K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid)

That acronym has been a mantra for successful coaches and teachers for decades. When things down work, we force ourselves to look in the mirror and remind OURSELVES too follow that “simple” rule. My friend Bernie Keller reflects.

“My brothers and sisters and I were pretty lucky growing up because we had the opportunity to be raised by two people who were good at keeping things simple. One of my mom’s favorite sayings was, “There is more than one way to skin a cat.” Basically that means there is more than one way to do anything. This sage piece of wisdom is especially applicable to education reformers who insist their way is the only way to “fix” education. The truth is there is more than one way to make education work, but interestingly enough, for all the different ways to make education work, each of the different ways contain similar, if not the exact same elements

   Recently, Augusta Uwanmanzu-Nne made news when she was accepted to all eight Ivy League schools. In point of fact, this was the second student in two years to do this as a young man named Harold Ekeh from the same school accomplished that feat in 2015. According to the article written about her, Augusta was not a genius, nor did the school have only “great teachers”, or Rhodes Scholars or Ph.D. candidates. It appears they were simply committed, compassionate teachers, much like many of the people I had the opportunity to work with throughout my 40 year career. In fact, according to the young lady, her success can be credited to supportive parents, her persistence and hard work, and dedicated teachers. I daresay you’d have to add to that list a supportive administrative team that provided whatever assistance and support the committed teachers needed in order to successfully complete their jobs, (as opposed to simply being “managers” or CEO’s).

   The more I listen to the “experts” and “reformers” talking about what needs to happen in order to fix education, it strikes me that what they are saying seems to be so complicated and convoluted, and I keep thinking about those simple people I was privileged to have as parents, people who tried to keep things as simple as possible.

What is necessary to make education work has always been necessary, and wherever there has been success, those elements have been present. Until and unless all of the elements necessary- parents, students, teachers, administration, community and government- do their parts and contribute their efforts, no re-configuration, no change in design, no change in curriculum or testing or evaluation, or giving schools names like academies or charters will work or change anything.

   The experts talk about “best practices” and tested and “proven” techniques. Well, consider this- education in New York specifically and the United States in general, has produced the likes of President Obama, Michelle Obama, General Colin Powell, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, President Bill Clinton, Dr. Hakim Lucas, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former chancellors Harold Levy and Joel Klein, and millions of others. This means we already possess the knowledge and the answers to fix education.

   While I may not have the numbers at my fingertips, (as I am not a big sabermetrics guy), I’ll tell you what I’m willing to do. I’m willing to bet you any amount of money that if you look at the people who have succeeded in education, whether we are talking about New York particularly or the United States in general, or whether we are talking about 100 years ago, 40 years ago or last week, for every 100 of them , 99 of them would have at least three, if not all four, of the elements of supportive parents, persistency and hard work, dedicated and committed teachers and a supportive administration.

Any takers?”

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1/19/17 (On the eve of the inauguration of the 45th president of the United States)…B. Keller

 

The world

didn’t end

in Y2K

and it won’t end

now.

Tomorrow

there will still be

questions that must be

answered

and wrongs that must be

righted,

there will still be

injustices to stand

against.,

lies we must repel

with truth.

 

There will still be

rhetoric

and slogans

and “isms”

and haves

and have nots

and insults

and fact free, truth free

zones-

 

but the world didn’t end

in Y2K

and it ain’t gonna end

now.

History of Trump: Nixon Reagan, and G.H.W. Bush

If you want to make more sense of Trump’s victory in 2016, look back at the Nixon campaign, his southern strategy and his war on crime and drugs, look at what John Ehrlichman says about their strategy.

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people,” former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper’s writer Dan Baum .”

“You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” Ehrlichman said. “We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

 The Nixon southern strategy using those tactics and crime as a code word for race appealed to southern poor and middle class whites to switch from being traditional democratic voters to angry Republican ones to first elect Nixon, then Reagan. And then look at what Reagan advisor Atwater said in the 1980s reinforcing that southern strategy:

“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

 Then the “Willie Horton” ad for George H.W. Bush. on top of that..

Everyone should watch the documentary, “13th”.

Betsy DeVos Must Not Be Confirmed

Bernard Keller

Dave Greene

  Warren Buffet said, “Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” This statement has powerful implications because it clearly speaks against the “only today matters” philosophy making the rounds in education today. Today, the emphasis is on the twenty-first century, its technology, creating new “shiny” things that will turn everything around.

The Buffet quote makes the point clearly and powerfully that there can be no today without a yesterday. The shade being provided to the person in the quote wasn’t planted by the person in the quote- it was planted in the past- the past that today’s education reformers claim is outdated and lacking in its ability to educate students in the twenty -first century. Much like the tree providing shade, a tree that was planted before now, yet is providing shade now, education is not just about now- it is cumulative- it didn’t just arrive today! Like that tree, it was “planted” by someone in the past so people would be able to take advantage of it today.

In our careers as teachers, we did not start by “planting trees.” We enjoyed the “shade”, the knowledge, the wisdom, the “trees”, others had already planted in order to get our careers started, to have some idea of what to do and how to do it right. As time went by, we learned more, gained more wisdom, and “planted some trees “of our own, so those who came along after us might have some “shade” to enjoy.

As educators, it troubles us greatly that the past is being treated by the education reformers like some sort of nuclear wasteland in which everything old is radioactive waste with no value.

It troubles us that they see no importance in knowing what came before or why. We get it when students see the world this way, after all, they believe they are the creators of slang “new” dance moves, and “new” music when the truth is there has always been slang, dance moves and music. Those things have always existed- all they have done is add on to them. In fact, in some cases, some of their dance moves and slang are actually “recycled” (even though the young people do not know it!)

We get it when kids, with a limited understanding or perspective of the world discount or deny the past’s significance or existence, however it is simply unacceptable and the height of irresponsibility when people claiming to be the answers to “fixing” education, the people who are “preparing students for the 21^st century” and providing them with a “world class” education, see the world exactly the same way.

That is why Betsy DeVos must not be confirmed.

 

For John Lewis: Hero and Champion (With gratitude and honor) 1/15/17

 

by. B. Keller

He has never

stopped standing,

never stopped

marching.

 

He has never stopped

rising up before

pharaohs,

or walking through

Red Seas.

 

He has never stopped

seeking truth,

never stopped finding

a way

to get in the way,

never stopped doing

whatever he could do

to help bend the moral

arc of the universe

towards justice.

Find The Good and Praise It…. B.Keller

Alex Haley wrote, “In my writing, as much as I could, I tried to find the good and praise it.” As I look around at the contentious relationships making the rounds in our government and in the education arena, it strikes me that we‘d solve a whole lot of problems by simply applying Haley’s statement. When I listen to the vitriolic, vituperative exchanges taking place daily between the members of the legislature and the president and the conversations between the mayor of New York City teacher’s union, it is clear they’ve never ever heard this quote, (and even if they have, they have no intention of applying it!).

A great quote asserts that the reason people do what is wrong, rather than doing what is right is because the wrong thing seems so much easier. Maybe that’s the way it is with applying Haley’s statement. Maybe the problem with “finding the good and praising it” is that it is so much easier to condemn, defame, belittle, denigrate and insult than it is to say, “It’s not perfect, but your effort is good. Let’s build on that!” When you listen to the mayor, from the time he entered the office of the mayor, he said teachers were inept, incompetent, unconcerned with the education of their students, and only concerned with keeping their jobs. This despite the fact that he’d never once spoken to any teachers, never sat in any teacher’s classroom, this despite the fact that before he became the mayor and was granted total control of New York City schools had produced students who became authors, doctors, teachers, principals, assistant principals, lawyers school chancellors, CEO’s, Wall Street workers, musicians, professional athletes and a whole lot more. Did this happen for every single student and every single school? Of course not, any more than it happens or will happen at every charter school and/or small school the mayor has or will create or endorse! Truth to tell every student doesn’t graduate from Harvard, or Yale, or Bronx Science, or Stuyvesant, or Hunter High School, either. The fact that something good did come out of public schools means something and somebody was working and that means there is something that was worthy of praise, that there was something good he should have found to praise.

Although today, I may be a poet some people regard as pretty good, when I started, I wasn’t really very good at it. A great teacher I had at Hunter College, Professor Fred Bornhauser, read my early efforts. Looking back now on my early work, even I would have to say there wasn’t a whole lot there. He could have said, “You need to find some other interest kid, ‘cause this ain’t makin’ it!”, instead, he looked for the good and praised it, telling me my writing was very “cinematic”. Today, my work has been published and featured in magazines such as Essence and anthologies like Beyond the Frontier. I doubt that any of that would have happened without Professor Bornhauser’s having been smart enough to see that while I may not have been Langston Hughes, or the next June Jordan, or Ethelbert Miller, or Sonia Sanchez, or Robert Frost, there was something good in what I wrote, and it was worthy of being praised.

Nothing is perfect and I guess we can make anything better, but even when things may not be as good as they could or should be, there is still something worth finding that is good, and praising it.

LET’S TRY OPTIMISM

The Sunday, January 15^th New York Times editorial is titled “The Optimism of Barack Obama”.

It begins by saying,

 “Barack Obama is leaving the White House with polls showing him to be one of the most popular presidents in recent decades. This makes sense. His achievements, not least pulling the nation back from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, have been remarkable — all the more so because they were bitterly opposed from the outset by Republicans who made it their top priority to ensure that his presidency would fail.”

It ends with his farewell quote,

“Let me tell you, this generation coming up — unselfish, altruistic, creative, patriotic — I’ve seen you in every corner of the country. You believe in a fair and just and inclusive America; you know that constant change has been America’s hallmark that it’s not something to fear but something to embrace; you are willing to carry this hard work of democracy forward. You’ll soon outnumber any of us, and I believe as a result the future is in good hands.”

We must be at least as optimistic as he. There is precedent. The Republican Party.

Several decades ago the Republicans were reeling. Nixon. Ugh! Ford? Eh! An economic crisis brought Ronald Reagan, a Republican visionary, into the White House followed by his VP. Republicans thought they were to be in power forever. Then Bill Clinton won and gained back power for the Democrats. The Republicans began to see a shift in the population of the US. The Democrats boasted about reaching the new younger and more multicultural demographic. Newt Gingrich and Congressional Republicans tried to revolt, but that flopped. However, optimistically, they hatched a plan…. That worked twice.

They realized they would have a very difficult time winning the popular vote, so they figured out how to use the Electoral College to win the presidency and did so in 2000 with Florida’s hanging chads, and in 2016, by turning the tables in Pennsylvania’s, Wisconsin’s, and Michigan’s rural and white working class election districts.

They knew, 20 years ago, that the key was to control state legislatures during Census years to ensure control of redistricting and gerrymandering. That they did in both 2000 and in 2010. Their optimism paid off. So did a smart plan.

So how do Democrats look at the future? Do we fold? Do we argue amongst ourselves? Or, do we learn about optimism from President Obama, and, yes, even from those nasty Republicans that optimism connected with a good plan works.

What will swing the pendulum back? Politics is always local and it is always the economy, stupid. The national democrats blew that. It is time to gain remember that to get power back.

Now, as for the Nay Sayers who are worried that Obama’s legacy will be lost? You cant undo what was done. You can repeal and replace but you can’t make believe it didn’t happen. He will gain his rightful place in the rankings of presidents just as others have.

Remember, John Adams followed Washington. Washington is still usually ranked number two.

Lincoln’s legacy as the number one ranked president survived despite being followed by quite a few awful presidents. Andrew Johnson tried to reverse Lincoln’s reconstruction plan and was also the first president to be impeached. U.S. Grant presided over a very corrupt administration that included it’s own Black Friday when speculators Jim Fisk and Jay Gould attempted to corner the nation’s gold market and enlisted the help of Grant’s brother-in-law, who had pledged to prevent the president from acting to ruin the scheme. Grant’s administration also saw The Whiskey Ring scandal when many of the nation’s distillers bribed officials in the Department of the Treasury. In the end, more than 100 officials were convicted. Grant, much to his discredit, successfully shielded his private secretary, Orville E. Babcock.

Warren Harding followed Woodrow Wilson. Wilson was ranked most recently in the top 10 out of 44, because even with his racist negatives, he was responsible for one of the most progressive eras in our history. Harding was a successful newspaper publisher and horrible senator before becoming president. He won that position because his supporters viciously attacked his opponent for being a Catholic intent on delivering Ohio to the pope.

During his campaign he promised to restore the U.S. to “normalcy”, ostensibly to “Make America Great Again.” President Harding often rewarded political allies and contributors with powerful positions with financial leverage. Scandals and corruption ran rampant under his administration. Scholars and historians consistently regard Harding as one of our worst Presidents.

So look up America. No one is perfect. I didn’t like Obama’s education policies and how he also is responsible for Trump’s triumph. He, as almost all other democrats did, forgot how important local economies are, especially jobs with good wages and benefits that include health care.

We will survive. So will President Obama’s legacy, not just because of his achievements, but also because of his character. You can’t fake character like you can fake news.