RANKING AMERICA: WE'RE NUMBER 40!

 What makes America exceptional is its belief in its exceptionalism.  We chant “We’re number 1” as if incantations are self-validating.  But among rich countries, the United States ranked 40^th on childcare, according to a June 2021 UNICEF report.  Among 72 industrialized countries, the United States ranks 35^th in mathematics.  Perish reality.

 

New Mexico does not tout its exceptionalism: best not to.  In healthcare, the state frequently ranks 50^th.  Although New Mexicans think well of their schools and teachers, the public school system usually ranks 50^th.  Although the Las Cruces school board mantra is “It’s All about the Kids,” students struggle to achieve mediocrity—that is, 50%—on proficiency tests of basics in reading and mathematics.  Perish reality.

 

Readers of my blogs going back over a dozen years will recognize that I have cited this figure many times.  No doubt, they are as bored by it as I am.  But boredom should not obscure the fact that leaders in Las Cruces and Santa Fe have shown themselves indifferent to educational mediocrity—of course, the teachers are as mediocre as the students—or incapable of improving public education.  What counts for them is the employment and enrichment of teachers, not the education of students.

 

What is exceptional about America is that its people deny the reality of prevailing conditions.  The foregoing and similar numbers in country-wide health care, childcare, other social services, public education, public safety, and income equality make a joke of the first words of the Constitution “We the People” and the central words of the Pledge of Allegiance “one nation.”  America does little enough for its people and what it does depends on the many “identity” nations to which its people belong.

 

Thus arises the question—why?  The answer is that many Americans, mostly white Christian Republicans spend much of their emotional and mental energies on meddling in the lives of others.  They work to make others be like them or live like them—or else.  Thus, say, the Republican legislation to abuse members of the LGBTQ community; the Constitution may define them as American citizens, but, in many Christians’ opinion, they are second-class citizens.  So, instead of addressing the challenges confronting America, mostly white Christian Republicans expend their energies and talents in culture wars.  The Jackson confirmation hearings revealed that Republicans are roused to unsettle “settled law” in four areas of asymmetric culture-war aggression:

 

They oppose abortion.  So they should not have one, not legislate against abortion.  Pro-choice advocates do not urge legislation requiring pregnant women to have an abortion.  (They could: what about laws requiring women to have abortions if fetuses have birth defects requiring long-term remediation at public expense?)

 

They oppose contraception.  So they should not use contraceptive devices or medications, not legislate against them.  Pro-contraception advocates do not urge legislation requiring men or women to use such devices or medications.

 

They oppose same-sex marriage.  So they should marry someone of the opposite sex, not legislate against it.  Same-sex-marriage advocates do not urge legislation requiring men to marry men or women to marry women.

 

They oppose interracial marriage.  So they should marry someone of their race.  Interracial-marriage advocates did not urge legislation requiring people of one race to marry someone of another race.  (Jail for Ginny and Clarence?)

 

Three points about this opposition to “settled law.”  One, it trashes stare decisis; it is, strictly speaking, the antithesis of conservatism; and it destabilizes the legal system.  Two, legislation against any or all of these practices solves no national problem.  Three, truce can be achieved if everyone would agree to let others be free to make private personal choices for themselves.  One version of the Golden Rule urges such respect for others: do not unto others as you would not have them do unto you.

 

Republicans talk the game of individual freedom and personal responsibility but are compulsively hypocritical in opposing both freedom and responsibility.  Their legislation proposed or passed to enforce behavior in what are properly personal life-style decisions are the antithesis of both freedom and responsibility.

 

But Americans so much love to meddle in matters irrelevant to their lives as they live them that they do not realize or accept that Republican leaders use these culture-war items to rile them up and to distract them from their determined efforts to eviscerate programs in health, social services, and education which affect their wellbeing.  Although the GOP refuses to disclose its agenda for the 2022 elections, it has not changed its traditional positions.  Its core commitments remain: out-source to the states, reduce, or eliminate Medicaid and Medicare; privatize Social Security or let it go bankrupt; cut federal funding for medical research; and reduce federal spending on education.

 

Racism motivates and underlies almost all Republican domestic (and some foreign) policies.  Republicans refuse to admit discriminatory past practices and their enduring after-effects, which have left minorities disadvantaged and disproportionately reliant on public services.  Thus, their furious resistance to Critical Race Theory for exposing the facts to Americans.  The almost all-white Republican Party views those services as race-oriented transfers of money or other resources from whites to blacks.  The Party does not care that many more whites than blacks are beneficiaries of the same services.  In their crabbed mindset and stingy morality, Republicans believe that it is better to have no programs than to have programs which benefit blacks despite also benefiting larger numbers of whites.  Just such thinking led southern communities to close whites-only municipal swimming pools rather than open them to blacks as required by the Civil Rights Law of 1964.  Plainly, Republicans prioritize “them,” not “We the People.”

 

Democrats want to fund beneficial public services; Republicans want to fund the military.  The result is likely to be the traditional compromise which underfunds social services and overfunds the military.  The result: America is likely to slide lower in the rankings.  We might end up aspiring to be 40^th.

UKRAINE: HOW TO WIN THE PEACE AFTER WINNING THE WAR

     On Wednesday, 16 March, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken declared that the sanctions against Russia would last until it was no longer possible for it to launch another such attack against an adjoining country.  That statement is either grandiose political rhetoric or a manifesto for change, not just in Russia’s regime, but in its political culture and military capabilities. 

In an NPR interview, Blinken “insisted that U.S. sanctions against Russia are ‘not designed to be permanent,’ and that they could ‘go away’ if Russia should change its behavior.  But he said any Russian pullback would have to be, ‘in effect, irreversible,’ so that ‘this can't happen again, that Russia won't pick up and do exactly what it's doing in a year or two years or three years’.”

 

As stated, the declaration is right as a matter of policy but wrong by implied practice.  Russia has attacked Ukraine with tanks, artillery, rockets, drones, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and jets, and has threatened to use weapons of mass destruction like chemical weapons and nuclear bombs.  Unless its conventional military weaponry is reduced to the minimum to protect borders and preserve order, and its WMD arsenals eliminated, Russia will be able to resume such an attack on any bordering state the day after it withdraws from Ukraine.  Unless its military capability is thus radically diminished, “irreversibility” is an impossibility and a temporary postponement a palliative.  The policy is right, its demands daunting.

 

For the past few centuries, Russia has been imperialistic because it is paranoiac.  Its paranoia goes back to the Tatar and Mongol invasions from eastern and central Asia in medieval and renaissance times.  In modern times, the invasions of Napoleonic France and Hitler Germany from western Europe have reinforced Russia’s traditional fears of brutal attacks.  As the dominant member of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Russia installed friendly governments in the occupied countries of eastern Europe throughout the Cold War to provide a buffer on its western border.  After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, constituent Soviet states established their independent countries and governments.  Within a decade, Putin ascended to power in 2000 and has worked to expand Russia’s authority or boundaries to these adjacent states; Ukraine is merely the latest such effort.  Since paranoia knows no bounds, Russia’s paranoia seeks protection, its efforts manifest in its imperialistic tendencies to expand its boundaries, thereby to increase protection from real or imagined foreign invasions.

 

Nothing that any country or group of countries can do can soon or significantly reform Russia’s political culture based on its paranoia.  Putin’s defeat in Ukraine, whether by military eviction or political erosion, will establish an opportunity to revise the current international order in Europe and much of the world.  That opportunity requires a resolve for which NATO countries are not known, not to waste Ukrainian sacrifice and heroism, and the triumph of democracy in eastern Europe on a short-term pause in hostilities  By now, NATO countries should realize that short-term peace with Russia would be no more than a prelude to another war with Russia.

 

The end of war in Ukraine enables its reconstruction and requires the reconstitution of Russia.  Presently, a third-world country with nuclear weapons, Russia must rebuild itself as a third-world country without them.  Much of the impetus to rebuild must come from sustained sanctions.  Just as sanctions are playing a large role in Russia’s defeat, so they should be maintained to ensure that Russia’s economy remains too impoverished to support a large role in international affairs, whether military, political, or economic, for the foreseeable future.  Sanctions should impose such high domestic costs on Russia that it cannot afford to attack neighboring countries or continue to occupy previously seized territories.

 

To achieve this goal, NATO’s objectives should be to degrade Russia’s military capabilities, to enable the emergence of new Russian leadership to establish a non-totalitarian government, and thereby to disarm its imperialistic, paranoiac impulses.  Until these objectives are reached, sanctions in all their rigor should continue.  The price of lifting them should be the prior, complete elimination of strategic offensive weapons and weapon systems—missiles, drones, bombers, and submarines—; the elimination of nuclear munitions, chemical stockpiles, their delivery systems, and related production and storage facilities; and the implementation of an unfettered NATO inspection regime.  All lifted sanctions should have a snap-back mechanism for violations.

 

The issue is whether NATO wants to win the battle for Ukraine but lose the war for peace—or not.  To make Russia’s withdrawal from Ukraine “irreversible” and not merely to postpone renewed Russian aggression there or elsewhere for “a year or two years or three years” requires a collective determination to prevent Russia from re-arming and to keep it disarmed.  Otherwise, history will repeat itself.  NATO will repeat the mistakes of the Allies after World War I which allowed Germany, resentful and revengeful after defeat, to re-arm—with World War II the result.  If it repeats those mistakes, NATO will face an even more belligerent, better prepared, and more determined Russia.  That likelihood means one thing: NATO can win the war, cannot win the peace, and will risk World War III.

BANISH RUSSIA AS A BARBARIC PARIAH

Years ago, my sister-in-law, knowing that I was curious about the Russian steppes, gave me Eric Newby’s The Big Red Train Ride (1977) for Christmas.  By the time I finished it, I understood two things about Russia.  First, its centuries-long history of hostilities has understandably made it psycho-socially insecure, paranoid, and, to compensate, repressive within its borders and aggressive and imperialistic beyond them.  Second, this combination of traits has, with the exception of great music, great novels, and grandiose architecture, left the country with nothing which could otherwise be called a civilization or a civilized way of or outlook on life.  The result: Russia as a whole operates like a collection of barbarians, brutal to themselves, brutal to others, who fight among themselves as much as with others.  Only when attacked do they coalesce.

Ukraine has been a recent showcase of the brutality of Russian barbarism.  In the early 1930s, when Stalin sought to enforce collective farming and suppress Ukrainian nationalism, his efforts resulted in the direct deaths of 3 to 3.5 million people (omitting a decline of a half million in births), or about 13% of the population.  Today, in his aggressive, imperialistic attack on Ukraine, Putin is attacking its civilian population with traditional indifference to human life.  To win, especially in the face of stiff resistance, Russia will adopt a no-holds-barred, scorched-earth approach to suppress the population and conquer territory.  It will terrorize civilians to create millions of refugees to burden NATO countries with a humanitarian crisis draining resources, damaging economies, creating ethnic frictions, and promoting political instability.  This conclusion is certain; just as Russia does not care about its own people, it does not care about other people.

Putin’s method of warfare reflects the abysmal ethics of Russia and its people.  The corruption, cronyism, and coerciveness of Putin’s government builds on the corruption, cronyism, and coerciveness of previous governments.  Russia lacks political ideals and a political philosophy to guide its government in domestic or foreign affairs.  Government is ruled by men, not law.  Which means that dishonesty is endemic in its way of life.  The Russian constitution, modeled on Western constitutions, is a lie because it means what those in power, through its courts, say it means.  Russia’s signature on a treaty is a lie in waiting until Russia finds it advantageous to ignore it.  When Putin repeatedly asserted that he intended no aggression against Ukraine, he was not, and knew he was not, telling the truth.  He cared more about buying time for the West to splinter about whether to believe him or not and whether to organize against a possible incursion than about personal honesty and how his political dishonesty might affect future diplomacy.

Such dishonesty has been a fixture of Russian international and national conduct especially since the end of World War II.  Russia (also the USSR, which it dominated) has proven untrustworthy in its international obligations.  Russia has kept none of its post-World War II commitments in Eastern Europe.  Instead of ending the occupation of its liberated countries, Russia installed communist governments and suppressed revolts (1953 East German uprising, 1956 Hungarian Revolution, and 1968 Prague Spring).  It invaded Afghanistan and fought (1979-1989) to support a communist government under attack from nationalist fighters opposed to it.  Not for nothing did Reagan adopt the policy of trusting but verifying.  Only the demise of the USSR in December 1991 enabled the countries of Eastern Europe to reclaim their independence.  Those countries which joined NATO wanted their membership to protect their independence.  Ukraine’s interest in joining NATO reflects the same desire.  Putin is trying to reverse the break-up of the Russian empire, and Ukraine is his first aggressive effort to do so.  With Ukraine behind him, he will try elsewhere, most likely the Baltic states: Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia.

The question is what U.S. policy should be.  I assume that Russia prevails in Ukraine, that it kills thousands, wounds or maims many thousands more, creates millions of refugees, and commits war crimes in the process, in violation of treaties which it has signed.  I also assume that the U.S. will establish a unified policy with NATO (and EU) members, which, to this end, should admit Finland, Sweden, and a Ukraine government-in-exile as members.  The U.S. policy should be the policy of the West.

The West should declare Russia a pariah nation and sever or work to sever all ties—military, political, economic, and cultural—with Russia.  It should isolate Russia by detaching itself from all means of Russian influence.  The West’s policies and practices should work to neutralize Russia as a country with the power to threaten other countries.

If Russia wants to build more nuclear weapons, let it.  NATO countries do not need to engage in an arms race.  They already have enough nuclear weapons either to deter Russia or to destroy whatever and as much as it wants.  It needs only to keep pace with technological advances in weaponry.  The West should adopt a strategy of resisting  Russian aggression, whether in overt military action or covert cyberattacks, in kind.

The West, with others as necessary, should oust Russia from all international organizations: the United Nations, the G-8, etc.  The West should restrict or terminate all communications and transportation, end all commercial and financial relationships, discontinue all cultural and educational exchanges.  It should maintain economic sanctions indefinitely, and liquidate all Russian assets in the West and use them to fund humanitarian aid to Ukrainian refugees.  The West should multiply its efforts to reduce its need for fossil fuels and thereby end dependence on Russian gas and petroleum.  This isolation should be achieved as rapidly as feasible and maintained indefinitely, without regard for Russian assurances, promises, or even changes of policies.  Russia must change by adopting a different way of life and establishing it throughout.  But it will not, so it must be constrained by the isolation of its pariah status to reconstitute itself as a civilized country.

WATER, WATER NOWHERE, NOR ANY DROP TO DRINK

Shortly after I relocated to Las Cruces in 2007, I attended a public meeting led by the newly elected mayor and my councilor Gil Jones.  The point of the meeting was to solicit opinions about what residents wanted, important things like more shaded bus stops and bicycle lanes.  Afterwards, I asked Gil whether the city had a plan for water usage in view of scientists’ projections of severe drought in the Southwest.  His answer was blunt: no.

If the city has such a plan now, it may be a secret for one of two reasons: (1) it is not a plan at all but a potpourri of vague platitudes about conserving, but not rationing, water; or (2) it is a plan which calls for radical (meaning “root”) changes in the economy and lifestyle.  My money is on (1); to my knowledge, the Las Cruces City Council has not been capable of addressing difficult issues or making difficult, as opposed to merely controversial, decisions.

The latest news is that the current drought is the worst in 1200 years and shows no sign of ebbing or ending.  The drought will proceed inexorably, more slowly and less dramatically than that which preceded and persisted throughout the Dust Bowl years in the 1930s.  Its effects were aggravated by greed-based decisions which ignored ecological conditions and by virtually non-existent environmental practices.  (If you want to see drought-produced devastation and tough, gritty American farmers struggling to survive and maintain their way of life, watch Ken Burns’s The Dust Bowl.)

Las Cruces faces a more complex and difficult set of problems.  With limited water allotments and availability, the city can introduce measures to cap or reduce water usage.  It already rotates days for residential watering.  Even if this step saves water, savings enable new construction.  If builders continue to push for more construction, and the city continues current policies and practices, it will over-build its water supply.

If the city recognizes and resolves to address the problem, it will reluctantly, incrementally, and slowly introduce other water-reduction measures.  Progressively, these may include requiring restaurants to provide water only on request (big savings—not; symbolic effects—minor); banning new lawns, then all lawns, then golf courses; and metering water and controlling residential, commercial, and institutional water allotments on a per-capita basis.  Finally, it will have to impose the ultimate water reduction measure: a building moratorium, likely a permanent one.

Adopting and implementing these and other measures will have dire consequences.  As inconveniences proliferate, the city’s appeal as a retirement destination will likely lose its luster, the housing market will weaken, housing values will decline, and slowing sales will put a brake on housing construction.   Either the market or a moratorium will ruin the only industry which sustains the local economy.  There are not enough movies being filmed in town or enough government agencies and educational institutions to provide work-fare for employable residents.  As befits a drought, the city will shrivel up.

I do not know all water-saving possibilities.  I assume that local environmentalists will have suggestions for conserving water.  But they will not be able to address the issues arising from an irreversibly diminishing supply of water: fairness in prioritizing users, reasonable policies for equitable distribution, and impartially and rigorously enforced regulations—the tough political issues with which the best city councils would struggle.

Of course, Las Cruces cannot solve all of its impending water-shortage problems.  It will get the worst of over-planting as well as over-building.  Dona Ana and other counties will continue to tap into the Rio Grande and underlying aquifers to provide for water-intensive pecan and pistachio as well as other farms.  The city will require the help of state government to deal with water-defined constituencies: residences, businesses, institutions, extractive industries, and agriculture.  Without advance planning, we can expect the modern equivalent of range wars.

Who are such forward-thinking people?  Las Cruces might look to its well-known environmentalist Senator Jeff Steinborn.  But instead of focusing his legislative efforts to prepare for impending perils to the state’s fragile environment, its economy, and the livelihoods and lifestyles of its residents, Steinborn is misdirecting his energy to wage war against a virtually non-existent threat to the state or its residents.

Whatever his motives, he is adopting fact-free scare tactics to raise the specter of risks to safety, health, and the environment from a proposed nuclear-waste facility isolated in barren, remote land near Carlsbad and Hobbs.  Asked to state and support his “concerns,” a wimpy, evasive word, he refused by not answering.  The scare-free fact about on-route transportation and off-site storage of nuclear waste is their unblemished record of no civilian deaths, no civilian illness, and no damage to nature.  If it comes to risks, the sun annually causes more cancers in New Mexicans than the worst imaginable transport accident or container leak involving nuclear waste can cause.  Steinborn is doing nothing to mitigate, not “concerns” or risks, but actual disease and deaths from cancer solar-induced by sunshine.

Of course, I jest.  But Steinborn, a close-minded, short-sighted ideologue, cannot, despite—perhaps because of—his environmentalist reputation, recognize or confront the biggest local and state-wide variant of the problem of climate change in our and our children’s and grandchildren’s time.  By spending his legislative energy on his and his base’s cultural and political antipathy to nuclear power, he is squandering the diminishing resource of time to address the diminishing resource of water and doing nothing to prevent catastrophic consequences for the state’s economy, its ecology, and its environment.

TEACH TODAY? NOT FOR LOVE OR MONEY!

    Permit me to be autobiographical at some length, not to boast or elicit praise, but to make a point.  I have a distinguished record as a high-school and college English teacher, and five decades ago aspired to be a college professor.  I know that God cares for me because He did not grant my wish.  Instead, I had a career as an independent consultant mainly in defense, energy, and environment, one more gratifying than anything which I could have had as a teacher or professor.  Still, when I retired, I returned to scholarship, became an independent scholar, and wrote well-regarded scholarly publications.

For 45 years, before, during, and after my career, I taught English intermittently in public and private secondary schools and colleges in ten states (OH, NY, MA, MI, KS, CO, VA, MD, OR, NM) and the District of Columbia.  I began teaching in elementary school; my second grade teacher arranged with my fifth grade teacher for me to teach a lesson on birds.  When I was a student teacher at Cornell, my supervisor stopped attending my classes after one week because she said that I was the best teacher in the high school.  After my first 3 months at a boys preparatory school, the assistant headmaster told me of parents reporting that their sons regarded me as the best teacher whom they had ever had.  When I was a teaching fellow at Michigan, the department asked me to design and direct a training program by and for graduate students; later, one of 10 out of 1500, I received an award for distinguished teaching.  I skip the many episodes of student praise along the way, including that of a Rhodes Scholar, now a professor at Duke University.

But I have also had a few experiences which have persuaded me that some, perhaps many, schools and colleges do not want good teachers.  In my first and and only term at a girls preparatory school, I soon became the teacher whom the admissions staff showed off to inquiring parents, whom Black students sought out for counsel, and whom the best students chose for my course on feminist literature through the ages.  Jealous teachers prompted the headmistress, who had observed and admired one of my classes, to engineer my replacement for the second term.  Anyone who thinks that mediocre teachers want good teachers on staff needs to think again.

When my wife and I were considering relocating to Las Cruces—she to enroll in the NMSU nursing program—we met with the English Department chair about my teaching writing or literature courses.  Before we left, she said that we would talk again if and when we had moved to town; after we left, she emailed to advise us not to relocate here.  We relocated, she declined to meet with me, and I was hired only in desperation to staff all writing classes.  I surprised the director of writing classes when I asked her not to announce her visits to evaluate my teaching; she said that did not know that such visits were part of her job.  The department did not care to help inexperienced graduate students in their first teaching assignment.  After encountering the least capable and least committed students of my career, I declined reappointment.

New Mexico’s Public Education Department was no more encouraging.  Despite four degrees, including a Master’s in secondary education, permanent teaching certification in New York, and years of diverse teaching, PED answered my inquiry about teaching by telling me that I would start at the lowest rung in the career ladder, like a recent graduate of a school of education.  Anyone who thinks that the education establishment wants good teachers needs to think again; New Mexico prefers national guard troops.

•      •      •

My experiences are not typical.  But if a former high-school and college English teacher with my record is not welcomed to teach in New Mexico schools or colleges, the message must be that the quality of teachers matters less than the quantity.  Despite my love of teaching and my success, I would not return to teaching today.  Indeed, I would warn teachers about entering the profession.  In fact, circumstances and conditions are warning them before I can get a word in edgewise.

For Governors, legislators, state education departments, schools of education, school boards, and voters have made a mockery of public education.  Most politicians know little or nothing about education and value it only for the political value of saying that they value education; you know, they say, “it’s all about the kids.”  So I am not surprised that many are fleeing and others are avoiding education (like the plague against which the powers-that-be who respect them so little will not even allow them to self-protect).

Most current problems began with the success of the women’s liberation movement (which success I endorse).  In pre-lib days, with few career opportunities in other fields, the best and the brightest had careers in education and nursing or work as librarians and paralegals.  They set the standards in teaching.  Principals—formerly, Principal Teachers—were former teachers and knew their schools and their staffs; they made evaluations based on daily knowledge and informed professional judgment.  Meanwhile, school boards exploited teachers trapped by gender discrimination, by paying them on the cheap and relying on psychic benefits to make up the difference.

When women’s lib freed them to enter more attractive careers, the education establishment, school boards in particular, failed to make adjustments to maintain standards, ensure a professional environment, and increase salaries to be competitive with salaries in the fields which the best and the brightest entered.  Two primary results of their failures were that mediocrities, who wanted steady jobs, steady paychecks, and union protection from administrative abuses and justified dismissal for incompetence, replaced them, and that student academic performance then began its steady decline.

The education establishment responded to vigorous complaints from business and industry by compounding these mistakes.  It adopted approaches to teaching entirely inappropriate because they were modeled on business/industrial models.  It imposed regimented curriculums, and prescribed and proscribed instructional methods, teacher evaluations based on student test scores, and performance-based or merit-pay schemes of pay or rewards.  It terminated psychic benefits.  Yet the decline in student academic performance continued.  Yet no one admitted or addressed the underlying problems: the mediocrity of teachers, the failure of schools of education to graduate better ones, and measly, mixed-up curriculums to accommodate the deficiencies of the mediocrities.

At the high-school level, with greater emphasis on science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and health (STEMH), teachers of the humanities have been most adversely affected.  English teachers who might have enjoyed teaching novels and plays found themselves teaching snippets; Hamlet reduced to the “To be or not to be” soliloquy.  This game of Trivial Pursuit is not any reasonable person’s idea of an education, but the education establishment no longer knows what an education is or what is it for, other than entry-level job training.  No one should be surprised at teachers’ demoralization, their rate of resignation or retirement, and others’ avoidance of the profession.

•      •      •

The progressive deterioration not only of K-12 public education, but also K-12 private education—where do private schools think that they can get teachers better than those in public schools?—is irreversible without three radical—meaning “root”—reforms.

The first reform is to make teaching a profession in four ways.  One, open teaching to all those interested and having subject-matter competence, whether acquired in school or on the job.  The idea that certain people are not suited to teach, like intellectuals or former military personnel, reflects anti-intellectual and anti-military stereotyping.  The idea that courses in methods are necessary to teach effectively is a lie demonstrated by declining academic performance, though a few courses can help some in presentation techniques and classroom management.  Demonstrated competence on independently designed, administered, and scored subject-matter tests, not graduation from a school of education, should be the determining criterion for a professional license.

Two, delegate greater authority to principals in hiring, retaining, promoting, and firing teachers.  They should have the authority and responsibility to develop competent staffs of teachers and to reward and punish their performance.  Establish standards for judging the conduct and performance of principals because of their greater authority and responsibility, and hold them accountable.  Appoint an inspector general dedicated to protecting teachers and directly accessible to them, with power to act.

Three, give teachers great latitude in teaching their classes.  They should be free to use whatever effective, efficient, but respectful means works for them, not required to teach according to a prescribed process or template.  Teacher evaluation should consider classroom performance, not pedagogical approach, and overall student performance, not test scores only or even mainly, with allowance for new, promising teachers to grow.

Four, raise salaries to be competitive with those in other professionals requiring comparable education.  The higher salaries should be phased in by giving them to recruits meeting the higher standards of state tests and to current teachers who meet them (minimum score: 95; no more than one re-take by anyone).

The second reform is to restructure curriculums, most importantly English, to make them comprehensive and sequential.  These curriculums should be designed by subject-matter experts experienced in teaching at each grade level.  Personnel in departments of education and schools of education should have no leadership role in the development of these curriculums and be in a minority on all curriculum committees.  They have demonstrated their incompetence by misunderstanding what a curriculum is, what it should include, and how it should be structured.  Witness Common Core State Standards.

The third reform is to reorient all curriculums for training teachers in state schools of education.  The reorientation should require schools of education to implement the state subject-matter curriculums and focus course and practicum work on subject-matter mastery according to those curriculums at the grade level at which prospective teachers expect to teach.  Currently, schools of education make no effort to prepare elementary school teachers for teaching the fundamentals of English, social studies, mathematics, and science.  Persistently atrocious proficiency scores in reading and mathematics in fourth and eighth grades are proof positive of their failure.

•      •      •

I end with an autobiographical story, again to make a point—in fact, more than one.  At Michigan, I taught, among other courses, a first-year course in expository writing with assignments based, not on essays in a collection, but on a half dozen Shakespeare plays.  I had asked my supervising professor to observe without giving notice, to see me teach as I taught, not teach like those who prepared to perform.  The play was 1Henry IV.  I came to class with the text and a few notes on main points.  I had not planned to give a quiz—I always took attendance,—so I gave none.  I led off with a question and for the next 45 minutes students responded to questions and follow-ups from me—I required defenses of all answers, right or wrong—and questions or challenges from classmates.  Throughout, I managed the discussion to cover my main points so that they emerged from discussion.  With 2 minutes to go, I summarized the discussion to make the main points explicit take-aways.

After the class ended and the students departed, my supervising professor gave me his response.  He was stunned; he had never seen a class like mine.  For the first 43 minutes, he had seen me manage the discussion, which involved everyone, voluntarily or, in a few cases, not, but he had no idea where I or it was going.  My summation made it clear to him that I knew exactly where I and it was going from the start.

The point is that I knew my subject cold, I knew exactly what I wanted to cover in the discussion, yet I led it in a way which encouraged interest and participation because discussion seemed to unfold naturally.  Moreover, the department not only gave great latitude to teaching fellows, but also provided supervision (unlike NMSU).  It prescribed nothing about how or what to do to cover the subject matter; instead, it trusted the competence and dedication of those who aspired to teaching.

Not all of my classes were as successful as this one was (though few were much below the mark), and not all topics lent themselves to such discussions.  But no teacher should enter a class without subject-matter competence, self-confidence, and a commitment to “stand and deliver.”  No teacher at any grade level should be hampered by top-down diktats or harassed by local micro-managers to achieve desired educational results.

Until America trains professionals, trusts professionals, and treats and compensates professionals like professionals, teaching will remain a career for a diminishing number of teachers, disproportionately mediocre, with student performance no less mediocre.

NM SUPREME COURT AND ITS GOVERNMENT LAWYER PROTECTION RACKET

The New Mexico Supreme Court establishes the “Rules of Professional Conduct” for lawyers in New Mexico.  Its Disciplinary Board enforces the “Rules” through the Office of Disciplinary Counsel (ODC).  Lawyers are encouraged, perhaps expected, and certainly should be condemned to read its nearly 240 single-spaced pages (pdf).  Those convicted of and incarcerated for serious professional misconduct should be required to memorize it as a condition of release.

I had the chance years ago to read Ohio’s statement of professional conduct.  When I was 19, the senior partner of a highly regarded law firm in my hometown promised me a partnership-track position the day after I passed the state bar exam.  I passed; that is, I politely declined the offer.  Even then, I knew myself well enough to know that I did not want to read legalese, split hairs, and write sophistical arguments—all in an ego-quest to conquer competition in depositions or trials.  So I missed my chance, but not very much.

My experience with Las Cruces’s government lawyers, City Attorney Jennifer Vega-Brown and Senior Assistant Attorney Robert Cabello, prompted me to skim-read this code of legal conduct.  By the time I finished my cursory examination, I concluded that the Court operates a protection racket for lawyers, especially government lawyers.  Two biases are essential to its operation; a third bias ODC lawyers are not equipped to handle.

The first bias is the Court’s undue emphasis on the conduct of private lawyers, either alone under their shingle or with others in a law firm, almost to the exclusion of the conduct of government lawyers.  The disproportionate frequencies of the words “clients” and “citizens” parallel the disproportionate numbers of private and government lawyers.  Yet the proportion of text on private and government lawyers is the inverse of their importance.  Lawyers employed by city, county, and the state governments are far more important to the functioning of society although they often work, not for and often against citizens, but presumably, eventually, accidentally in the public interest.

Some fraction of these government lawyers forget that, as lawyers, they are “officers of the court” first, employees of governments second, as well-known examples of their forgetfulness prove.  Most government attorneys shield police by reducing or declining charges alleged against them.  Many relieve the burdens of court dockets or increase convictions rates by coercing plea bargains, especially in dubious cases, by overcharging unrepresented or poorly represented citizens, mostly minorities, many innocent, and threatening them with heavy penalties and long prison terms.  Some coach police to give false or misleading incriminating testimony (aka, “testilying”; my anagram: police = cop lie) and suppress or conceal exonerating evidence to secure convictions, some involving life, some involving death sentences.  If the Court were concerned about the integrity of the profession, its “Rules” would not be silent about these and other abusive practices by government lawyers.

The “Rules” says little or nothing specific about professional conduct by government lawyers.  However, the discussion in the last article, “Article 8: Maintaining the Integrity of the Profession,” is general enough to include them in “16-804. Misconduct”:

It is professional misconduct for a lawyer to:

A. violate or attempt to violate the Rules of Professional Conduct, knowingly assist or induce another to do so or do so through the acts of another;
B. commit a criminal act that reflects adversely on the lawyer=s [sic] honesty, trustworthiness or fitness as a lawyer in other respects;
C. engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation;
D. engage in conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice;
E. state or imply an ability to influence improperly a government agency or official or to achieve results by means that violate the Rules of Professional Conduct or other law; or
F. knowingly assist a judge or judicial officer in conduct that is a violation of applicable rules of judicial conduct or other law.
G. engage in conduct that the lawyer knows or reasonably should know is harassment or discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, or marital status in conduct related to the practice of law….

These acts of misconduct apparently apply to all lawyers, though E seems directed to private, not government, lawyers.  For them, E should proscribe acts, not just words, “to influence improperly a government agency or official.”  The reason is that government lawyers sometimes seek to advance personal agendas under the guise of giving advice, which, even if ill-founded, flawed, or false, is accepted on their authority and acted on.

The second bias is a procedure favoring all lawyers  The Court “has established … procedures regarding the investigation of alleged unethical conduct….  The procedures are designed to provide a thorough and objective review of the complaint of conduct and to resolve the matter in a way that is fair to those involved.”  So says the Court.  But the Board says otherwise in its statement of the complaint process.  I quote and comment on its first three steps:

First, if an attorney thinks that the complaint has merit, “The Office of Disciplinary Counsel (ODC) sends a copy of your complaint to the attorney for his or her response.  The response is confidential; you will not [ODC’s emphasis] receive a copy.”  The process not only ensures the confidentiality of that response, but also enables the accused attorney to tailor a response to rebut the complaint.

Second, “Once the attorney has responded, the file is assigned to one of the attorneys of the ODC.”  How can the ODC attorney reliably evaluate the veracity of the response?

Third, “If the response reveals that there was no misconduct, or that the misconduct was a minor isolated instance, ODC will dismiss the complaint and you will receive a letter of the reason(s) for dismissal.  The letter will explain how you can request review if you so choose.”  The ODC attorney relies on the response to reveal misconduct or not, but the term and syntax are not reassuring that he scrupulously analyzes and evaluates the lawyer’s response with all available information.  A complainant’s reply is one important and possibly indispensable means for ODC lawyers to ascertain the truth or falsity of his response.  Without stated criteria, no one can be sure that the conduct complained of is “minor” and “isolated.”  Once the ODC reaches a decision denying the complaint, the complainant has virtually no chance of overturning it; the Board backs staff.  Its procedure can should avoid such issues by involving the complainant before, not after, ODC makes a judgment about the complaint.

The crunch comes when a complaint concerns a lawyer’s honesty.  ODC asks the lawyer whether a complaint about lying is true or false.  How, short of revelation, does the ODC lawyer ascertain the veracity or falsity of the response?  My experience suggests that, with lying a common practice in law enforcement and legal communities, ODC lawyers likely incline to regard most of them as “minor,” whether “isolated” or not.

A third bias is the likely inability of ODC lawyers to address bias-based lawyering in complaints about “race, sex, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, or marital status.”  Even those best intentioned probably cannot identify indicators or address nuances of these biases.

Were I a member of the Disciplinary Board, I would want to revise the “Rules of Professional Conduct” in six ways:

(1) Group “Rules” by separate professional functions—financial arrangements, communications, etc.
(2) Use subgroups of “Rules” to indicate which apply to all lawyers, which to government lawyers, and which to non-government lawyers.
(3) Eliminate the bias which does not detail the professional conduct of government lawyers to the same level of detail as that for non-government lawyers.
(4) Develop rules to address prosecutorial abuses which implicate police, prosecutors, and judges, and thereby undermine the integrity of the legal profession.
(5) Move the current “Article 8: Maintaining the Integrity of the Profession” forward to be Article 1 and revise it to emphasize the current section “16-804.  Misconduct” so that it frames the rest of the “Rules” as elaborated guidance to avoid misconduct by lawyers or disservice to their employers or clients.
(6) Eliminate the bias against complainants by revising procedures to give them timely opportunity and the time to address lawyers’ responses to the complaint.

If the Court wants to maintain the integrity of the profession, it has serious work to do.

THROW OUT THE CRITICAL RACE TRASH AT SCHOOL BOARD MEETINGS

When she was sweet sixteen, my daughter suffered from a severe case of the hormone poisoning which afflicts many American female teenagers.  We had an argument; she was losing it and, knowing that she was losing it, appealed to her right to have her opinion.  I replied that her having a right to an opinion did not mean that her opinion was right.  Squelched, she later admitted that her opinion was wrong.

The same cannot be said of those attending a Las Cruces School Board meeting to protest vigorously against the Public Education Department’s proposed revision of the social studies, or history, curriculum because, so they claim, it incorporates Critical Race Theory.  The fact is that it does not, but they care, not about the fact, only about a racist agenda to impose on schools.  Unlike my daughter, they are not teenagers, but adults, she more mature than they.  She could listen and learn, and admit being wrong; they cannot.  Instead, they bellow, berate, and bully those who have different and better opinions.  Unable to offer facts or make arguments, they call names, shout slogans, and thump Bibles.  They are the metastasized legacy of hillbillies who left their shacks in the hollars to fight for states’ rights, the fig-leaf rationalization of white racial superiority.  Whatever they are, they talk trash.

These protestors have rights to have and express opinions, but those rights do not mean that their opinions are right or, if wrong or unworthy, must be respected.  As a teacher, consultant, and citizen activist, I like to discuss or debate important issues, especially of public policy.  However, I stop participating when I encounter disregard of information and indifference to truth; bigotry in the assumption of superiority on the basis of gender, race, religion, ethnicity, class, or education; or angry outbursts, insults, threats, or violence.  I feel no guilt about losing respect for my opposite because I have no misguided tolerance which often tacitly accepts the otherwise intolerable.

Still, I almost sympathize with these protestors.  Like the rest of us, they suffer from extreme tension and seek relief from a seemingly endless pandemic of a forever mutating covid-19 virus, with personal, societal, and economic effects; a complex, dynamic, and dangerous international order, with growing threats from China and Russia; accelerating post-Vietnam trends of educational decay and moral, social, and political rot; threats or effects of climate change, the nature and rate of technological, economic, and social change, all aggravated by passionate cultural and ideological divisions.  Anyone not anxious, stressed, or frazzled is not paying attention.

The protestors suffer like the rest of us but, like racists elsewhere, feel their sense of white superiority threatened.  To them, inclusiveness, multiculturalism, or the idea that “Black Lives Matters”—more change—is a sharp stick in the eye.  Fearful and angry, they vent, not about remote, large, and complicated issues, but about smaller, simpler ones close at hand, like changes in a curriculum close to personal concerns.  Anyone worried about the future is going to be concerned about the education which children receive.

Their attacks on proposed or approved education policies or course curriculums not only release pent-up tensions which we all feel, but also focus their pre-existing racism on CRT.  However sincerely and strongly they assert their opinions, they should not expect informed, logical, and reasonable people to agree, accept, or acquiesce in them.  Instead, reasonable people should adopt the best antidote to their trash talk: detailed rebuttals of bogus claims, clear and cogent decisions benefitting students’ education, and explicit limits of protestors’ behavior.  If protestors behave outrageously, officials should restore order without regret at having to do so.

In the matter of CRT, the primary rebuttal is the exposure of protestors’ ignorance and their indifference to it.  None of the protestors can define CRT or knows its origins or auspices.  None knows who teaches it to whom or can locate material imported from CRT and inserted into the proposed curriculum.  None can give educational, not partisan or racist, reasons for excluding from that curriculum facts about race as an influence in America long predating and continuing parallel to the specialized academic study of its influence in institutions.  None can prove it makes students “hate America.”  None cares.

None knows or cares that history is an account of selected facts interpreted to approximate the whole truth.  Protestors want a half-truth history which excludes the facts of slavery and the racism which justified it and has permeated America from its origins.  The absurdity of excluding race from American history would resemble the absurdity of excluding radioactivity, x-rays, E=MC², relativity, and quantum mechanics from physics.  Modern physics supplements, not replaces, classical physics because Albert Einstein and Max Plank explain facts which Isaac Newton could not.  Likewise, history which includes the facts of race and racism explains more about America’s past than race-biased history can.  Just as no school board would base its physics curriculum on 17^th-century science, so no school board should sustain a history curriculum based on a history derived from the 19^th century.

None cares.  The protestors do not care about history or education; they care about white racist propaganda to indoctrinate all students into beliefs of white superiority; they want to racially segregate facts about race.  They are not content to teach their children bigotry at home; they want schools to teach bigotry to all students.  They fear that racially different classmates will unteach their children what they have tried to teach and that a revised curriculum will teach them about this country’s ennobling struggles to overcome racism and realize its ideals.  “Uncomfortable,” indeed, for them but not their children.

Still, the proposed revision of the curriculum has technical flaws tantamount to educational failure or worse.  Like many curriculums developed in recent decades, it defines, not subject-matter information and skills, but “performance standards,” which are not standards at all, only tasks to be accomplished.  Though intended to inform the public about content, it does not specify the knowledge and skills teachers must possess and students should acquire.  Moreover, many standards are age-inappropriate and invasive of individual privacy—student, parent, friend, or neighbor.  Students revealing such information on their initiative is one thing; teachers assigning work requiring such revelations is another.  Schools should not evolve into a service of law enforcement.

School boards have many good reasons to reject critical race trash but few good reasons to accept the proposed revision of the history curriculum.  The question is whether their members know enough about curriculums themselves, have reasonable views what a history curriculum should teach, and have the courage to adopt it.