If Life Was Fair (I'd be Rich & Have Hair)

The SAT will be adding an “adversity score” algorithm in an attempt to level the playing field for disadvantaged students. In these contentious times, this has, shockingly, generated a bit of controversy. 

I don’t pretend to know if an “adversity score”  is a good idea or bad idea. I give credit to the Educational Testing Service (ETS) for having (what passes for) its heart in the right place, for recognizing the inherent advantages of children from the affluent classes. ETS, of course, is also not divulging any of the details of its proprietary algorithm. While I don’t find fault with that decision, I also don’t trust them to make it work like it’s supposed to.

The program has been criticized from both poles, so maybe it’s not all bad. The bribery scandal that allegedly shocked the nation (Were you shocked? Was it really news that children of the wealthy had advantages not available to mere mortals?) was just an evolution. Large “donations” have been buying acceptance letters to prestigious schools for decades; we need look no further than our government. The main difference here was the attempt to make the process less obvious. You want more evidence? How about the fact that you can now buy an entry for your child if (s)he doesn’t actually win a ticket to the national spelling bee? ($1500 plus your travel and lodging expenses)

I’m not so naïve as to believe that adding one variable to the formula will change much, certainly not in the big picture. If you can pick your parents, all other things being equal, money will open more doors. I doubt that the number of kids, nationwide, who get a small bump to a (maybe more prestigious, not necessarily more appropriate*) particular school will be significant. If those few that do benefit bump an advantaged kid to a less prestigious, but undoubtedly still high quality, school, well, I doubt that will severely handicap the affluent kid.

In theory, though, this provides information to the admissions counselors (process) that may (slightly) change the perspective of the decision makers. Just knowing that an “adversity score” has been added may open eyes if not doors. Of course, because the Law of Unintended Consequences will not be denied, it might also unfairly discount the efforts of an applicant who would have received consideration outside of some arcane formula.

I’m skeptical that we can achieve fairness in the admissions process (or much of anything else, for that matter). That doesn’t mean, however, that we shouldn’t try to find ways to, if not actually level the playing field, at least remove some of the landmines. The effort and intent alone are worthwhile reminders that some of us start life’s marathon with unshared advantages that give us a head start.

* I was accepted at, and matriculated to, an allegedly prestigious college, with more graduates (per capita) than Harvard or Yale listed in Who’s Who in America, thanks in part to the fact that standardized tests were rigged in favor of white middle class (and above) kids (should there have been a “lack of adversity” factor?). Ivies, or Little Ivies, are not necessarily the best fit for kids from, shall we way, more common backgrounds. That was certainly the case for Hamilton (named for Alex while he was still alive) College and me. Mind you, my failure there was on me (does it make me exceptional, by comparison, to accept actual responsibility for that?), my immaturity, the cultural and socio-economic disparity between me and many of my classmates, my inflated opinion of my level of sophistication, plus multiple other factors obvious in hindsight.  Some of those would probably have played out no matter where I attended, but the point is, I used the wrong criteria (prestige high among them) to make my decision. But it all worked out, for me, at least, and I recognize my outcome was based, at least in part, on the advantages I had starting out.

Echoes from My Past Reinvigorate

This blog has (obviously) been on hiatus and you may have wondered why (or not). While nothing is really that simple, the simplest answer is that I found the current socio-political situation just too depressing, polarized, and entrenched to invest my increasingly limited energy into writing about it, feeling as though I’d either be preaching to the choir or screaming into a vacuum. Neither seemed worthwhile, plus, most of the time, I concluded that I had nothing of significance to add to my previous offerings.

So what has changed? Why emerge from hibernation now?

I arrived home Wednesday to a package, sent by my last high school girlfriend who had inexplicably saved all the letters I sent her through my first year of college. Inspired by an advice column in her local newspaper, she took the time to find my address and mail them to me (making sure to note that I wasn’t that special, she saved EVERYBODY’s letters!). While I’ve been wading through the 40+ epistles (she was right on target, I certainly wasn’t that special), I realized I wrote A LOT of letters (and, based on references in those missives, to a number of people).

As embarrassing as those letters are (Carolyn, thankfully, has shown zero interest in reading any of them; we long since concluded that my former self would not have been the least bit attractive to her.), what I quickly came to realize is that writing isn’t just something I do (obviously for fun, clearly not for profit), rather something I NEED. Looking back, I recognize that it was also something I did, regularly, throughout my teaching career (former colleagues will remember the union local’s most powerful weapon, TGIF), plus the occasional “Random Thoughts” memo after that newsletter disappeared (and, IMO, the local’s power went into decline).

While I always said that I wrote this blog for myself, that packet of letters from the past (I may have mentioned how embarrassing I find them now!) reminded me of the importance of continuing to write, not for the benefit of any particular audience (although I will not deny I do like having an audience, no matter how small, which may explain, at least to a certain extent, why I have a blog instead of a diary), but for my own mental health and well-being.

So, fair warning. Don’t Get Berndt is (probably) getting a re-boot. Whether it informs, entertains or (even) annoys you, this I do for me.

Genesis of a Libtard

Unlike Lady GaGa, I wasn’t born this way. I was a disaffected Republican long before I became what I am today, a disaffected Democrat. What follows is obviously incomplete, despite its length. My apologies because the point probably gets made well before the piece more stops than ends; perhaps this will eventually become a chapter in my autobiographical memoir.

Although my (moderately) conservative/Republican roots run deep, I am the outlier in my family. My father probably never voted for a Democrat in his life. In his later years at Friendship Village, he was a regular at meetings of the Concerned Conservative Citizens (aka Cranky Old White Boys Club). My brothers probably tilt farther right than I do left. But my final paper in my senior year of high school (1966) was an earnest assessment of the Republican Party and who in it could best return the country to their leadership. The first group I tried to join at the prep-school dominated Hamilton (named for Alex while he was still alive – old ivy on those walls) College was the Young Republicans.

So how did a white bread suburban boy (from the originally solid Republican Webster Groves) end up inhabiting the left side of the political spectrum? Because I reject simple and simplistic explanations and solutions, you may not be surprised to learn that I believe there are multiple reasons for my evolution and leftward shift.

• Child of the ‘60s: Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, Bob Dylan. Conservatives who now control the Republican Party have been consistent opponents to the expansion of civil rights for minorities and women since the ‘60s; Nixon’s “southern strategy” politically solidified that stance. Karl Rove put it in concrete with rebar reinforcements.

• First Job: Orderly on the men’s ward of old St. Luke’s on Delmar, lots of black patients and co-workers. Spare time reading the St. Louis American. God forbid I actually do any of the assigned reading required by UM-St. Louis!

• Marriage to an intelligent woman (met and worked with at the aforementioned St. Luke’s); father to an intelligent daughter, who has since given birth to an intelligent granddaughter. The goals of the women’s movement were/are obviously important – and personal. (My mother was born too soon and frustrated by the limited roles available to her. That added to the movement’s appeal.)

• Public school teacher in a district that served a population that did not share many of the advantages of their more affluent neighbors, including those in schools I had attended (Webster Groves and Ladue). This changed me on at least three different levels.

      ° I found myself almost immediately thrust into the nascent teacher union movement. Let’s just say that conservatives were not supportive of teachers having any power to advocate for themselves or their students. That being said, it was not always a Republican/Democrat dichotomy, and I voted for several Republican state representatives and state senators. Union endorsements tilted Blue, but were not exclusive by any means, at least not at first. In fact, as I set out in 1976 to find a candidate to support for state representative, Republicans were my first choice because the WG then was reliably Republican and I wanted to back a winner; WG, too, has shifted away from the new Republican Party; those denizens who remain are often derisively referred to as RINOs. As union power grew within the Democrat party, the Republican party countered by moving the right and becoming even less friendly, sometimes seemingly antagonistic, to the concerns of public education and educators (where it remains), as well as unions and workers in general.

      ° The word “underprivileged” rubs many of my formers the wrong way; one reason may be that “privilege” has taken on a different, more politically charged, meaning in the modern lexicon. Maybe they perceive the term as some kind of condescension that discounts what they’ve accomplished in life. Perhaps a preferable term is “disadvantaged.” Those students didn’t understand (and some still don’t, it seems to me) how badly the system is rigged, stacked against them. That many manage to beat the rigged game and still overcome those disadvantages speaks loudly to their resilience, but does not negate the existence of those obstacles they had to conquer to do so.

      ° While it is not a job requirement, per se, most teachers, or at least most of the best I know, are empathetic; we know that no one is solely responsible for either success or failure. Most of us have no trouble with the expression, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” Empathy has become a dirty word to modern day Republicans; and Trumpists, well, that’s a rant for another day, leading to....

• A growing belief that just because something is not MY problem does not keep it from being A problem. I find the left more accommodating of that POV than the right. In my dotage I have greatly narrowed the focus of the problems on which I concentrate, but that does NOT mean I can’t recognize the importance of the oh so many others faced by my fellow citizens. I have used the analogy before, but conservatives’ version of a social safety net is a leftover rope and the admonition to “Pull yourself up.” While liberals seemingly want to solve every problem, no matter how few people it affects, often devising overly complex (and often ineffective) systems that validate the Law of Unintended Consequences, they at least generally recognize that complex problems require more than simplistic solutions.

Finally, or at least my final point, is conservative resistance to the concept that health care is, or should be, a right of all citizens, and not limited by jobs or economic status. I have a daughter and granddaughter afflicted, through no fault of their own, with auto-immune diseases that could block them from affordable access to the health care system without the current protections for those with pre-existing conditions that conservatives want to strip from current law, so this is obviously extremely personal.

As the parties themselves become increasingly tribal, polar and partisan, I am disaffected, and often disgusted, by both. That’s my story and so here I stand, with clowns to left of me and jokers to the right; I certainly lean left now, but really see myself as stuck in the middle (hopefully with you).

Disclaimer: This deliberately provocative title to grab attention does NOT constitute permission to aim such an offensive insult at any other person or group; that would include me.

Incompatible

When I was a college freshman I took a vocational test (Strong Interest Inventory) that offered a score of 0-60 or 70 on your compatibility for certain professions. Although it turns out that teaching was a perfect fit for me (maybe not you, my student, but me, at least), I don’t recall that career score as being spectacularly high. What I do recall is that I was the only one of my friends with a NEGATIVE (below 0!) score on not one, but three potential careers. Notably leading the pack: police officer. (The other two were, not surprisingly to those who know me, minister and industrial arts teacher.)

One of the reasons I have so much respect for police officers is that I know full well it is a job I could never do, even poorly, much less at all. We may not share many personality traits, but what teachers and police do share is an under-appreciated, under-compensated, highly demanding job (that too many critics think they can do). Policing and protection take a certain personality type (and skills). And while there is no such thing as a typical teacher (or police officer, for that matter), I would suggest that in general the people best suited for teaching are poorly suited for policing, and vice versa. When I think back on the many teachers I have known, both as a professional and a student, the ones who seemed most focused on crowd, sorry, classroom, control often were the least inspiring in the classroom.

Which brings me to my main point, if you haven’t already guessed: you generally don’t want men and women best suited for policing teaching your children – it’s a poor fit. It may be well-intentioned, but “training” and arming teachers is a spectacularly bad idea; it has gained traction only out of a desperate sense of “We have to do something (but not anything that might interfere with our ability to arm ourselves with high capacity magazine weapons)!”

We all like to think we’d respond like a hero under fire, but the Parkland shooting shows that isn’t true, even for those armed and trained to respond. There’s a lot of macho bravado in this country (we’re not alone there, of course), and I enjoy those books and movies as much as the next person, but Stephen Crane (Red Badge of Courage) gave a more realistic portrayal. I'm guessing that most military veterans who have come under fire on our behalf (thank you for that) can provide examples of fellow soldiers who, shall we say, "blinked" under that kind of pressure.

And I am not criticizing them, not even the armed deputies who stayed outside the school while the shooter went on his rampage – disappointing, yes, but they wanted to go home to their families, too. I’d like to think I’d be like the teachers in school shootings who shielded their students and forfeited their lives in the process, but what I’d like to think and what I would really do is a scenario I hope I never have to encounter. However, as I head back for one more sub gig at Lindbergh HS in May, what I really hope is that as a country we have started to move toward actions that make such a life or death decision less likely. But pretending that training and arming teachers will do that is nothing more than a convenient fiction.

Remember the Law of Unintended Consequences as you ask yourself, “What could possibly go wrong?” Feel free to start the list below.

Build the Bleepin' Boondoggle

Let me be clear. The proposed border wall* is a monumental waste of money and will do little if anything to stop illegal immigration. (According to some sources, at least 25-30% of illegal immigrants come in by plane and then overstay their visas; no wall will change that, although cheaper solutions for that problem actually do exist.) Instead it will be a monument to a narcissist's ego, so it does have that going for it.

You think I’m being sarcastic. Well, it is my nature, but in this case that’s only a small part of the picture.

Our government wastes money by the barrel, although you and I may disagree on what actually constitutes some of that waste. In the big scheme of things, a $25 billion wall is a relatively small output for what I expect we would get in return.

Wait, what? I just said it’s a monumental waste of money and won’t work. No, that’s not a Trumpian Truth (convenient shift of position). Because there are, in fact, benefits to building the stupid thing, just not its intended one. Incidentally, the money won’t be spent either up front or all at once, so it is quite possible the waste will actually be less than that. The wall will take years to build and construction probably won’t begin until 2019 at the earliest. Assuming we elect someone competent in 2020, such a project can stop faster than it started.

Much of the expenditure for this vanity project will go to pay workers (at least some of whom, I’m willing to bet, will be immigrants, dreamers, and even undocumented aliens). So that money feeds the local economy.

Political pressure will almost certainly require the actual wall components, unlike most other Trump brand merchandise, to be made in this country, using domestic materials and suppliers, again fueling our economy.

Again, I’m not in any way suggesting the wall is the most, or even a, critical infrastructure need, but from a “trickle down” perspective it will serve the same purpose, creating jobs.

I’m a pragmatist. I do not think our immigration “problem” is the most pressing thing on our plate, certainly not in my neck of the woods. Its costs and alleged dangers are overblown and exaggerated, using isolated anecdotes, rather than research, to make things seem far worse than they are. But perception trumps reality, and this seems to be a front and center issue for the president and the trumpet section, one that is getting in the way of finding solutions to real (more important, IMO) problems, including a shortage of workers in jobs filled by immigrants on temporary work visas (that Americans will not take).

“….If we don’t truly secure our borders, you can say goodbye to our country.

[Senator Schumer] needs to understand that this isn’t just my demand. These are the non-negotiable demands of the American people!” (victory.donaldtrump.com)

Now I don’t trust either President Trump or Senator McConnell to actually KEEP their promises (both have demonstrated a complete lack of trustworthiness), but if the stupid wall is TRULY the obstacle to solving that mythical problem, it’s time to call the bluff, move on, and take this stupid idea off the table. Sometimes, as all parents know (to our chagrin), you give the toddler the damn piece of candy so you can get him in the carseat and move on down the road.**

* You might read The House of the Scorpion (2004) for an interesting take on a dystopian future prominently featuring a wall between Mexico and the U.S.

** Yes, I am aware of the dangers of such a strategy when the toddler is already a spoiled tantrum-throwing brat, that you are reinforcing that kind of behavior, but I’m pretty sure that ship has already sailed in this case.