Five Questions on the US Election your Students should Wrestle With

There are many resources for kids studying the current US election, including one from Lynn University's School of Education focusing on the final Presidential Debate.

It was in looking at that site, and trying to ask questions about it with Dean Craig Mertler that I began to really wonder about all the questions we do not ask our kids to wrestle with. Because there might be value in a 17-year-old working on: "Reforming the Electoral College: The students will, as a whole class, debate the Electoral College; examining the merits and problems associated with the current system and each of the proposed reforms. The students will propose an amendment to the Constitution to reform the system and vote on it as a class," or a 13-year-old practicing: "The voting process: (Common Core - SS 7 C 2 7 Conduct a mock election to demonstrate the voting process and its impact on a school, community, or local level). The students will run for student council elections. They will campaign for themselves and create a brochure providing information about themselves and why their peers should vote for them," but I think our students are not just capable of much more, I think they need much more if they are going to be effective citizens of this nation, and this world, in this century.

So, here are five questions you might raise in your school:

(1) Why do Americans vote the way we do? Should we continue to do that?

This is a question I keep begging educators to engage with, because how we vote largely determines how we are governed, and in a global century the ignorance of Americans about democracy around the world - even around their own nation - is both absurd and dangerous.

An Irish General Election Ballot, choosing five "TDs" - members of the legislature
by ranking candidates in preference order.

There are many ways to vote, not just the "single-member-constituency" and "First Past the Post" systems the United States inherited from 18th Century England. There are consequences to the choice of any system, for First Past the Post, the key consequence is the diminishment of choice:

"The main reason for America's majoritarian character is the electoral system for Congress. Members of Congress are elected in single-member districts according to the "first-past-the-post" (FPTP) principle, meaning that the candidate with the plurality of votes is the winner of the congressional seat. The losing party or parties win no representation at all. The first-past-the-post election tends to produce a small number of major parties, perhaps just two, a principle known in political science as Duverger's Law. Smaller parties are trampled in first-past-the-post elections."—from Sachs' The Price of Civilization, 2011

First Past the Post Voting with three parties gets confusing. The inner
circle in this graph shows percentage of the votes British parties
received in the last general election, the outer ring shows the
percentage of seats won in Parliament.

A few US states - Louisiana is one - use the "French" system of runoff elections for some offices, requiring a majority win. But in most elections in the United States, the more parties, the fewer votes one needs to be elected.

In Canada, for example, in the last election, the Conservative Party received 39.68% of the votes against four left-of-center parties (Liberals, New Democrats, Parti Quebecois, Greens) yet ended up as the "majority" party in Parliament with 53% of the seats in a nation in which over 60% of voters strongly disagree with their policies.

In other words, choice is discouraged. If there were just two Canadian parties - as the US has - the Conservatives would not have won a Canadian election since 1988.

But what might happen if we had multi-member-constituencies with "proportional representation" ("PR")? What if we had, as Ireland does, "transferrable votes"? What are the implications - what else changes - if we chose another electoral system? Get your students talking.

Download Electoral Design Handbook.

(2) Should it be easier to get on the ballot everywhere in America?

Does democracy require choice? Who gets to limit what your choices are in an election? In Pennsylvania a group called the Pennsylvania Ballot Access Coalition says they (like many in other American states) are, "seeking more choices for all of us on Election Day. Current Pennsylvania law makes it difficult for independent and minor party candidates to appear on the ballot — much more difficult than in most other states. The result is less political competition, less political dialog, and fewer choices to vote for in November. The current system is simply not fair and does a great disservice to the ideal of democracy and to the voters. In 2006, independent and minor party candidates were required to collect over 67,000 valid signatures simply to get on the state-wide ballot in Pennsylvania on Election Day. Legally, Democratic and Republican candidates require no signatures to get on the state-wide ballot, and even the 2,000 signatures required for the Primary Day ballot are ridiculously smaller than the virtually impossible hurdle of 67,000." So, first question, should it be easier to get your name on the ballot because you say you are a "Republican" instead of saying that you are "Green" or a "Socialist"?

Voters in Israel pick between 18 political parties (Wikipedia Photo), what are your choices?

What choices you have on your ballot are limited in many ways. Most US states prohibit "Electoral Fusion," a ballot system which helped break "one party rule" in New York City. Fusion voting empowers smaller parties in remarkable ways. New York City mayors John Lindsay and Rudy Giuliani owed their election victories to New York State's Liberal Party, while New York State's Conservative Party elected a United States Senator, and no Republican has been elected to statewide office in New York since Nelson Rockefeller without Conservative Party cross-endorsement.

Limited ballot access in the United States is a battle without traditional dividing lines, with everybody from the Green Party to Michelle Bachmann weighing in, from Oklahoma to Georgia, and the inconsistency of these laws mean you may not have the same choices as your neighbors a hundred miles away. As USA Today says, "It is a quirk of American democracy: Your choices for president depend on which state you live in."

(3) Should all votes be counted in every election?

West Virginia, and many other states, refuses to count the choices of many voters: "Only votes for official write-in candidates will be counted" says their website. And an "official" write-in candidate is one who, "submits a Write-In Candidate's Certificate of Announcement to the proper filing officer."

Why would there be a law like this? A law which also has a date limit on when someone can become a "write-in" candidate? 

Let's begin with the "ridiculous" - suppose a whole bunch of people decided to write in "Mickey Mouse" or "Bart Simpson," is that "joke voting" or "throwing their vote away" or might it suggest a deep unease about available candidates which should be recorded?

Or, what if people chose to write-in the name of someone who had not chosen to become an "official" candidate? Surely that person has the right to refuse office if elected, but shouldn't voters be allowed that choice?


And finally, let's consider this situation. In my county in Michigan about half the people on the ballot are running unopposed. It is pretty much a one party community (like the old Soviet Union). But what if the only candidate on the ballot dies eight days before the election? (Michigan has a formula for a candidate dying under 7 days before election day )Or gets arrested for robbing a bank? Voters where I live are then deprived of any choices at all.

It gets worse, if you run a write-in campaign ("officially") in a party primary, you can win that election but not get on the general election ballot because you did not get "enough" votes according to th state ["if the office involved appears on a partisan primary ballot, a write-in candidate is  nominated to the office if he or she 1) receives more votes than any other candidate seeking nomination to the position and 2) meets a vote threshold provided under Michigan election law. (MCL 168.582)]. If a write in candidate gets three votes and nobody else gets more than two, doesn't that mean he or she won the election?

And in seven US states, write-in votes for President are prohibited!

(4) How many people should be in the US House of Representatives? How many in your state legislature? City Council?

Wikipedia has attempted to list legislatures by size:

Jurisdiction	Type of jurisdiction	Population	Lower house	Upper house	Total
People's Republic of China	Nation-state	1,333,370,000	2,987	—[1]	2,987
United Kingdom	Nation-state	61,634,599	650	786	1,436
Italy	Nation-state	60,114,021	630	315+7	952
France	Nation-state	65,073,482	577	321	898
India	Nation-state	1,169,850,000	552	250	802
European Union	Intergovernmental organization	499,794,855	754	27[2]	781
Japan	Nation-state	127,540,000	480	242	722
Egypt	Nation-state	77,420,000	454	264	718
Indonesia	Nation-state	229,965,000	560	132	692
Germany	Nation-state	82,002,000	622	69	691
North Korea	Nation-state	24,051,218	687	—[1]	687
Ethiopia	Nation-state	79,221,000	546	112	658
Thailand	Nation-state	63,525,062	480	150	630
Mexico	Nation-state	107,550,697	500	128	628
Russia	Nation-state	141,883,000	450	168	618
Cuba	Nation-state	11,177,743	614	—[1]	614
Spain	Nation-state	45,929,476	350	259	609
Democratic Republic of the Congo	Nation-state	68,692,542	500	108	608
Nepal	Nation-state	29,331,000	601	—[1]	601
Morocco	Nation-state	31,993,000	325	270	595
Brazil	Nation-state	191,956,000	513	81	594
Poland	Nation-state	38,100,700	460	100	560
Turkey	Nation-state	71,517,100	550	—[1]	550
United States	Nation-state	307,635,000	435	100	535

So, is the United States Congress too big or too small? You might ask students to start doing some math to begin. How many people are represented by one member of the United Kingdom's House of Commons (62,000,00/650) vs the US House of Representatives (310,000,000/435)? How does that compare to Germany (82,000,000/622) or France (65,000,000/577) or, say Ireland (4,600,000/166)?

How does that compare to your state legislature? To your County or City government? Each "TD" in Ireland represents about 27,000 people, each member of the New York City Council represents 159,000 people. Each member of the Michigan State Senate represents 238,000 people, but each member of New Hampshire House of Representatives represents just 2,350 people - or far less than the members of most local American Boards of Education.

Consider all that this implies. If I, as a candidate, need to get to the voters of a New Hampshire district I could probably drive around and meet almost every voter, but if I want to be in the Michigan Senate I probably need to spend a lot of money on radio, mailings, phone calls, perhaps even television. If I need to spend money I need to either be rich, or I need to have lots of rich friends, or I need to promise things to lots of rich people. None of that is necessary in New Hampshire, where the legislature meets part time and members are paid $250.00 annually. Will that difference allow differing kids of members to get elected?

Who benefits when a legislature is smaller? Who benefits when a legislature is larger? How does size impact function? In what ways? Many questions...

(5) What would happen if the US Electoral College no longer included electors for Senators?

Simple question: Right now each state's electoral vote is based on the number of members of congress - representatives plus senators. What if it was just based in the number of members of the House of Representatives?

Wyoming, its as if all the animals in this photo get to vote for President.

This year, Wyoming gets one electoral vote for every 190,000 people, but California only gets one electoral vote for every 691,000 people. So, every Wyoming voter, effectively, gets more than three times as many votes for President as a Californian.

How might this change things? Consider the contested 2000 election - without those "senate" electors, George W. Bush's electoral vote would have dropped from 271 to 211 (he carried 30 states), while Al Gore's electoral vote would have dropped from 266 to 224. In other words, it wasn't Florida which changed the nation's political course, it was Wyoming, Alaska, and North Dakota.

What would be fair? Who would be hurt? It is important to note that the United States does not have - and has never had - any kind of "national election." All elections in the US are state-by-state affairs, but in this one instance - what is fair when the state's come together? Is the Senate enough protection for small states? Do we really have "one-person-one-vote"?

- Ira Socol

One Ethos, Open Culture, Many Paths, Many Tools

"Ethos is a Greek word meaning "character" that is used to describe the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community, nation, or ideology."

A Twitter conversation led me to this place. What does a place of learning need to welcome all, to offer all the kinds of paths to the future which our children need?

I settled on a set of four thoughts: One Ethos, Open Culture, Many Paths, Many Tools.

If that is the belief system, I think that the rest - the pedagogies, the spaces, the schedules, the ways we treat each other, and the kind of deep, inspired learning humans deserve - will follow.

One Ethos

High School Math Teacher (1996): "That damn kid, he's rather go to Saturday School than come to my class."
High School Librarian (replying): "Well, you'll have to think about that!"

Why would a student come to your school, if she/he were not forced to? This is a question you must ask every day, as every teacher ought to ask, Why would a student come to my class...?

What does your school, as a whole and in every space inside, offer children? Safety from unsafe families or communities? Food which otherwise be in short supply? A chance to hang out with their friends? Do they come for just one teacher, or only because of music or sport? Is that good enough for you?

These kids of questions are rarely asked in American education, though we fill millions of square feet of wall space with "mission statements" and "learning goals." We just don't ask, "What is this school for?" In fact, we avoid that question so deeply that last January the US President got up in front of the nation and actually suggested that the solution to high school dropouts was to make dropping out illegal. Talk about giving up...

So why? What do you - as an entire school - offer every student that would make them come if compulsory attendance laws and the parental need for babysitting disappeared? Would they come because they understand that your school is a safe and happy place in which they are offered a world to learn in a somewhat less-risky-than-real-life situation? Would they come because they are excited about what they invest in when they walk through your doors? Would they come because they find the push to discovery, learning, and growth to be inspirational instead of coercive? Would they come because you offer a great collection of paths to an independent future? Would they come because you offer a laboratory for democracy and life - that you are - all together - creating a future better than the present?

I cannot tell you why... but you must find this answer, and that answer is the ethos your school must embrace - universally.

Open Culture

I'm not against the"Common Core" because I'm a crazed postmodernist. There are other things I'm against because of that. And I'm not against the "Common Core" because I doubt the need for us to share some commonalities of knowledge.

I'm against the "Common Core" because it is neither "common" in my experience nor is it generally at the "core" of what people need. Instead it is part of a long history of education as Pygmalion - to use George Bernard Shaw's lovely mythological metaphor.

"None of this is new. "Established in 1914, the Ford English School taught the company’s immigrant workers more than just how to speak English. It taught them about American culture and history and instilled the importance of such virtues as thriftiness, cleanliness, good manners, and timeliness." There has always been a tension in the United States between the expressed ideal of a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society - you know, that brilliant combination of ethnicities in any World War II film - and the reality on the political ground, which is that "our leadership" would find things "much easier" if we were all "white, protestant, straight, northern Europeans,"' I wrote more than a year ago, while pointing out that even that belief is a lie, a cover for something else, that is, if school is about being a "white, protestant, straight, northern European," it guarantees that those now in power will watch their children begin school with an insurmountable lead on everyone else, thus assuring social reproduction.

People think the "Common Core" is inclusive because teachers can choose books, but in this, they miss the point. The "Common Core" is "white protestantism" because of the values it suggests while pushing all children to meet Middle Class Age "Appropriate" Learning Targets - or in their carefully crafted words - "provide teachers and parents with a common understanding of what students are expected to learn. Consistent standards will provide appropriate benchmarks for all students, regardless of where they live."

What if it doesn't really make a f---ing bit of difference to my kid's, or my community's, life, if my 7-year-old doesn't... "by the end of year, read and comprehend informational texts, including history/social studies, science, and technical texts, in the grades 2–3 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range"?

Pygmalion, why are you superior? 

Could my 7-year-old spend that year investigating physics with balls and paper airplanes and by building bridges instead? Or learn to speak the languages which might surround her in our community? Or learn measurement concepts by learning to cook? Or might he just want to listen to, and tell, stories? Or, as was the case of my kid at that age, was he far more interested in adult reading and music than in the "grades 2-3 text complexity band"?

In Finland, much of Scandinavia, kids don't even begin school until they're 7-years-old, and since the "Common Core" claims to be built on "best practices," and Finland tops those international comparisons, maybe the alphabet is the best cultural target. In Ireland I watched 7-years-olds from all over participating in classrooms with kids up to age 12, with all that subject matter, but mostly... participating by listening and talking.

A culturally diverse school is not about flags in the hallway or "welcome" written in a bunch of languages, its about being a learning space where kids get to negotiate how their culture meets the others around them. Where, say to begin, holidays are shared on equal terms, without pressure to either "opt in" or "opt out." Where time is respectful of cultural differences, whether it is Ramadan and Yom Kippur or "on-timeness" or "appropriate speed." Where communication is accepted and developed because it is authentic, not because it meets E.D. Hirsch's cultural expectations, and as it is developed, we all learn to communicate more widely, and we learn far more about communication choices.

A culturally diverse - a culturally "open" - school also refuses to grade by compliance to Anglo norms. It is not a question of why read For Whom the Bell Tollsinstead of The English Patient, but rather, the violence you will do to The English Patientif you try to analyze it and write essays about it "the common core way"?

Many Paths

Where is the student now? Where does the student want and need to go? What are the possible ways to get from point A to the much more nebulous point B?

There is really never one way to learn anything, to read anything, to write anything, to calculate anything. There are always choices, and there must be choices - unless we plan to never improve as a species. "Why is fastest better?" I once heard James Gee ask. "Why is the shorter proof better in Geometry? Why is it better to finish an assignment faster?"

Or why is a five paragraph essay better than a one paragraph argument? Or a ten page rant? If this were true Tom Clancy would be a better writer than James Joyce or Virginia Woolf or Colm Toibin, and (let me just assert this truth), he is not.

If all the rules were true, this wouldn't be great literature

Or, why should addition come before calculus? Or biology before physics? Or why is music composition less important than reading about Abraham Lincoln? Or why can't soccer practice count as math class? Is it about "rules," or is it because educators are not imaginative enough to help students pursue the world their own way?

It is way past time to stop imposing single solutions on our learners, Neil Postman and Charley Weingartnerrecognized the choices created by (then) new media in 1968 required teaching practice to radically change. You are now over 40 years late.

And that lateness has been horribly destructive. I am sorry to have to tell you this, but the majority of students leaving American schools at the end of 12th Grade (or before), will describe most of their education to that point as an irrelevant waste of time. That's because it is not "their education" at all, but something imposed on them by people who appear to have nothing in common with them.

Many Tools

"Most of us lack all kinds of powers. I can't lift my car by the bumper in order to change a tire. That's what jacks are for. I can't add long columns of figures in my head. That's what calculators are for. Tools give us the ability to make up for what we lack in native powers." John Perry in the Wall Street Journal.

I believe in Toolbelt Theory, which begins with the concept that we humans are, perhaps above all, toolmakers and tool users, and that thus, in the education of our children, the most important thing we can help them learn is how to be very good at both. "After all," I tell people, "without tools humans are a very long way from the top of the food chain."

It is human to make, choose, use tools

Schools need to stop limiting tool use and equating tool use with "cheating." The tools of today are incredibly powerful, incredibly diverse, and create never-before-seen opportunities for so many students failed, consistently, by our one-size-fits-all education system, that we must embrace these tools, and help students learn to get the most out of the technologies which sit - or will sit - in their pockets. We can't do that by limiting, filtering, and blocking.

Right now, right from the first day of school, every student can read from paper, from a computer screen, from a tablet screen, from a mobile phone screen, or listen to their computer, tablet, or phone read to them, or some combination of those things. Right now, right from the first day of school, every student can write with a pen, a pencil, a stylus, their finger, a big keyboard, a little keyboard, a touch screen, or just by speaking. Right now, right from the first day of school, every student can communicate through text or speech, audio or video, music or art, with much of the world. Right now, right from the first day of school, every student can pull in information from anywhere on the globe, at any time - and truly - that is a skill you must help them learn to do well. And we can't do that unless the tools are present every day, all the time, so that we can all learn what works for each of us.

One Ethos, Open Culture, Many Paths, Many Tools. Because if education matters, it matters enough to do the right things for our kids.

- Ira Socol

Culture, Compliance, Community (Penn State part six)

Previous posts on Penn State: Cultures of Compliance,  The Teaching of Tribalism, Darkness at Noon (Saturday), The Realities of the Victims (Omelas), and The Silent Stadium. Please see Voices4Victims at Penn State for more information.

"They [the janitors] witnessed what I think in the report is probably the most horrific rape that's described. And what do they do? They panic. The janitor who observed this said it's the worst thing he ever saw. This is a Korean War veteran who said, 'I've never seen anything like that. It makes me sick.' He spoke to the other janitors. They were alarmed and shocked by it. But what did they do? They said, 'We can't report this because we’ll get fired.' They knew who Sandusky was. … They were afraid to take on the football program. They said the university would circle around it. It was like going against the president of the United States. If that's the culture on the bottom, God help the culture at the top." - former FBI Director Louis Freeh, 12 July 2012

a culture of fear and compliance

Last Wednesday I sat with Hamilton, Michigan schools superintendent Dave Tebo and liistened to him describe his efforts to get secondary school teachers to separate compliance from academic achievement in the grading process. And last Thursday I listened to former Clinton Administration FBI Director Louis Freeh describe the road to ruin which cultures of compliance create. On Friday I heard the Pennsylvania State University administrators respond to the Freeh report by announcing renovations to their football building. On Saturday I heard those same administrators insist that, regarding the campus statue of child rape enabler Joe Paterno, "[We] are hoping more time pass and people will forget about it and then it won't come down," one trustee said. "They don't get to tell us," the source said about members of the public clamoring for its removal. "This is a Penn State community decision."

We should not be surprised that the supposed "leaders" of a supposed "great research university" are betting on everyone in State College, Pennsylvania forgetting the rape of children - they worked so hard at forgetting it for 14 years. Nor should we be surprised if they - at least locally - succeed. "Happy Valley" has proven - again and again - to be the Omelas of Ursula LeGuin's fiction, a place where the comfort and glory of the majority are happily constructed out of the pain and misery of the forgotten few.

That happens not just because the Pennsylvania State University put football above all else (and women's basketball too), but because, clearly, Pennsylvania State University relishes unquestioning compliance in its community. It is the gruesome compliance of fake, forced smiles and pretend agreement which denies inquiry, investigation, and emotional and intellectual discomfort.

The football building must be rebuilt so that week-kneed Nittany Lion football players won't be "creeped out" by the thought of child rape. The Paterno statue must remain because "people would be unhappy" to see it removed. There remains - as Judge Freeh pointed out - not one thought about the victims. The voice of victims - whether whispered from the shower room tiles or shouted in the destruction of a monument to a monster - would force the Penn State community to think, to debate, to recall, perhaps even to disagree. And quite clearly, that is completely unacceptable to the leaders of "Happy Valley."

Which should force all of us to ask: what is education about anyway?

There are, in my mind, two forms of "education" we can choose from, or, as I might say, we can choose between "education" and "training." Now, I am not saying that there is anything necessarily wrong with "training" - the teaching of a specific form, a specific skill, through instruction and, usually, repetition - but I would argue that "training" is not something which moves us - as a society, as a community - forward. It simply reproduces what "we" already do.

What I would call "education" is something different. "Education" enables doubt, and doubt enables change, progress, and the future. If we simply "train" - for example, the mathematics educational efforts suggested here (or here) or the "go ask your elders" view which prevented Michael McQueary from acting when he saw a child being raped and prevented Graham Spanier from acting morally at any point - we remain locked in one place. I can recall being "trained" in a sport, but if I watch that sport today, there is not one technique which has not changed dramatically, and that change is the result of "education," of continuous investigation, challenge, learning.
 

Not, "how do I swim like that guy?" but, "how do I swim faster?"

1976 (above) 2012 (below)

When we "teach compliance" - whether by grading homework completion, or on-time appearances, or by insisting that a leading "educator" cannot be challenged, we are training. When we "educate" we force students to doubt their world, and to imagine all things greater.

This is not always easy in education. Many of the education professors I know speak of the trouble they have getting the future teachers in their classes to dissent, to doubt, to think beyond the linear. Many secondary school teachers, those who try to move away from "training," say the same things about their students. "I tried giving them choices," I've been told, "but the students want me to tell them what do do."

Faced with that, we can choose be "Penn State," and raise a generation which will challenge neither a Sanduskey nor a Paterno, nor a belief, nor formula, or we can choose to be something much better, and raise a generation which will lead us to new places.

Eight months ago I asked:

"What creates such a powerful interest in loyalty and stability that it completely over-rides the commitment to the best interests of children? And understand, I would not ask this question here if I did not think it had implications far beyond the ethically-challenged land grant university of Pennsylvania.

"This was not one of those, "uh, not sure it matters" kind of thing McQueary watched that afternoon in 2002 [turns out it was 2001 according to Freeh]. It wasn't a friend driving five miles an hour over the speed limit, or someone having a few too many drinks, this was - first - one of the "big crimes." In New York City's Police Academy we were told that there were only five crimes for which you could use deadly physical force to "prevent or terminate." The acronym was "Mr.Mrs." - Murder, Robbery, Manslaughter, Rape, (forcible) Sodomy. McQueary observed one of those, and - second - he knew the victim of this crime to be a child.

"What, one wonders, would McQueary have to see which might get him to call 9-1-1?

"Or, the real question, why did Mike McQueary not call police within this "educational environment" when - and I'm guessing here - he would probably have intervened if he had observed the same scene in another place, say, in a park or library rest room?"

In other words, the question becomes, how does the teaching of compliance and unquestioning respect for anything, deconstruct both our humanity and our communities? The Pennsylvania State University stands today as a monument to all that is wrong with the teaching of compliance in education, all that is wrong with traditional forms of institutional loyalty and "team spirit," and all that is wrong with reverence for leadership. All that is wrong with the community cultures of so many of our schools. And so, again, we must ask, how do we consciously, quickly, effectively, undo this.

What the Penn State story shows is that, at the "bottom" (to use Freeh's word), be it the custodial staff or a graduate student, the culture at Penn State was/is a culture of fear and blind compliance. No one, apparently, at that "bottom" felt allowed to trust their own judgments or to act on their own moral beliefs. All were sure that any challenge to the system would have devastating consequences for them. I suspect they were right, as was the reverse. Perhaps for his silence, certainly not because he had challenged Sanduskey or Paterno, Mike McQueary was the only graduate assistant coach of that time rewarded with a full-time job.

And this not only enabled child rape, it disabled thinking.

"Despite being children within easy reach of many supposedly great local figures, they were offered no outstretched hand. They were left to save themselves. This campus is plagued by desperate, insistent shrieks of `We are Penn State.' It's time for Penn State to realize that adhering to this mantra is distancing and self-defeating. It is time to follow a path of humility, not one of hubris." – Matt Bodenschatz, a Penn State student and spokesman for Voices for Victims.

And, I would argue, it is time to stop "training," and start "educating," because if Penn State had valued doubt, questioning, and individual decision-making, Jerry Sanduskey would have been jailed 14 years ago.

It may seem a huge leap to go from insisting on homework completion to Mike McQueary running away from the scene of a crime in progress and handing off moral responsibility to someone he had been told to respect ("You did what you had to do. It is my job now to figure out what we want to do," ... Freeh quotes Paterno as telling McQueary), but it is not a "slippery slope," rather, it is a direct path.

Do not challenge anything! Citizenship grading

Every time we tell a student what to do, we move decision-making from them to ourselves. Every time we decide how a student will learn something, we remove the learning of responsibility from that student. Every time we substitute our judgment ("You cannot skip class") for a student's own micro-economic decisions ("I have better things to do"), we block the learning of the connection between decisions and consequences. Every time we choose stock, pre-cooked rules for community developed moral and ethical expectations, we risk creating the next Mike McQueary, the next Graham Spanier, the next "Penn State."

A quick Google search found this "gem" of a definition of citizenship from a "California Distinguished School," Hilltop High School in Chula Vista, California:

"Citizenship grades are based upon the following criteria, each of which is observable during the grading period. Citizenship grades are also cumulative throughout the semester. Students are expected to be:

Responsible - Bring supplies regularly, submit completed assignments when due, have textbook covered at all times, request work missed during absences, put full name on all assignments, utilize class time wisely, be organized and neat (notebook, backpack, etc.).

Respectful - Behave in a manner conducive to the learning environment, follow all the rules within the class, be polite and courteous to the teacher and classmates, be friendly and helpful.

Reliable - Be on time and attend regularly (especially on testing days), make up work missed during absences, complete all individual and group work.

Honest - Some work is collaborative (group work) but most and especially quizzes / exams are not.  There is no tolerance for cheating, copying others, plagiarizing sources, etc. and severe penalties may result, including receiving an F grade in citizenship."

when your school reopens: don't be Penn State

This may seem like the "rules" in many schools, and it is probably close to the rules in Penn State's football building (We've been told many times this week that new coach Bill O'Brien's rules are "be on time and never lie to me."). It suggests that doubt, questioning, challenging, and making one's own decisions are not part of citizenship. It equates neatness with honesty, compliance with responsibility. It is a recipe for both school and community disaster.

Communities, societies, and nations succeed when people are not compliant, either in politics (think Thomas Jefferson), science (think Albert Einstein), arts (think anyone from Monet to Christo), or ethics (think about those French leaders in the late 1940s who began to forge a shared destiny with Germany). Communities, societies, and nations fail when they adhere to the past out of loyalty (think Czarist Russia, Imperial Germany, or Egypt's Mubarak Regime).

School begins (in the northern hemisphere) in five or six weeks. Will you be "Penn State"? Or will you be something better?

- Ira Socol

Cairo, Bahrain, Wisconsin: Teaching Democracy

How do you bring the controversies of the world into your classroom?

And why is it important to do so?

Democracy can only survive if citizens can successfully interact with each other and if they are able to successfully interact with information. And both things need to be practiced.

Different cultures have different forms of debate, and different comfort levels with debate. And so different students begin in different places. My child, raised in a family and culture where "political combat" is both art and game will enter this differently than the children of parents in Zeeland, Michigan who would not let their kids trick or treat at houses with Democratic Party campaign signs.

But wherever the starting point is, we need to carefully support listening skills, research skills, crap detecting, and a level of discourse that may find ideas repugnant, but not people.

That is, we must hear each other, we must research our positions widely, we must refuse to accept emotion or nonsense as facts, and we must respect our fellow citizens.

A vital resource on this is Teaching on Controversial Issues by Alan Shapiro.  Shapiro's opening advice, "A good citizen questions, informs himself or herself, thinks issues through, reaches conclusions, and participates in public life. A good teacher helps students to understand that controversy is the lifeblood of democracy, to learn how to inquire into past and current controversial issues that are meaningful to them, and to participate in public life," lies at the heart of the citizenship education we hear so much about.

Shapiro's last article, on the WikiLeaks controversy, provides a great model.

If we do not practice, we will end up with, well, the absurd level of debate we have currently in the United States, where up to two million people a night watch Glenn Beck uncritically and every politician we don't like is "Hitler" or "Stalin."

So step one: Prepare: We don't just begin the discussion, we ask students both what they think and why they think that.  When we do this it enables us to ask them to search both for information which supports their beliefs and information which challenges those ideas. You can't just say, Unions have rights, you need to explain why (yes, the United States has agreed to the right to collective bargaining by international treaty) and you need to understand the controversy. You can't just say, "Wisconsin can't afford it," or, "taxes are too high," you have to explain what that means, and what Wisconsin can afford, and what taxes are.

Step two is discuss and listen: We need to model an important behavior here. Argument can be impassioned without becoming abusive. If your student's father or mother is in Afghanistan, the military base in Bahrain might seem, might be, more important to you than Bahrainis voting. That does not make you evil, it means you are making a self-interested decision, which, we all tend to do in certain political situations. If you believe that Bahraini democracy is more important than potential disruptions to US military operations, that does not make you anti-American - rather suggests a different understanding on "American interests." Here, your role, your behavior, your actions within the classroom, as the teacher, truly make a difference. You have to decide how opinions you express, how reactions you have, will impact the conversation. If you say, "I worry about how a different Egyptian government might treat Israel..." or "I could lose 10% of my salary..." or "My son is a Marine in Afghanistan..." will that fundamentally change how your students debate this?

And as we discuss, Step three, is to challenge: It is essential that we raise a generation of doubters. Just tonight on Twitter I responded to a statement about the evil of Mao's regime in China by wondering if the "industrial revolution" Mao presided over was more deadly - proportionately - than the equivalent industrial revolutions in the United Kingdom 1700-1900? After all, in just one decade 12% of the population of British ruled Ireland died and a third fled. I don't bring that up because moral equivalency is an argument, but because perspective is. In another Twitter moment I asked why a teacher badmouthing her students on Facebook was worse than what New Jersey's Governor Chris Christie or US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has said about teachers? "Are you defending [the teacher]?" I was asked. "No," I said, but I wonder how we apply rules only from the bottom up.

So it is vital that students challenge statements. In fact, the more "accepted" a statement is, the more important it is for the doubt, the challenge, to be welcome. I don't care if the statement is, "the deficit is huge" (I don't know, is it? historically? internationally?) or "democracy is good" (let's define democracy, first, then, really? does it always work out?), it should require defense based on "real" information.

And when challenged, we need to expect better than we get from many of our current "leaders." We need to raise a next generation of leaders who can handle disagreement intelligently, and can provide workable defenses for their positions, or even, gosh, show an ability to change their minds based on new information.

If we can't raise the next generation to be better than this
angry, sarcastic, no facts form of argument, we're doomed

The politics of controversy in the classroom are complex, but if we are to continue to succeed as a society we better get better at it. And we need to convince our students that they can do a much better job than "we," or their parents, have done as generations.

- Ira Socol