I must get this off my chest.  I have failed miserably in helping my students in my writing courses at the community college learn what I intended to teach them, how to engage in meaningful and productive discourse to learn how to communicate in powerful ways using the tool of writing.  The conversation needed to teach to such goals never really got started.  I tried at first to find topics for them and could hardly find any most were interested in or would come to be interested in and I asked them many a time about what it was that they were interested in.  Neither tactic worked.

They insisted they were not very interested in much, this a topic I tried to use to generate conversation but without much effect.  My students, I came to realize through the conversation we did have where they spoke some, were not used to conversing or thinking deeply enough about things there were to think about to have what they considered something to say.  Two years of isolation, no environmental conditions to warrant they think about their thoughts and find reason to find words and phrases to convey their thoughts to others had, indeed, had an effect.  Maybe worse than their COVID related problems was an attitude I came to understand as reasonable.  They told me that they were used to people not listening to them, the people who counted having already made up their minds, not only about issues, but also about who was smart and who was not.

The boomers, they said, ran the world—and had ruined the world—most ever part of it.  And the boomers, their teachers, politicians, bosses, etc., believe themselves to be so smart that those who were not boomers need not be heard.  So why try?  They told me that they were waiting for their time to come–when the boomers were gone.  Meanwhile, they would talk among themselves but didn’t see much reason to argue with those who would not listen to them anyhow.

I, of course, am one of those they consider a boomer.  Yes, I could have done more, done better, but I really wasn’t ready for what I encountered.  I misread a generation or maybe two because, probably, my boomer mentality got in the way.  And, too, I had not the faintest idea of what the effects of COVID had been or of the attitudes spawned by the conditions of the world most directly affecting them, the seemingly insurmountable problems of global warming and an economy that would, they believed, never allow them to achieve levels of prosperity equal to that of former generations.

They saw the job market boomers had left them uninviting and the prospect for living well rather dim.  I needed to feel the malaise rather than study it if I was going to connect and I could not do that.  I had the advantage of boomer credentials and, even though I did not use them as many of my cohort had to enrich myself, I still felt degrees of freedom of choice that they do not feel, probably because of what they have been taught about how done a deal their futures are no matter how hard they may try to change it.

Watching skateboarding at

. Skateboarding began as kid play. My play on a two-by-four with Roll Fast metal skates nailed to it to go down Cardiff Hill. Crazy! And then, invention upon invention and a world class sport. Watch where the children play and, from time to time find ways to suggest attempts at greater sophistication! Schoolwork productively meaningful, creativity, imagination, and critical thinking used to do what makes growing such abilities worth the effort.

There is a local group on Facebook that is for local educators to discuss issues concerning education. Actually, it is a site for teachers to talk about their employment as teachers and not much about issues that need discussion concerning the problematic nature of the educational system and our local schools that are a part of that system.It is fine to have places like this where people of a kind can commiserate, give others support, make one another feel better.It is a problem, thought, when, in making one another feel better, the broader issues that are related to their happiness are not discussed, for educators whether it is the system they are a part of should be making them unhappy and whether it is necessary for them to be unhappy for their refusal recognize the problems inherent in the system their work support and the damage their support for the system does to students who are its most vulnerable victims.Yes, the teacher’s lot is a difficult one. Worse, teachers are a cause of their own problems, to a large extent, by supporting the system, by being its good and loyal employees.So, I do think far past due that the truly good teachers who should be worried about the results the system produces and its consequences for individuals, society, and the planet, create new organizations that speak truth of the reality of schools in American society and the failure (much intentional) to prepare students to participate in the development of a properly sane and humane democratic society.SHAPE: Sane and Humane: Association for Progressive Education.

CNN article titled “John Kerry warns ‘time is running out’ to address climate crisis, calling the last 30 years a failure” leads me to say this:

Thirty years of failure to address sensibly an issue that has such profound implications! How could that be in this democratic society? Because we do not have a sensible and humane democratic society. We have a society in which capitalism is the economic system and the political system. We have two parties that are capitalist and none that are sensible and humane because sensible and humane would necessitate undoing capitalism. Schools teach for capitalism, for students to be obedient workers. Teachers keep their jobs by being obedient to capitalist masters and are fine with this as long as they make enough not to be impoverished. Change? Recycle, save a gallon of gas here and there, rally, write letters to politicians, so on and so forth? All leading to failure. So, what now?

Progressives, shocked by the readiness of half the country to support this hateful man, seized on racism as the single cause and set out to disprove every alternative. But this answer was far too satisfying. Racism is such an irreducible evil that it gave progressives commanding moral heights and relieved them of the burden to understand the grievances of their compatriots down in the lowlands, let alone do something about them. It put Trump voters beyond the pale. But racism alone couldn’t explain why white men were much more likely to vote for Trump than white women, or why the same was true of Black and Latino men and women. Or why the most reliable predictor for who was a Trump voter wasn’t race but the combination of race and education.

These are cites from George Packer’s rather important article in the Atlantic titled “How America Fractured into Four Parts: People in the United States No longer Agree on the Nation’s Purpose.” For those in education, I would hope that you would give it a read and agree to find a way to discuss what this article should mean to we who try to educate the American citizenry.

Quotes:

But a freedom that gets rid of all obstructions is impoverished, and it degrades people.

Real freedom is closer to the opposite of breaking loose. It means growing up, and acquiring the ability to participate fully in political and economic life. The obstructions that block this ability are the ones that need to be removed. Some are external: institutions and social conditions. Others are embedded in your character and get in the way of governing yourself, thinking for yourself, and even knowing what is true. These obstructions crush the individuality that freedom lovers cherish, making them conformist, submissive, a group of people all shouting the same thing—easy marks for a demagogue.

Government, which did so little for ordinary Americans, was still the enemy, along with “governing elites.” But for the sinking working class, freedom lost whatever economic meaning it had once had. It was a matter of personal dignity, identity. Members of this class began to see trespassers everywhere and embraced the slogan of a defiant and armed loneliness: Get the fuck off my property. Take this mask and shove it. It was the threatening image of a coiled rattlesnake: “Don’t tread on me.” It achieved its ultimate expression on January 6, in all those yellow Gadsden flags waving around the Capitol—a mob of freedom-loving Americans taking back their constitutional rights by shitting on the floors of Congress and hunting down elected representatives to kidnap and kill. That was their freedom in its pure and reduced form.

A character in Jonathan Franzen’s 2010 novel, Freedom, puts it this way: “If you don’t have money, you cling to your freedoms all the more angrily. Even if smoking kills you, even if you can’t afford to feed your kids, even if your kids are getting shot down by maniacs with assault rifles. You may be poor, but the one thing nobody can take away from you is the freedom to fuck up your life.” 

Politically, Smart America came to be associated with the Democratic Party. This was not inevitable. If the party had refused to accept the closing of factories in the 1970s and ’80s as a natural disaster, if it had become the voice of the millions of workers displaced by deindustrialization and struggling in the growing service economy, it might have remained the multiethnic working-class party that it had been since the 1930s. 

The winners in Smart America have withdrawn from national life. They spend inordinate amounts of time working (even in bed), researching their children’s schools and planning their activities, shopping for the right kind of food, learning to make sushi or play the mandolin, staying in shape, and following the news. None of this brings them in contact with fellow citizens outside their way of life. School, once the most universal and influential of our democratic institutions, now walls them off. The working class is terra incognita.