A Mosque At Ground Zero

I have waited for the firestorm to die down so that I can comment rationally on the situation.

This promises to be a short statement - at least it will be shorter than most of the earlier ones.

First, Obama's opening statement is one that had to be made. The Iman and his group have every right to secure possession of a property and to build what they want - a mosque, a grocery store, a restaurant, or a terrorist training center. Their proposal should not be denied on the basis of their religion.

However, the city of New York has every right to deny the application, for lack of the appropriate word, on a multitude of bases. City officials are SUPPOSED to make approvals on the basis of fitness, aptitude, or viability of the proposal. If the area in question already has fifteen grocery stores in a two block area, they can discourage the construction of another one.

In this case, the likely disruption of domestic tranquility in the area in question is a good enough reason to deny the project. The relatives and friends of those murdered in 2001 WILL BE offended by the construction of the mega-mosque. Perhaps they shouldn't be, but the fanatical Islam element is the primary cause for their distrust. Islam does have an undeniable history of building mosques as a symbol of their victory over a particular country, regime, or rival. Moreover, there really are a multitude of mosques already in service in NY. The Iman's contention that location is critical is silly. Why can't the US show tolerance in some other location? Why MUST it be precisely in a place where the motives of the builders MuST be questioned?

To say that the Iman is being disingenuous is ironic understatement. The mosque promises to cause a firestorm of backlash that will continue until the day that some extremist group within THIS COUNTRY blows it up. Don't be stupid, Iman. We have wackjobs too, and though we honor the notion that religious buildings and books are sacred and holy, we have already had a nutjob threatening to burn a Quran, Koran, or whatever is the appropriate spelling.

I don't want the situation to end in tragedy, but it will. Americans enjoy a level of freedom that creates the opportunity for zealots to mastermind tragedy and idiocy. Perhaps such things rarely happen in the Middle East, the UAR, and other Muslim countries. Provoked by the possibility that your group's motives are malicious, a illegal, dangerous, and tragic response is likely.

Build the mosque elsewhere and continue your proposed education of the Western culture, with the objective being to separate your religious position from the radicals who murdered more than 3000 Americans. The whole freaking world is wired. Communication is immediate. You can create a bully pulpit almost anywhere in the country. You have no compelling reason to maintain that the mosque MUST be built where you propose.

So I'm Frustrated By the Educational Establishment

In earlier installments, I have complained about organizational or cultural stupidity within school buildings, districts, or even states. An entry from about a year ago fairly specifically addressed a few of the important examples. Here comes a new one.

I know of a fairly large number of districts that are currently in the process of implementing change that is designed to improve the educational process, and therefore improve achievement. Their method, mechanics, and mindset are driving the educators crazy, and I don't know why they don't get it.

For instance, I spoke with a former student whom I taught very early in my career. He is currently a math teacher in a school for the performing arts. This year, he was teamed with a co-teacher. They share fifty students for a math=-science block. The science teacher was the target of the reassignment, as she had been ineffective with her previous partner. The math guy is pulling his hair out, because the science lady has no interest in pulling her weight, and essentially doesn't have to, since the newly implemented team is supposed to solve the problem. The pair are at philosophical odds, in addition to having diametrically opposed work ethics. The science lady refers to the students as 'her babies,' and subsequently parents them badly, sometimes by screaming at them the way an ill-equipped young mother might handle a toddler's temper tantrum. How does this happen?

In another example, a former colleague of mine is in his fifth year of co-teaching; he is an English teacher paired with his third different special education teacher. I know for a fact that he is a superior teacher, one of those that administrators call their 'superstars'. While his students collectively are performing adequately, which means they are making their marks on standardized tests, the situation severely limits the advancement of the best students. "Differentiate the instruction!" the gurus yell from on high, but that mantra is STUPID. A certain percentage of students walk in the door with a performance level that is beyond the target FOR THE YEAR. Differentiated instruction will not serve them well enough. The teacher's job is well-articulated: he is to make certain that his students can perform as a certain level, and it's human nature to focus efforts on those students who will potentially fall below the target. Consequently, he and his partner KNOW they will not advance the superior group to a level in keeping with their capacity.
Again, how does this happen?

Here's how it happens. The people who are trotting out the ideas are not in the trenches. Their hypothetical improvements are usually pedagogically sound, but they do not consider the human element of education. They approach the situation like a person who needs to manufacture a widget. Moreover, the administrators who are charged with implementing the hypothetical improvement are likewise not in the trenches. They often do consider the human element, because they are confronted with it, but they have only the hypothetical script to work from. Consequently, some excellent administrators take the idea, implement it wisely, and tout the success of the program. Neighboring schools then try to profit from the example, but haven't the strength and vision of that excellent administrator, and subsequently struggle mightily.

In short, the same error is made at every level, though not in all cases. Excellent teachers implement programs and plans and meet with success BECAUSE THEY ARE EXCELLENT TEACHERS working with a good hypothetical idea. They intuitively tackle the potential hurdles, or genuine hurdles, and make the situation work. The excellent administrators are successful with the same good idea BECAUSE THEY ARE EXCELLENT ADMINISTRATORS. They anticipate the problems that might arise - they expect to accommodate the human element - and they often have enough initial success to incrementally address the obstacles that prevail.

So I return to a very basic premise. Teaching is not a science. Education is not a business. The principles of science can be helpful in improving instruction, but they cannot be seen as the answer. Education at the structural level needs to be run much like a business, but because of truth number one in this paragraph, business principles cannot dominate the process. Schools can't fire under-performing teachers or students to mastermind the widget production process. Business can to some extent, though their response to the human element isn't directly determining the quality of the widget.

A guidance counselor friend of mine always refers to the school improvement purveyors and those who facilitate the implementation as the ones who are 'drinking the Kool-Aid.' However, I liken this idea that one can FOLLOW A SCRIPT set forth by the ivory towers as more akin to the Josef Goebbel's propaganda machine: "If you make a lie big enough, and say it often enough, people will believe it." [This is not a direct quote, I don't believe, but I wanted the effect of the quotation, and it is close enough to do the job.]

The moral of the story is this: great teachers are amazing, because they are driven by a love for students and a passion for what they do. They will find a way to engineer success using some awful ideas. They will work wonders with good ideas. Unfortunately, every school building has a limited supply of these people. So one must consider the corollary. Poor teachers will make a mess of weak ideas, and do significant damage in the process. They will only rise to a level where they avoid harm if charged with implementing a good idea.

So Long US World Cup

Ok, so this will probably not be a politically correct blog entry, but I can't help myself. The US has bowed out of the World Cup after finishing first in their group with 5 accumulated points. I tried to be interested, and to be supportive of the endeavor on a private, personal level. After all, I am a loyalist. I root for all the local sports teams - a 4 for 4 guy - in cheering on the Phillies, Eagles, Flyers, and Sixers. I cheer on the local high school teams, and I go to local college games as time and opportunity permits.

I watched a decent amount of the England-US game. I saw almost all of the US-Algeria game. I glanced briefly at the US-Ghana game today. I didn't care. I wanted to care, but I just didn't. Perhaps I have been spoiled by the games (sports) with which I have had the most involvement: baseball, basketball, football, and lacrosse. Even hockey might qualify, especially playoff hockey. You see, in those sports with which I am most familiar, one basic truth prevails: if the offensive player does what he is supposed to do with a high degree of technical and situational skill, his team will be rewarded with a reasonable chance to score a goal, touchdown, or run.

Now, look at soccer. These guys are admittedly some of the most remarkable athletes in the world. They can run, jump, stop on a dime, control a ball with only their feet, and generally make torturously difficult athletic movements look ridiculously easy. However, if the offensive player in soccer does everything he is supposed to do with high degree of techinical and situational skill, his team will have a reasonable chance to score a goal approximately one out of every thirty times. Moreso than baseball, and almost every other sport except for field hockey, failure is the norm.

90 or more minutes every game, and the most common score is 1-0. My conclusion is that the game is just too hard. I don't need high scoring, a 1-0 baseball game or a 1-0 hockey game can be riveting, as can relatively low-scoring basketball and football games. The problem isn't the final tally, but the futility of the efforts on a regular basis.

I think they need to change the rules. Maybe if they played with fewer players per side, or if they changed the off-sides rule to allow those sneaky guys to hide behind the defense. I honestly don't know the game well enough to suggest a legitimate rule change. What I know is that the games I watched weren't compelling. I respect the athletes, and am often awed by their conditioning and skill. What I would like to see is the fruit of the definition mentioned earlier. If a soccer teams executes its play, sequence, or set EXACTLY as they have prepared and practiced, they should be rewarded with a chance to score. Perhaps a defender will streak in to redirect a shot. Perhaps the goalie will make a phenomenal save. Perhaps the offensive player will kick the ball just barely wide. I don't need a higher level of success in scoring, just a higher chane for success.

I wish the US had advanced. I would have no problem with soccer's popularity growing to rival the rest of the world's. I believe that will never happen, however, so long as chances are so few and far between, and so long a games are won and lost so often on the whim of a referee's call that no one can explain, and which the referee himself isn't required to explain. So long as games are won and lost on the capricious bad or good bounce - depending on which team one is cheering - the games will not hold my interest.

I apologize to all of the fans out there who will hate my position. I admit in advance that I don't understand, and I am not inclined to try to learn. I think the sport needs to change. Put 7 men on a side. Do away with off-sides. Do something to elevate the sport beyond what it is now, a great deal of work while waiting for one team or the other to get a stroke of luck.

The 8th Habit - Hmmm...

So I picked up Stephen Covey's book, The 8th Habit, and started to have a look at it. I vaguely remember reading the 7 habits book from many years ago, but I was less impressed than everyone else on the planet.

While I agree with Covey's points, I suppose my lack of excitement was housed in the fact that I thought the advice was less than earth-shattering. You see, aren't most of his ideas grounded in the same optimism that Thoreau and Emerson espoused with their Transcendental philosophy of the middle 1800's?

The 8th Habit therefore is even less earth-shattering, though again I must express a general agreement with the principles. If I read Thoreau and Emerson correctly, they seems to agree that each human has to think for himself, trust that he and other people have the potential for greatness if they connect with the universal in themselves and in the world in general, and believe that the self-reliant individual will act in a way that will benefit himself and those around him.

Now go look at the Covey book and tell me that his philosophy isn't essentially transplanted from the woods of Walden to the top offices of the corporate centers of the world.

So why respond?

Could it be that no matter how complicated the world becomes, the more basic is the philosophy that can help people to wend their way through it?

A summary then... Be yourself. No matter the external forces and circumstances, marshall your efforts so that you are making yourself as viable and efficacious as you possibly can. When decorum or propriety tell you to tread softly, listen. But do not stop following the principles and drives that tell you what is right and what is wrong. Right and wrong DO NOT CHANGE with the times. They are intractable, constant, and timeless.

It didn't take a book.

Do we Really Think? An Impertinent but Necessary Question to Ask Ourselves

The title and text of the following entry is entirely borrowed from a book af essays and observations. I will give proper credit at the end, so that the reader has a chance to respond as intended/expected.

"We Americans are firm believers in education. The litle red schoolhouse is the very backbone of our entire experiment in government and living. Education is widely encouraged and made available to almost everyone."

"It would shock most of us, then, to hear that our education is sadly in need of repair. That despite our buildings and books and teachers and endowments we have overlooked the most important result which any education should give."

"The truth is that, as a nation, we have not been educated to think. We are filled with dates and names and even a wide variety of knowledge, but the ability to think --- to think through to the very end of a problem --- is stil a very rare quality with us."

"Millions of men come to problems which they earnestly seek to solve. On paper the solution they bring seems to be the right one. Weeks later, Time has proved it the wrong one. Isn't that the real reason why so many men who are sincere, ambitious, and hard working still meet with so little success?"

"As a nation, we enjoy a fine percentage of literacy. We read, write, spell, count, and talk reasonably well. Yet the ability to think, to rationalize --- to reason coldly and logically, is something apart from all this. And to men in business, this remains and shall always remain the greatest of assets."

"It is time to inquire into this. It is time to realize that in this machine age, average knowledge, average ability to do anything, is worth only half of what it was fifty years ago. We are building machines today which add better than men can and faster too. It is only a matter of time before machines will spell and provide information and carry out tasks of all kinds. In short, the mechanical man we are perfecting threatens to do almost everything we do - except one, and that is to think."

"Thinking on the surface---or halfway--- or three quarters of the way --- is like making half or three fourths of an automobile. And thinking this distance is just as useless.

"It is time to ask: are we really thinking things through?"

Heatter, Gabriel. Faith: a selection from essays and editorial that appeared in "The Shaft." United States of America, 1936.

Seventy-five years ago, at least one voice was forewarning, and forecasting, the perils that plague us in 2006. How prescient for a pre-WWII radio man to see that we were headed for an eduational disconnect that has not gotten better in the end?

Too many of us aren't thinking, about anything, all the way through to the end.

Admit it, if the 'red schoolhouse' and the dated computer references hadn't given it away, you would have thought this was written today.

How else to explain the current predicaments we are in? Pick a current issue - the Gulf Oil leak, the various war zones, the global economy, the jobless rate, the bailouts. You cannot tell me that the perpetrators would have taken us to where we are now had they thought there various situations through to the very end.

State of the Union

State of the Union (ca.1994)

We are too like Ulysses, in decline.
We are become a name – or even less –
A shadow of a name, a misty scent
Of glory days too often perfumed over.
The paunch of our complacency sits well
As we preside over a savage race,
Exacting self-inflicted fines for crimes
Committed more as an accessory
Than as a perpetrator. Yet are we
Betrayers guilty, chasing silver dreams –
Mistrusting eyes which once saw past the sky.

In our bright youth we led like pioneers
Into a new frontier, each mountain pass
Divulging treasures. Onward to a sea
As vast and boundless as our spirit – strong
Enough to tame the wilderness of fear.
Then when we should have sailed upon the tide,
To have momentous current serve our will,
We heeded servile voices, counsel stern:
“Leave off this long, intrepid odyssey.
Take root and flower here beside the sea.”

Relenting, we grew cautious, lost desire,
Denied the motives burning deep inside;
Bequeathed by proud Prometheus, this fire
Provided grit for noble enterprise –
To strive with gods was once within our grasp.
Except… we acquiesced. The compromise
Accepted soon but never justified.
Now we grow fat, luxurious – our eyes
Glassed over turning inward.

We must try
To find a quest as worthy as the first
Of all the exploits listed by our names.
Then hereby make a promise and a pact
Between us and our honor: Once we flew
By instinct pure and simple, so we swear
Upon the moral fiber of our past
We will stay true to principle, in spite
Of obstacles and hardship. We must fight
To lead all those we touch – in quiet ways
And with bombast alike if it need be-
By nurture and example show the world
That we have not completely lost our will.
Rage out against all thunderclaps, despite
Our ineffective blows. No! No! because
Our impotence encumbers and confines.

Not by decree can any living soul
Embark upon a tempest-tortured sea,
Without regard for imminent dismay
Or setback. Yet surrender must not breathe
Within our hearts, when storms will fracture skies
With lightning. What is lightning? But a sign
From all and any gods, what so they be.
A sign that power lives and breathes, as we
Forever may, unless we choose to sleep.
I speak for you, “I choose to seek the dream.”



Obviously, this was originally composed in 1994, two years after the Bill Clinton regime began what appears to have been the final phase of the dissolution of the American heart and spirit. Yes, the process began as early as 1950, with the Korean Conflict, and continued with the embarrassment that was Vietnam. Reagan tried to reverse the course through the 80’s, but even his successor, Bush I, quickly blinked and reverted to the heartless approach that gathered support through the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. I trace the acceptance of our lack of heart to Clinton, who made the stance popular.

Is Everybody Really So Enamored of Tiger?

My son texted me to let me know that ESPN had added a text box to its screen, thereby making a busy screen even busier. The contents of the box on permanent display allowed viewers to follow Tigers progress at the Masters. Even though the means of communication was a text message, I could smell the disgust eminating from each keystroke.

Really, a text box on the screen at all times to mark the fortunes of a disgraced golfer who hasn't played in almost five months? Are my son and I the only ones who don't get it?

I have written in an earlier blog or two that I must acknowledge that Tiger is the best golfer in the world. The revelation that he is a hypocritical, low-life punk hasn't changed that. However, I have changed my perspective since the scandal broke. Before, I never vocally rooted for or against Tiger. I would root for a player I liked if he was contending with Tiger. I held no animosity.

Privately though - meaning in conversation with my wife, who is a major Tiger fan - I had the sense that Tiger was not what he seemed. I told her on more than one occasion, "I just think he's not a good person. The charity work, the education foundation, the family values platform: they all seemed contrived to me.

An earlier column alluded to my misgivings, but this entry is really more about the public, the fans, the media. Developments have confirmed that Tiger is indeed less than what he seemed or protrayed, and the media assumption seems to be that Tiger, warts and all, is bigger than the game.

I realized that this 'bigger than the game' theme has been what rankles me. But now, even after a public scolding from the Director at Augusta, and after a disingenuous apology from Tiger himself, the implications of which are that Tiger is NOT bigger than the game, ESPN puts a text box on its screen to declare that the Masters tournament is really all about Tiger. He is, they are saying, bigger than the game.

He shouldn't be. Each week, each year, each decade - individual players or teams get the chance to bask in a few moments of glory. Some players and teams do so more often than others, and thereby elevate themselves to the pantheon of all-time greats. As a golfer, Tiger will undoubtedly always be in that club, even if he never wins another tournament. He should never be bigger than the game. Older champions earned their accolades in the milieu that prevailed during their respective careers. When too much time separates two all time greats, comparisons are frivolous. Considering the car accident that almost killed him, should Ben Hogan be considered the greatest golfer of his era? the half century when he played? All time? Is it Nicklaus, since he won the most majors? Is Sam Snead's victory total more impressive? You see, the answer is very tough. Where does Arnie fall? How about Watson?

Fans are fickle and generally dumb about many things. I suppose my wife can still root for Tiger if she wants, though I don't understand it. However, I think the media should know better, and stop fawning over every move that Tiger makes. And I think ESPN should take down that damned text box. It's Sunday, and Tiger is playing like crap. Put up a Lee Westwood text box. A Phil Mickelson, or a Freddie Couples. No one should be bigger than the game.