WhirledView

On the Impossibility of Travel Writing

by CKR

“Mis on su nimi?”

Andres doesn’t answer, and I know that’s his name because as he runs off his mother says “Andres” in that universal mother tone, but I also know that a two-year-old won’t balk at my accent. It’s the question you ask two-year-olds: “What’s your name?” He is willing to hand me things, without talking, including the passport and tickets his mother stuffed in his hand when she needed to get something out of their carryon.

Mistaking my grasp of this question for competence in Estonian, she says something I don’t catch, so I answer (in Estonian) that I’m learning Estonian. Andres misses his grandmother, she says in English to explain his affinity for me. His grandmother is back in Estonia and takes care of him. They have been visiting in Minnesota, and we have missed our plane to Tallinn, the flight from Chicago having arrived late.

I am tempted to ask if I can help with Andres for the four hours we must wait for the next flight. She could obviously use more hands, but she is asking the agent for a stroller, and, this being Stockholm, she is likely to get it. But making decisions becomes harder with two, and I am not sure she needs to be saddled with me.

I’ve wanted to write about my travels, have been urged to by friends who enjoy my stories and descriptions. The trouble is that as I formulate an article, a book, scheme it out in my head, it degrades to condescension or exploitation, sometimes both. Look at the exotic natives!

Why Johnny is out to lunch and not in class – and what can be done about it

By PHK

An article in the Albuquerque Journal print edition on April 24, 2006 was titled – sadly but aptly, in my view – “Parents want students in class.” The subtitle: “APS high schoolers given too much time off for testing, parent-teacher conferences, many say.”

Sure seems like that to me. In fact, let’s add in all the time off for off-campus lunch breaks, class breaks – and some other far less attractive pursuits that if the kids were studying – learning something that would keep them out of trouble and help qualify them for a good – not dead-end – job they, their parents and the community in general would be far better off.

Nicholas Kristoff in “Opening Classroom Doors” (April 30, 2006 NYT subscription only access) blames part of the problem on a sclerotic education bureaucracy. One that makes it impossible for teachers who are otherwise qualified to teach in U.S. public schools because they do not have teacher certification. They can, fortunately, teach in elite private schools – which is a good thing because otherwise I doubt my son – who graduated from International School Manila (ISM) – would have passed the AP calculus exam with flying colors – as did the rest of his class not to mention any number of other subjects. His calculus teacher had recently retired from the math department of the University of Wisconsin – and college professors are experts at the subjects they teach not mired in degrees of the study of the process of teaching – which, of course, is what teaching certification is all about.

Kristoff tells us too that the quality of U.S. public school teachers has deteriorated in part because women now – as opposed to 1970 or even 1974 – have other career options. I take his point – although actually even before 1970 American women had other career options – and I for one – took them. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society program came along at just the right time. The doors to the federal government had swung open to entry level professional women in 1968. And though there was plenty of discrimination as we attempted to climb the ranks, those doors never swung shut and more and more women today make it to higher levels in the bureaucracy.

So why would one want to attempt to teach K-12 particularly when the pay is low, the support is non-existent, the kids are more and more troubled because they come from more and more dysfunctional families (this recently pointed out by a former Albuquerque police chief who sees latchkey kids, messed up families, and poor schools as keys to America’s higher crime rates.)

I agree with Kristoff about one of the solutions to the problem – e.g. encourage the hiring of faculty who “have graduated from a recognized college, passed a competency test in their field and passed a rigorous background check.” I also agree with the former police chief about the tougher environment in which too many kids grow up today, and with the Albuquerque parents about the need to get their kids back in class.

But there are other problems related to the K-12 education deficit as well. Here, in my view, here are ten ways to respond to it:

1. abolish education degrees at the BA level; teachers need to know substance as well as process. True, they need to be able to transmit that substance to their students – but learning those techniques doesn’t take four years. Probably six months with an experienced teacher mentor, if that, would do the trick. Maybe less. According to Kristoff, Teach for America – a highly competitive program for 2,000 young college graduates to teach in low income schools – provides only a six week intensive training course, yet these young teachers excel in the classroom.

Of Teacups and Politics in Washington

By PLS

While unloading the dishwasher a few days ago, I reached down to pick up a teacup and all I got was the handle. Damn!

Did I throw the pieces away right then? Of course not. I set them carefully aside.

I’ll glue the handle back on, I thought, and still have all six cups that came with the tea set I’d acquired in Oshugbo, the Santa Fe (so to speak) of Yorubaland in Nigeria. As you can see from the intact cup in the photo, this isn’t the most exquisite pottery in the world, but I was fond if it, if only because it was part of my history, one of the tangible residues of my life in the Foreign Service.

Then I got real. A repaired teacup is not a safe teacup. I tossed both pieces into the trashcan, and the city collected the trash before I realized I had a good metaphor for the kind of discussion that’s been disfiguring political debate in Washington since before I acquired my tschotchkes.

Consider immigration policy. Consider energy policy. Consider lobbying and electoral reform. Consider, if you can stand it, our recent policy toward external threats of any kind: the declaration of some kind of rhetorically impressive, hopelessly open-ended war.

All these policies are broken. And they haven’t just lost a handle. They’re smashed, as if I’d dropped that teacup on my Mexican tile floor instead of a bouncy dishwasher rack.

And what’s the response of our Senators and Representatives to the manifold evident deficiencies of the legislation they have crafted and/or inherited? Some insultingly minimal palliative with all the hope for serious usefulness of gluing a handle back on a cup. The only sure outcome: scalding hot tea in our laps, sooner or later.

Dismantling Old Nukes - Updated

by CKR

While the Bush administration has been eager for bunker busters and Reliable Replacement Warheads, it hasn't been so eager about dismantling the old weapons being taken out of service.

But now they're saying different, anyway.

According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the United States currently has 9960 deployed nuclear weapons and 445 "spares." The Treaty of Moscow says that we'll get down to 1700-2200 deployed by 2012. It doesn't say anything about "spares," but it seems reasonable to estimate that there might be that many again on backup, spare, or undergoing reconditioning. So that's, max, 4400, or about 6000 nuclear weapons to be taken out of the stockpile.

If we were serious about decommissioning them, that would be a thousand a year from now to 2012. Walter Pincus, in the Washington Post article, says that the current rate is about 100 a year.

How Not to Hammer Home a Message

By PLS

The President looks more like a New York subway strap-hanger than a sturdy can-do builder in the latest White House photo fiasco, the one designed to upstage the release of the Senate report on FEMA’s feeble response to hurricane Katrina. And the President’s expression is that smarmy, much too familiar “look-ma-no-hands” smirk of self-regard and self-satisfaction. He thinks he’s getting away with it.

It’s six years into the Bush Presidency and still the executive handlers allow that off-putting expression of smugness slip through. I’d have worked on erasing smirks from the Bush smile vocabulary from day one, which doesn’t mean that I’d have succeeded either. You have to work with what you’ve got.

I’ve arranged my share of photo ops for dignitaries, and I know that there’s no perfect control. You envision the ideal shot. You set it up. You put tape on the floor (or ground). You brief the principals. Then a photographer shouts “Do this!” or “Look here!” and catches a fleeting gesture or expression that’s all too telling. For example: the patient but disgusted look on Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco’s face as she pretends to grip the unifying prop (a 2 x 4?) whose structural function I can’t make out. (With her other hand she firmly, very convincingly grasps a hammer. If I were to put a speech balloon by her head, it would say something like, “God, I’d love to bash this jerk on the bean!”)