Category: Education

A Time for Changes, Not Slogans

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

Critical Thinking

When I was a teacher there always seemed to be at least one person on campus who was not particularly good at doing the job. Sometimes the individual was just lazy, always sitting behind the desk giving the students work to do with very little instruction. Sometimes the person was dispensing erroneous information. The worst of the bad teachers were the ones who were abusive toward the students. It was a well known fact that firing a teacher was almost impossible unless they had stolen money or done something sexual with either another teacher or a child.

It was frustrating to have those kind of people in our midst because they made the same amount of money as the rest of us while also making our profession look very bad. Some of them would last long enough to even earn a pension for the remainder of their lives. There was a hushed practice among principals known as “passing the trash.” They would agree to take someone who was not doing well in another school in exchange for sending away one of their own problem teachers. As a result the troubles continued year after year with nobody able to find a way to clean house. The contracts and unions protected even the teachers who should not have been in the schools.

The same type of system plagued the Catholic Church until very recently. Priests who were discovered to be pedophiles were sent away for counseling and many eventually found their way back into other parishes where they sometimes continued their foul behavior. They were protected and passed from one place to another, usually without any retribution.

Most organizations in at will employment states are able to fire employee who do not meet particular standards. Sadly our police departments exist with systems much like education and the Catholic churches of old. The unions operate more to protect officers than to guide them. Often times when a cop behaves in egregious ways there is a note in his or her file but little is done to remove that person permanently from the force. These bad actors defile the good name of the majority of law enforcement officers who work hard to serve and protect the public. Much of the problematic policing that we see is a result of covering up behaviors that should be grounds for expulsion from the service. Often departments simply pass their trash to other municipalities, creating ticking time bombs in their midst.

We are so divided in this country today that there seems to be a schism that requires us to either be all in for the blue or all in for the Black citizens who are protesting the all too frequent abuse that they receive at the hands of trigger happy police officers. Instead it would benefit everyone, including the truly decent men and women who police our streets to rid themselves of those who degrade the badge. All police officers and their supporters, which include me by the way, should want to create a system of transparency that provides a means of eliminating any cop who is racist or too quick to use force. Just as I was embarrassed by teachers who were subpar, so should all good lawmakers and citizens be ready to clean house.

The most wonderful thing we might do for our police officers is to demonstrate that the bad cops will not be tolerated. We must demand that substandard cops will not be allowed to diminish the dedication and hard work of the many. I worry when I hear blanket statements of support without consideration that there are systemic problems that require needed changes. I get irritated when someone suggests that I am somehow against all police officers if I point out solutions that may help the profession.

It is interesting that the United Kingdom only had three victims of police shootings last year and Germany only had seven. The police in those countries do not carry guns. When fire power is needed they call special forces that are armed. It would behoove us to find out how they manage to make this work. 

There are a number of solutions being offered and many parties with great interest in what may eventually become law. I would like to think that just this once our elected officials will work together and not at odds. Frankly their failure to think of the country first and their own elections last has created a divisive and unproductive environment for years. How can they expect any of us to trust them when they get along about as well as children in a schoolyard with no adult supervision.

These are very serious times. We have to have a willingness to be honest with one another. Showing uncritical allegiance to any group will only result in a standoff. I want the juvenile sound bites  to stop and real critical thinking to begin. Our country does not need cheerleaders with slogans, it needs honest assessment and thought. That means a willingness to question, examine, debate, challenge and evaluate with honesty and a place at the table for all stakeholders. 

Cries of Five Hundred Years

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

crying

There is a certain type of conversation that is incredibly difficult to endure. We almost all encounter them in our lifetimes. Mine came from my mother, my husband, my children, my bosses, my students. They were presented in moments of frustration, but always with the idea of helping me to understand something about which I was seemingly oblivious. They required a willingness on my part to suspend preconceived notions and judgements and simply listen with an intent to learn. Since they sometimes involved a critique of my actions or beliefs they were humbling and often tempted me to defend myself. All of them ultimately improved my relationship with the person who was in a way giving me the magnificent gift of honesty and an opportunity to change.

My mother often engaged in such soul searching with me. She was never afraid to provide me with a truthful assessment of my behavior. Even though I often was initially  angry with her, upon some sincere meditation I almost always realized that she had helped me to become a better person with her appraisals. Indeed, I might have been a mediocre teacher and wife and mother without her unfiltered sagacity at important junctures in my life.

I have always considered myself to be a peacemaker. I despise conflict of any kind. My life has had enough uproar without my purposely seeking to shake things up. Still, there have been moments when I realized that my silence would fly in the face of the ethics by which I measure the morality of my life. I know that I cannot look away from hurt or pain simply because I want to keep a measure of calm in my world.

I am reminded of two incidents that had a profound effect on who I try to be. The first occurred when I was eight years old shortly after my father had died. My family had moved to a new home and we were just getting to know all of the neighbors. One evening we were alerted that the man two doors down had shot and killed his wife. The police were on their way as we all stood on the sidewalk waiting to see what would happen next. We could hear the children in that home crying in terror but nobody moved to help them. From out of nowhere came Kathleen Bush, a tiny woman with nerves of steel. She marched straight to the house, banged on the door, and ordered the killer to release the children. She threatened to break down the door if necessary. Within minutes the little ones came outside one by one. Without saying anything to the rest of us Kathleen took the babies to the safety of her home.

Years later a man was beating his wife in an apartment in the same courtyard as mine. She was screaming for help and her children were standing in the window crying. Once again someone had called the police and the rest of us stood around nervously hearing and watching what was happening. A woman left the gaggle of onlookers, bounded up the stairs and banged on the front door demanding that the children be allowed to leave. She was unafraid even as the man began to threaten her. She kicked the door and made threats of her own until the children were safely in her arms.

Those two women taught me the importance and power of someone who is unwilling to just be a bystander when a wrong is being done. They never even thought of their own safety and risked being hurt to save those children. I have the highest respect for them to this very day.

I have almost always taught minority children. In my last school I encountered a group of Black students who schooled me on the difficulties facing them on a daily basis. I had rather naively believed that with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the election of Barack Obama that the problems of the past had mostly evaporated. After all, I have Black neighbors and I worked on equal footing with Black educators. I wondered how things could possible be so bad.

It was then they my students opened up with great honesty. They expressed feelings and ideas that made me feel uncomfortable but I decided to listen without prejudice. I did not attempt to change their opinions or explain mine. I just heard what they were saying, knowing that they were not trying to hurt me, but rather to help me understand. It was one of those very difficult conversations that felt quite uncomfortable. In the end I began to realize that in spite of my efforts to be a good and loving person I had missed the extent to which Black in America are still being abused by much of society. The students gave me a great gift. They showed me a truth of which I had been ignorant. Suddenly I saw the realities of what they had told me with eyes no longer blinded by my own experiences. 

The best explanation of the Black Lives Matter movement that I have heard relates it to disease. Right now we are engaged in a battle with the Covid 19 virus. Our emphasis on it does not mean that we do not care about cancer or heart disease or any other illness. It just means that right now it is the source of our biggest health concern. So too, saying that Black lives matter does not mean that Black people are somehow more important than all people but that our Black citizens daily grabble with fears most of us never experience. Even when they are innocently running for exercise they may be in grave danger of being suspected of having criminal intent and lose their lives. It is a concern that few of us have and in our complacency we have too long stood waiting for someone else to come to their  rescue

That is why I am so adamant in my support of the Black Lives Matter movement. The protests and marches may not be perfect because they have at times been infiltrated with bad actors who have changed our focus with their destruction. That is not what should be most important to us. The emphasis should be on the reason for why Black Lives must matter to us all. Literally millions of Black people from around the world are crying out for all of us to understand their plight. They are screaming to be saved. Through a long line of history they have cried out with in pain for more than five hundred years. Why are so many of us still refusing to listen?

What’s In a Word?

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

old-brick-one-room-school-house-c-wayne-hennebert

I often spend a great deal of time attempting to find the exact word that I need to convey a particular message. Given how many times people have misunderstood my intent I suspect that I not quite as proficient at selecting the appropriate phrases as I would like to be. The written word is static and subject to a thousand different interpretations so it helps if ideas are described in as simple and and understandable form as possible.

I’ve been writing a great deal about the Back Lives Matter movement because I truly believe that we are in a moment of living history. The protests are far greater than the sum of their parts and if things go well there will be significant changes that may help to move the dial of justice closer to equity. Because change is wrought with many concerns not everyone is on board with what is happening which makes it more imperative than ever for there to be clear goals that clearly outline what might be done. Unfortunately the nebulous catch phrase “defund the police” is being bandied about and causing a great deal of confusion even among those of us who agree that we must face problems of race squarely in the face and make important changes.

To be honest when I began hearing of defunding police forces it sounded way too extreme. Usually when something sounds hyperbolic I find that I have probably misinterpreted it’s true intent so I set to work finding out as much about the defunding movement as possible. While nothing about the concept is set in stone it appears to revolve around the idea of taking some of the duties that now belong to police officers and shifting them to persons and agencies better trained to handle them. It is a way of allowing our police officers to handle crime and still have time for more community involvement. The hope is that police will be able to become known and beloved members of the fabric of society. Doing this means taking a number of current duties off of their plates. For example, police are often called to assist with mentally ill citizens and these incidents sometimes escalate into violence. Instead it would make more sense to send people trained and certified to work with mentally ill persons. They would be better equipped to calm persons who are in a state of distress.

I began thinking about the potential of such changes by considering how teaching has evolved from the one room school houses of old to the modern day classroom. At one time a teacher was all things to all people. Eventually auxiliary professionals began to provide teachers with the ability to concentrate their efforts on teaching subject matter. Schools began to hire librarians, counselors, technology specialists, social workers, coaches, music teachers, nurses and so on instead of leaving all of those duties to a single individual. Today’s teachers continuously receive specialized training and certifications. The educational experience has had to adapt to ever changing challenges and so too should the policing efforts of our cities and towns.

Nobody expects us to exist without the men and women in blue who put their lives on the line to keep us safe. Instead, as I comprehend it, the idea is to create a more highly trained and specialized force that is not buried under the weight of more and more duties that might very easily become the purview of other specialists. I would think that this might actually make the life of the men and women in blue a great deal less stressful. I can only imagine how exhausting the present demand must be, making it little wonder that some officers reach a boiling point that leads to trouble in an emotionally charged situation.

As things changed for teachers in the classroom some ideas were not so good but most made life far easier and helped to lower the stress levels considerably. I see nothing wrong with beginning a concerted effort to find the best law enforcement practices and use them to create greater equity for both our police officers and the citizens that they serve. There are already locales that have had great success with restructuring and we should be studying them.

There is nothing radical about continuous improvement. A few years back when Ford Motor Company was on the verge of bankruptcy and was producing inferior automobiles experts descended on the plants and recommend sweeping changes that revolutionized the way the cars would be made. The approach was a last effort to save the dying manufacturing plants and they resulted in happier workers and customers. Ford now consistently produces some of the most reliable cars and trucks in the industry. The company’s willingness to take a hard look at problems and try new methods to repair the damage of years of clinging to the status quo has now become a business model that is studied in graduate schools.

Our world is constantly changing and the organizations that take the time to adapt and be flexible not only survive but grow and prosper. The so called defunding concept may not be the best way to repair our criminal justice system but we should not be too quick to toss out the entire idea. I sense that there is something quite interesting doubt the methodology. Perhaps with a better moniker and a bit of retooling it can lead to a modern police force that becomes an integral part of every community. 

Searching For Truth

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

feathers

In the long ago when my husband was in graduate school he was often invited to small gatherings at the homes of his professors. The evenings usually consisted of academic discussions of the past, the present and the future. There was always a great deal of emphasis on data, theories of social science and outcomes of common human behaviors. Such evenings were intellectually exhilarating. My part was almost always just to listen and learn after which my curiosity would lead me to do more reading on the various topics of discussion.

Of late I have been reminded of the excitement that comes from considering varying points of view to explain the workings of the world. In Zoom conferences with my nephews who live in Chicago and with my grandson and granddaughter who are still in the process of furthering their educations I have learned by listening and then continuing my research later. I have also delighted in garnering information from some of my former students who now hold posts as teachers, college professors, economists and the like. In the spirit of intellectual fairness they take great pains to investigate the credibility of claims before accepting them as gospel. They are wary of any kind of particulars that appear to have a taint of undocumented truth.

I am now an old dog who is still listening quietly and learning new tricks. Among them is the ever more pressing need to check sources before accepting their authenticity. Social media platforms and modern technology have created rumor mongering factories. Those feathers that Jesus talked about with the gossipy women are now flying at us at warp speed and once they are out there they are exceedingly difficult to remove. They are flying through the avenues of communication like a blizzard of fakery.

The pandemic, economic uncertainty, and the Black Lives Matter movement have all collided with an election year to make the prevalence of false information more and more common. A couple of quick examples illustrate the problem. One is a side by side photo of President Trump waving a Bible and Adolf Hitler doing a similar gesture with the holy book. The truth is that the Hitler photo was manipulated. It never happened and yet it has no doubt circulated around the world millions of times as valid proof of President Trump’s facist tendencies.

In the same vein there is an image of Nancy Pelosi tearing the Bible in half in protest of President Trump. It’s similarity to a real picture of her tearing up the president’s State of the Union address alerted me to do some homework where I found that the creation was a satirical effort by somehow wanting to inject some levity into the anxious political environment. The problem is that the people posting the photo were all proclaiming their disgust with Congresswoman Pelosi and anger at her audacity in destroying such a sacred volume. In other words they believed that she had actually ripped a Bible asunder.

I could go on and on and on. I have seen screeds about damage done by rioters in the present time which were accompanied by photo “evidence” from four years ago. One video I watched showed rioters tearing down the statue of a slave trader with the indication that it was happening in the United States when in fact it was in the United Kingdom. People were becoming enraged over incidents that had absolutely nothing to do with the BLM protests.

If there is “fake news” in the world it is mostly to be found on social media platforms and the sources of such misinformation are almost always disreputable. Sadly few people have the time or the inclination to check the veracity of everything they see before reacting to it. While it is rather easy to see the falsehood of some propaganda, other examples are quite cleverly produced to appear rational and valid. For that reason we all need to guarded in our acceptance of everything we encounter as truth.

I have generally found that if something appears to be hyperbolic or audacious it is quite likely to be either being absolutely false or at the very least an effort to propagandize the public. So too when statements or solutions are seemingly too simplistic they merit a closer examination. We hear about “defunding” police departments and immediately jump to conclusions about what that actually means regardless of which side of the BLM movement we lean toward. The reality is that defunding does not mean ridding ourselves of a police force but rather re-allocating some of the functions of those organizations to agencies that are more meaningful. For example, right now our police officers are answering calls regarding people with mental illnesses. Our jails are filled with the mentally ill. The defunding idea would appropriately outsource those duties to mental health professionals. Persons who are suffering from mental illnesses would free up jails and decrease time spent by police waiting in hospital emergency rooms with buses full of prisoners waiting to be evaluated.

While I was in the United Kingdom I learned that many of the duties of our American police officers are the domain of other groups in that country. They have meter maids for example to give parking tickets. By allocating funds and functions to more suitable agencies our police force can concentrate on the heavy duty crimes rather than the petty infractions. A man using a counterfeit twenty dollar bill should not have merited the attention of four police officers. If this incident had been investigated in more fitting ways we would not have been sitting where we now are.

Other concerns swirling around police departments include the increasing use of military style equipment by police as well as the quickness to resort to harsh techniques. Departments must consider their current tactics and begin a process of training all of their officers in de-escalation techniques. In cities where that is already standard practice there are fewer occurrences of misguided overuse of force. Finally police unions need to be willing to admit when their own have crossed the line of decency and admonish members who give policing efforts a bad name. They cannot automatically defend bad behavior and then expect to maintain the respect of the public. The Catholic Church is feeling from backlash for the many years that pedophile priests were protected. Police unions should take note of how such inaction destroys credibility. 

We all need to consider that the world is complex and neither our reactions nor our solutions from problems should be denied the time it takes to make reasoned decisions. Searching for the truth should be a common occupation for all of us. That means that first we have to listen and then we must take the time to ferret out the truth without blindly following anyone.

It’s Time We Get Started

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

Problem-Solve-750x354

I saw a post that suggested that if we just turned off the media for thirty days and went about our business we would soon find that everything would suddenly get better. Sadly like anyone else I would surely love for the problems facing our nation with regard to Covid-19 and race relations to evaporate just by not thinking about them, but experience has taught me that ignoring difficulties does not eliminate them. In fact doing so tends to only make them worse.

We will be facing a number of issues in the coming weeks and months that will require our attention. All of them are complex and won’t be solved with quick fixes or wishful thinking. We can’t just run to the beaches or out to the malls and think that our economy will suddenly begin operating at full throttle or the the virus will go away as mysteriously as it appeared. We won’t cure the racism that we’ve recently seen by insisting that it isn’t there either. We’ve got work to do and we will get the best results by facing the pain and the hardships that our country has endured. We are far from being ready to pat ourselves on the back because if anything is somewhat certain it is that we have been far too complacent in thinking that the status quo has been as good as we need to be.

All of us should be insisting that we be better prepared for future national emergencies. The honest truth is that we were blindsided and forced to move without a real plan or sufficient supplies. It matter less who or what caused the virus to enter our country than to determine why we spent so many precious days and weeks fumbling to identify and address the issues. Certainly this virus and its impact on the world seems to be unprecedented, but in truth such pandemics have occurred before and we have been warned about the possibility of such a thing happening again many times. In fact, when George W. Bush was president he decided to form a commission to design a framework for addressing possible emergencies like the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918. Unfortunately a Republican Congress bent on lowering taxes reduced funding for the program during the Obama administration leaving a major hole in the nation’s safety net.

Since we can’t relive the past our only option is to proceed from this day forward to create a well funded pandemic plan that is run by experts in infectious disease and virology, The group should also include supply chain specialists, representatives from medical manufacturing and pharmacists. There should be generous and permanent funding from Congress that cannot be randomly taken away in political power struggles. We must treat it as the national security issue that it is.

We also need to look at how to coordinate responses to pandemics across states and within cities so that the confusion that occurred during the past few months will not be repeated. We know that there are countries with populations as dense or even denser than ours that had fewer cases and deaths from Covid 19. We need to study the behaviors and operations that they followed to get such favorable results. We might learn from them if we are able to determine what decisions elicited the better outcomes. We can’t be too proud to learn from other countries because in this case we were not number one or even in the top ten.

It is imperative that we have ongoing discussions about how to best serve our students during emergency situations. When the new school year rolls around there will be multiple problems to face. We would do well to gather teachers across the nation right now to brainstorm ideas regarding how to keep our faculties and students safe while also providing the best possible educations. We may have to think out of the box and be willing to try methods that are untested. The efforts will demand flexibility and a willingness to react quickly to changes as they arrive. At the same time we owe it to parents and students to be as honest as possible about what to expect so that they will not be surprised at the last moment. It’s not fair to anyone to make promises that may never be kept so if there is a chance that school life as we have known it is impossible, then we need to tell people the facts. Then we must prepare them for what they will experience. 

We have millions of unemployed persons. I would like to submit that we urge large corporations and smaller businesses to come up with ideas that might get the men and women without jobs back on a payroll quickly. Perhaps there might be a job sharing program or even a temporary lowering of salaries across the board to allow businesses to hire new workers. I think that sharing the sacrifices rather than putting them on the shoulders of only those unfortunate enough to be left out in the cold is a humane and very American thing to do. I know that if each person lost a few thousand dollars so that others might be hired it would be a grand show of support for those who are fearful of losing their homes and their self respect. The government can only help so much. Ultimately it will be each employer finding ways to get people back on the payroll that will help to turn the economy back around.

Finally, and most importantly, we must quit pretending that racism does not exist. If we are not minorities who have experienced such things we have to admit that we don’t know how it feels to be continually targeted simply because of the color of our skin or other features that have nothing to do with who we are. The fact is that if we have not walked in that other person’s shoes all we can do is believe them when they describe what their lives are like. A good beginning for fixing the race relation problem that seem to be enduring  should begin with better training for our police officers and public servants, and most especially with those who make our laws.

No, we can’t just turn off the news and pretend that all is well, because it is not. Our best bet is to move past finger pointing and recriminations and begin a process of fixing what is broken. We have much work to do. It’s time we get started.