wonky wishes

I have sighed many times over Joan Acocella's writing--a sigh of desperate admiration. In a recent New Yorker article on the rise of overparenting, Acocella makes a succinct and astute observation:

No Child Left Behind: that sounds like the expression of a democratic wish. More likely, it was the product of an economic wish--that America not be left behind by India and China.

If one has any doubt this truth, let me show you the latest language on the need for a successful education system--it is tinged with a fear of losing our accustomed world order. Battalions of foreign students breath down our necks. We must devour our math and science textbooks not because their content might help us unlock the beauty and power of scientific and mathematical theory, but because a country that can't add can't calculate tax breaks for U.S. corporations; a country that can't reason through science experiments won't own the means of energy production. In the new era of xenophobia, it's not that we can't imagine a world where resources are freely shared, but that we can imagine it all too well--we see that it means we might have to give things up.

Of course, like most selfish impulses, it's wildly illogical and will, at some point, come to a diseased and deadly fruition (known in Texas as shooting oneself in the foot). As Adrienne Rich observed:

Universal public education has two possible--and contradictory--missions. One is the development of a literate, articulate, and well-informed citizenry so that the democratic process can continue to evolve and the promise of radical equality can be brought closer to realization. The other is the perpetuation of a class system dividing an elite, nominally "gifted" few, tracked from an early age, from a very large underclass essentially to be written off as the alienated from language and science, from poetry and politics, from history and hope, an underclass to be funneled--whatever its dreams and hopes--toward low-wage temporary jobs. ...The results are devastating in terms of the betrayal of a generation of youth. The loss to the whole society is incalculable.

Writing this in 1997, Rich was specifically referring to tracking, which has passed out of vogue in its most blatant forms. But regardless of this, we must remember that tracking was merely a symptom of a larger fear-plagued motivation--a motivation that remains just as viable in 2008 as it did during the Cold War.

Relatedly, the connections between George W. Bush and the testing companies were made years ago, but this remains an excellent article about the other economic wish that drove the development of No Child Left Behind. If there is one quality I will allow G.W.B., it is that he seems to know how to have fun. But I am befuddled by his cronyism: based on their inane curriculum and testing materials, the friends that made millions off NCLB appear to be the dullest of people.

Mumbai, Maximum City

a short video I worked on

Slumdog Millionaire

the varied carols I hear

Times Square on November 4: it is perhaps one of the few times the Square is full of native New Yorkers. We are celebrating not the fall of a new year and soon-to-be broken resolutions, but something real, something hopeful, something that requires Walt Whitman and a few good yalps.

An NYFD firetruck attempts to navigate the throngs. Our eyes on the screen high above the vertex of Broadway and Seventh Avenue, we part slowly. The driver begins to tap on the horn, syncopating the blasts, and we join in: "O-ba-ma! Yes we can! O-ba-ma!" We wave as they crawl by. One fireman, suited up, arm on the windowframe, puffs on a cigar.

location, location

Synecdoche, New York

at least expensive movie tickets buy new york opening weekends

zip codes

Last year I tutored at a school in Brooklyn. You could see the Empire State building from the classroom, but life still seemed far removed from "the city"—although one student surely had studied the subway map more than once, he was shocked to learn that the East River flowed half a mile from his doorstep. "There's no water around here," he insisted.

Now I work within a few blocks of the familiar Empire spire, at a charter school in Chelsea. The sixth graders have made multi-page, multi-colored reports on their neighborhoods: Gramercy Park, the West Village, the Lower East Side; their projects are more developed than a number of high schoolers' I've seen. It's a magnet school for readers and writers. When they finish tests they pull out hardbound sketchbooks and begin doodling. Last week the seventh graders held a raucous impromptu debate on disposing of nuclear waste. (As precocious as they appear, I must say I am glad they aren't calling the shots on that piece of policy. Some of them hardly quibbled over the pitfalls of shooting plutonium into space—one trigger-happy girl had a disturbingly detailed plan to deposit it on the moon.)

When I introduce myself on my first day of work, a few classes break out in applause when I tell them I'm studying journalism at New York University. Many of them are members of the newspaper club, which is anxiously awaiting publication of its first issue. The newspaper's political writer, a bespectacled sixth grader, tells me it should hit the stands by Election Day. “Election Day?” asks the boy beside him, although a second later he knocks the palm of his hand on his forehead. “Oh yeah! Obama!” He raises his hand in the air, and his tablemates lift their hands in solidarity and simultaneously cry, "Obama!" The original instigator, a slight boy with cornrows, grabs my wrist and tries to push it in the air. Seeing as the city has forbidden public school teachers to promote candidates, I resist, but can't help telling him, "Obama wants you to do your homework."

They ask which publications I want to write for. I mumble something about the New Yorker, and they bob their heads in recognition. One girl raises her hand: "My friend's dad is the music critic at the New Yorker," she says.

"Sasha Frere-Jones?" I stammer. She nods. I ask if she ever read his pieces. Sometimes, she says.

Later in the day, a boy comes over and asks if I want to be a journalist or a teacher when I grow up. I tell him I used to be a teacher and now I’d like to write about teachers. I say nothing about my age or state of grown up-ness.

They may need some clarity on the nuclear issue, but at the very least, they are generous.

modern medicine

In a few weeks my friend E- will complete her contract as an ICU nurse at an East Coast hospital. After one of her night shifts earlier this year, she came home at 8 a.m. and slept until the afternoon. When she awoke, she sat on her couch, bleary-eyed and exhausted, and told me how she'd spent an hour crawling around the morgue—literally climbing in the machinery, fumbling with broken equipment—in an attempt to move a DNR patient who died after spending two months in the ICU. "I hope this is my worst job ever," she said, and went off to work another night shift.

diarie gastronomica

triptych

three recent sights; one infuriating, one baffling, one dear:

+ "I am voting for the chick!" signs in the hills of Augusta County

+ hay bales in Manhattan

+ the P.S. 11 farm market, manned by four eager elementary school students

why I wish I was still teaching English

Sarah Palin et al. do not [currently] have their red pens on the education policy of the nation, but the vice presidential candidate has provided at least two day's worth of lessons.
Poetry

Diagramming

broken window theory, all shook up

Says the wonderfully subversive Banksy:

"I came to New Orleans to do battle with the Grey Ghost, a notorious vigilante who's been systematically painting over any graffiti he can find with the same grey shade of paint since 1997. Consequently he's done more damage to the city than any category five hurricane could ever hope to achieve."