided time with highlights of violence, government dishonesty, and a burgeoning generation gap.

Perhaps after getting used to the shock of seeing someone after 5 decades have passed, my old friends and co-workers from VISTA and I will begin the massive task of sorting much of this out.  There is much to celebrate, not the least of which is just being here...or being there in Texas where we really believed we could change the world.

A Remarkable Thing

I've been reading David W. Blight's massive new biography, Frederick Douglass, Prophet of Freedom.  Aside from being a highly readable tour de force from one of our best historians, the book takes a comprehensive look at how the "peculiar institution" of slavery impacted both slave owner and those enslaved.  That slavery is America's original sin, there can be no doubt.  However, there are a few scenes from Douglass's remarkable life that linger long in the mind.

One particular scene seems to relate nicely to the current topic of reparations for Americans whose ancestors were enslaved.  A quick review reminds us that after the Civil War and throughout Reconstruction, former slaves never received a proposed "40 acres and a mule."  That would have helped thousands of newly emancipated freedmen reestablish their lives as working, productive members of the newly united country of which they were citizens.  Instead, they became enmeshed in what became the sharecrop system, which became aptly named the "new slavery."
So here's the scene from the Douglass biography that most interestingly figures in here.  After being sent to Baltimore, Douglass learned the skills of a shipyard worker.  He became an excellent calker and was "hired out" by his "master" to one of the large companies in the Baltimore inner harbor.  Every Friday he took home his pay: $9.00 per week.  Upon arriving home Mr. Auld promptly asks for his pay.  He takes the money from Fred's hands and returns 25 cents to Fred.  Just imagine what that feels like.  Especially given the time involved and the difficulty of the work, to be de-humanized in this way would certainly take a toll.  Now just imagine that scene being repeated thousands of times over every week.
Is it too much to seek reparations given that kind of history?  Just how that would be and what form it might take is another question.  But to do nothing is to make no recognition of our shared history.  The benefits, in whatever form, would far outweigh the costs.
A final thought:  It's impossible to mention Frederick Douglass without recalling how the current occupant of the White House was not even aware that Douglass lived his life in the 19th century.  "He's doing remarkable things," the accidental President said.  Douglass, historian David Blight tells us was the most photographed person in the 19th century. Remarkable.

Well Chosen Friends

It is a very soft piece of leather.  I remember it for the tactile quality most of all.  Most bookmarks are paper or cardboard or sometimes metal, but this one was kind to the touch.  It was given to me by my cousin from NY when I was about 9 or 10.  Perhaps it was her mother, my Aunt who picked it out, but when they left for home after this West Coast visit they presented one to me and my sister.  I can't remember much about the one my sister got, but it was similar only mine had an owl on the top.  Her's was another animal, but I can't specifically recall.
This morning, right after I awoke, I thought of the soft owl bookmark.  It has an adage that read, "Books like friends should be few and well chosen."  Pretty good advice for a 10-year-old.
I've chosen many books and fewer friends since receiving that bookmark.  Somehow, because it lived inside a book, the little trinket has survived on my bookshelf and is actually in fairly good condition for being over 60 years of age.
For a minute I thought I might not find it.  hen I remembered, if I still had it, there was only one place it could be.  I visualized the bookmark inside a red perma-bound copy of The Catcher in the Rye.  There it was, smiling back and soft as ever.  For the last 30 years or so, that bookmark has resided in that book.  I taught that book to high school juniors many times.  Oh, I know it's regarded as an "old chestnut" among literary critics and many educators.  I get that, but the book, if taught conceptually, can apply to any person, any time, anywhere.  We all have a childhood.  We all experience some sort of loss of innocence.

The J.D. Salinger classic was so different in unreliable narrator and teenage voice when it was published that some critics never took it seriously.  The potential that comes with teaching this book to a group of sometimes reluctant readers is huge.  That's where that little bookmark comes in.  My students were asked to bring to class an object that represents their childhood.  Early on in a semester, it's a good way for each class member to introduce themselves to the class and for the class to learn something about them.  Oh, the stories.  I would model the 5-minute presentation by sharing an object from my childhood.  Usually, it was my Little-League baseball glove, but I put that bookmark inside my copy of the book in case I ever forgot to bring in the glove.  Both have good stories that provide deeply drawn symbols for childhood.
Lately, I'm wondering what will become of both the book and the bookmark.  If I put it out in the universe, perhaps it will live to find new meaning(s) for someone else.