What Did You Learn In School Today?

As Hoosiers anticipate the upcoming session of the General Assembly–an anticipation tinged with trepidation for many of us– we would do well to focus on the harms our Lords and Masters at the Statehouse intend to visit on public education this year.

This will be a budget year, and education is a huge part of that budget. I should note that, despite the pious concerns about taxes and spending voiced by Republican legislators each year, Indiana lawmakers have thrown millions of dollars into efforts to privatize education via the country’s largest voucher program, sending those dollars primarily to religious schools while routinely shortchanging the needs of our public schools.

According to the Indiana Capital Chronicle, the state is currently short 2300 teachers, a shortage undoubtedly exacerbated by inadequate pay levels and the legislature’s obvious disdain for the profession, demonstrated by its persistent efforts to dictate what can and cannot be taught in the classroom. In the upcoming session, a don’t say gay bill will be introduced, along with one purporting to keep Critical Race Theory out of the classroom. (The fact that actual CRT has never been in the classroom is irrelevant to the culture warriors, most of whom couldn’t tell you what it is if their lives depended on it.)

Classroom teachers and school board members I’ve talked to are exhausted by the constant assaults by Rightwing parents–the uninformed demands that they teach (or omit) certain materials,  efforts to ban books or remove them from school libraries, and hysterical accusations about education perceived to be “woke.” These high-decibel accusations are front-page news, despite the fact that–according to research–the great majority of Americans who actually have children in the public schools are satisfied with the education those children are receiving.

The harassment of teachers and school board members has little to do with what actually goes on in the nation’s classrooms; instead, it is one of the more visible battlefronts in the GOP’s culture war.

The linked study, done by Pew prior to the midterm elections, underscores the fundamentally partisan nature of the assault.

As the midterm election approaches, issues related to K-12 schools have become deeply polarized. Republican and Democratic parents of K-12 students have widely different views on what their children should learn at school about gender identity, slavery and other topics, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

They also offer different assessments of the influence parents, local school boards and other key players have on what public K-12 schools in their area are teaching. Republican parents with children in K-12 schools are about twice as likely as Democratic parents to say parents don’t have enough influence (44% vs. 23%, including those who lean to each party). And Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say school boards have too much influence (30% vs. 17%). These parents also differ over the amount of input they personally have when it comes to what their own children are learning in school.

At the same time, Republican and Democratic parents – including those with children in public schools – are equally likely to say they are extremely or very satisfied with the quality of the education their children are receiving (58% each) and that the teachers and administrators at their children’s schools have values that are similar to their own (54% each).

The large differences between what Republican and Democratic parents believe their children should learn are illuminating.

When it comes to what their children are learning in school, U.S. parents of K-12 students are divided over what they think their children should learn about gender identity: 31% say they would prefer that their children learn that whether someone is a boy or a girl is determined by the sex they were assigned at birth, and the same share say they’d rather their children learn that someone can be a boy or a girl even if that’s different from their sex at birth. A 37% plurality say their children shouldn’t learn about this in school.

There is also no consensus when it comes to what parents want their children to learn about slavery: 49% say they would prefer that their children learn that the legacy of slavery still affects the position of Black people in American society today, while a smaller but sizable share (42%) would prefer that their children learn that slavery is part of American history but doesn’t affect the position of Black people in American society today.

The self-appointed education experts in Indiana’s General Assembly should take note of another Pew finding: more parents say that state and federal governments have too much influence on what goes on in the classroom–and complain that teachers and principals don’t have enough.

Perhaps if legislators respected teachers–and compensated them accordingly–we wouldn’t be frantically searching for 2300 more of them.

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Indiana Legislators Don’t Care What You Want…Or Don’t

The Indiana Capital Chronicle is one of a handful of new media sites trying to fill the dangerous void in news about local and state government. (As I frequently complain on this site, so-called “legacy media” like the Indianapolis Star have emptied their newsrooms of reporters as they’ve focused on cutting costs at the expense of real journalism. The result has been a news desert when it comes to informing citizens about their state and local governments.)

A recent column in The Capital Chronicle focused on what is perhaps the most annoying characteristic of Indiana’s General Assembly–its pursuit of legislation untethered to the needs or desires of Hoosier constituents.

As the columnist began;

My Christmas wish is pretty simple: I would like lawmakers to listen to what Hoosiers want. ALL Hoosiers, not just the loudest slice of their Republican constituents.

Poll after poll and survey after survey shows what Indiana residents are worried about, and what they aren’t.

Bellwether Research’s latest poll in early December surveyed 1,100 Hoosiers representing both the demographic and geographic layout of Indiana. It asked about their top priorities.

Wishes one and two were lowering health care costs and affordable housing, at 31% and 21% respectively….Next up was increasing K-12 education funding at 17%. Nothing after is in double digits

As Hoosier lawmakers prepare for the upcoming session, however, they are signaling their preoccupation with culture-war issues. Some are focusing on restricting dissemination of abortion pills through the mail; according to the polling, exactly 3% of Hoosiers care about restricting access to mailed abortion pills. (Quite the contrary: according to the article, the GOP’s own internal polling reveals that a solid majority supports abortion rights, and a survey by Ball State found that 56% of Hoosiers believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.)

That poll also found that 56% of Hoosiers believe marijuana should be legal for personal use and 29% for medicinal purposes. Only 15% say it should not be legal…

Surveys also find only 6% of Hoosiers making oversight of K-12 curriculum a top concern, but the “usual suspects” in the Indiana Statehouse are busy preparing bills to combat “critical race theory,” which is not only not being taught, but is a rather rarified field of research into American legal systems pursued by a subset of law professors. Use of the terminology is not only inaccurate, it is intentionally misleading–a none-too-subtle “dog whistle” to White supremicists who want teachers to ignore certain aspects of the national story.

And of course, it wouldn’t be Indiana if our legislature failed to pick on LGBTQ Hoosiers. House Education Chairman Robert Behning has promised introduction of a “don’t say gay” bill–demonstrating that Indiana lawmakers aren’t intimidated by that pesky court ruling that found Florida’s “Don’t say gay” bill unconstitutional.

Most lawmakers send out constituent surveys on hot topics that they know will be coming up. They are clearly less scientific than the polls I have mentioned but even when legislators directly hear from their most engaged constituents they ignore the results.

Remember gun licensing from earlier this year? Not a single survey — that journalists could find — supported abandoning the carry permit. In fact they almost all said to keep the system as-is. But legislators tossed the licensing out with the bathwater — against advice of the Indiana State Police superintendent and the majority of law enforcement groups.

Growing up I was always told, “be careful what you ask for.” It seems lately the phrase for Hoosiers should shift to, “be careful what you DON’T ask for,” because you are increasingly more likely to get it.

The disconnect between what Hoosiers want and what we get from our lawmakers is a direct result of gerrymandering that produces safe seats and allow lawmakers to ignore the policy preferences of a majority of Indiana citizens.

Gerrymandering, after all, is the very best voter suppression tactic. Why bother to vote when the result has been foreordained–or, to use Trump language, when the election has been rigged? Gerrymandering amplifies the power of the fringes–the ideologues and culture warriors who vote in primaries–and effectively disenfranchises the rest of us.

Reporting on the antics at the Statehouse is one of the very few checks on lawmakers bent on pursing their own cultural fixations, and central Indiana has been ill-served by the Star’s devolution into sports and what has been called the “beer beat”–reports on new watering holes. That makes the arrival of the Indiana Capital Chronicle very welcome. The Chronicle describes itself as an “independent, nonprofit news organization dedicated to giving Hoosiers a comprehensive look inside state government, policy and elections.”

It’s probably wishful thinking, but perhaps a “comprehensive look” at what Harrison Ullmann dubbed the World’s Worst Legislature will trigger efforts at reform….

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Bumper-Stickers And Tweets

I have previously noted that I consider Ezra Klein one of the most thoughtful and insightful observers of American government and society.  A recent essay for the New York Times, reminded me why I came to that conclusion.

Klein–like many others in the Chattering Classes–was considering the chaos created at Twitter  by Elon Musk (aka the “Chief Twit”). He began by pointing out that the handwringing over losing a “town square” is misdirected, because Twitter and its ilk are not analogous to town squares. Permit me to quote his reasoning at some length:

This metaphor is wrong on three levels.

First, there isn’t, can’t be and shouldn’t be a “global town square.” The world needs many town squares, not one. Public spaces are rooted in the communities and contexts in which they exist. This is true, too, for Twitter, which is less a singular entity than a digital multiverse. What Twitter is for activists in Zimbabwe is not what it is for gamers in Britain.

Second, town squares are public spaces, governed in some way by the public. That is what makes them a town square rather than a square in a town. They are not the playthings of whimsical billionaires. They do not exist, as Twitter did for so long, to provide returns to shareholders. (And as wild as Musk’s reign has already been, remember that he tried to back out of this deal, and Twitter’s leadership, knowing he neither wanted the service nor would treat it or its employees with care, forced it through to ensure that executives and shareholders got their payout.) A town square controlled by one man isn’t a town square. It’s a storefront, an art project or possibly a game preserve.

Third, what matters for a polity isn’t the mere existence of a town square but the condition the townspeople are in when they arrive. Town squares can host debates. They can host craft fairs. They can host brawls. They can host lynchings. Civilization does not depend on a place to gather. It depends on what happens when people gather.

Klein references the lofty goals that accompanied the creation of these social media platforms. They were going to enable democratic deliberation, allow people to connect across barriers of ethnicity, geography, religion. As he points out, the predicted improvements haven’t arrived–democracies are weaker, not stronger, Humans are no wiser, no kinder, no happier.

The reason, he says, that so few aspects of our common lives have gotten better– and so many have arguably gotten worse–is the role played by these platforms in diminishing “our capacity for attention and reflection. And it is the quality of our attention and reflection that matters most.”

In a recent paper, Benjamin Farrer, a political scientist at Knox College in Illinois, argues that we have mistaken the key resource upon which democracy, and perhaps civilization, depends. That resource is attention. But not your attention or my attention. Our attention. Attention, in this sense, is a collective resource; it is the depth of thought and consideration a society can bring to bear on its most pressing problems. And as with so many collective resources, from fresh air to clean water, it can be polluted or exhausted.

He compares this reduction in collective attention to “the tragedy of the commons.”

Farrer argues that our collective attention is like a public pasture: It is valuable, it is limited, and it is being depleted. Everyone from advertisers to politicians to newspapers to social media giants wants our attention. The competition is fierce, and it has led to more sensationalism, more outrageous or infuriating content, more algorithmic tricks, more of anything that might give a brand or a platform or a politician an edge, even as it leaves us harried, irritable and distracted.

Klein notes that Twitter, especially, makes it easy to discuss difficult issues poorly. Complex matters are reduced to bumper-sticker memes. The algorithm that determines what you see takes its cues from likes and retweets, and the quote tweet function encourages mockery rather than conversation.

As Klein says, Twitter has facilitated the growth of movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo. It has allowed socialists to get a new hearing in American politics .It has also given new life to the racist right. “Put simply, Twitter’s value is how easy it makes it to talk. Its cost is how hard it makes it to listen.”

The Internet has enabled immensely productive collaborations–Klein singles out Wikipedia as an example–but social media is arguably a different animal–one Klein believes is in decline. I’m not sure about that. Humans have a longing for connectivity.

But surely we can do better than substituting bumper sticker slogans for dialogue.

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Happy Holidays

To those who celebrate Christmas, Merry Christmas. To those marking Hanukkah or Kwansaa, Happy Holidays.

Thanks for reading my daily rants–and know that I really, really appreciate all of you who visit and/or comment here.

Since I figure you all have better things to do today than reading this blog,  I’m taking Christmas day off.

See you tomorrow!

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Follow The Money…

A recent diatribe posted to the progressive site Daily Kos made me think. It began with a recitation of the many indisputably negative elements of our current social and political environment.

Violence toward women and minorities has exploded. Armed militias tried to assassinate the Vice President and Speaker of the House in an attempted coup directed by the Republican President of the United States. They tried to kidnap and murder the Democratic governor of Michigan. They’re blowing up power substations from Oregon to the Carolinas. They’ve embedded themselves in DHS, police departments, and our military. They’re coordinating with fascists overseas.

“They” are the MAGA extremists, Neo-Nazis and Christian Nationalists who perpetrate most acts if domestic terrorism, and those who facilitate and/or excuse them.

The writer blamed all of this on “Reaganism” and the GOP, an accusation that vastly over-simplified the complexities of social outcomes. (That said, I agree that the rise of populism and the takeover of the Republican Party by radically Rightwing extremists Is hugely implicated.)

What caught my attention was the post’s reminder of a 1971 memorandum written to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce by former Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell prior to his elevation to the Court. Historians and political scientists have noted the influence of that memorandum on businesses seeking to influence government policies in ways that would benefit their bottom lines.

Powell asserted that “leftists” — whom he defined as “middle class socialists and communist sympathizers” — had taken over the “government, universities, the Supreme Court, and our media.”

Current examples of the impotency of business, and of the near-contempt with which businessmen’s views are held, are the stampedes by politicians to support almost any legislation related to ‘consumerism’ or to the ‘environment….

Business must learn the lesson, long ago learned by labor and other self-interest groups. This is the lesson that political power is necessary; that such power must be assiduously cultivated; and that when necessary, it must be used aggressively and with determination — without embarrassment and without the reluctance which has been so characteristic of American business.

On the Court, Powell was part of the majority opinion in Buckley v Valeo–the decision equating money with speech and striking down legislation intended to limit the influence of money in political campaigns. The author of the post correctly noted that Buckley struck down “nearly a century of campaign finance legislation going all the way back to Teddy Roosevelt’s Tillman Act.”

It’s hard to argue with the post’s assertion that the Court “tripled down” on the equation of money and speech in Citizens United or with his assertion that between 1933 and 1981, pretty much everything that went right for middle-class Americans was the result of progressive policies: the right to unionize, unemployment insurance and workplace safety rules, Social Security and Medicare…

A top personal income tax rate between 74% and 91% throughout that period kept wages strong for working people and prevented the corrosive wealth inequality we see today. We didn’t get our first billionaire until after the Reagan revolution.

It’s easier to argue with the characterization of that period  as one of ” uninterrupted political and economic progress”–a description that conveniently  ignores much of the inequality and turmoil of those years–but the description of America after Buckley and Reagan is accurate:

Republican-leaning businesses bought up radio stations from coast-to-coast and put “conservative” talk radio into every town and city in America. Wealthy people began running for political office or supporting those politicians who’d do their bidding.

Conservative donors demanded rightwing economics and political science professors in universities across America. Rightwing think tanks and publishers were funded to support them. Billionaires founded a movement to pack our courts, including the Supreme Court.

The rise of neoliberalism has decimated the middle class and further enriched the wealthy. While I would quibble with details of the writer’s lengthy diatribe, I do echo his conclusion: we need to turn back to

the lessons of the New Deal and Great Society, embraced by presidents and politicians of both parties for a half-century, and rebuild our middle class and our democracy, along with our trust in each other.

The question, as always, is “how do we accomplish that?”

Thanks to the availability of huge amounts of money, a distinct minority of Americans  currently control many state governments, and is vastly over-represented in Congress. The money that has poured into the political system in the wake of Buckley has funded  sophisticated gerrymandering, misleading lobbying, and  overwhelming political influence via campaign contributions. It has supported the messaging that has drawn a variety of culture warriors, racists and their ilk to the GOP.

Perhaps it’s a failure of imagination, but unless the current iteration of the GOP suffers a crushing  electoral defeat–and soon–I don’t know how we begin to fix this.

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