On Chomsky's Driving Forces in US Foreign Policy

On Chomsky’s “Driving Forces in US Foreign Policy.” This talk is from last summer, but it just caught up to me now.  I've summarized bits of the 2-hour long talk and discussion.  It's all Chomsky's words, but the paragraphs are differently ordered under headings below:

On Global Warming and Nuclear Weapons 

The security of state power and concentrated private power is a driving force in state policy. What about security of the population? It’s easy to demonstrate that that’s a minor concern for state policy planners. Any literate person should be doubtless aware that global warming and nuclear weapons are dire threats to the security of the population. State policy is dedicated to accelerating the threats in both cases in the interest of primary concerns: it’s state power and concentrated private power that largely determine state policy.

In the case of global warming, it’s so obvious. It does illustrate very clearly the concern for security and certainly not for the population. It also illustrates the moral calculus of contemporary neo-liberalism of state capitalism. The fate of our grandchildren counts for absolutely nothing in comparison with the need to make more money tomorrow. That’s the driving principle of what’s called capitalism today.

It’s interesting to look at how the propaganda works. In the United States there’s a policy, there’s nothing secret about it, to try to convince the public either global warming isn’t real at all, or if it is, it has nothing to do with human activity. The policy has had some impact. The United States ranks lower in public concern of global warming…..It’s stratified, so among Republicans it’s one of the lowest in the world. The Columbia Journalism Review has a current article about this: one piece requires a counter piece, which leads to confusion on the part of the population. But there’s certainly no doctrine of fair and balance reporting in everything. If an article is denouncing Putin, there doesn’t have to run an opposing piece. The actual media doctrine of fair and balance holds in one case: when the concerns of private power are threatened. Nowhere else.

For the first time in history, we face the possibility of destroying decent existence, and NOT in the distant future. For this reason alone, it’s imperative to sweep away the ideological clouds and face honestly and realistically how policy decisions are made and what we can do to alter them before it’s too late.

On Western Control 

The Arab Spring broke a logjam in the Arab world. …The west is certainly going to try to prevent independent developments, but they may not succeed. There’s one striking example that you should pay attention to, and that’s South America. For 500 years, since the conquistadors, South America has been controlled by central powers, and for the last century and a half, largely the United States. Now South America has become the most free part of the world. In the western hemisphere, the United States and Canada are more isolated. Take a look at hemispheric conferences. The US and Canada are alone against the rest of Latin America. There was a dramatic illustration of this recently: Open Forum did a study of rendition: one of the most extreme forms of barbaric torture humans have developed. If the US wants someone tortured, they send them to countries to be tortured there so we can say we didn’t have anything to do with it.

Most of Europe participated in rendition by cooperating with the United States. One region of the world refused to participate: Latin America. Which is amazing. First of all it’s been under total US control for the last century, and during this period, it was the world center of torture…. Now it’s the one region that refused to participate in US administered torture. That’s the kind of thing that could happen – and it could happen in the Middle East….

In the history of imperialism, most crimes were carried out by mercenaries. Black fighters were used to control groups in South Africa. In India, Indian fighters were used. The US deviated from the pattern by sending its own soldiers. But you can’t take people off the street to turn them into fighters. The US army fell apart – soldiers began killing officers, got hooked on drugs. So they moved to a professional army in more recent years, back to imperial patterns and mercenaries.  They're called contractors now [like Blackwater / Academi]. Look at Iraq and Afghanistan, they have many contractors – but that’s the traditional imperial pattern. It makes sense to keep your own civilians away from the fighting and hand that out to professional killers.

We don’t have to tolerate that, of course. That’s up to us.

On Saviours

It’s true that people are always waiting for a saviour, and no saviour’s going to come. That’s not how things work. People can create the conditions under which some decent person may become a spokesperson, but they don’t come from above and organize the movement. Take Martin Luther King, a very significant person. I respect him a lot, and he would be the first to tell you that he did not create the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement was created by young black activists in the south that sat in at lunch counters, rode freedom buses, got beat up and killed,…. and Martin Luther King was a spokesperson for them. That’s how leaders come. But notice what happened with Martin Luther King – there’s a national holiday…but the rhetoric stops with his ‘I have a dream speech’ in Washington….he didn’t stop there.

He went on to confront class issues in the North. When he was assassinated, he was supporting a public sanitation workers strike – and he was on his way to lead a march on Washington to form a poor people’s movement to strike at class issues. He was assassinated. The march took place anyway led by his widow. That part of Martin Luther King’s history is gone. It’s fine to attack the racist chair of Alabama, but don’t look too closely of what we’re doing. That’s the fault of people like us who didn’t do the things we should have done. You won’t get a leader who will save you until you do the work, and then you’ll get a spokesperson.

On Personal Efforts:  Political Transparency, OWS, Revolutions, and Capitalism

Samuel Huntington said, “Power must remain in the dark. Exposed to the sunlight, it begins to evaporate.”  That’s what lies behind what we’re talking about. One thing you can do is to expose power to the sunlight to let it evaporate. Exposing power to the sunlight has to be a preliminary to the only thing that has ever worked in history: mass popular organization. And that has achieved plenty of results…. The power is actually in the hands of people like you, but it has to be exercised. And that requires organization and action. As an individual you can do very little. But when you get together you can do almost anything. And that’s been demonstrated over and over again through history.

You mentioned Occupy, and that’s interesting and important. If I had been asked myself should people occupy Zuccotti Park in New York, I’d say no and I would have been wrong. It was remarkably successful. Within days, weeks, there were hundreds of occupy movements across the country and worldwide. I actually spoke at an occupy event in Australia. It lit a spark which had a real impact and it changed a lot of things: it changed the discourse and put equality on the agenda for the first time, and now phrases like the 1% is common coin. But remember that occupy was a tactic, not a movement. Every tactic has diminishing returns, and this one in particular couldn’t continue over the winter. So it has to turn into a movement, and to some extent it has.

There are no magic tricks. That’s the one that’s worked throughout history. There’s always regression – power systems don’t say, “Thank-you we’re going to give you the power.” They try to maintain themselves, and that’s class struggle. It goes on through history, and it will continue.

As individuals there’s very little we can do to confront the problems we face, but if people get together, then they can do a great deal. They belong to something. It’s happened all the time in the past – for thousands of years. It’s how feudalism was overthrown, it’s how slavery was overthrown in recent years, it’s how women were able to get minimal or relatively equal rights.

During the French Revolution, people carried things forward, but there was a regression, which is very common. Power systems do not give up willingly. They’ll fight back. We can then go on from a higher plane. Capitalists will only win if you let them win.

We should recognize that what exists isn’t remotely like capitalism. There is a system of corporate power but …lots of ways to overcome it and remove it, and some of them are happening right now. Take the United States, the industrial region has declined seriously because of a decision to undermine manufacturing – there is a reaction – worker-owned industry which is spreading over the region. A couple years ago Obama nationalize the auto industry….He could have handed it over to the work-force to let them produce the things that the country really needs. That could have been done, and would have been done – but we can only blame it on the failure of people like us to do what we should have been doing.

Look at the women’s movement in US history just after the American Revolution. According to British law, women were not person, but the property of her father, which was handed over to the husband. One of the arguments against women having the vote is that it would be unfair to unmarried men, because married men would get two votes because obviously the property votes as the owner does. It wasn’t until the 1960s that it totally collapsed….And then as recently as 1975, the supreme court recognized that women are legally called peers… that’s a big change….When I started at MIT in the 1950s, the halls were full of white males, obedient, deferential. Today it’s half women, one third minorities, and informal relations, which matters a lot. Those are big changes. They came by organized, activist efforts, which met a lot of resistance, but won a lot of games.

[Refering to the number of people at his talks:] People are interested but atomized, not organized. You have to have enough privilege to spend your time doing research. That’s how popular movements get organized. And when they’re powerful enough, change happens. Pick the forms of activism that makes sense.

There are no formulas. And there are no limits.

On Acting Nice

I've been watching lots of movies and thinking about this bit from Aristotle:

"But we get the virtues by having first performed the energies, as is the case also in all the other arts; for those things which we must do after having learnt them we learn to do by doing them; as, for example, by building houses men become builders, and by playing on the harp, harp-players; thus, also, by doing just actions we become just, by performing temperate actions, temperate, and by performing brave actions we become brave.  Moreover, that which happens in all states bears testimony to this; for legislators, by giving their citizens good habits, make them good; and this is the intention of every lawgiver, and all that do not do it well fail; and this makes all the difference between states, whether they be good or bad.... 

Again, every virtue is produced and corrupted from and by means of the same causes; and in like manner every art; for from playing on the harp people become both good and bad harp-players...for if this were not the case, there would be no need of a person to teach, and all would have been by birth, some good and some bad. The same holds good in the case of the virtues also; for by performing those actions which occur in our intercourse with other men, some of us become just and some unjust....It does not therefore make a slight, but an important, nay, rather, the whole difference, whether we have been brought up in these habits or in others from childhood" (Nicomachean Ethics Book II, Chapter 1).

If it's the case that watching shows regularly can influence our actions towards others (as I suggested here), would it not follow that it's even more influential to act out the actions in the shows regularly?

It's not uncommon for actors in films and shows and plays who are playing the part of lovers to actually fall in love.  It could just be the case that two people working together fall for one another through proximity alone, but then why don't more actors fall for the camera operators or stage hands or secondary players.  I think there's something about saying the lines to one another over and over, or even just staring into one another's eyes, that creates the feeling.

But I'm curious about more villainous and harmful acts - more harmful than a new attraction ending an old relationship, and how Artistotle's ideas connect significantly with recent findings on neural pathways in the brain.

The brain gets accustomed to our typical activities and changes when they stop or when new activities start: “neurons seem to ‘want’ to receive input….When their usual input disappears, they start responding to the next best thing” (29)....Once we’ve wired new circuitry in our brain…’we long to keep it activated.’ That’s the way the brain fine-tunes its operations. Routine activities are carried out ever more quickly and efficiently, while unused circuits are pruned away” (34).

The key difference in current brain science and Aristotle's contemplations is that we now believe that childhood isn't the end all and be all of brain development.  We can alter the pathways through our behaviour as adults. There is ever time to change, albeit it can be a more difficult battle to change the pathways than to create them in the first place.

In Birdman, the play inside the film ends with a suicide.  As a theatre piece with a long run, the actor would be shooting himself in the head every night.  Does that repeated act on stage make it easier to carry out in real life?  In Nightcrawler, Gyllenhaal altered the way he moved, his facial gestures, and his speech to become utterly creepy.  How well does he turn that off when he's not on the set?  How quickly does the creepiness re-enter in inopportune times when his ego's depleted, like during an argument.  After many childhood dance recitals, when asked to ad lib a dance for an audition (a lifetime ago), I reverted immediately to a collection of moves from past dances.  The body memory had created a pathway that was easiest to find in a pinch.

But the actors in our lives who, for instance, pretend to be nice for their own gain, they don't become nicer over time.  Their pretending is part of the action to the point that their nice-act becomes hard to stop.  It becomes difficult to be authentically kind or thoughtful.  Is it the case, then, that stage actors have a harder time turning off the pretending, than turning off the current characters they're embodying for part of each day?  

As a teacher, I have developed certain traits that have spilled over into my "real" life, but many of these are useful.  I stay calm and can often diffuse a situation when others are arguing angrily.  I listen patiently to the least-interesting conversations.  But then I also really want to impart information wherever I go, and tell others what to do and when to speak.  These are habits I actively repress outside of my job - and not always well.  However, during my classes, I'm not actively pretending to be a teacher.  I'm behaving appropriately as a good role model of behaviour, which, I think, is what Aristotle suggests we do.  We should act kindly and courageously as if we're role models for the world to follow.  And sometimes pretending to be kind and acting on it, not for self-gain, but as a means of practicing, can create an authentic kindness.

It's a similar problem found in self-help books that encourage us to think happy thoughts.  While smiling can actually make us feel a little happier, focusing on acting happy can have the reverse effect because somewhere inside we know it's an act.



The implications of all this isn't just a watchful eye over the behaviours of our children, but of ourselves, of our smallest actions that can get embedded as habits. And if it's the case that pretending is attached to the action being pretended, then it seems to follow that we can allow sword fights with sticks, or water gun fights, or teasing when it's very clear that it's a game (and not just a consequence-free passive-aggressive act of anger or retaliation).  And our actors won't be unduly corrupted by their actions.   But only if it all starts with the right attitude towards the good.    

On Pseudonymns

A post at Feminist Philosophers discusses why some bloggers feel the need to write under an alias, and the respect this decision necessitates.  The reasons are primarily around safety.  Bloggers - particularly female bloggers - can get some nasty comments.  Sexually aggressive comments are the pinnacle of this escapade.

I used to write under a pseudonym.  When I was on mat leave with my youngest, now ten, I wrote a mommy blog that got about 100 times the traffic as this blog.  I was able to write a few times a day, targeting a niche audience.  I wrote short posts about babies, sex, and the trials and tribulations of a relationship going sour.  In some blogging circles, it was gold.  But I stopped because a couple wankers went to town on the hate-rape comments.  I had a blog-specific e-mail that filled with the vitriol daily.   I blocked them, but they kept coming back with different identities.  Or there were a lot of them - but the consistency of the posts, times of day they'd arrive, wordings, etc. made me think there were only two or three.

It was enough for me to pack it in.  I had better things to do anyway.

Now, curiously, I write with my real name and photo and lots of details about where I live and work.

Seems crazy, right?  Am I just baiting the creepers to come find me?

I actually started writing without a pseudonym in part because, when I had one, I always worried that I'd be found out.  I worried that something I wrote could be traced to me and cause me to lose my job.   (Good teachers don't talk about sex on the interwebs.)  Without an alias, I'm more careful to write as if everyone I know is reading.  I don't have to worry about being found out if I'm out already.  Secrecy is always so burdensome.

Writing personal crap is fascinating reading to many, but it's limited.  It's hard to do it well without getting sucked into whining to get the rewards of multiple ((((hugs)))) in the hundreds of comments following.  It can lead to self-absorbed writing that only barely mimics more interesting self-exploration.

I don't write on a personal level much here, so that distances me from any audience.  And I don't have much traffic, so I can still get my long-winded thoughts down, get the occasional comment or two, and avoid any obnoxious e-mails.  Keeping it real, keeps me much more authentic and thinking, rather than barfing out a free-for-all of gossipy rants.

But I also wonder if safety through anonymity is illusory.  At school we're warned that, even if we write under a pseudonym, if we're found out through a search of IP addresses, then we're still on the hook for everything we say.  And it's similar for people writing for safety from predators.  Anyone can be found now.

But beyond being found, I think people act differently towards a real name (or a reasonable facsimile) and a fake one.  I think it's harder to slam people when you're looking their photo in the eye and addressing them by name.  I might have an easier time saying something snide to Giraffeboy37 with an avatar than I would to Dave in his Christmas sweater.

Harris on Harper

Michael Harris discusses union busting tactics, forcing members out of office, refusing compensation for veterans, and other scandals of the Harper years - so far.

The Newsroom: On Journalism, the Environment, and Sexism

I just finished watching the final season of The Newsroom as it appears catching up on shows is becoming a personal tradition on the first day of any holiday.  It was a cringe-worthy six hours with a few redeeming story-lines.  Here be ton o' SPOILERS including the fact that it ends with a wedding, a funeral, and a baby - the holy trinity of lazy plot lines.

Journalism

The themes of the show were timely in that we're discussing media integrity in my class.  But we watched Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land instead.  The Newsroom is a fantasy news show the way The West Wing was a fantasy political show, so we can have higher hopes than is typical.  Unfortunately, we end up disappointed.  They harped on the reality that facts much be checked carefully, and they had one bit of moral soul-searching as Maggie decided against using a scoop she got in an unethical manner all scrunched down in a chair.

But the big message of the season is that social media is full of dangerous lies.  In several episodes they contrast a populist and speedy bit of intel with a more accurate but slow and steady bit to show us how real news must work.  They came across more as flummoxed luddites baffled by the existence of blogs than righteous journalists.  The only social media that seems to exist is the likes of Buzzfeed and Gawker.  There aren't journalist bloggers informing the world, nor are there people live-tweeting events as they happen, and the ACN's twitter feed gets used by a sleepy girl who says stupid things that makes the company look bad.  It's boringly two-dimensional.

Media is changing, but it's not wise to slander all social media with such a broad brush in the hopes that it will send us scurrying to network news channels.  What has to happen now is that we each have to follow well - choose carefully where we get information in the first place.  Then we have to fact check our own sources through multiple credible sources.  AND we have to THINK about what we're reading or watching.  Always with the thinking.  Most people won't do any of that, and they'll stay in the dark, ignorant to world news.  Nothing new.  But, as the show suggests, it can be dangerous if the masses people believe rumours.  Still nothing new.  Even their own newsroom was wrong in the past.  They don't forget that, but they also don't really remember it when it comes to this argument.

Environment

Maggie struggles to make the environment interesting and Jim mocks her efforts in the most douchie way possible and makes her beg for his help.  Cute.  She's a top reporter now, but can't find an angle for a major story because we all know the environment is SOOO booorrrring!

The EPA top dog is interviewed, and tells Will of an apocalypse coming within 80 years or so and that he thinks we're doomed no matter what we do now because we've missed our chance to save the day.  Mother Jones fact checked the speech and found the numbers pretty accurate, but the numbers are publicly available and not really the big secret the episode made them out to be.

Grist has this to say,

"There is no line you cross where bad weather becomes a "failure of the planet," such that we'll be able to identify the first person to die from such a failure. It's not going to be that dramatic.  Making it sound like there's going to be some sudden break only makes people blind to the incremental changes already underway. It makes them think climate change is something that might happen, something we might or might no avoid, rather than something that's already underway and has to be managed." 

And both say his level of resignation is not yet necessary.  We still have a fighting chance.  The real EPA still suggests we can save the world by changing the kinds of lightbulbs we use!  It would have been easier done sooner, yes, but it's still possible to slow things down.

But just because it's not as dramatic as a meteor strike doesn't mean it's not newsworthy or interesting.

And then they all moved on and never spoke of it again.

Sexism

Emily Nussbaum's article in the New Yorker points out that the show is "consistently worried about scurrilous sexual gossip directed at prominent men."  It might be something men fear because it seems to be one of few ways of actually taking them down.  Inside Job painted a portrait of financiers who bring prostitutes on the road with them, but then only the disliked in the group - the ones not playing ball - are actively destroyed by their libido being outed.  I got the sense from that film that it's a normal part of the culture that's dragged out into public forums only if necessary.  It's like the law for open carry - which, in my parts, means having an open case of beer in your trunk.  It's technically illegal, but everyone does it.  But if cops want to arrest you for something else, they can bring you in for that opened case.  If the analogy is remotely accurate, then it's very clever of men to get everyone involved in something they can use against them later!

The show tries with a variety of men and women, but they all still fall into pat and dull stereotypes.  They are many annoyingly dumb men who still have more options and control than their clever female counterparts.  Only the one guy in the group doesn't clue in to the fact that Mac is pregnant.  The  male twin is baffled by anything going on during a billion dollar acquisition.  And all the men are stereotypically fearful of relationships.  I've never actually met an adult man like that in real life, but there are scores of them on TV.

And it seems like most of the women get or keep jobs because of their sexual relationships with the men in the office.

Some superficial attempts at being pro-woman actually make things worse:  Like when Maggie tries to convince Jim to be supportive of his girlfriend even when Hallie just wrote an exposé of their relationship that barely concealed his identity.  Men should be supportive of women no matter what nasty stuff they do.  Or when Will admonishes his cell-mate for hitting a girl.  Of course domestic violence is a horrible crime, and they pointed out this must be his third strike to end up in jail, but Will's speech has something about it that doesn't sit well.  It promotes a chivalry that still allows for more subtle sexism.

Jim got Maggie a job - implying she'd be lost without him - but then he tried to save her from leaving by offering her a promotion.  At least she chose to leave anyway, and he supported her.  There's that; so she didn't waste her time training him to support women for nothing (a necessary move because he's so dumb). Then a male subordinate is told of his female boss' promotion before the boss - who only hears about it as the subordinate announces it!  When would anything like that ever happen?

And then there's the weird chat Don and a rape victim have in her dorm room.  But that's been talked about all over the interwebs.  The moral is to never judge anyone until after s/he's been to court.  Reporters shouldn't interview anybody whose words could damage someone who hasn't officially been charged with a crime, even if they're unlikely to ever be charged.  Well, unless they're rich and powerful.  But if a girl has been assaulted, and went to the police, and no arrests were made, then she should just be quiet about it.  Only a judge can determine if a crime was committed. Once again, things can't be left to the court of public opinion.  The right people have to tell us what to think, not teach us how to think for ourselves.


And then there was...

- a Human Resources officer following around a dating couple to prove they're dating, threatening to separate them, because, it turns out, he thought it would be funny.  He was actually a fan of their awesome love  (or something like that).  And he apparently had nothing else to do with his days.  And this was after doing nothing about an employee who openly admitted to sleeping with many women on staff which was clearly causing problems in the office.

- an ethic professor who is totally clueless about personal discretion - but was sensitive enough to  somehow recognize that Maggie is really in love with Jim even though there's zero chemistry between them.

- a brilliant lawyer turned journalist who can't, for the life of him, remember anybody's name, but doesn't think it would be a problem to refer to people by racist names as a fill-in.

- an executive producer who ties her hair back whenever there's work to be done, but always leave the front bit in her face and often right in front of her eyes - the bit that would typically be the whole point of tying it back in the first place.  

- a newsroom dedicated to integrity, but quick to hide a friend who commits a felony.


After all this, it was entertaining.  It just wasn't excellent entertainment.    

On Sex Ed, Double Standards, and the Red Herring of Consent

My philosophy class discussed Erin Anderson's article from Friday's Globe and Mail, and it provoked a whole gamut of topics.  I'll try to encapsulate some of them here.  The article starts with an important question:

"The question left is whether we'll waste this moment, leaving the teenagers today to have the same conversation decades from now.  It's time to talk about solutions - in the courts, on the Internet and in our schools."

SEXUAL EDUCATION

The article calls for better sex ed in the high schools.  I agree, but what Anderson fails to realize is that, while Ontario students must take one Health and Physical Education credit to graduate, they can take it in any grade.  They don't all have to take the grade 9 health curriculum that focuses on sex ed.  And there were many stories from my class of some of the fear-inducing or just plain silly lessons from middle school health classes.  Sex ed must be improved dramatically to include "consent training" and "bystander training," as the article points out, but I think that has to happen outside of health class as well.  It must be part of mandatory courses, and I think it's particularly suited to fit randomly throughout English and civics courses.

Luckily, new curriculum documents (I believe for all courses) have or will have "front pages" - a reference to the preamble before the actual essential course learnings - that demand a focus on environmental education, healthy relationships, equity and inclusive education, and financial literacy as it applies to the subject area.  History got a curricular make-over just this past year, and the new Social Science blurb (p 41) on healthy relationships sounds pretty good:

"Healthy relationships are based on respect, caring, empathy, trust, and dignity, and thrive in an environment in which diversity is honoured and accepted.  Healthy relationships do not tolerate abusive, controlling, violent, bullying/harassing, or other inappropriate behaviours."  

This is or will be an actual part of every course now which is much more effective than forcing it into a few weeks of one course.  In teachers' college, we had a week of equity and inclusion studies that many deemed "pink week," and ridiculed it as such.  When I taught Careers, I tossed in an article about sexual harassment in the workplace in the middle of discussing employee dynamics, with no discernible backlash from students.  If we can sneak this type of education in throughout all our courses, it could actually foster a cultural shift.  I'm ever optimistic!

But, of course, we have to make sure it's addressed well.


CONSENT IS A RED HERRING

But one problem I have with Anderson's article, is the way it frames the issue of sexual assault as a matter of innocently misunderstood signals.  Yes, that happens here and there as we continue to see the rape myth perpetuated in films enough that some might still think resistance is part of the mating dance.  But I think it can often be an excuse for behaviour - "It was all just an honest mistake!" - and part of a larger issue of a lack of respect for women in general.  The fact that the article started with a discussion about Jian Ghomeshi makes it curious that it went down the "consent training" road.  From all reports, it's pretty clear that JG didn't misunderstand the signals he was getting.  He just wanted to hurt some women.

And, skirting an uncomfortable issue but no less relevant to my argument, my students got into a good analysis of the double standard.  "Men can have many partners and be cool, but women can't."  "Even if guys are okay with a girl who's slept around, girls like that have to deal with the consequences that no guy will actually date her."

Still.  In 2014.

Of course no discussion on this topic is complete without the requisite Breakfast Club double-edged sword speech:



My questions, as always, is "Why?"  Why does that happen?  What cultural forces maintain that dichotomy that hasn't budged since I was in high school in the early 80s.  I watched all sorts of gains made in racial issues and LGBTQ issues, but this one hasn't moved.  Do we want it to continue for some reason?  Who's benefitting from it?  Why won't it die??


Biology

Some said it's part of nature.  I guess since women have children, we have to protect them from being tainted with bad seed.  Many philosophers over the centuries have written about the importance of knowing for sure that a wife's children are actually her husband's, so a chaste woman is necessary to ensure proper lineage.

Almost 200 years ago, Schopenhauer said it's natural for men to be okay with multiple partners. Their will to live is satisfied by the possession of love - i.e. sex - regardless whether or not the desire is shared by the woman:

“But yet that in every case of falling in love, … the essential matter is not the reciprocation of love, but possession, i.e., the physical enjoyment. The certainty of the former can therefore by no means console us for the want of the latter; on the contrary, in such a situation many a man has shot himself. On the other hand, persons [i.e. men] who are deeply in love, and can obtain no return of it, are contented with possession, i.e., with the physical enjoyment. This is proved by all forced marriages, and also by the frequent purchase of the favor of a woman, in spite of her dislike, by large presents and other sacrifices, nay, even by cases of rape.” 

And, he continues, women are biologically determined to want love more than sex so they, and their children, can live securely.

Nowadays many of us call that essentialism and believe we are more than our biological or evolutionary mechanisms.  Our brains are more complex and efficiently designed than most of the other animals with segregated gender roles.  And, since we have birth control and DNA testing, how much does it matter if women have a variety of partners?  So why is this still maintained so vociferously?

There's another bit of biology that came up though - that the act of penetrating is different than being penetrated.  That women are a vessel that contains men's semen.  If she's been with 50 men, then she'll be "loose."  I countered that women give birth and bounce right back, but I should have argued that she could be with one man 50 times and not raise the same concerns.  It's the "kill count" that matters.  It's the image of the hot dogs down the hallway, the jizz bucket, sloppy seconds, damaged goods - as if sexually active women don't bathe and sex destroys their genitals - but only if it's with many men.  They can be tainted in a way that men can't because men leave something behind, deep inside, that seems to leave a lasting mark - forever.

But the vagina cleans itself out, kids.  Regularly.  Geez!

I can't scoff too much because I remember being in grade 12,  just when AIDS was first discussed, and, because it seemed relegated to gay men and prostitutes, my group of friends surmised that if one man's sperm touches another man's sperm it's actually fatal!   That's why sex education is so important.

But their imagery paints a picture that can be hard to shake.

ETA - And four classes later, someone raised the "vaginal looseness" argument AGAIN, so I was able to discuss the 50 times vs 50 people argument after all (and reiterate that they really need better sex ed classes).  But another argument was added to the fray:

"If a woman's vagina couldn't go back, then the tampon industry would go under because sexually active women's tampons would be falling out all over the place.  So if a woman's vagina can accommodate a tampon, it's likely small enough for your needs."

Whatever works to get the point across.


Religion

It's all because of religion.  Like the biology explanation, I think this is too simplistic. And there were myriad sexual restrictions long before the Christians ruined all the fun.

The Code of Hammurabi - written centuries before Genesis - states:

142. If a woman wishes to divorce her husband and refuses him sexual rights, an inquiry shall be held. If she has not committed adultery but her husband has, she may take her dowry and return to her father's house. 143. If she has committed adultery, then she shall be executed by being thrown into the water.....154. If a free man has sexual relations with his daughter, that man shall be exiled....159. If the first wife and a female slave of a free man both bear him sons, and the father acknowledges the sons of the female slave as his own, then the sons of the female slave shall share equally with the sons of the first wife in the paternal inheritance after the death of the father....171. If the father did not acknowledge the sons of the female slave as his own, then the sons have no right to share in the paternal inheritance; but both the female slave and her sons shall be given their freedom.

Sexual restrictions are part of society to maintain social order.  Sometimes they're officially legislated, but it's an easier time to keep order if they're part of the social fabric.  It can cause conflicts if we all sleep with anyone without respect for who's bothered by our shenanigans.  So my beginning position is that there is an order that is somewhat maintained by the sexual double standard.  Maybe if we can get to the perceived necessity for the structure, we can dismantle the attitudes.

Social Control

We ran out of time before I could postulate my own theories, but I think it's mainly about control.

If sexually confident women - or even just attractive women -  are sluts, then it reduces the competition for nice hetero girls.  So girls definitely benefit from reinforcing the dichotomy even if it's to their own detriment later.  It can be a means for girls to keep other girls from their guy by labelling them as diseased so that they become less attractive to their potential mate and even shameful to be seen with.  The solution to this dynamic is to recognize the abundance of potential mates available.  We don't need to complete with each other.  If she likes him, and he likes her back, let him go.  There are plenty to go around.

But I think for men the dynamic is perpetuated because many guys still like the upper hand in a relationship.  Not nearly all, of course.  There are confident men who can be with an experienced woman, but some really can't.  Like Silent Bob explains in Chasing Amy:



Personally, if a man has kept himself chaste and demands the same of a woman, I can respect that.  But if a man has seen some action, or tried to, and has a different standard for the women he dates, then I really can't tolerate that hypocrisy.

As I said in a previous post, saying no can precipitate retaliation of the weirdest sort.  I once turned down a guy just on a date to a movie, and he denigrated me to his friends mercilessly.  And it was just a movie, AND I was in a relationship at the time.  Some people don't take rejection well.  It's not the problem of the nay sayer, but that retaliation, unfortunately, is something women sometimes have to cope with.  So some girls say yes when they don't want to. And then they're ruined in the eyes of the Silent Bobs of the world.  But some girls want to say yes because they want to.  And that should be okay.

Here's the dynamic I think's at play:

Last summer I went on a date with a guy who I discovered, part way through the meal, loves Stephen Harper.  He challenged me to say one bad thing about him.  I listed a medley of dismantled environmental laws and regulations that are permanently destructive to Canada, not to mention the stranglehold he has on scientists.  But, I think separate from his politics, this guy's response was very interesting:

"Yes but, you can't talk about that because I don't know anything about the environment.  It's not fair because you're an environmentalist, and that's not my field."

So... let's get this straight.  I shouldn't discuss any piece of knowledge I have that a man doesn't have during a debate?   This man anyway.

But it's not just this one guy.  I've seen that same type of response here and there in other relationships over the years.  An early boyfriend whined that I'm so much more worldly than he because I lived in Ottawa for a year - Ottawa - so we just don't fit.  And a male friend insisted I didn't influence his musical tastes even though he hadn't heard of Ween or Primus before he met me and now is a rabid follower of both.  It feels to me like it couldn't be possible for him to have been influenced musically by a woman.  I could be wrong on this, of course, but it feels like a significant behaviour - a dynamic primarily between two sexes.

There's an insecurity there.  A fear.   And it hinges on what real men do and don't do.  Real men don't learn things from women, and part of that means that they should be the most experienced in the bedroom.  And the underlying current here, is that women don't have the status to teach, to know, to have seen more things - and they won't be respected if they have.  This likely ties in with the reality that smart, successful women are often single:

A study conducted with 121 British participants reported findings that females with high intelligence in male/female relationships were seen as problematic. Their intelligence were predicted to cause problems in the relationships. Whereas, high intelligence in the male partner was not seen as problematic, but desirable.

My sense is that until we can address this behaviour and belief system, we're going to be stuck with the double standard and with the sexual assaults.  It's all part and parcel of the same mentality:  This woman isn't really worth anything, so I can use her as a sex toy, as a punching bag, as a maid, as a nanny for my kids....

But then there's this guy, Terry Crews on Manhood, Feminism, and the Mindset that Leads to Rape:

"People are scared of being controlled....Feminism is not saying women are better than men....We're talking about... true gender equality.  But the problem is that men have always felt that they're more valuable....I have been that guy....Men have been manipulated to chase their win....You have to know you're already valuable."

People are getting their sense of value from their conquests, from their stuff, from their trophies, instead of from within.  Some men have a sense of entitlement over women and see women as a trophy that they deserve, whether she likes him or not.  And, I think, part of that includes wanting to be the only man the woman has ever known.  Crews says, "Never should that ever be accepted."

He suggests that men have to step up the join the battle against the patriarchal mindset that damages everyone:

"I relate it to...civil rights....Let's say the people who were silent....and the black school with two books, and the white school had everything, and you were quiet.  You were accepting it.  Same thing with men right now. You're not saying anything, you are, by your silence, accepting it.... 

The big thing for me is just that when you see another person as your equal there are things you just won't do....You would only go ahead when someone says no unless you feel you own them, you're above them....you feel they're your property.... 

We're not battling people, we're battling a mindset....It's like cutting a tree down by the leaves, it just grows back....nobody's getting at the stump.  The stump is the mindset that people feel they're more valuable than one another.....You think you're better than everybody.  The issue is every man wants intimacy....all intimacy is [that] you want to be known...and loved....Sex comes later.  The problem is people are chasing sex to chase intimacy, and you'll never be satisfied."  

Men are weaker, more fragile, more vulnerable than they feel they could ever admit. De Beauvoir discussed this at length almost 70 years ago.  Hiding that fragility is a huge burden to maintain.  Crews says, "Admit you don't have it....Keep a moment where that pride is out of here."  And maybe we can stop the competitions, and begin to see one another with respect, on an even plane, as actual equals.


BUT WOMEN LIE ABOUT RAPE A LOT

The only discussion I cut off during the class was this one.  Like the evolution vs creation debate, and the climate change vs natural fluctuations debate, saying some women lie to ruin men's lives doesn't rate an equal billing with some women get raped.  'Nough said.

Inequality for All

I watched Robert Reich's film last summer on a camping trip.  I woke up in the middle of a pitch-dark night and couldn't fall back asleep.  I tried a movie on my phone to lull me into a coma, but this was the wrong one to choose.

Reich's film clearly explains how we've gotten into this economic pickle, and he offers solutions to get ourselves out.  Here's a synopsis the 90 minute film.  It's about the U.S., but much of it applies to Canada as well, so I use "we" throughout.

The (corporate controlled) media has created the illusion that the U.S. is poor, and we don't have any taxes to pay for anything, but that's a myth.  The U.S. is very wealthy, richer than it's ever been, but it's just no longer sharing the wealth in a way that can support itself.

The media also contributes to the problem by spinning any attempt to discuss income inequality into a conversation about class warfare - which, apparently, is a topic to avoid.  Jon Oliver gets at this issue very well and in only 14 minutes (with jokes!):



We have the same disparity now as we did in the 1920s - just before the great depression.  Policies that benefit a few at the expense of the many, according to Oliver, get passed because we've been brainwashed to believe erroneously that we, too, will end up in the upper echelons with the very wealthy:

"60% believe our system unfairly favours the wealthy, but, and here's the key, 60% also believe that those who work hard enough can make it.  Or, in other words, 'I can clearly see this game is rigged, which is what's going to make it so sweet when I win this thing!'"

Or, as Steinbeck said,

Federal estate tax is created to tax anything over 5 million, and is on the verve of being abolished because people think it might apply to them one day.  The problem with inheritance is it keeps the wealth circulating in few hands, and the poor have less chance of every getting out of poverty.  Marx was on the problems of inheritance, but from the other end.  He warned about the error of dismantling inheritance first while leaving the economic system intact:

"The disappearance of the right of inheritance will be the natural results of a social change superseding private property in the means of production; but the abolition of the right of inheritance can never be the starting point of such a social transformation."  

And we're back to Reich.

The Class Struggle

Reich and Oliver agree that, like cinnamon, a little inequality is a good thing, but too much is dangerous.  Reich uses a graph that looks like a suspension bridge, with the peaks - the danger points - in the 1920s and now.  In 1928 as in 2007, the top 1% took home more than 23% of all income, and the middle class stagnated. That's what too much inequality looks like.

The middle class is imperative to a healthy economy.  The rich buy very little proportionate to their numbers ("a person making a thousand times as much money, doesn't buy a thousand times as much stuff"), so we count on the masses to keep shopping. A good economy will support the middle class and the poor who will create jobs by spending money.  But they are struggling too much to survive for them to shop any day except, of course, Black Friday.

Policy Changes in the Late 1970s and Early 1980s

There's no such thing as a truly free market.  There are always governmental rules necessary to run things.  The real question is who do the rules benefit and who do they hurt. Middle class wages rose from the late 40s until the late 70s, and then flattened out.

The best book to understand this period of history, for my money, is The Shock Doctrine.  Naomi Klein outlines in detail exactly how the US, UK, and Canada (under Reagan, Thatcher, and Mulroney) changed the economic system with worldwide repercussions.  From the film:  The tax rate on top earners dropped from 70% to 28% under Reagan.  In the late 50s it peaked at 91% under Eisenhower for top earners, which was set at incomes over $400,000 (about $3.5 million in today's money).  That was dismantled in the name of equality: Why should some people be taxed higher than others.  But that confuses equality and equity.

The financial markets were granted more power as governments moved to deregulate the market, so they engaged in more excessive behaviour.  Labour unions declined (often by force) which mirrored a decline in the middle class share of income.  And globalization and technology added to the destruction of the middle class.

Where a company's headquartered means less and less.  We can outsource jobs which undercuts wages of workers in the US.  And automation has reduced the need for as many employees.

On the positive side, we have more cool stuff that's cheaper, and CEOs and financiers are much richer.  But CEOs raised their own salaries as they fired workers.  When companies depend on shareholders, there's a growing pressure to increase profits, which plays out by pushing down wages and benefits to the bare minimum.  But then they have fewer consumers available to buy their products, so they have to widen their market worldwide, make products that self-destruct, and encourage people to buy crap they really don't need.

What Worked in the Past

Policies that were around from 1947-77 (Keynes' economics) worked for the general prosperity of all.

• Higher education was a priority, and universities expanded. 
• Labour unions were strong, and more than a third belonged to a union.
• The middle class bought more, so companies could hire more, providing a stronger tax base for governments to invest more in people.

Today tuition is rising as the government is taking money out of education.  Infrastructure is crumbling and becoming dangerous.  There isn't a tax base to use to fix the problems because we've lowered taxes on the very wealthy, shipped jobs overseas, and flattened middle class wages so they no longer keep up with inflation.  If the wealthy don't pay their fair share, and the middle class doesn't have enough to pay tax on, then there's less revenue for social services like public education and health care.  Then tuitions go up, and the population becomes less educated, and, globally, less competitive.  In the 1960s, tuition at Berkeley was free.  In the 1970s, it was $700 in today's dollars. Now it's $15,000/year.

In the 1980s, we coped with declining incomes for a time by introducing double wage families with more women in the workforce.  Families worked longer hours, taking on second and third jobs.  And we borrowed money with fewer restrictions on loans - that, to some, seemed like a good idea at the time, but later blew up.  Now the coping mechanisms the middle class used are exhausted.

The Effect on Democracy

Inequality is a problem for democracy too.  When so many resources accumulate at the top, there comes the capacity to control politics through wealthy lobby groups who give the maximum amount allowed to election campaigns.  All politics have shifted to the right, so that Reich maintained the same views, but shifted from a Republican to a Democrat over a few decades.  (And some of us NDP supporters are left without a truly leftist party to back.)  High inequality brings with it a high degree of political polarization with politicians disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing instead of working together for the good of the country (like Howarth rejecting a very left-leaning budget).  For $300 million, you can buy a president.  We can't have government on an auction block.

There's a polarization of citizens too.  Losers of a rigged game can get very angry.  These trends of society pulling apart are very dangerous.  Reich sees fights on the Berkeley campus.

Solutions

The economy does better when everyone does better, and history is on the side of positive social change.  There's no "single magic bullet," be we need to mobilize, organize, and energize other people, from what I gleaned from the film, to...

• shop locally - avoid automated check-out line, on-line shopping, or anything that reduces jobs
• decrease technological use in manufacturing to increase jobs for the working class at home which will increase wages, increase shopping, and increase our tax base
• put tax money into infrastructure to decrease risk of collapse and create jobs
• support union creation and maintenance
• convince the government to invest in education, skills, and infrastructure
• regulate corporations to prevent companies from being allowed to deduct executive pay
• raise the tax rate for the very wealthy to increase the tax base which will allow for more money in education and health care

But the question, as always, is... how do we get from here to there?  I can do the shop locally thing, and support unions, but everything else seems horrifically out of reach.

But then...  There's always art:

It'll Be Fast: On Yes Means Yes

Globe and Mail.

I was struck by the report of an intimate exchange between a man and woman in today's Globe & Mail; the woman later questioned how consensual the act really was.  She said, "Please stop," and he responded, "It'll be fast."  Later she says "yes," then later again "no."

But that "fast" line struck me because of when else it's typically said.  We don't offer the cushion that an event will be over quickly unless we're well aware that it's not an event that's desirable.  I might say it when my child's about to get a needle, or when I'm enticing her to clean her room.  It implies that an event has little to redeem it except that it will all be over before you know it, and you can get back to more enjoyable pursuits.  So it's curious that it wasn't clear that the woman wasn't interested when speed was the best persuasion he could muster.

This is very complex issue, and I applaud how many of the bits and pieces are at least given a mention in the article.

It's a Huge Issue, and It has Barely Budged

"At least one in five women say they have experienced sexual assault that includes penetration by the time they graduate...Roughly one-third of the students surveyed agreed that rape happens 'because men can get carried away in sexual situations once they've started,'....believe that men 'can't help it,' and that drunk women who cross their paths have themselves to blame."

This is no different from attitudes in my high school in the early 80s.  But it felt like it all shifted for a time; it felt like people were gaining an awareness of these myths through an openness towards sexual discussion.  Now it feels like it's all come full circle back to the crappy place pre-rape shield law.  Actually it's so much worse.  We never had to worry about videos of an assault going viral.   The only evidence I have is anecdotal: in 1991, several teens in my school felt the need for a Gender Equality Club to discuss these issues.  Then, after a few years, that went away.  It no longer provoked like it once had. Now, in 2014, we've got another group of teens feeling the need for these kinds of discussion outside of a classroom setting.

Maybe in the in between time, too many of us were resting on our laurels, relaxing that we waged that war and won a couple legal changes and some attitudinal shifts that might protect us a little more.  How hard is it for people to remember that nobody should be doing anything sexual that they don't feel like doing?  But I think we might have to be vigilant about this one forever - even when times seem good.  It's an easy victory to have slip away.

On Coercion and Culture

"If you include unwanted touching or being 'coerced' into sex...the [sexual assault] rate rises to more than 50 per cent."

I cringe at the word "coerced" for two reasons.  First, I hate the image of adults, women and men, as childlike puppets, easily manipulated into doing something they don't want to do, to the point that if they say 'yes' loud and clear, it doesn't count if they later reveal they were coerced.  They didn't want to, but got talked into it.  It makes us seem so weak.

But, secondly, I hate the reality of that situation.  Saying 'No, thanks' doesn't just deny two people of some carnal pleasure, it can often be punitive to the objector.  If it were just about sex, then choosing a yes or no would still be a complex decision of physical attraction, timing, and feelings.  But in our culture, it's also about reputation.  For girls, being a prude isn't cool, and if a guy rejects a girl, he's seen as gay; both terms are still seen as insults.  What if it gets around?  Furthermore, people may be punished for a 'no' response in subtle ways.

Turn down a colleague, and he could make your days at work very difficult despite your efforts to smooth things over.  Some people are sore losers.  Or just losers.  So a choice to have sex often isn't always just a choice between having sex or not having sex.  It can be a choice between having sex you're not into OR being hassled for years by the proposing partner and whomever hears his/her slanted side of things.   This is the realm of the few men who get angry if "friend zoned," who somehow think a friendship should blossom into more in order to be worth anything of value.

From here. 

It's Not Always a Big Misunderstanding

"Human beings can read body language in the bedroom as easily as they can in other social interactions....[Sexual assault] is about someone making a decision to ignore the cues." 

Sometimes our cues get misinterpreted, absolutely.  Look a little too long at someone, and they might think you're into them when you're not.  And we have this strange idea that body language tells truths that our mind might not be aware of, so sometimes no verbal explanation can help sway a belief in the depth of feelings you appear to have for someone you barely know.  It does happen, and it can be frustrating experience for all involved.  

But too often misunderstandings can be an excuse for an act of aggression.  Most people can tell when someone's pulling away, and they stop.  Some people notice the gesture, but choose to ignore it.    It seems like such a little transgression, ignoring a gesture, but it's huge.

The Legal Issues

The 'Yes Means Yes' campaign, "frames sex more positively, shifting the focus from what a victim did (or didn't do, or couldn't do) to the steps a perpetrator failed to take to proactively ensure consent."  Instead of someone needing to say "no" to stop it, now they need to say "yes" before beginning AND throughout.  Without a clear "yes," it's assault.   "If it's not loud and clear, its not consent."  

But it will ever be difficult to determine what happened behind closed doors.  Nothing short of cameras everywhere will alleviate that problem.  A false accusation that gets thrown out of court can be enough to ruin a life, but so can a real sexual assault.  The worst reality is that it sometimes takes more than one transgression by a perpetrator (of accusations or assaults) to get any action from the courts because of the complexity of the issue.  I do think we need to err on the side of believing the alleged assault victim when in doubt, however, but that's a post for another day.  Laura does a good job of explaining that in this post, where she says, in part, "I understand that there are false accusations of rape. They are rare, but they do occur. Sexual assault, however, is not rare."

There's also this Alternet post, which clarifies that rape and false rape accusations are not equivalent problems.

But It's So Awkward! 

"[T]here's a large part of us [that] wants things to be spontaneous and free - and it enhances our experience....asking permission is 'awkward' in that it suggests the guy, still usually expected to initiate sex, 'doesn't have game." 

Asking for, and giving, consent repeatedly throughout various stages of intimacy doesn't have to ruin the moment.  It's not a matter of taking a break to re-draft a contract to be signed in triplicate.  It's merely a matter of saying, "Is this good?  Does this work?  Do you want me to keep going?" from time to time.  If we're weighing reducing sexual assault with reducing the spontaneity of sex, then I think spontaneity has to take a back seat.


We've come a long way in our acceptance of all manner of sexual relationships and habits, but the one I think is still in the closet, is the desire not to have sex.  Abstinence-only education has become such a joke, that the choice to abstain has become denigrated right along with it.  If we put up ads to suggest it's okay, it comes across as pushing religious doctrine rather than acceptance.  But it's not the case that all men are always horny, or that sex is all every hormone-laden teen is thinking about.  There are a lot of other things we can do together.  Sex has to remain just one of many choices in order for it to be freely chosen at al.  

On Wente's "It Girl" Article

It's curious that Margaret Wente is so clear about the errors Klein commits in her new book, when it appears from Wente's article today, "The It Girl of climate change doesn't get it," that she's looked at "every interview, excerpt and review," but hasn't actually read the book.  It reminds me of a film buff I know who refused to see Atom Egoyan's beautiful film Exotica because it was just about strippers.  As if.

I'm only on chapter 4, and I'm convinced Wente's concerns are unfounded.  She claims Klein ignores "elementary facts" about China and India's role in GHG emissions, but a cursory look at the index of the book reveals a column of page references under the headings of 'China' and 'India.'  Klein clarifies that we've outsourced our emissions when we outsourced our factories.  I think she gets it.

Klein's not suggesting we just cut emissions growth in the US and Canada, rather she calls for a change worldwide:  "Either we will change our ways and build an entirely new kind of global society, or they will be changed for us" (22).  And that's just in the introduction to the book.

The big difference between this movement and the Occupy movement, is that we've been offered a clear and possible solution that can be put in place if people worldwide can convince leaders this is vital to our survival.  Yes, that's a big 'if,' but because it's difficult doesn't mean it shouldn't be attempted march after march after march.

I question Wente's insistence that, yet again, this can't possibly make sense or work or help anything.   I wonder if it's a matter, as Klein suggests, that "it is always easier to deny reality than to allow our worldview to be shattered" (37).  But we do have to "grow up," as Wente says, not to see that "climate change is a complex and fiendishly hard problem" as Wente suggests, but instead to see that we have a real choice to make, that we can take this path towards radically decreasing emissions worldwide even though it's going to be hard. It's not the fun choice in the short term, but it's the only choice that gives us a long term.

As Leonardo Dicaprio said at the UN today, we're looking at climate change as a fiction, but we're seeing undeniable evidence of climate change every week that's decades ahead of scientific projections. This disaster has grown beyond individuals and now requires industries taking large-scale action.  We must end the free ride that industrial polluters have been given. It's not just achievable, but good economic policy.  This is not a partisan debate, but a human one.

On Naomi Klein's Climate Change Battle

Suzanne DeChillo/
The New York Times

So far, I've just dipped into This Changes Everything, but the introduction alone is a compelling read.  I made my way through Shock Doctrine several summers ago, and it broadened how I think of the world.  This should be an interesting trip where even the Nature Conservancy doesn't escape scrutiny.

A review by Drew Nelles in today's Globe & Mail summarizes some of her ideas, and raises a contradictory message found in the book:   "If capitalism itself is the problem, what does Klein mean when she writes that '[t]here is plenty of room to make profit in a zero-carbon economy'...." I think it just shows how deeply we're into the mindset of capitalism, and that we need to be given a bone.  It's too hard to alter the entire ideology, so some remnants remain to get us involved.  Many people are still hoping to stop the burning of fossil fuels without affecting our lives too dramatically - and I wonder if it's possible to do, as Klein seems to suggest here, or if it's just the only message that people will accept at this point - enough to also accept that "oil companies will have to be forced, through popular pressure and legislative action, to let themselves die - to become as fossilized as the long-dead life forms they suck from the Earth" (Nelles).

Klein can also be seen in a Democracy Now interview last Thursday where she explains some of the ideas in the book.  (She's a much better writer than a speaker, though, so I edited out the "yeah, well"s from the the following bit of the transcript.)

She explains the two tactics necessary to our survival, championing Germany as the model for improvement:

I think two things need to happen at once, and this is what the German experience shows us. You need to have bold national policies, like you need to have feed-in tariffs. You need to have clear goals—how much of your grid is going to switch to renewable energy, by what time. You need to have the right incentives in place. I think what Germany shows, too, is [the flaws with thinking] that it’s a big problem, so we need only big solutions, and [arguing] in favor of nuclear power and industrial agriculture. But actually, what Germany shows is that the fastest transition we’re seeing anywhere in the world is happening through a multiplication of small-scale solutions, with well-designed, smart national policies. But that’s not enough. You also need to say no to the fossil fuel companies. So we need to close those carbon frontiers, right? We need to have clear no-go zones—no drilling in the Arctic, no new tar sands, and wind down the tar sands. We need to enshrine these fracking moratoriums into law. We need to turn the moratoriums into bans, and we need to expand them. So, it’s the yes, on the one hand; it’s the no, on the other hand.  

...in my country, in Canada, I think there’s a really clear connection with respecting indigenous land rights, because some of the largest...pools of carbon are under the lands of some of the poorest people on the planet, and much of it is under indigenous land. So, there are tremendous fights being waged by indigenous people around the world to keep the drillers out of the Amazon, to slow down the tar sands. But one of the most important things that needs to happen is that the benefits of this new economy ... the people who have been hurt the most, who have been on the front lines of the extractive economy and have got the worst deal in the unequal exchange powered by fossil fuels, need to be first in line to benefit, so that there are real options beyond just extractive economies, because people are being asked to choose between having running water and having an extractive project in their backyard which will potentially poison their water. That’s a nonchoice. People need better choices than that.

  We'll see how the march goes tomorrow.  I'll be in Toronto in a thunderstorm.  It offers some pathetic fallacy for the TV crews - one way or another.  

Disruption Critiqued

I showed  Disruption to my grade 10 civics class.  Some liked it okay, but many thought it was long and boring.  "They could have done all that in a fraction of the time."  So the movie didn't get to the youth of the day the way the directors hoped it would.  I asked them what the message was that they heard, a better way to make it heard by more people, and how to actually change things.

Some hadn't really understood how CO₂ works as a greenhouse gas, so that visual with the sun's rays was important to include.  They understood that we've known about all this for a long time, and nobody in the room openly questioned that it's largely due to burning fossil fuels.  They got the three big tipping points because that's scary, and they heard that it's all going to affect us in 30-40 years if nothing changes now.  I explained the concept of lobby groups, and they offered that "politicians are just puppets of the corporations."  Some thought that we needed scientists to work on solutions, but others countered that we have the solutions, we just don't have the political will to use them.  It seems they more or less have their heads around how things work and what needs to happen.

And they really get that consumers could change everything if we could just get our act together, which wasn't really part of the film.

So how to get all that information in a film that works to get students to act?

They said it has to have a celebrity and/or be funny.  A bunch of unfamiliar talking heads doesn't cut it.  It has to be more entertaining.  Get Matt Stone and Trey Parker to do something similar to the bit on US history they included in Bowling for Columbine.  It has to inspire us to work towards solutions.  And, most importantly, it has to be SHORT.  Fifty minutes is way too long.  Ten minutes might be acceptable, but anything more than that will lead people to zone out.  Aim for four minutes.

Then we talked about what will make the march effective.

People have to know why they're there.  If a bunch of people are just there for a party, it makes the whole thing look bad.  It's good if a few people get arrested doing something peaceful because it shows how important this is to them, and it shows that we have a real problem with our system.  There needs to be cameras, publicity, and the news there.  We need lots of people - enough to convince the government that the survival of people has to matter more than profits.  And we need a few strong leaders to rise up with a message for everyone that's clear, do-able, and visible.

We compared the OWS and the Civil Rights Movements.  OWS was amazing, but it just went away.  There were no leaders that anyone can name or remember.  And there wasn't a memorable message for them beyond, "It sucks that some people are so rich while others are starving."  What worked for the civil rights movement is that the fight was about, in part, laws that could be openly broken by the public in protest of the injustice of the system.  Ordinary people could sit in the wrong place on a bus, or use the wrong water fountain, or dare to enrol at the wrong school.  With OWS, people could move their money out of banks and into credit unions, but nobody notices when that happens.  I did just that, but largely from my living room.  We can't easily see how many subversives are on board, so it's hard to maintain the stamina necessary to keep the struggle moving.

And we talked about what makes this issue particularly tricky:  that the very people protesting are part of the world using the most fossil fuels per person.  We need legislation that prevents us from enjoying our comfortable lives as much as we currently do or hope to do in the future.  A few set up an us vs them scenario with the very wealthy - that it's all because some rich people have a few homes and travel everywhere.  I kept bringing it back home, that it's not just about the few wealthy people living in excess, but it's because of us, the very many who confuse luxuries with necessities and drive everywhere.  There's no escaping the fact that what we need is to change the way we live either by force or choice or necessity.  I'm still really hoping we can do it by choice.

What can we do to make it clear we're on-board is to avoid the use of fossil fuels openly:  Make solar panelled knapsacks cool so everyone starts charging their phones without taking from the grid.  Make it cool to bike, bus, and walk everywhere.  Teach class all day with the lights off.  Use every square inch of both sides of paper before letting it hit the recycling box. These seem inconsequential, but they make it clear to the culture what's important.  Some cities and countries are getting there, so it's definitely possible.  We just need to make it inescapable.

And go to a march on Sunday to make it clear to governments that this is a top priority issue.
  

People's Climate March Update

"If you don't fight for what you want, then you deserve what you get." - Disruption

The People's Climate March is in one week.  The 50-minute film, Disruption, is a motivating force to inspire people to hit the streets.  If you can't make NYC on Sunday (busses leaving from Toronto might be full), then there are small events in most cities (info for Waterloo here and Toronto here).  Klein's book comes out on Tuesday - just in time for people to read it on that 12 hour bus ride!

Here's the movie, with my notes from the movie below - an amalgamation of the many ideas presented:


"DISRUPTION" - a film by KELLY NYKS & JARED P. SCOTT from Watch Disruption on Vimeo.

"The biggest successes happen when people leave their homes and get out into the streets."

Climate change isn't a new science - we've known about it for over 150 years.
In 1849 John Tyndall was the first to notice that we're adding too much carbon dioxide to the atmosphere as we evaporate coal mines into the air.  Then in 1958, Charles Keeling found a way to measure the CO₂.  Way back in 1988 James Hansen, of NASA, clarified that climate change is happening right now, and it spurred on an act to decrease fossil fuel use, the creation of the IPCC, and widespread media interest, but then it all fell apart.  The summit in 1992 provoked only non-binding agreements, and Kyoto wasn't ratified and then was later abandoned by the U.S.  In 2009, at the Copenhagen 15 summit, there were riots as people came to the realization that no leader is coming to save us.

It's beyond clear at this point that releasing so much CO₂ into the atmosphere is affecting weather systems worldwide.  We need to leave fossil fuels in the ground if we hope to survive, but the fossil fuel lobby has access to the political class.  It's a monopoly controlled by big carbon polluters.  Half the pentagon's budget is set aside to help oil producers.

There's an inequity issue here as well as the poorest areas suffer first and the worst.  The idea of "sacrifice zones" - that there are places we don't think matter as much - is inherently racist.

If we hit a feedback loop - a tipping point where greenhouse gases will dramatically increase exponentially - then things could be beyond hope.  There are three of concern: If the arctic ice caps melt, they'll no longer mirror back sunlight which will cause more melting and even less reflection.  If they melt, they'll also release methane which will increase the greenhouse gas effect, which will cause more melting.  And most frightening, ocean acidification (from excessive CO₂ in the water) could kill the plankton which creates about four times as much oxygen for the world as rain forests.  If we hit a feedback loop, we're screwed.

Why don't we act?  We have a finite pool of worry, and tend to respond first to things that feel urgent.  We need the issue to become emotional to us instead of just factual in order to be provoked into action.    Instead of trying to scrape the bottom of the barrel (fracking), we need to show restraint.  Our reality is grave, but we can avoid slipping into depression about it by working to change the system.  A march is a tool to deepen the movement.

And my thoughts on this:

We need a march along the lines of the civil rights movement in which there were many small but public acts that moved people to march, and in which a few strong speakers rose up with a plan of action.  The OWS movement died out without a strong message of action carrying on beyond the days of protest.  And it's not enough to just keep fossil fuels in the ground, we need to manage resources much more stringently (trees and fish especially), protect large areas of wilderness to promote biodiversity and continue to re-wild parcels of land, keep toxins away from water sources, regulate toxins using the precautionary principle, eat less meat, prevent further population growth, and convince the world to buy fewer luxury items (tons of clothes, cars, bigger homes, tech toys....).  It's not impossible to do, but it will change our lifestyles.  We need strong voices to carry this message everywhere, clearly and loudly and continuously until the political will is found to actually make the changes necessary.

AER Strategies

Margaret Wente recently wrote about a teacher, Lynden Dorval, who was fired for giving students zeros when they didn't complete assignments.  Fellow teachers argued his case:  "They told the tribunal that when there are no consequences, a disturbing number of students – quelle surprise! – don’t do the work."  She clarifies the policy rationale:

[Ken Connor] believes “student behaviour” is entirely different from “student achievement,” and should not be lumped in with it. Therefore, students should not be marked down for late work, skipped assignments, absence, missed exams or even cheating. Instead of punishing a student by lowering their grade, schools should “apply other consequences.” 

If Alberta's policy is similar to my region's AER policies*, then this part is somewhat accurate. But then Wente suggests students need to be permitted to fail.  I agree completely - but that's a different issue.  The no-zero policy doesn't prevent teachers from failing students; it suggests, in part, that teachers shouldn't average in a zero to their other marks in such a way that it gives a skewed idea of the student's ability to master the curriculum.  So if Johnny gets 90s on 5 assignments, but misses one, his mark should likely be in the 90s, not the 70s.  We've been encouraged to assess students' most consistent and most recent marks for years - now it's more than just encouragement.  Yet it's still not cut and dried.  That final grade is always up to the professional judgment of the teacher.

I'm not sure of all the ins and outs of Dorval's case, but I suspect it's not the policy that was the problem as much as, perhaps, a dictatorial implementation of every suggestion with a scrutinizing focus on the letter of the law rather than the spirit.

The no-zero policy provokes teachers to leave a door open for students to complete work that, previously, they might have just skipped.  If we keep the goal in mind, its purpose is to prevent students from just accepting a zero rather than doing the work.  But if the knowledge that the work is still expected doesn't motivate a student to do the work, then failure could be imminent.

I don't love all of the AER ideas, but we have to find a way to make them work in our classrooms.  Over the past year, through many discussions with teachers, I've found ways to understand and implement the new policies by focusing on the rationale for each idea rather than viewing the ideas as hard-and-fast rules.  Here's what I came up with, so far, in terms of strategies that could be effective in my particular school, but my ideas could change again after another year of implementation.  I'll post this here regardless in case it helps someone get their head around the policy while also recognizing that it might provoke some debate.

We'll keep trying.


The Spirit of the AER:

Transparency. Equity. Mark integrity.

• Make sure your lessons, projects, and tests directly connect to the curriculum.
 • Let students (and their parents) know exactly how they’ll be evaluated ahead of time (weighting and rubrics). Clarify your success criteria.
• Let students know specifically what they should expect to learn in each class (or sequence of classes), and then track a variety of pieces of evidence that students are learning including observations of each student (process work, presentations, problem solving process, group skills, listening and speaking skills…) and your conversations with each student (class discussions, journals, online forums, conferences, follow-up questions…). (See page 15.)
• Offer additional supports and accommodations where needed. Read students’ IEPs early on. Also accommodate special circumstances in such a way that it doesn’t affect the integrity of the course.
• Offer lots of specific feedback on student work as immediately as possible. It is “imperative to provide students with opportunities to act on the feedback being provided” (14).
• Use a final evaluation (worth 30%) that’s made up of two or three components (13).
• At the end, after calculating a mark based on student products, observations, and conversations to get a numerical grade, go further to consider if that number is, in your professional judgment, the truest reflection of the degree to which the student demonstrated an ability to master the curriculum: limited (50s), some (60s), considerable (70s), or thorough (80s-90s). Marks will likely change significantly only for students who neglected to, or were unable to, complete part of the course.


Common Concerns:

The Assessment, Evaluation and Reporting Handbook is a bit vague, but that’s for our benefit. It allows for a variety of teaching practices. Yet it can be a frustrating puzzle to determine the best way to implement the requirements. Potential solutions follow:

If we can’t give marks for formative work, then fewer students will actually do the work.

* The burgeoning practice of marking work but not telling students that you’re not including it, goes against the goal of transparency. But, since we should ensure that students’ final marks are a true reflection of their ability, and formative work is sometimes a truer reflection than the final product, students should be made aware that those marks could be considered in the final evaluation.
 * There is some overlap between formative and summative work, which offers a grey area open to interpretation. You may include in your evaluation any work that summarizes student learning at a given point in time, which could be something that occurs at the end of a single lesson.
 * Instead of giving marks for process work, give marks for refinement of ideas. Students can be expected to do the rough work or practice work, and then must show that they read your comments and incorporated them into the final product. Without getting the comments on the process work, they won’t be able to get marks for refinement.
* The curriculum for your course might include process work as an overall expectation, so it may be appropriate to include this process work as an essential learning for your course.

If we can’t take off late marks, students will hand it all in at the end of the semester.

* Marks should reflect ability, not work habits in as far as it’s possible to separate the two (9).
* It's recommended that a missed assignment lead to students getting a different assignment and/or negotiating a new deadline, but, for students with a tendency towards idleness, this could precipitate an on-going practice of re-negotiating due dates or expecting a variation on the original assignment instead of encouraging them to develop better work habits and finishing the work by the original due date.  There needs to be a bigger "or else" to motivate students who are more challenging.
* If an assignment isn’t completed by the due date, call home and the guidance counselor immediately and arrange for the student to complete it in student success during his/her MSIP period.  This works for many students, but isn't effective if the student generally skips MSIP and/or isn't affected by parental pressure, or for whom parental response is akin to, "I just don't know what to do with him/her."
* We are permitted to have a cut-off date (42). For some courses, if the cut-off date is at the end of the semester, students might miss the benefits of doing the work during the unit, so a cut off date near the end of each unit is preferable. To prepare them for university or college, the cut-off date could be on the actual due date, and then students are responsible for asking for an extension in advance of that date if necessary. However, of course extenuating circumstances must be examined on a case-by-case basis.
* If an assignment isn’t completed by the cut-off date, use your professional judgment to decide if  the student should get an "I" (grades 9-10) or 35% (grades 11-12) in the course or if the student showed significant competence in the essential learnings on other assignments and/or the final evaluation to be able to pass the course without that assignment.
 * If students miss an assignment, it means they have fewer opportunities to show they are proficient in the course material.

We can have a cut-off date after which the assignment will not be accepted, but isn’t the punishment for not doing the work, doing the work?

* The implication of the last bit is that it’s not possible to pass someone who was unable to show achievement in one unit (or essential learning) of the course, but that’s listed specifically as one strategy used to promote student responsibility (40). If students miss the assignment and test for the unit, then they still have the final evaluation to show their ability to understand that section, and then achievement charts might show that their proficiency in the unit was limited. It might mean setting up marks by the unit (or essential learnings) rather than by the assignments and tests if that isn’t already the same thing.
* Some students have on their IEP a need for fewer assignments to demonstrate a skill. They may be given fewer assignments as long as all the essential learnings are still demonstrated by the end of the semester.
 * To get the credit, the work should be completed, but it might not happen during the semester. Once the semester ends, the student is no longer your responsibility (unless you get him/her in your class again).

If we’re using “Incomplete” instead of “Zero”, how do we get a numerical mark at the end?

* We’re not to give zeros to students for two reasons: to clarify that the work is still expected, and to clarify that we’re looking at the work they actually completed to determine their final mark: “assigning a mark of zero places a judgment on unseen work” (18). So don’t allow work habits to skew the final marks, which should be indicating student ability. But if a student’s ability can’t be seen accurately because of the lack of work completed, then that will end up being reflected in the final grade.
 * At the end, incompletes can be turned into zeros long enough to calculate a grade used as a starting point for a final mark, BUT then we must ensure that the numerical grade is an accurate reflection of the student’s actual ability in the course.
 * If an assignment is missed, and some proficiency is shown on that part of the final evaluation, the mark for that essential learning can be determined by deciding to what degree the student mastered that part of the course. If s/he only did the work on the final, without doing the assignment to show competency in that essential learning, it’s likely the mark – for that part of the curriculum – will be limited.

But work habits are part of a student’s ability to do the work.

* Zeros and late marks shouldn’t give a false impression of ability, BUT the AER policy recognizes that work habits are entwined with ability to a certain extent as evidenced by the beginning of this line (italics mine): “To the extent possible…the evaluation of learning skills and work habits…should not be considered in the determination of a student’s grades” (9). Most students with poor work habits will see this reflected in their level of achievement.

How am I supposed to keep track of student ability during discussions?

* Tic sheets on the seating plan that are turned into a mark every few weeks can help. Then students can be made aware of their level of competent discussion regularly. Discussion should take several forms possibly including, for instance, on-line forums or exit cards.

My course is separated into units that aren’t the same as the way the essential learnings are divided in the curriculum guidelines. How do I show which essential learnings a student missed?

* A bit more work at the beginning – and just once per course – can make things much easier at the end:
* On the course outline or on a separate page given early on, take the time and trouble to connect specific essential learnings with tests and assignments. Alternatively, indicate the essential learning on the top of each assignment or test.
* Clearly tie all your rubrics to essential learnings from the curriculum.

There seem to be two (or more) kinds of courses with different challenges:

1. The essential learnings are assessed repeatedly throughout each unit and at the end.
 * In these cases it makes sense to have more marks assigned to later units to better indicate the students’ abilities at the end of the course.
 * One missing assignment won’t affect the ability of the student to show proficiency in the essential learnings, but the final mark may reflect the effects of a diminished level of practice.

2. The essential learnings are significantly different from unit to unit, and are only repeated at the very end.
 * It can be harder to develop numerous ways to determine proficiency in each essential learning.
 * Once the unit is over, and the cut-off date has passed, the student only has the final evaluation to show proficiency on any essential learning missed during the term.

I’m supposed to make a package of work for the student to complete in Student Success after the course is done, but that student is no longer on my caseload (for grades 9 and 10 only).

* Save one of each summative assignment or test with the essential learning indicated on it in case a student is allowed to complete it the follow semester instead of re-doing the course.
 * There needs to be a process in place in which teachers deliver missing work to Student Success as they hand in the Loss of Credit forms at the end of the semester because, legally, we shouldn’t be asked to do work for a student that’s no longer on our lists.


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* This is the closest link I could find to the AER, which used to be easily accessible online.  The link on the board website is dead.  Hopefully it's just a temporary glitch.