Race … spoiling the fun again

After hearing about an episode of this show called “Wife Swap” from several people I did the unimaginable and actually went to ABC website, found the episode online and watched it. In this episode, Dayna Martin from Madison, New Hampshire, trades places with Cindy Avery-Lamb from San Diego, California. Each woman will live with the other woman’s family for a week. In the beginning, they go along with the ways of the hosting family, and later the visiting woman will get to call the shots.

How anyone thought of such a concept for a show and why anyone would participate – let’s not try to fathom right now. The television producers know how to entertain and never once bring up the subject of race. How ungraceful would that be? I laughed along and cheered for Dayna who was so obviously cooler than Cindy.

You know, it’s so annoying when there’s a TV show or an advertisement designed to make us feel good and someone comes along and ruins the celebration. Like that Dove ad telling us – meaning women – to recognize our beauty. And then along comes some upstart named Jazz (really?) who says the ad makes her uncomfortable and angry. Why? Or take a show like this that celebrates us – us meaning people with alternative lifestyles generally regarded as weird.

I believe the exchange was to last longer but gets cut short because Cindy is appalled by Dayna’s family. The feeling seems to be mutual. Dayna on the other hand seems to have had a rather pleasant time with Cindy’s family and hugs the kids goodbye.

This was not merely a contest of “strict disciplinarian vs mom with no rules” as it was advertised. There was also a bit of country mouse and city mouse – that we see as each woman makes a mildly disparaging remark about the others’ house (really? even before walking in?). And most of all but least remarked and most happily overlooked, a contrast between white privilege and minority striving.

We’ve all heard about how immigrants navigate American society by expecting their children to work twice as hard, take responsibility and make no excuses for anything less than outstanding accomplishment. Bashing the Tiger Mother became a popular sport a couple of years ago. No one could win, of course.   You can only go so far finding fault with a family for being too achieving.

Now welcome our next target, an African American family, Cindy and Andrade, raising their son and daughter with strict discipline.  ABC couldn’t have picked a more  contrasting family, though almost any mainstream mother would sharply contrast with Dayna Martin, who takes “extreme” as a compliment. Let me be honest here and say that I don’t think she makes a particularly good advocate for unschooling, much less for radical unschooling – this has nothing to do with what her kids have or haven’t learned but entirely with her presentation of the philosophy. Still, I admired the way she suggested small things that they could do that would make the family she was visiting happy.

Cindy Avery-Lamb did not suggest small things. Huge things stared her in the face, such as 11 year old girl’s inability to read, and dog hair everywhere including the fridge.

While Cindy’s husband Andrade was willing to take a leaf from Dayna’s book, Dayna’s husband Joe appeared to be going along (to the extent that they did go along) for the sake of the show. Finally it was Joe who loudly ordered Cindy to leave his house.

Each mother is critical of the other.  Dayna calls it cruel for Cindy to wake her children up with an alarm, disrespectful to hold them to high standards of cleanliness, and calls her strict routine with limited free time a “tight leash.”  She does so in a sweet voice and is heard with a quiet smile. When Cindy questions whether Dayna’s parenting, Dayna’s son Devin leaps to her defense, “How dare you?”

Neither woman is impressed with the other family, and says so clearly to the father in the home she is visiting.  Though one woman is sitting on the floor of the girl’s room admiring her artwork, and the other is standing at the kitchen table screaming and cursing, the message is the same – you have not fulfilled your role as a dad and as a man. In fact, Dayna says as much, “I think your wife is emasculating you.” In other words, you (black man) should not listen to her (black woman); you should listen to me (white woman) and do the following:

- frame the kids’ art
- give daily hugs
- improve communication
- invite their friends over for a party

Such fun suggestions! Contrast Cindy’s recommendations, far less gently delivered – clean the house, unplug the electronics, and go to school. These are things taken for granted in her home, just as hugs, expression and free time anytime are taken for granted in Dayna’s home. While Cindy’s family is able to try Dayna’s ideas, at least while she is there, Dayna’s family cannot follow Cindy’s rules even for one day. The reason we are given is that her rules are extreme, especially in contrast to the no-rule motto they have grown up with.  True.  Could the rejection of rules be a presumption of superiority that lies deeper than simply believing that “the rules don’t apply to us.” While they think their rejection of rules stems from their own personal choice to embrace freedom and what they call “radical unschooling,” they don’t tell us why they think othes aren’t as free as they are.

Not only is the Martin family white, but they live in a county where there are only 50 people / square mile, and 98% of those people are white.  Their state, New Hampshire, is 95% white with only 1% black population.  Most of the 5% nonwhite population would be in Manchester, far from rural Madison where the Martin children freely go out at all hours, as they proudly state. Try doing that while black.

If we are looking at learning, I have to say the Avery-Lamb family demonstrated greater ability and willingness to learn. Each member tries out something they have picked up from the Martin family. Cindy even tells Joe, “I am learning something new, I like this.”

What did Dayna’s family learn from Cindy’s? Only that they woudn’t change a thing?

Buy Gender Biased …

I was looking up bias in history textbooks and included in the search results was this:

1. Buy Gender Biased Indian History Books | ExoticIndia

   www.exoticindiaart.com › Books › History
   Items 1 – 20 of 79 – Come take a look at our selection of Gender Biased Indian History Books. We have a huge collection of Indian Book at ExoticIndiaArt – the …

 

To fix the shocking brokenness …

Aaron Swartz wrote this at age 20,  after reading Noam Chomsky at age 18

“It’s taken me two years to write about this experience, not without reason. One terrifying side effect of learning the world isn’t the way you think is that it leaves you all alone. And when you try to describe your new worldview to people, it either comes out sounding unsurprising (“yeah, sure, everyone knows the media’s got problems”) or like pure lunacy and people slowly back away.

Ever since then, I’ve realized that I need to spend my life working to fix the shocking brokenness I’d discovered.”

 http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/epiphany

 * * *

In the years I lived and worked in Boston I spent many evenings and weekends on the MIT campus, in the library, attending events or strolling the infinite corridor. In spite of its numbered buildings or maybe even because of them, the place had a homely feeling and I always felt welcome there. In fact, one of my pet stories to tell used to be how I was able to log in to athena using a login passed along to me by a homeless person. All I did was look things up in the library, thereby impressing my co-workers the next day with my fast turnaround on research questions. I was young, it was the 90s. Incidentally I worked at BBN, one of the internet pioneers, where we also had numbered buildings, just like MIT.

(fya, I logged in as root with password mrroot. I assume this no longer works, though I have not tried it in many years. Sorry if I am revealing any secret here.)

I am now far from Boston and though I thought I was aware of issues like this, I had not heard of Aaron Swartz till now and I am more than shocked by the role MIT has played. MIT the place where anyone is allowed to audit a course (at least this is what the word on the street was). I can no longer smile when I see news of MIT students playing tetris on a building, I can no longer think of MIT without thinking of Aaron Swartz. Aaron Swartz who read Noam Chomsky at age 18 and dedicated his life to changing the world. If we do not work to address causes like freedom of knowledge through legal means, then we are going to see more idealistic and self-sacrificing people like Aaron Swartz putting the cause ahead of themselves. When we do, I hope that we can recognize their abilities and seek their guidance for the sake of a more just and humane society.

If we can’t we may want to ban Noam Chomsky for 18-year olds and make them wait till they are old enough to sit in cafes and just talk about it.

If I had lost all hope then I guess I would not have bothered to sign the Petition for MIT to apologize for role in Aaron Swartz prosecution.

Comment on organic foods – runner’s world

Recent current “events” of US have brought attention to a magazine called “Runners World.” I looked at the site and saw the top story Study: Organic Foods Might Not Be More Nutritious.

So in solidarity with the many runners who also take interest in sustainable agricultural issues, as well as organic-enthusiasts are interested in truth and “fact-checking,” and considering that this magazine is enjoying its day in the national spotlight, I posted this comment on the site:

The vision of organic has been rapidly diluted after it shot to fame and fortune, but this approach to growing food should mean far more than refraining from the use of harmful inputs (chemical pesticide & fertilizer). It should be a holistic approach that supports the ability of the plant itself to draw fertility from the soil and to defend itself from pests. This will involve inter-cropping and focus not on directly feeding N-P-K to the plant, but rather on replenishing the microbes living in the soil. Plants grown this way will take longer to bear fruit but the resulting fruit / vegetable / leaf will be higher in a much wider range of nutrients because the roots were allowed to dig deeper. It may also be smaller in size compared to a vegetable that has been pumped up with fertilizer.

Because this method takes more time it is not favoured by the Big Organic Agriculture companies, who continue to do monocropping and focus on methods that make the fruit / vegetable gain weight faster. This means less time for the roots to do their rooting for nutrients and hence the results reported here are not surprising. But if you have the opportunity to buy from a local organic farmer, working in a smaller area and and practicing holistic and sustainable agricultural techniques, you are more likely to finds fruits and vegetables able to grow in a way that draws in a wider range of nutrients.

I learned the above from a farmer at Alemany Farm in San Francisco and also from reading Michael Pollan In Defense of Food, which I highly recommend.
p.s.

The study originally appeared in the Annals of Internal Medicine and was also reported by the BBC on 3 September 2012. “Organic food ‘not any healthier’”

And Just for fun: Check your marathon running time against the http://www.paulryantimecalculator.com.

Response to Anupam Ahuja on right to inclusive education

Letter to Editor
The Hindu

Anupam Ahuja, "Don’t Disable her Right to go to School"
The Hindu, 14 August 2012

I welcome Anupam Ahuja’s vision of "acknowledging, respecting and celebrating diversity as enriching humanity and a normal aspect of society." This will facilitate efforts to include people who are differently-abled, and in fact we should be doing this already, for everyone. Why do we discount the diversity within all of us, label some of as "standard," and call those who do not fit into that standard as disabled and thereby uniquely able to bring about the promised enrichment of humanity? If we truly respected the diversity within each one of us, our society would be a more hospitable place for those with conditions that are normally labelled disabilities including impairment of hearing, vision, motor-functions and more severe conditions.

Instead our schools are designed to stamp out diversity and promote conformity,. To this end, a student whose learning path diverges from the standardized curriculum, who dares answer a question differently, ask a different question, or question the answer or the teacher, is punished in some way or another. At the most basic level – the student is not heard. A different answer is not explored but simply marked wrong. Soon children learn not to give different (wrong) answers, and soon after that learn not to think them either.

But what about those who don’t learn to reign in their curiosity? Children tell me stories of what happens when they ask a question or say something other than the scripted answer.

"So you think you are smart?"
"Why do you come to school?"

These are not questions designed to be answered. They aim to humiliate and forbid reply. From what the children and parents tell me, they largely succeed.

In short, since the system is hearing-impaired, the students must be silent. Is it not the school that must be certified as disabled and given appropriate services to equip it to hear and see all of its students and respect their right to education?

Rather than demanding that such schools accommodate someone whose abilities differ from the norm, we should question the push to standardization and conformity in society as a whole, that has led to the social marginalization not only of those who are recognized as disabled, but of the communities that the author is concerned about, such as migrant workers and ragpickers. Why have their rights to land, housing, work, wages, rations and other entitlements that would improve their quality of life and liberty, been denied? I am not suggesting that right to education of the children with disabilities must wait for these other rights to be fulfilled. But I worry that to leave those questions behind and only seek enrollment in the same system of standardized education will not bring us any closer to the vision of society that the author has espoused. Mr. Ahuja is not advocating that we do this, but globally we are seeing a trend of emphasis on education, blinded to social factors and civil rights, as if education alone can help the individual overcome poverty and social injustice. This vision of education isolated from its social context, feeds into the cycle of standardized testing and competition over creativity and cooperation.

The author’s ideas about education, home-education, school-education, and community growth seem to be unexamined and perhaps not well-informed.

"Most often when we talk about educating a child, we think about school and believe that true learning can only take place within the four walls of a formal classroom."

Who believes this? Does this ring true with our own experience? Is it supported by research? How many schools today are ready to embrace true learning – to allow students to depart from the script of the textbook and standardized test preparation? Such learning is more likely to take place outside the walls of the classroom, or at most, within the spaces between classes.

The author asks,

"Is education only for personal gain or does it also offer benefits for the general growth of an entire community providing a place for children, youth and adults to interact, socialise, and unify societies? If we agree with the latter, then clearly home-schooling cannot really provide for this goal."

What home-schooling has the author observed? In contrast to schoolchildren, home-schooled children are not placed within four walls with children of the same age for hours every day. Instead they interact with people of various ages and generations in their home and community, discovering ideas and projects that mean something to them, and working with those around them, much as school-going children might do during vacations and weekends. Granted more support may be required for children with severe disabilities but homeschooling in general allows more time for children to take part in the community, not less, than standard schooling.

The author asks, "Who would identify and certify the children as severely disabled for providing the home-based education programme?"

Currently home-education is a route that anyone in India may pursue, and one not need demonstrate any specific ability or disability to avail this path of learning. Secondly, I would urge you to question the value of labeling children as disabled – I understand that it is used to help children access appropriate services, but there is a risk associated with labeling as well, a risk that one sees the disability and is blinded to the abilities of each individual, and also that any departure from the increasingly rigidly defined "normal" is labelled a disability. We are seeing this with the rise in learning disabilities that are being diagnosed in Western countries and also in India. Many people have observed that children allowed to learn at their own pace and following their own, at times roundabout paths will learn more meaningfully. Some schools allow for such learning, but increasingly the pressure of standardized curriculum and testing makes this all but impossible. Compound that with earlier start of formal education (who waits till age 6 now? the admissions race begins far earlier.) and the child who is engrossed in thinking or exploring interests other than reading, writing and arithmetic is not allowed to do so, but labelled slow or disabled, or having attention deficit, or defiance disorder. Instead can we not recognize that child as learning?

The author says:

"Many argue that the current regular schools do not offer any relevant service for children with high support needs."

In fact, I would argue that for the most part that the current regular schools do not offer relevant service for children who are passionate about learning, who are eager not merely to answer the question but also to question the answer, and even question the question. I have observed in case after case that young children do all of these things quite persistently but the behavior is systematically ironed out of them till they can sit as passive receivers of the standard curriculum and efficient writers of standardized tests. That is a tragic denial of Right to Education, as I have written here: Right to Education.

When school systems embrace every child’s right to learn, then they will not depend on confining children for many hours each day within fixed spaces and fixed ideas. My sister went to school with a disabled child. In her classroom, children had "jobs" every day, such as changing the calendar page, arranging supplies, erasing the chalkboards, cleaning the table after lunch, etc. One of the jobs was helper for the disabled child, Kumar (name changed). The jobs rotated so that every week or month every child got to do every job at least once. My sister tells me that everyone looked forward to being Kumar’s helper. There was no condescension, and Kumar also got to do certain jobs and be helpful. Schools that equip children to accommodate difference, whether in ideas, habits, or physical ability, will ultimately serve all students.

We are a long way from that today however. To achieve that vision in our schools would require changes in our society. It would require that we sincerely live up to our constitution and believe in every person, respect rights of everyone without exception. We should foster connections between formal and informal paths of learning, not posit one as a threat to the other. Those working in home-education and those working in school-education, and who believe in a society that works "for all the children including Mira," serve in complementary roles to articulate and achieve this vision.

what India must do for US

Letter to editor of The Hindu in response to:
India must carry out “difficult” economic reforms: Obama
July 15, 2012

Dear Editor:

What this tells us is that any efforts by the people to defend environment, livelihood, rights of oppressed classes, and basic democracy in India are making things “hard” for the US. So these efforts need not only win over an increasingly repressive Indian state, but also the might of the US and its vision of development.

“Too hard to invest in India” means – too hard to do what? Too hard to acquire land, water, forest without people’s consent? Too hard to pollute the air and water without people raising a fuss? Too hard to suppress dissent?

“The President pointed out that India had lifted tens of millions of people out of poverty to create one of the world’s largest middle classes.” — and what about 60+ million displaced to make way for those middle classes? http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-06-04/india/32030869_1_internal-displacement-shivani-chaudhry-land-rights-network

US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has already made clear that her foreign policy rests on three pillars: defense, diplomacy, and development. Development (of foreign countries) aims to feed US economy. How? “Surging U.S. exports to the region are helping drive our economic recovery here at home. And future growth depends on reaching further into Asia’s growing consumer base and expanding middle class.”
Text of her lectures are available here:
http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2012/04/187693.htmhttp://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2012/04/187693.htm

Do not go gently

Utterly heartbreaking, is all I could say after reading Martin Bayne’s article in the Washington Post, A man depicts the often grim atmosphere in assisted living facilities. This is the first time I have heard first-hand about the experience – WHY? Would AARP magazine have considered publishing such an article? What magazine would? It is perhaps rare for those in assisted living to be able to write an article, and after getting assistance with eating, taking medicine and going to the bathroom, probably it is too much for them to ask the staff for assistance putting their thoughts onto paper.

I see comments from people saying that their parents are happy in Assisted Living, why should I disbelieve them? But there aren’t any positive comments from the people living there. No comments at all – don’t the assisted living centers provide online access to the Washington Post?

As Arundhati Roy once asked Bhaiji Bhai,

Bhaiji Bhai, when will you get angry? When will you stop waiting? When will you say “That’s enough!” and reach for your weapons whatever they may be?

But indeed, what weapons do those in assisted living have?

In India people get very bent out of shape and shocked at the idea that people in America have no family values and put their elderly in nursing homes. But I have seen the elderly suffer in India too. True, the expectation is that the children look after their parents in their old age, but what happens if they don’t? Those who can afford to hire help at home do, but what about those who can’t? And what if the hired help doesn’t really care about them either – or worse, takes advantage of them? Newspapers regularly crimes against the elderly.

I have seen it first-hand in the villages – when surveying the poorest of the poor it was abundantly clear that the elderly were worst off.    Harsh Mander has written about it in In the age of neglect (The Hindu, May 19, 2012)

In one village, Kotipalli I had a chance to see a group of elderly  started a collective lunch program – the transformation in their lives was dramatic – the same women who earlier looked blank were now in command, no longer waiting for things to happen. The only outside help was a room rented by AID-India and food grains collected from the villagers. They cooked, served and cleaned up themselves.

Perhaps they do not live long enough to get the kind of illnesses those in western Assisted Living Facilities have. I have seen elderly people who did require assistance, but only in urban homes, and they lived with their children or other family members. Most of these elderly would not consent to have hired help take them to the bathroom, etc but at least their children could hire help for other housework and thus absorb the workload of assisting the elders. One imagines that being at home, and with their children and grandchildren would have slowed their deterioration though I don’t know how one would do a controlled study on that.

Even in Lage Raho Munna Bhai when Atmaram, the newest entry into the Old Folks Home, describes the heartless manner in which his son came to leave him at the home, the rest of the inmates ask him how long he is going to dwell on this sob story and urge him to let it go. You could imagine them saying, just as the author does, “you are among friends now.”
art by Johanna Goodman/The Washington Post July 10 2012.

All those aunties

Contrast the fond memories of the author’s childhood, his mother always dressed in the sari appropriate for the time of day with the hand-wringing bewilderment to follow. The tone shifts from nostalgia to chaos and the body is no longer stable, no longer single, no longer that of the mother but: “all those aunties run around all day with their nighties a-flapping.”

All hail the nightie by Sandip Roy Jul 4, 2012

Teju Cole: Our Wish Come True

There is the principle of first do no harm. There is the idea that those who are being helped ought to be consulted over the matters that concern them.

Teju Cole, The White Savior Industrial Complex , Atlantic Monthly, Mar 21 2012.

Quite true, and thoroughly complicated.   Where, there?  When, first?  What, help?  Who, them?   The more closely one works in the field, the more the questions multiply. Over-simplified and inaccurate presentations of poverty and injustice spread more easily than those that call for complex and difficult solutions, as shown by the Kony 2012 video campaign and many before that (such as Live-Aid, that met with a response, “Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records.”) Not everyone offended by such efforts can easily explain to their friends why, and for them an article like Teju Cole’s comes in handy.

In the course of his sharp critique of the growth industry capitalizing on the needs of privileged, politically naive, socially networked people to feel good, Teju Cole passes out some parcels to make the rest of us feel good.

For example, I felt good to see someone articulate the problem with Kristof. So often Saint Nick’s articles have left me uncomfortable. But his own kind-hearted sincerity is so strong that I have been at a loss to confront what disturbed me about him. Cole hit the nail on the head when he talked about how he himself was drawn in by his eloquence, and why that precisely is the problem.

Cole strikes back with Marx and Shakespeare. Of Kristof’s feeding hungry mouths, he says that Kristof “sees no need to reason out the need for the need.”

Thank you Teju Cole! You give us food for political thought, garnished with literary delicacies.

Imagine how delicious it must have felt to pen this line:

The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening.

Stern tip of the hat to Marx, and even sterner rebuke to anyone who didn’t see that already.

Just above Teju Cole’s article we find this appeal to “Make a Child’s Wish Come True,” complete with a photo of an earnest child whose wish the gentle reader can fulfill with a click and a donation. Those who found Cole’s article to be a wish come true, may well respond … Aw, why not?

Telling the truth

Is honesty the best policy? Practically speaking, I would say yes. No doubt. Whenever I have strayed, I have learned the hard way, that whatever I thought I was helping or saving by suppressing some unpleasant truth, was in fact worse and not better as a result.

Ethically, there are hypothetical cases where greater virtues trump truth. What to do if the Gestapo is at the door and asks “Are there Jews in the house?” is a question people like to hypothetically ask Kant, who apparently found in favour of truth always. This he called the categorical imperative (in Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals) which stated simply, always do the right thing, the thing that would be right if everyone (always) did that.  Would it be all right if everyone lied? If not, then you must not lie either, not even just this once.   One can also apply it to mundane laws like stopping at red lights.  Would it be all right if everyone used their own discretion on stopping at red lights?  If not, then you must not either.   (Though an ambulance is exempt.)

What I remember in college is that someone said that if there are in fact Jews in the house but you, in an attempt to save their lives, say they are not in the house, the Nazis could go search outside or in the next house. Meanwhile the family whom you were sheltering, knowing the Nazis were at the door, might have gone outside to escape … and you, having sent the Nazis away would in fact have led them directly to their victims. So you would be responsible for their death.

Now this last part strikes me as irrelevant, because I don’t think the issue was whether I as the homeowner was to blame or not, but whether the Jewish family would survive or not. The very fact that the oppressive regime exists is something for which I may be partly to blame whether someone is killed on my watch or not. Some people dwell on this aspect and compare the scenario in which I let the Nazis in and they directly capture the Jews. Apparently then only the Nazis are to blame. I have simply told the truth. Whereas if I lie I am guilty of lying AND of sending the Jews into the jaws of death.

Maybe I don’t care about guilt and hence this explanation has never touched me. All the commenters who solemnly defend lying to the Gestapo in the interests of the higher cause, namely saving a life, likewise leave me unmoved. There may be cases when one ethical principle “trumps” another, but I find this philosophically inelegant. The idea of making this a duel between the two answers, yes and no, between truth and lie, between truth and life – makes me look for something else that is wrong with this picture.

First of all, who am I, this innocent-bystander homeowner? It seems I am neither oppressor nor oppressed. What has been my role so far, before the Gestapo came to the door?  Was I just giving the Jewish family a place to crash, and going about my business as usual for the rest of the time? Does the categorical imperative arise during any of this?

When the Gestapo knock, the conflict is between answering and not answering. I haven’t read Kant, and dont know who has discussed this example, but is refusing to answer not an option? If we are strictly speaking of ethics, should we answer a question that the person had no right to ask? Is that not the thing we would want everyone to do?

Reminds me of the Mother’s Day proclamation of Julia Ward Howe. She proclaims, “We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,”

We could as well say, we will not answer questions of irrelevant (or illegitimate) agencies. Fighting words … for the cause of peace