Expanding Our Sense of Self Can Create Revolutionary Moments of Happiness: Caring for Ourselves During the Pandemic

In my last year of college, 1968-9, the improvisational theatre group I was part of rehearsed on a stage in a coffee house. Not only our group rehearsed and performed there, but singers and other performers, sometimes famous ones. That was where I heard Odetta,  Tim Buckley, Dave Van Ronk, Doc Watson, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee.  At a vigil for peace in Vietnam, Joan Baez was seated behind me and, at one point, started singing “The Dove Is A Pretty Bird.” Can you imagine suddenly and unexpectedly, from right behind you, hearing her voice burst out in song? It was shockingly beautiful.

 

One night, Joni Mitchell performed there. It was winter and she had just broken up with a boyfriend. Every song she sang, even the upbeat ones, was a song about sadness.

 

At that time, I was dealing with a form of depression, but didn’t have the insight to name it that. There were days I felt I was being attacked from within. I would have a good time, talking with friends, dancing, and suddenly felt like I had no right to have a good time. I had to do something great first ⎼ change the world and prove my self-worth, or at least get a good paying job.

 

That night, I was totally absorbed in Joni Mitchell’s singing. But after her last set ended, any pleasure I had taken in the music turned into pain. I left the coffeehouse on my own without saying goodbye to my friends, got on my motorcycle, and took off. I drove into a storm of my own making, to freeze the pain so it could no longer touch me.

 

Depression is not just a lowered mood. The word means to press down, weaken, and reduce, as in to reduce the information you take in, or to feel the weight of the world press down on you. You might fear a situation is reducing, stealing your life from you and you are not strong enough to stop it. Depression makes the world look so dark you can’t see much of it, certainly not see anything that might lighten it up. Sometimes, you don’t even see who or what stands in front of you. And your ideas about life and reality can be as rigid as the metal bars of a jail cell. Finding the key to let yourself out can be difficult.

 

Or maybe it’s wrong to say that depression dims the light. It is more accurate to say that when the light is dimmed by your neurochemistry or your response to a situation and you feel locked in a jail cell of your mind and can’t find the key ⎼ then you are depressed.

 

I have a vague memory, which I’m not sure is accurate, of my father telling me that if I tried to make a living as a writer, I’d end up as a bum on the Bowery. Or maybe I subconsciously stole that image from somewhere, like a Henry Miller novel, and imposed it on my Dad ⎼ or on myself. I feared that if I worked at something creative, like writing or acting, or some profession I really liked, I’d wind up a Bowery Bum. Maybe my writing and acting was a way to rebel against that fear. Such a disturbing image can lock up your mind….

 

**To read the whole post, discover the conclusion of the piece and ways to better care for ourselves and our families or friends, go to The Good Men Project.

 

Using Corona Shock to Sacrifice Democracy

Just imagine hearing someone describe you as expendable, or saying you weren’t worth saving from a disease. And this isn’t “The Lottery,” the short story by Shirley Jackson, about a small but modern village that sacrifices a person each spring to ensure a good harvest. It isn’t the ancient Inca who sacrificed children, or ancient Britain or Sumer. This is the United States, today.

 

This is the Lt. Governor of Texas saying people should go back to work despite the pandemic, and the old people who are more vulnerable and might therefore die from the illness should be glad to sacrifice themselves so the economy can be saved.

 

It includes Larry Kudlow, DT’s chairman of the National Economic Council, saying: “we’re gonna have to make some difficult trade-offs”, i.e. we’re going to have to let some people die so the Stock Market can live.

 

It includes the Governor of Florida, Ron DiSantis, who kept open their beaches so the young could frolic in crowds and later bring the virus to towns and cities throughout the nation. But the old—they could be sacrificed.

 

It includes Republican Tate Reeves, the Governor of MississIippi, who decided to override all town and city stay-at-home orders to send workers back to their jobs, despite increasing numbers of coronavirus victims in neighboring states. And DT has decided that by Easter, all will be well. People must go back to work. His economic numbers must look good.

 

Esquire Magazine has a highly disturbing article about just how far the far right has been taking the meme that some need to be sacrificed. This sacrifice never includes the rich (I think they would sacrifice a Jewish or person of color who was rich) and never includes decreasing the profits of large corporations. One spokesman talked about social isolation as creating a “demonic atmosphere” — maybe they think a commitment to save all lives is Satan’s work.

 

In contrast, Governor Cuomo of New York said it’s not an either-or choice, to protect public health or protect the economy. “My mother is not expendable.” There are choices the President could have made for the last two months and could make now to avert a deeper disaster, but he isn’t doing it. For example, he could use the Defense Procurement Act to get manufacturers to switch to producing more ventilators and other medical supplies. He has signed the order to invoke the act but hasn’t (as of 3/25) used it to get anything produced….

 

To read the whole post, go to The Good Men Project.

Is Governor Cuomo Supporting Education or Undermining It?

Last week, according to the New York Times, Governor Andrew Cuomo attacked New York State education officials for an “attempt to water down his new teacher evaluation system that was one of his earliest legislative triumphs.” The context is that the New York Board of Regents, due to mistakes in the rollout of the Common Core, proposed a two-year moratorium on holding teachers accountable for student test scores. The governor opposed the moratorium. He said it was unnecessary; the existing policy already allowed teachers to ask that the test scores of their students not be counted in teacher accountability ratings if the students were unfairly affected by problems with the rollout. The real issue here is why have such an accountability system at all? This system is more of a threat to education than a triumph. Does the Governor sincerely believe that this system would improve education in New York? That it would force teachers and schools to “do a better job” and thus create more equity between how richer and poorer school districts educate their students?

 

Standardized testing has never helped create equity and never will. The increased testing brought about by the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind legislation did not lead to equity in school funding or improve education and neither will the Common Core assessments. Fair Test, the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, published a report on NCLB in 2004 clearly stating that making the boosting of test scores a priority in schools does not improve education. In fact, it detracts from education. Sanctioning schools that do not improve test scores is “counterproductive.” Holding teachers responsible for such scores is likewise counterproductive. To teach in any classroom, let alone a very challenging one, teachers need to be able to be creative. They need to feel trusted by the administration and community so they can adapt their methods to the individual students. The scrutiny and pressure of “raise scores or lose your job” undermines trust and creativity.

 

Linda Darling-Hammond takes my argument further. She points out that when school reform is used as a lever for external control of schools, as Cuomo’s system does, these strategies are “unlikely to be successful and the assessments are unlikely to be equitable because they stem from a distrust of teachers and fail to involve teachers in the reform process.” Tests should be used to provide teachers with “practical information on student learning,” not rate students and teachers. Instead of a top-down system, she calls for measures in which teachers and their communities work together to self-reflect, critique, correct, and renew their programs.

 

According to Fair Test, young people of color unfairly suffer from standardized testing. They point out that “the use of high-stakes testing in an overall environment of racial inequality perpetuates that inequality through the emotional and psychological power of the tests over the test-takers.” The inequality of resources in many districts which primarily serve people of color hits those students very personally. It leaves the message that the political system doesn’t care enough about them. If they want an education, they must work even harder to get it.

 

The Common Core says that one of its goals is College preparedness. Fair Test argues that standardized “tests provide no social or educational benefit. They do not improve college or employment readiness.” Furthermore, as I argued in an earlier blog, high stakes tests increase the level of fear in education and undermine creative thinking. Diane Ravitch points out in The Reign of Error that no nation tests as much as the U. S. now does. Supposed reformers claim that we are falling behind other nations, one of which is China. Yet nations like China and India look to the U. S. as a model for teaching how to think independently and creatively. Vivek Wadhwa, an Indian American technology entrepreneur, wrote in Business Week that “the independence and social skills American children develop give them a huge advantage when they join the workforce.” American students “learn to experiment, challenge norms, take risks… This is why America remains the world leader in innovation.” Does Governor Cuomo want to undermine that independence of mind by testing students (and teachers) into submission?

 

In my history class several years ago, I had a student with severe anxiety. The class was portfolio based and required an assortment of assessments. For the first quarter of the year, she could sometimes write a paper, do research, collaborate with other students to some degree, but rarely passed a quiz and failed the one test I gave. By the end of the year, she had completed her portfolio and passed the difficult final exam with a score of 75%–the passing score was 70%. Yet, when it came to the New York State Regents (a standardized test in Global Studies), which most students thought was easier than the final, she froze and did not pass. She faced more personal obstacles than I would wish on anyone, made more progress with her skills and learned more material than most of the students. Yet, according to the state, she did not do enough. She had to re-take the test and finally passed. Some people might say that the experience made her stronger or that students need to learn how to face adversity. She had enough adversity to face just coming to class and doing her work. Unreasonable adversity is institutionalized suffering. Such tests tell students that compared to their test grade, all else is secondary. That’s just wrong.

 

According to the Albany area NPR station WAMC, the governor’s new budget increase of $608 million falls short of the $1.9 billion called for by many legislators and education advocates to simply “maintain current programs and restore others that were cut over the last five years.” If the Governor was truly in support of public education he would be searching for ways to raise the revenue to fulfill these needs. Instead, he called for reducing many taxes, for example corporate taxes, and raising the cap on estate taxes.

 

So, I ask Governor Cuomo: Are you sincere in claiming you support public school education? Your support for standardized testing, and the evaluation of teachers partly based on those tests, argues otherwise. Failing to commit to raising the money to maintain current programs, restore ones recently cut, and reduce inequity in school funding argues otherwise.

 

And unfortunately, I think that too many politicians need to be asked the same questions.