Readings on Home

Since I have nothing eloquent enough to share as of yet on this topic, just many ideas swilling around in my head and heart, I thought I'd quote this section of Joan Didion's "Where I Was From," where she is in fact, quoting Victor Davis Hanson, a professor of classics at California State University, Fresno. His children are the sixth consecutive generation to live in the same house on the same San Juaquin Valley land where he was raised.

Didion writes:

"Hanson lives on the family farm, but no longer actually farms it. "When we all went to the universities, when we abandoned what made us good and embraced what made us comfortable and secure, we lost something essential, knew we lost it and yet chose to lose," he writes. "Material bounty and freedom are so much stronger incentives than sacrifice and character." What was lost by the "we" of this passage, and in Hanson's view, by America itself, was the pure hardship of the agrarian life, the yeoman ideal that constituted the country's "last ling with the founding fathers of our political and spiritual past," its last line of defense against "market capitalism and entitlement democracy the final stage of Western culture that is beyond good and evil."

As I try to decipher my own story, gnaw at the bones of the stories of others, a thread is emerging.

I'm working out some relationships and trying to figure out how I am a child of all of these things and how both Louis and I ended up teaching in Baltimore City.

Key Players:

Mike Davis' "City of Quartz" about Los Angeles
"Crips and Bloods: Made in America" about the long lasting Los Angeles gang wars and their histories wrapped up in CA's history and the history of America
Joan Didion's new journalism about California
Hanson's "The Land Was Everything"
Willa Cather's "My Antonia"
My observations at the Maryland State Fair and the 4-H subculture
The Republican Party and the Conservative's reaction to our president and America's future as an increasingly multi-racial society.

Re-Thinking Community--- NCLB and It's Failures Pt. II

If Americans are serious about closing the achievement gap, we need to expand our ways of thinking about community. Currently, policy work and community activism center around solving the social problems of 'dysfunctional' communities, or communities with the outward signs of poverty, neglect, crime, and violence. For example, the current logic says that if a community has a significant number of boarded up houses, those houses need to be torn down, or re-habbed, or replaced by a viable substitute such as mixed-use development. In the case of East Baltimore Development Inc., their “New Eastside” aspires to be a “vibrant, mixed-income community,” which includes an education initiative of a new community school, and the “economic engine” of a Johns Hopkins Science and Technology Park. In its ideal form, the current mindset identifies problems and allocates resources to solve those problems to 'dysfunctional' communities. No jobs? Let's create jobs. Not enough 'highly qualified' teachers? Let's bring them in. I am even a product of this mindset, moving to Baltimore from California to teach in the city schools through the Baltimore City Teaching Residency.

I suggest that we need a broader approach. We will not close the achievement gap until America as a whole understands that as long as any 'dysfunctional' community exists, our entire social ecosystem is 'dysfunctional.' The broader approach needs to see the achievement gap as an issue not simply of schools failing to educate students, but also of economic, public health, and community safety failures. Even more broadly, what are communities doing outside of Baltimore City to addresses issues of privilege, power, social justice and their roles in the achievement gap? Until ALL Americans confront how racism, classism, and segregation have contributed to the achievement gap, we will not close it, and America as a whole will remain a 'dysfunctional' community.

No Child Left Behind: A Short Summary and Why it's Failing (Pt. 1)

The statistics are bleak.

According to an article published by Columbia's Teachers College:

• By the end of fourth grade, African American, Latino, and poor students of all races are two years behind behind their wealthier, predominantly white peers in reading and math. By eighth grade, they have slipped three years behind, and by twelfth grade, four years behind.

Aware of this 'achievement gap,' the government enacted the “No Child Left Behind Act” in 2001.

NCLB does the following:

• Ties federal funding to standards-based achievement testing in the belief that setting high standards and measurable goals can improve individual outcomes in education.

• Schools that receive federal funding through Title I (funds provided to schools with usually 40% or more of students designated as 'low income') need to meet AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) or face being placed on a 'failing schools' list and risk closure and/or restructuring. In Baltimore City for example, funds for public schools are provided on a system of per pupil enrollment, and students are free to leave 'failing schools,' lowering a school's operating budget as enrollment declines. A smaller budget means fewer staff, resources, etc. The incentive then, is to get students to pass state tests.

Schools then, in reaction to NCLB, and not meeting AYP:

• Increase course offerings in reading and mathematics, decreasing courses in other subject areas

• Provide block schedules that place students in 4 classes per day/90 min class
  

• Offer few to no electives

• Place students who failed tests in remedial classes with instruction that mirrors the instruction they received when they failed the tests.

• Hire teachers with high turnover rates from alternative certification programs such as Teach for America and the New Teacher Project that educate their cohorts to approach instruction from a NCLB perspective where mantras such as 'high expectations, data, standard-based instruction,' are emphasized.
  

Why is this bad and Why is NCLB is Failing?

The assumption of NCLB is that failing schools and failing teachers are the causes of the achievement gap, and that if teachers stop having the 'soft bigotry of low expectations,' student performance will improve.

But as Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute explains, “the notion that with schools alone you can create equal achievement for children of different social backgrounds is one that's not based in any research. It's not based on any experience. It's not based on any true understanding of what the many, many factors that contribute to student achievement are.”

He, like many experts and educators alike, realizes that NCLB cannot focus solely on schools. Education reform needs to be wrapped up in the reform and policies of housing, healthcare, the economy, and the reform of 'dysfunctional communities' (which I will address in the next blog post).

The biggest impact of NCLB that I've seen in my classroom in Baltimore City centers around a lack of access to a broad curriculum and menu of course offerings. Students have no choice. They are forced to spend hour upon hour in classes that are geared to help them pass state tests that the majority fail. Both teachers and students end up frustrated and burnt out. Students' love of learning diminishes. Teachers' love of teaching feels fruitless. Students are unprepared for higher education, and worse still, are unequipped to critically engaged with, and participate in our democracy.

Rothstein, in another essay ,provides some tangible solutions to education reform:

• Expand existing low-income housing subsidy programs to reduce families' involuntary mobility.

• Ensure good pediatric and dental care for all students, in school-based clinics.

• Provide higher-quality early childhood care so that low-income children are not parked before televisions while their parents are working.

• Increase the earned income tax credit, the minimum wage, and collective bargaining rights so that families of low-wage workers are less stressed.

• Promote mixed-income housing development in suburbs and in gentrifying cities to give more low-income students the benefits of integrated educations in neighborhood schools.

• Fund after-school programs so that inner-city children spend fewer nonschool hours in dangerous environments and, instead, develop their cultural, artistic, organizational, and athletic potential.

All of these are tangible solutions to problems that American educational reformers want to frame as tangible problems, but as I will suggest in my next piece, there is a much more difficult and intangible barrier to solving these problems, making education reform one piece of the larger puzzle of societal reform.

The Daily Language of Institutionalized Racism and Classism

A few days ago, Toya and I headed down to our local Rita's (delicious Italian-style water ice for anyone unfamiliar with the tradition) for a summertime treat. This particular Rita's is located on the edge of Fell's Point, near Patterson Park, and the waterfront neighborhood of Canton. These are neighborhoods where significant gentrification and new construction has occurred over the past decade or more, and is still occurring. In these neighborhoods one finds a convergence of two major groups, newcomers (affluent, young-urban-professionals, recent immigrants, and students {the Johns Hopkins medical campus is a few blocks to the north}), and longtime residents (predominately working class individuals and families).

I've barely started into my water ice when I overheard four people (two white men in scrubs and two young white woman in workout apparel) in conversation. The tone was friendly, if not mildly flirtatious.

I' m ready to stop eavesdropping until I hear this:

Man #1: Where are you from again?
Woman #1: Cherry Hill
Man #1: Oh, outside of Philly?
Woman #1: Yeah, Philly is NOT my favorite city.
Man #2: Oh, like the Cherry Hill Mall in Jersey?
Woman #1: Yeah, the mall.
Man #1: Have you ever been to Cherry Hill in Baltimore? It's a lot like Camden.
Woman #1: Oh. Camden is a very unsavory place.
Man #2: Yeah, so is Cherry Hill.


I had, at this point, lost all interest in my water ice and was ready to throw it into the faces of the four engaged in conversation. Rage, an emotion that I seldom channel unless directed towards Fox News commentators, quickly boiled to the surface. Rage, because I know Cherry Hill in Baltimore, and I know Camden. These are two places that have the markers of poverty all over them: boarded up housing, a police presence, lack of access to quality food, healthcare, and education, high rates of crime, and a palpable absence of whiteness. The word 'unsavory' in particular hit a raw nerve. Something 'unsavory' is 'distasteful,' 'morally offensive,' 'revolting,' and 'sickening.' The subtle undertone of erotic flirtation over a shared disgust of these places and their symbolic value made me nauseous and embarrassed, but this was a conversation I'd heard many times before.

In this vast urban landscape, there is always a place for fear. There seems to be no shortage of the message that white women should be afraid, shouldn't walk in certain places, at certain times of the day, and wearing certain clothes. It's as if each city is a living map, and places become crossed out as 'no travel' zones depending on who you are. In a quick second, one person drew a line from a neighborhood in Baltimore to Camden, New Jersey, traveling a hundred miles, to cross it out and silence the conversation. This is the language of institutionalized racism and classism at its finest, subtle and sexualized.

Toya and I turned and stared at them. I mocked their them, their insipid voices, and they coincidentally ended their conversation. I watched the women get into a convertible with the top down, at this point was I openly cussing them out. They were oblivious. I wasn't loud enough, nor talking to them directly. Why was I so upset and yet frozen in action? Was I overreacting?

A variety of factors have combined in my history to encourage me to resolve conflict and disagreements peacefully. This often comes off as weakness to others. I knew in that moment I didn't have anything peaceful to say to them. Perhaps the most tragic reflection of the whole experience was that I couldn't grasp any models of how to proceed. White people eavesdropping on conversations and then challenging other white people on their institutionalized racist and classist language? “Too radical?”

Changing the mindsets of white people will take more than peaceful dialogue, or a blog post, for that matter. Our language however, determines our actions. Maybe if we change our language, we can change our communities for the better.

Meat Love

My mother shows her love with meat. Some mothers show their love with clothing, others with supportive hugs, some with useful goods such as irons and coffeemakers. My mother has done all of that, but like far more mothers, she shows her love with food. Mine in particular chose red meat. Birthdays, holidays, days offs, Sundays, it's always been similar: bacon frying, sausage grilled with peppers and onions for sandwiches, thick burgers topped with bleu cheese, tender steaks, barbecued ribs dripping in sauce and so tender they fall off the bone. I believe this is tradition handed down many years. Is is the very thread that runs through generations past, through my maternal Slavic, Germanic, Hungarian, and Romani ancestors who provided, when they could, a meal of meat.

Perhaps this is why I ultimately could not survive as a vegetarian, especially when I found myself in the motherland of the Czech Republic, the pangs of my mother and my Czech roots pulling me away from processed vegetable balls in sauce towards the succulent pork tenderloin medallions bathing in gravy and topped with raspberry preserve and cream and surrounded by thick dumplings. This was Svickova, a traditional Czech dish with a smell so rich and delicious, I put in a request that night to be switched from the vegetarian option to the meat one. This was Czech love, I could feel it, and I was missing out. I had only been a vegetarian for three months, but those three months couldn't have been forgotten sooner.

In Prague, if I ever felt homesick, all I needed to do was walk outside, and I was covered in the meat love of home. On the street, I could buy delectable, swollen, greasy sausages (klobasa) that snapped when you bit into them for less than a dollar. In restaurants, I ordered the requisite 'pivo' or beer that came in huge mugs that demanded meat dishes of beer gulash with dumplings ( hovězí guláš s knedlíkem), roast pork with cabbage and dumplings (vepřo-knedlo-zelo), pork schnitzel, (smažený vepřový říze), and fried cheese (smažený syr) with boiled tartaroes and tatar sauce, so rich it fell into the meat category. The Czech language with its 'zuhs,' and 'shus' and constants filled up my mouth with the same satisfaction as the food. I became obsessed.

After several months of tutoring a Czech boxing promoter in English, I finally had the nerve to ask about an old recipe that my Grandfather had referred to in Czech, which he had inherited from his mother called "michanice" meaning a 'medley' or a 'hodgepodge.' My mother explained it as 'depression' food, a stew of whatever was around ('everything but the kitchen sink' food). My mother served it the same way every time, a stew of beans, noodles, paprika, catchup, onions, and ground beef that cooked for hours. It became the ultimate winter soul food that I craved.

The boxing promoter said that michanice is made with 'eggs, potatoes, anything.' An odd contrast to the michanice that I ate at home.

'Can I get it at a restaurant?' I asked.

'No,' he said, 'it is now illegal in Czech Republic.'

I was shocked. My only Czech food connection was illegal. He explained that chefs could put in any kind of old, spoiled vegetables or meat into the stew, and cheat people. After asking other Czechs, I determined that every Czech has a version of 'michanice.' My family's version is, our course, includes red meat.

And so it is, that I crave meat as a connection now not only to my mom and my family, but also to Prague.

The Price of Housing in Baltimore

After an exhaustive search for new (rental) housing in Baltimore, my mind still reeling from the experience, I must now beg to ask the question: what is a fair price for housing in Baltimore? What can I expect to get for my money? And more importantly, why? The answer, proves that the lines of economic (and often racial) segregation in Baltimore couldn't be clearer.

Backstory:

After two years of living in a rented apartment in Bolton Hill while my girlfriend finished her degree at MICA, we are now both teaching in the city schools and want to expand so that we can both have office space.

Summary of the Search:

The affluent 'urban oasis' of Bolton Hill.

We decided to look at other apartments in the neighborhood.

Here's what $1200/month gets one in Bolton Hill:

1) 2 bedroom apartment (missing screens, holes in walls, non-insulated windows)
2)Quaint, tree-lined streets
3) Snobby neighbors who won't acknowledge your presence unless you're over the age of 35 or own property
4) Occasional break-ins and robberies (affluent areas are often targeted)
5) Management companies that operate as slum lords, not updating apartments because they have a constant stream of students (and their parents) who will pay above market prices for area apartments
6) Credit check prior to filling out application
7) No one directly in your business

Over in Remington, closer to Johns Hopkins, but in a more residential area that doesn't include many restaurants or amenities, $1200 gets:

1) 3 bedroom house (front porch, large yard w/o fence, sun room)
2) A few trees, fairly regular car traffic
3) Partially rehabbed interior (kitchen)

Fells Point

(On Broadway)
1) 2 bedroom apartment
2) Concrete yard with parking
3) Rehabbed house
4) Small, basement rooms

South of Patterson Park
1) 2 bedroom apartment
2) Small kitchen
3) Rehabbed, but lived in
4) Alley entrance

North of Patterson Park
1) Fully rehabbed, 3 bedroom rowhouse
2) Central air
3) Friendly neighbors, but in your business
4) Few trees, litter on street
5) Blue police lights and police presence


So, which place is the winner??

You decide.

It's clear that in Baltimore, you often pay for the neighborhood. Many people wouldn't want to live in a 'blue light' neighborhood for fear of crime or murder. Hence, the prices are lower. But sadly, many middle/upper middle class people are missing out and losing money in the process because they are afraid of being uncomfortable or living with people who aren't of their class/race.

Well, what's new?

Who Cares about Gay Marriage?

Yeah, I said it. And yes, I meant it.

Ok, sure everyone should be allowed to tie the knot if they so desire. And yes, I suppose everyone deserves the tax and medical benefits that go along with being married.

But is this really how the powerful gays are choosing to organize? Is this really the most important issue that our community faces?

I think not.

Powerful gays are not wanting to face the real issues.

What this does show me is how out of touch and socioeconomically segregated the gay community really is.

It figures that, suddenly, a bunch of hetero liberals in California are concerned with the 'rights' of the gays. 'Oh hey, I'm planning my big white wedding, and it's totally not fair that my favorite gay from college can't get married too!'

Yeah, it really sucks.

But you know what else sucks:

1) The HIV rate. According to the Center for Disease Control and Protection, we are entering a 'second-wave' AIDS epidemic where the AIDS rate is up 12%, the steepest rise being seen amongst black males aged 13-24.

2) The lack of mental health services and sex education for LGBTQ youth in most urban, suburban, and rural areas (There is no true health class to inform students about risky sexual behaviors at the high school where I teach in Baltimore City, and incidentally Baltimore-Towson has the 2nd highest AIDS rate of any major metro region as of 2006).

3) All pervasive homophobia in most areas of American life, except where money can be made such as marrying gays, and television shows depicting women having sex with other women.

But let's face it, marriage is a comfortable warm and fuzzy that unites all Americans in an ever-ending quest for the American Dream. Our televisions are saturated with images about marriage, so it's not a terrible surprise that powerful gays would rally around an issue that most Americans are inherently concerned with.

Let's also face the reality that the gay community is deeply segregated and the issues facing the 'gay community' almost always seem to be issues facing powerful, rich, and often white gays.

Gays, what messages are we promoting? Equality, social justice, and democracy?

I think not.