Month: March 2018

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Taking a reality tour of our nation’s public schools

Dear U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos:

Given your job title, unawareness of American public education with its tumultuous and racist history, and that you and your entire family including your grandchildren have never had to attend a public school, I strongly suggest you take one year to travel the nation and each day randomly choose a public school to visit starting in our cities.  If you’re afraid to step into our public schools, let me be your guide.

First, students sniff fear, so keep a game face.  No smiling, waving, embracing, hugging, engaging in pleasantries or sorrowful expression at the sight of impoverished neighborhoods.  A polished businesswoman impresses adults not kids.  You might consider wearing a baseball cap, sneakers and slacks and tone down the bling.  A tattoo, nose piercing or strip of pink hair would be a good way to bond with kids, especially teen girls.  They’ll think you’re cool.

Let me guide you through this middle school entrance where everyone forms a single line before passing through metal detectors.  Like I said, ditch the jewelry; it’ll just set off the alarm and rile the adolescent crowd.  Then once inside the building, you should assume the position with hands up and legs spread as another teacher gently pats you down.  They’re checking for permanent markers used for graffiti and any sharp object that can and will be used as a weapon to harm others or themselves.  Yeah, some teens really do cut themselves just to feel something.  It’s so sad but not uncommon.  Don’t stare at the pregnant student either.  It’s nothing shocking.

Try to ignore the throbbing rap music blaring from parked cars with parents and students.  They both like the same music.  And if a parent does stomp through demanding an unscheduled conference or confrontation with the principal or a teacher, just step aside and keep quiet.  Mind your business.  Look straight ahead, and ignore rude cussing and shoving even between students.  Let administrators handle the rough stuff, my dear.

We can wait in the cafeteria where most students are provided a breakfast as well as lunch every school day in our public schools.  You’ll see many kids waste food.  Few really want the breakfast, yet they have to take dietary proportions given by cafeteria staff.  This is because of a federal government partnership with the U.S Department of Agriculture.  See, America produces tons more food than we can consume.  So the schools are a great place to at least get the food delivered, whether or not kids like it, eat it or toss it in the trash.  At least they have the option to eat at school.  But looking across the room, you’ll agree some kids are likely eating breakfast at home and then an extra something at school—which may contribute to our epidemic obesity rate.  Let me commend you, by the way, for keeping your figure slim and trim.  Very admirable.  You go, girl!

No school like an old school

That first bell is mind splitting, isn’t it?  All the kids are herding to their classes while a good ten percent of the student body will arrive tardy 10 to 20 minutes or later every day, the same kids from the same families all year long.  Now morning announcements will start, spoken through the office PA system.  In some schools, announcements will be in English and then repeated in Spanish, so this morning ritual may take quite awhile.  You might notice some classes remain talkative and do not pay attention while others are quiet.  You will undoubtedly notice very few kids actually saying the Pledge of Allegiance or bowing their heads for the traditional moment of silence.  It depends on the teacher, what’s important to him or her.  Maybe the class is behind in assignments, and completion is the priority.  Just letting you know it’s not totally about disrespect but could be.

OK, I’d like you to inspect student restrooms.  We’ll just stand inside the girls since the boys always smells of urine.  Look at this: little or no toilet paper, no soap, no paper towels.  You wanna know why?  Mischievous kids ruin it for everyone else.  Some exasperated custodians will not stock paper towels, leaving kids to air dry their hands or wipe them on their clothes.  Toilet paper can be a play thing to stuff the toilets, stopping them up to overrun—a big mess and common in schools.  The soap, well that was another thing some kids played around with, using way too much and making a mess, never cleaning it up off the floor or wall.  Many schools will not provide soap, bar or liquid, in student restrooms even in the newest buildings.  Too many students playing around in the restrooms, sneaking in for fights and other misadventures, is why restroom doors are removed or remain open at many schools.

Now let’s walk the halls.  Most classroom doors have to remain wide open to avoid potential lawsuits involving inappropriate teacher behavior.  But every kind of sound plus all the teachers’ voices echo down the corridor.  I don’t know how any kid can concentrate.  I wouldn’t have been able to.  What about you?

Oh, sorry you had to see that!  My goodness, look at that graffiti: stick figures in sex positions and words like ‘b—’ and ‘m—-f—-’ and gang tags.  Adolescents think they’re the first to shock us with sex stuff and bad language.  Just expect to see more of it on occasion: inside books; on walls; in restroom stalls; scratched into painted lockers, windows, steel doors, even video monitors.

I wanted to mention to you an outdated feature of our nation’s schools in the 21st century: Some classrooms still use VCRs and video monitors instead of DVD projectors or Smart Boards with internet connection.  You would think every single classroom in America would at least have a Smart Board by now and every student supplied or required to have a laptop for school.  Maybe by 2050, huh?  Of course, who knows how technology will change by then?

So classrooms here along the first floor seem to be running smoothly.  Most classes are very organized, some in apparent disarray.  It depends on the teacher and style.  Some administrators will demand a streamlined approach, however, and those schools will have to follow suit.  A school’s tone, its order or chaos, starts at the top with the principal.

Up the down staircase

Ready to go upstairs?  No, we can’t take the elevator, dear.  They rarely work in some schools.  I’m not sure how this inconvenience and hazard continues after the Americans with Disabilities Act, but it does.  Accommodations are made if a student needs to go upstairs.  For example, a kid in a wheelchair may have an assigned crew—and other kids will volunteer for this—to lift and carry the kid in chair up a flight of stairs.  Other arrangements may be to keep a kid in a wheelchair on the first floor, maybe arranging for a tutor if the math lab is upstairs, for example.

Let’s step into this classroom.  Ooops!  Gosh, were you hit by that tiny bit of eraser?  Feels like shrapnel, doesn’t it?  Dog-gone kids.  Just quietly walk around the room.  Notice how students suddenly are paying attention to the teacher, acting studious, reading.  They want to impress you because they don’t know who you are and why you’re here.  They think you’re monitoring their behavior.  At this moment, they’re truly learning and concentrating.  This is a beautiful sight, what school’s all about.  Sigh.

But look around the room.  See?  No cameras anywhere.  That’s a problem in this day and age.  If a kid is so inclined to misbehave or act out, it’s the teacher’s word against the student or students.  But with you here, there will be no outburst, not until you are gone and things get back to normal.  Unfortunately, school classrooms should have cameras by now, don’t you agree?

Oh no!  That sudden loud order from the vice principal means we’re in lock down.  We have to stay in this classroom for now.  We’ll know it’s over when we hear a special code over the PA.  See how the teacher places a red or green card outside the door then locks it, if it can be locked, while students remain in their seats or in worse scenarios crouch together in a back corner?  I think this lock down is to let drug dogs roam free, an unannounced routine.  Usually the dogs sniff out something in student lockers or backpacks.  Later we’ll probably see police officers escorting arrested adolescents, hands cuffed behind their backs, as they leave school.

Yes, this school is one of many with armed police officers, about one per high school and middle school.  This school district has its own police force.  Years ago schools used security officers without guns.  But in recent years, they’ve been replaced by real law officers who wear handguns.  I guess everyone feels safer.

Now that lock down is over, let’s go into the staff parking lot.  Students are not allowed access, but there’s no fencing or any way to prevent stragglers from passing through.  Today I see four cars have been keyed, all of them red.  That means it’s a gang thing, a retaliation of sorts.  Adolescents who are entrenched in gang culture assume their teachers are gang members, too.  There are cameras monitoring activity around the school’s exterior.  Maybe those who scratched the cars will be caught but not if they wore hoodies and aren’t from this school.

Let’s go back inside to watch lunch time.  Some cafeterias are tightly monitored with students not allowed to talk above a whisper while some schools allow low conversation.  The thing is: kids are known to get out of control quickly, group laugh, ruff house, yell, break into fights or throw food.  So don’t be alarmed if you hear a coach or loud teacher instruct everyone: “QUIET!!  NO TALKING.”  I’m sorry teachers have to come across as mean.  You know they really aren’t.  It’s just hundreds of youngsters and five teachers monitoring lunch, like keeping a lid on a boiling pot sometimes.

Skip to my Lou

Would you like to pop in to another public school for afternoon touring?  Let’s go!  This is an elementary school where most students are from Spanish-speaking homes.  Many of their teachers also speak Spanish as their native language.  This school has a bilingual program whereby every other day, lessons are taught in one language or the other.  For example, Monday may be English, Tuesday Spanish, and back and forth through the week.  The effectiveness of this type of bilingual education is skewed because a confused kid will often have to break into Spanish on those English-only days to figure out what’s going on.  It’s hard on them, and if the teacher only speaks English, the kid must figure out what’s being said and taught sink or swim.  Their mandatory state tests will be in Spanish until they reach middle school.  Some bilingual teachers support full English immersion at school.

Before leaving, let’s go outside to the rows of small metal buildings surrounding the school.  They’re called portables, one-room buildings placed here decades ago as a temporary measure until the school was expanded.  But by now, many portables are fifty years old, and few schools actually were expanded through the centuries.  Heating and air conditioning are problems in some portables but also throughout many school buildings.  There are all kinds of reasons, but mostly the air ventilation systems are not monitored and maintained by an on-site crew.  It can take years for air in one freezing wing to be repaired while another area across the school building remains unbearably hot.  It’s the way it is.  Students learn to bring jackets or wear layers every single school day: summer, autumn, winter and spring.

And that brings me to my final concern about our nation’s school system.  Why aren’t American schools year-round by now?  It’s practically the middle of the 21st century, and the long summer breaks have been unnecessary for decades.  Expanding the school year would be a good place to start in improving our students’ education and retention.  Teachers, families and states may kick and scream about it.  But you know a lot of knowledge has gone to the wayside in order to maintain a nine-month school year decade after decade.

I understand your reluctance to take American public schools seriously.  You support privatizing all services, providing school choice to everyone, and doing away with the U.S. Department of Education altogether.  In countering these proposals or grand plan, in actuality our nation’s schools should be under one command.  The Department of Education should enforce the same curriculum for every school, rural and urban, so communities aren’t set back by poverty and school board politics.  Communities and citizens have failed our schools.  The oversight for correction, modernization or privatization must be at the federal level.  States would disagree on student courses that are important and essential.  But that is a national decision.  And you, Madam DeVos, are the Decider.

It’s been my pleasure showing you just a couple of our urban public schools.  B’bye!  Feel free to call me any time.

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Remembering President Clinton’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

It’s been 20 years … or should I say it’s only been 20 years since President Bill Clinton faced impeachment for lying about an affair with Monica Lewinsky, a young White House intern.  Monica was quite a hit a few years ago with her TED Talk, proclaiming herself as Patient Zero in the internet world of constant shaming, ridicule, public scorn and privacy invasion.  The whole sordid ordeal seems so very long ago that Clinton’s wife, Hillary, had the nerve to run for president twice.  All is forgiven in the Clinton household, we are to assume.

Since the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, the age-old sex and power story has never stopped in the political realm, now centering on our current president.  Nevertheless, an affair, lying about it to the nation and the feds, and abusing power as U.S. president almost brought down the Comeback Kid.  Yet Clinton survived it all, thus his nickname, one he earned as governor of Arkansas.

When Clinton became the Democrat nominee for president in 1992, I didn’t think he’d win.  The Republicans had been in power so long, I was jaded.  But the economy was awful.  Millions were unemployed including me for awhile, and President George H. Bush did not have the charm or charisma that many saw in Clinton.  I for one never saw that je ne sais quoi that made women swoon.  He was no Paul McCartney.  So certain was I Bush would win a second term, I went to bed early instead of watching election returns that November evening.  When I awoke the next morning, I was surprised and pleased to learn history had changed, this time in my favor.  “I guess a lot of people have been down on their luck the past few years,” was my response.

Coincidentally as the Clinton years began so did my newspaper career as a government reporter.  Because I was reporting from a small-town perspective, I saw firsthand how Clinton’s pro-business policies were helping boost the economy.  On his watch included welfare reform which locked in a lifetime limit for accepting federal assistance for people without children, meaning they had to find a job or go to school but get off the public dole.  They had about a year to turn their lives around.  Even the destitute with children had to get their act together job-wise, the deadline set by the age of their youngest child, usually 1 to 3 years old.  But Clinton intended for there to be no more lifetime and generational welfare.

To build economies, Clinton released a lot of government money in loans to help small businesses and individuals.  The chambers of commerce and banker types were kicking and screaming in protest.  But I witnessed for eight years in various communities how loosening federal funds directly helped people.  They could afford mortgage loans to own a home.  They could return to college or trade or tech school to learn new skills in a fast-changing era.  They were also learning to invest a portion of their income for a better retirement.

Clinton had many crowning achievements, one of which had to do with economic development.  Using a lot of complex formulas (Bill is supposedly an honest-to-goodness genius), the Clinton Administration named about 20 small towns across the U.S. to give a sizable block grant specifically to build small businesses, education and training, and tourism.  That’s right: Tourism should be a third of any healthy vibrant community’s income, the others being business and industry.  One community in Oklahoma was awarded the grant, and the town happened to be within my beat.  After writing about the community’s surprise and gratitude for the new innovative federal funding program, a year later I revisited folks to see how they were using the money.  One individual created a small toy company in his home, using the area’s abundance of trees to produce unique all-wood products.  He had an internet site to sell worldwide.  Another family used their pond to harvest large soft-shell turtles, Japan their biggest client. Other individuals qualifying for the new federal fund simply completed their high school or college educations, many going to trade schools.

A soul whose intentions are good

But the Clintons—and Bill always told us Hillary was his partner as the nation had its first co-presidents—were peculiar to many American conservatives.  The Clintons appeared to mix New Age philosophy with government action.  In other words, they believed in prosperity teachings that promote letting money flow, giving it away, instead of sitting on a pile of taxpayer dough.  Perhaps they got this idea from Deepak Chopra, who wrote a book about spiritual finance management, advising a change in personal perspective: One should be open to the universe to supply all needs including money.  In other words, giving and sharing are better for the human spirit, which actually sounds Christian.

When Clinton created a federal loan program to help people, he realized about ten to twenty percent of recipients would run off with the money and never repay the government—despite the big trouble with which they would eventually have to deal.  But he weighed the odds and followed his instincts.  He believed most people are honest and repay their debts.  Motivational speakers like Tony Robbins influenced the Clintons, too, and Bill and Hillary were regulars at the annual Renaissance Weekend—a gathering of leaders and innovators in science, medicine, politics, philosophy, religion, and technology.  Then one day while sitting alone in her White House home, Hillary was overheard talking aloud to a dead American hero for advice—another New Age concept.  She was crucified for believing or trying such nonsense.

I took up for the Clintons, even Hillary talking to real dead people to seek help and guidance.  But the Bill Factor was always there: sex scandals covered by the media, mostly the sleazy tabloids.  But the issue kept coming up.  Hollywood produced two major movies loosely based on the Clintons.  Any time I met someone from Arkansas, from a hair dresser to a fellow reporter, I’d ask: “Did Clinton really have affairs as governor?”  “Oh, God, yes!” was the consistent reply.  I could not believe the national media did not report this seriously.  It was as if the media wanted Clinton to win.  An Arkie friend, who did not want Clinton to be re-elected, warned me: “He will embarrass us.”

It took a couple more years during Clinton’s second term, but my friend was right.  Clinton embarrassed us all.  The truth about Monica Lewinsky and the president came crashing into all our TV sets: Oprah’s dedicated show “Our President has lied to us,” the Monica girls dancing to Addicted to Love on a late-night talk show, “Saturday Night Live” skits with the Monica character wearing her signature black beret.  I had to get rid of mine because at the time people jokingly called me ‘Monica,’ though I looked nothing like her.  George Stephanopoulos, who worked for Clinton in the White House and knew him well, wrote a book about him called All Too Human whereby he shares the Clinton method of lying: looking someone directly in the face, touching the person’s arm, and saying with great sincerity and a bit of tears “You gotta believe me.”  In response, during a promotional TV book tour, George, exasperated, could make no comment other than hold out both hands, palms up, like “What’s wrong with this guy?”

Even with Clinton’s sexual inclination, maybe because of it—he seemed like someone who was a sex addict—as president, he was concerned with the nation’s epidemic levels of teen sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancies.  He told us the number one cause of poverty and generational poverty is teen pregnancy.  He wanted sex education taught in the schools, but conservatives fought him.  Together they agreed to an abstinence-based sex education curriculum.  Again, in the small communities of Texas where I was a reporter, the federal program was implemented due to shockingly high numbers of teen STDs and pregnancies based on per capita statistics.

The Scarlet Letter

But Clinton’s Achilles heel was his way with women, his forbidden lustful desire, even if illegal.  And he paid the ultimate price with impeachment.  The  nation had to deal with the long tedious ordeal with every single nightly newscast for a year and a half.  In the end, he happened to get off relatively unharmed and did not have to resign.  He was a pretty tough dude.

As for Monica, she left the country to polish her education in England.  All along, Europeans loved Bill Clinton and saw nothing wrong with an affair or many affairs and felt Americans rather hypocritical—making a mountain out of a mole hill as it were.  And it was.  The economy was great, super-duper great.  The Clinton years were one of America’s most prosperous and perhaps will be the most positive and progressive era of my lifetime.  Even the conservatives, grinning and bearing, benefited immensely by Clinton financial policies, more than the little people.  There were the occasional Middle Eastern military strikes—bombings with death and destruction—usually when Clinton was caught in an alleged scandal, sexual or otherwise.  That was the only thing that bothered me, though previous presidents bombed the Middle East, too.  I figured someday we’d have to pay for all of that.

And I was bothered by the constant rumors of sexual harassment by Clinton, our U.S. president.

Monica may have been 22 years old, but she didn’t come across as an innocent.  She seemed older than her years, able to handle the dirt, play with the big boys.  She was no victim, knew what she was doing, even encouraged the president into a little sexual dalliance.  And that’s why she was treated the way she was: like she didn’t matter.

The public had no right to know every single detail from their sex life—and everything in great detail was made known to us.  Why?  Wasn’t it enough to say they had an affair?  Wasn’t it enough to say they had a sexual relationship?  The president, looking like a scolded school boy, admitted to the nation in an interruptive TV message from the Oval Office that he had lied and did have an inappropriate relationship with Ms. Lewinsky and that it was wrong.  Nevertheless, he fought impeachment, wordsmith that he was, semantics twisting that he can play—because he’s so damn smart.

The lesson Americans learned from the Clinton-Lewinsky affair is that sex is none of our business, even if it involves the U.S. President—especially the President if the economy is doing great and the people have a sense of well being.  So that is why, liberal or conservative, we put up with Trump and all the sex scandals that come to light.  Who cares?  We don’t have the stomach for a long drawn out impeachment.  We’ve grown more European in accepting a leader’s extramarital sex life.  Trump will have to do a lot more than sleep with and harass a bunch of women to embarrass 21st century Americans.  Take that, American history.

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Mixing news & views creates an unhealthy democracy

As a former newspaper reporter, it seems peculiar to me that there are several ‘watchdog’ groups with the mission of keeping journalists honest.  A real deal reporter does not write lies or innuendos in news stories or in columns for that matter.  However, the less honorable reporter and print tabloid would not only pay sources but accept money to not write the truth or print a story.  This fact known to everyone is part of the reason why journalists and the journalism profession are under severe public scrutiny.  Most Americans do not believe what they read in newspapers, even as staunch as The New York Times and Washington Post.  Because the public perceives journalists as inclined to lie, they believe their articles need to be monitored for truth.  But it’s the public not the reporters who are mistaken when it comes to fake news.  Many Americans do not know the difference between news and views.  Thank you Fox News.

When asked, journalists always rate their profession as most admirable and certainly worth the public’s respect and trust.  Yet the American public, more now than ever, distrusts the media, the press, what some country’s honorably call the Fourth Estate.  Did you know the Fourth Estate was considered to be a fourth branch of our federal government, with the responsibility and power of ‘watchdog’ to ensure equality among the executive, legislative and judicial branches?

Our nation was created by 18th century hell raisers, brave men willing to put their money where their mouth was.  They paid to own and operate and distribute newspapers.  Why?  To voice their opinions against tyranny and for liberty.  In other words, the United States of America never would have organized to rebel against British rule and authority if not for numerous publications read by residents of colonies, towns and communities.  The self-styled editors and reporters used their words, their printed words, to spark the American Revolution.  And they put their names on their self-published articles.

Contrast our journalist forefathers to modern Americans.  Thousands of internet bloggers often do not reveal their real identities, and hundreds of local ‘reporter’ wannabes attend court trials, government meetings and community gatherings and write about their impressions for their online news reports—and they compete with long-established community newspapers.  The internet being what it is, fast and convenient and monetarily free, these alleged reporters get noticed, read and believed; create a buzz by playing fast and loose with the facts; and advertisers support the new journalists in their online effort to keep the public informed—though in the most lackadaisical and uneducated ways.  [I’d add ‘uninformed,’ but they do follow a reporter’s beat.]

In the beginning was the word

When I first searched the internet for pictures of American journalists, guess who popped up first?  Diane Sawyer, followed by Oprah Winfrey, Katie Couric, Barbara Walters, etc. …  These are not journalists as I knew the profession—and I grew up with TV.  Think of the word ‘journaling,’ you know like ‘writing.’  I was hoping to see Ben Franklin, Ida Tarbell, Ernie Pyle, Ernest Hemingway, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein and Gloria Steinem.

Indeed there are a plethora of well-known, and to the public better known, broadcast journalists because of the very fact they’re in TV land.  I, too, grew up watching the news: key word ‘watching’ and maybe key phrase ‘watching the news.’  But I also grew up reading a daily newspaper, more importantly seeing my parents read the paper.  For Americans, just watching the news never was intended to be how we get the full story.  With the advent of television and now the internet, citizens living in free democracies, like we do, must seek all media to learn the full story, not just overhear 20-second sound bites over breakfast or during dinner.  We have to spend more time, not less, to gain full knowledge of a story.

Along with confusion between print and broadcast journalism is the growing need for emotional appeal.  A great writer uses precise words and language to grip readers.  That still remains a talent and craft any renowned author and poet know, and along with readers have known for centuries.  TV newscasters, which in my day were sarcastically dubbed ‘talking heads,’ must rely on evoking an emotional response by viewers through voice, appearance, and technology.  What a lot of fluff just to present the news.  In the end, the news is just the facts.  And we as a society have lost track of that: to know or to want to know the cold hard facts without being entertained or persuaded.  But humans are moved more by what we see than what we read.  Reading takes time.  But it never should have stopped being important to Americans.  We have failed our nation in this regard.

Then Fox News came along, singing a song, and broadcast journalism has never been the same.  Hand in hand with the World Wide Web, news and views became politically mixed with Fox blatantly slanted to the right.  But when it comes to political internet bloggers, it’s not more conservatives than liberals.  Liberal blogs have a slight edge, about 53/47.  But most Americans would never think that, given political radio and internet talk shows, most of which are loudly right wing with hardly a peep of left-wing counterpoint.

Emotional rescue

What to do with the state of journalism today?  Does anything need to be done with journalism today?  I can tell you that real reporters are out getting the story, getting the facts straight, and writing the news—while keeping it separate from their own views or opinions.  This is their sacred duty whether the public believes it or not.

Today’s journalists are not kicking themselves for the state of the newspaper industry.  In fact, every newspaper’s online.  Maybe that is the future:  no more paper and ink.  With strong photo images and even video reports, journalists are showing they are made of stronger stuff than fluff.  Some local reporters may give the talking heads competition.  After all, a reporter can write and tell a story.  That’s not necessarily true among broadcast journalists.

Our society feels the need to monitor journalists from newspapers to magazines, TV broadcasts to online news.  If anything in the media needs monitoring, it should be advertising dollars.  How much for a full-page ad in a major daily?  In a monthly magazine?  On an online newspaper edition?  For 30 seconds during TV news?  Get the picture?  Bottom line, it’s a lot of money.  Again, why?

Our emotions are being bought.  We are being manipulated by glitz and glamour that comes with watching TV news—the big guys more so than the mid-size and small markets, of course.  But the visual counts, and it comes with a hefty price.  Our major broadcast journalists are treated like movie stars or TV stars.  And they are.  That is the point and our problem with trusting journalists.

Good journalists are not like most people.  In pursuing truth, they won’t be swayed by money, power or prestige.  They are intense and take their jobs seriously.  They report facts; if they are lucky, they write with a sparkle; and while everyone else is busy gossiping about what was read in the news, journalists are on to the next story.  They don’t need monitoring.  They monitor themselves.  As our democracy depends on accurate news along with the equal but separate right to express views, there are aspects of the modern media business that need scrutiny.  When it comes to finding the truth, any good journalist would tell you:  Follow the money.