Category: News

A Fit of Nincompoopery

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment
woman wearing black jacket standing near ocean with swan and birds
Photo by GEORGE DESIPRIS on Pexels.com

According to the dictionary a nincompoop is a silly or foolish person. Nincompoopery refers to the beliefs and behaviors of a nincompoop. It is folly, stupidity. With a tip of the hat to Nero Wolf who first proposed the turn of the phrase, I submit that each day Twitter becomes the locale of many “fits of nincompoopery.”

Let’s face it, how much of great worth can be stated or argued in only one hundred forty characters? The comments are generally so terse that they might be interpreted in dozens of different ways, and therein lies a great number of the problems. Add to that the trolls lurking under the Twitter bridge and the so called discussions often become quite nasty, festering like plastic bags for perpetuity. Many a soul has lost a job or been revealed as a scum bag because of an outburst of tweets that might better have been left unsaid. We now live in a world of instant verbal arguments among strangers who somehow erroneously believe that they are doing no harm. It all reminds me of the back and forth that I sometimes heard among rival groups of fourth graders when I was teaching elementary school long ago.

Sure it’s a free country and all that, but frankly I’m becoming quite weary of the vast numbers of degrading tweets, particularly when they come from people who should know better than to let their fingers run afoul of common decency. We all see and hear things that make us angry, but generally control our temptations to lash out. There is a certain level of immaturity associated with outbursts that are hurtful to other people, so I find myself wondering when we lost our sense of decorum.

We have Roseann Barr, who has never seemed to know when to keep her mouth shut, losing a popular television series over rash racist observations. There is a New York Times journalist who seems to think that there is nothing particularly wrong with hurling invective at white men. The director of the highly successful Avengers series was recently fired over troublesome tweets and jokes made many years ago. Of course there is also the embarrassing aspect of the President of the United States making a fool of himself and the country far too many times with his late night rants. Regardless of the defenses being suggested in these cases, we somehow have a sense that something is going terribly wrong, particularly when we accept such behaviors as normal.

Freedom of speech is an important aspect of our Bill of Rights and certainly insults between adults are nothing new, but the more frequent incidence of such behavior is bothersome to me. I prefer a bit of propriety in public. If two people wish to engage in verbal fisticuffs in private, so be it, but why do we now seem to actually encourage public verbal executions, and even sometimes get down in the mud with the perpetrators?

Believe me, I do not wish to indict certain individuals or political persuasions because quite frankly there is plenty of criticism to go around to all sorts of people. I’d just like to encourage everyone to be careful about rapid responses that are hurtful and ugly. Those kind of things have a nasty way of coming back on us, but more importantly we need to rise above the muck and grime as a way of life. Nobody ever wins an argument with invective, and most often it’s not even necessary to attempt to do so. What does it really matter if someone disagrees with our beliefs? Why should we feel compelled to put down individuals with whom we have a difference of opinion. The likelihood that we will actually make a difference in their thinking is slim to none. Indeed what will probably happen is that we will make them even more enraged.

I refuse to be that person who gets pulled into verbal battles, and I think that we would all do well to walk away when a fight of words seems imminent. I learned long ago as an educator that ignoring nincompoopery is the quickest way to shut it down. Most people who engage in such shenanigans are just looking for an audience and I refuse to give them one. Perhaps more of us should consider bringing in the crickets whenever someone is being outrageous.

As a society we still have not yet learned how to deal with social media successfully. We forget our manners and too often neglect to take a deep breath before reacting. We have people using our outrage to stoke their own egos. We don’t have to play their game.

I am slowly learning how to move quickly past comments and tweets that make me feel uncomfortable. I choose to let them just lie on the ground seemingly unnoticed. I am seeing more and more evidence that lots of folks are following the same routine. The most egregious remarks that I see are frequently going without response, which is the way that we might all shut them down.

There is a flock of mockingbirds living in the trees in my backyard. They chatter day and night, but I have learned how to turn off the volume in my head. Now I scarcely hear them even though they are still there. I’m doing the same with Twitter.

   

Honor the Young

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment
person wearing hearing aid
Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

Every single time that I  hear some older person calling young people “snowflakes” I go into a slow burning rage inside my head. It is an epithet invented to cast aspersions on the thinking of  teens and twenty somethings who hold progressive points of view. The idea is that the youngsters are so fragile that they simply can’t bear critiques or differing ideologies. The insinuation is that they are silly, close minded and of little substance.

While there may very well be some young folk who are a bit spoiled and unwilling or unable to accept philosophies that run counter to theirs, the truth is that there are also middle aged individuals of more conservative bent who have the same trouble. Some of them are actually in high political positions and they often tweet their discontent. For the most part, however, I find the current crop of young men and women to be exceedingly hard working, earnest and determined to make a very positive difference in the world. The fact that they are a bit more liberal than their more aged counterparts has little to do with their level of courage or good intent.

It has long been a trend for young adults to be on a kind of search for truth and meaning in their world. It is in their natures to question the status quo and seek changes that they deem to be fair and more just.

 

Socrates once said, “The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority: they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in places of exercise.” This of course was noted about four hundred years before Christ walked on the earth, and I find it remarkable how it might have been said last week by some pundit making observations about today’s kids. In fact there are many such quotes that are part of our discussions of the young versus the old in political matters. We’ve all heard the quote, “If you are not a liberal at twenty five, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative at thirty five you have no brain.” It is a bit audacious in its sweeping assumptions, but we laugh at it because it bears a grain of truth. Indeed we often become more cautious as we grow older, but that does not make us wiser or more righteous. Thus, I find it beneficial to show more respect to the thinking of our younger generation than we generally do.

In 1776, when our Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence their average age was forty four. That being said more than a dozen of them were younger than thirty five and among those some were still teenagers. In fact, the American Revolution as with all such sweeping changes was much more of a young man’s cause than that of older men. James Madison was only twenty five when he penned his name on the Declaration of Independence and the current hero on Broadway, Alexander Hamilton, was a mere twenty one. Young adults are more often than not as passionately concerned about the world as those thought to be more mature.

I enjoy the conversations that I have with my former students and my grandchildren regarding the political conditions of the world today. I prefer listening to them and asking them questions rather than challenging their ideas. I find it enlightening and quite hopeful to hear just how much they have considered the various issues with which we continually grapple. They are far less likely to simply accept a particular way of thinking without considering many different possibilities. Their beliefs are mostly based on a great deal of thought and research. They are involved in internal debates as they search for the best ways of doing things. They have the audacity to think outside of the box and come up with ideas as radical as revolting against the most powerful government in the world to create a new nation conceived in liberty.

I find myself spending hours listening to young men and women who are more than ready to do their share of the heavy lifting in the world. Of course they differ somewhat from me because many of their experiences have been different from mine, but they are not unpatriotic or inconsiderate or lazy or spoiled. They simply look at the challenges that we all face from the vantage point of having an entire lifetime ahead of them rather than having walked through a lifetime. Their youthfulness does not make their thoughts any less valid than mine or any other older adults, but it does tend to make them more inclined to envision new and exciting possibilities. I find that when I listen respectfully the favor is returned when I speak. A rational and fruitful discussion ensues. It is when we disregard the fervor of a young person’s enthusiasm that we create an emotional impasse.

Each of us longs to be heard, to be understood. All we ask is that we be accorded an opportunity to speak our minds with impunity. All too often we create situations by dismissing certain forms of speech before they are even uttered, leaving us in a “them or us” kind of division. Hurling insults without thought only further inflames the situation.

During the height of the Vietnam war when so many of us were protesting what we believed to be a terrible mistake, far too many adults treated us as though we did not love our country. They did not seem to understand that it took great courage and much patriotism to speak out against what we saw as a wrong. There was a great divide that lead to unnecessary violence and clashes that might never have happened if only each group had been willing to sit quietly and consider each point of view. The frustrations came from all of the misunderstandings that came from assigning insulting labels to each cause, and pitting young people against their elders. Sadly we did not seem to learn from those mistakes.

The next time you find yourself wondering what a young person might possibly be thinking, instead of writing him/her off as a snowflake, try encouraging a true conversation with the intent of learning rather than judging. I believe that you will find that we are all seeking most of the same things, we simply have different ideas about how to achieve them.

Honor our young. They will one day be taking the reigns of leadership and helping us in our final days. I for one feel comfortable that we will be in very good hands.

Smart, Nice, Accomplished, Aware

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment
photography of person using macbook
Photo by LinkedIn Sales Navigator on Pexels.com

Appraising an individual or a program has always been difficult. We are a nation of numbers and like to use hard cold facts to determine the worth or success of the people and things that we judge. Businesses consider profits, time spent without accidents or complaints. Schools look at the test scores of students and performance on a number of measurable factors such as attendance, quality of lesson plans. Universities look at grades, class rank, scores on exams, extra curricular activities and creativity of essays. Still we have yet to find a system for determining the worth of people in various situations that is a hundred percent accurate because in reality each of us is incredibly complex. We might form close approximations of the value of any one person, but we will invariably find flaws in the systems that we use unless we are very careful.

I use the world of education as an example because it is the environment that I know best. It might be thought that a teacher whose students score particularly high on a standardized test must surely be a better educator than someone whose results appear to be mediocre. The hidden flaw to this kind of thinking lies in knowing where these students ranked before the respective teachers worked with them. It might be that the youngsters whose outcomes appeared to be so spectacular had actually done better the previous school year while those with mediocre grades may have improved by a quantum leap. The question then becomes which teacher is actually the better of the two.

The same difficulties occur when attempting to compare students who are applying as undergraduates to universities. It has long been known that kids who attend high schools like Bellaire or Clear Lake in the Houston area have an exceedingly difficult time landing in the top ten percent of their graduating classes because so many of their classmates are making all A’s. These schools are not easy, quite the contrary, but the students are intensely dedicated and bright. On the other hand there are campuses with terrible reputations where a reasonably hard working pupil will easily earn a top standing in the class.

We also know that there are some individuals who panic over high stakes standardized tests. Their scores rarely align with the capabilities that they exhibit day in and day out. Others whose study habits may be marginal at best have a talent for blowing the lid off of the one and done assessments. Comparing the two very different types of students sometimes requires an unproven leap of faith.

The question becomes how to determine who is most deserving of a job or a slot in a particular program. How can we be fair and still come close to making the right decisions? What criteria are useful, and what may mislead us? It is a conundrum that plagues virtually every aspect of our society and we have yet to create a foolproof methodology that takes all of the necessary factors into account. Our attempts to be fair and objective invariably end up unwittingly relying a great deal of subjective reasoning.

Recently I was somewhat amused and befuddled to learn that the Tucks School of Business at Dartmouth University has made a few changes to its admissions requirements for the MBA program. In an effort to find well rounded and diverse individuals they have decided to search for four particular qualities in their applicants. They have proclaimed that they intend to find students who are smart, nice, accomplished and aware.

Being smart means that the prospective students must have good grades and test scores that reflect written and verbal communications skills along with a good sense of numbers. Nonetheless the school emphasizes that potential candidates should be humble as well, a profoundly important life skill, but one that is ridiculously difficult to determine either in an interview or through references. Who among us chooses references that we do not believe will be rock solid in our favor? How many of us assume a kind of persona during interviews that does not adequately demonstrate who we really are?

Accomplishments appear to be relatively easy to determine. It is unlikely that someone will continually advance in a workplace if they possess many negative habits and yet there is always a possibility that accolades may not be as well deserved as they may appear. Additionally a listing of different activities gives little insight into how well those things were actually done. We all know someone who joins a number of groups but has little dedication to any of them.

In looking for students who are aware Tuck notes that reflection is mandatory. They insist that students be able to think about their character, their past and their future. This is a noble goal indeed. Still I wonder if a well spoken individual gregarious enough to share inner thoughts is in actuality more aware than someone who is circumspect but a bit more reserved with regard to revealing personal insights. It seems that even with essays, reviews and a psychological assessment it may be difficult to know who is aware and who is not. I’ve seen many a person who is masterful at blowing smoke only to later be viewed as a fraud, and others who rose to challenges with a quiet strength that surprised everyone.

Finally there is the matter of being nice. Tuck states that this is the quintessential quality that they want their students to possess. By nice they mean someone who celebrates and supports the success of others, is willing to ask for help, shares and respects different opinions, is both strong and vulnerable. They want students who possess a set of moral principles to which they hold fast even as they are being challenged.

While I find the desire to find such nice people laudable I also wonder how in the world  it is even possible to determine such a thing. The word nice is perhaps one of the most subjective ideas that there may be. What does it actually mean to be nice? That definition varies greatly from person to person, situation to situation. Nice often means having to be very tough. Sometimes it requires being firm rather than flexible. It is an ever changing concept that is far too nebulous to use as a measurement for determining who earns a slot at in a prestigious graduate program.

The university insists that they possess sound methodologies for determining which prospective students possess each of the four aspects that they have outlined. With respect to niceness they appear to believe that student essays and reference instruments will reveal the presence of nice qualities. I beg to differ. The concept itself is far too ill defined to be worthy of such an important decision making process. It’s bound to result in exaggerations and even falsehoods from those seeking admission. It is on its face a very unreliable albeit worthy quality to use when assessing strangers.

I often think back to students that I have known, some of whom appeared to be fabulous on paper and others whose performances, accomplishments and character seemed lackluster at best. The lesser candidates often nonetheless possessed extraordinary capabilities that might never be noted in today’s world of electronic and highly  specific measurements. I think particularly of a remarkable student who by all appearances was almost subpar. When all of the measurements failed to note was that he was literally financially and emotionally responsible for his family from the time of middle school. He attended his classes during the day but worked long hours every single night, rarely having the time to complete homework assignments. He often missed days at school to drive his disabled brother to appointments with doctors. His time was filled with major responsibilities of which he never spoke. Somehow he still managed to pass all of his classes and complete all requirements for graduation from high school. By the time he walked across the stage he had been working forty hour weeks for years. He had no extra curricular activities to list nor did he seem to have completed any community service, and yet he was already operating as a very responsible adult while his classmates were still immature by his standards. Not even a carefully crafted and objective admissions packet would have indicated that he was a worthy candidate for a prestigious program and so he instead chose a college with open enrollment and with sheer will eventually earned a degree while still being the breadwinner for his family.

I wish the Tuck School of Business well, but something tells me that their admissions process is still as fraught with problems as most of our systems are. There are just so many variables about humans that we have yet to quantify.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

backlit-clouds-dusk-853168On any given day the headlines of any publication include the good, the bad and the ugly. That trend pretty much sums up the nature of humanity and history itself. As people it’s actually easier to find the good among and about us, but more often than not we focus on the bad or the ugly. I suppose that is because horrific things are actually more unusual than generosity and compassion. We are fascinated with the bad and the ugly even as we abhor such occurrences. 

I scan the headlines each morning as I eat my breakfast. Last week the front page announced the bad news that a six figure income just over one hundred thousand dollars a year in San Francisco qualifies a family to be considered low income and possibly in need of government assistance to provide the basics of food and shelter in that city. It was shocking to realize that such a fine sum of money is insufficient in a town where the median price of a home is over a million dollars. It is a beautiful city that has become almost inaccessible to anyone but the very wealthy. In fact, it suffers from one of the most tragic homeless problems in the nation, and residents complain that the plight of individuals with no place to go is growing exponentially. I find myself wondering how it is so that a city that prides itself in being advanced in so many ways has become more and more segregated by economics.

Yet another quite ugly story from out of California told of an elderly man from Mexico who was severely beaten by a woman in Los Angeles who shouted that he should go back from where he came as she pummeled him with a brick. It’s more than difficult for me to imagine how someone might possibly become angry enough to inflict suchg harm on a stranger. Had she taken the time to determine his story she would have found that he was simply visiting his very legal family as he has done countless times. His vacation turned into a needless nightmare because someone jumped to conclusions that weren’t even accurate. Even if he had been attempting to come to this country without proper paperwork, the violence that he endured was terribly wrong. I suspect that it would not even have warranted mention in the newspaper were it not so unusual, but I worry that there is a kind of growing contagion that encourages more and more people to demonstrate their prejudices with this form of extreme ugliness.

We certainly do in fact have very real problems, and of late we don’t appear to be inclined to work together to solve them, but sometimes something quite extraordinary happens and we see the goodness of our better natures in all of its glory. Thus it was with the rescue to the soccer team and coach from Thailand. For many days the entire world seemed to be holding its collective breath and praying in unison for the young men trapped inside a cave in a very dangerous situation. Help came from around the globe, and models of courage and sacrifice kept people from far corners holding their breaths in the hope that all would turn out right. In the end the entire crew was rescued in a daring operation that sadly took the life of one man who perished while helping with the endeavor.

There was no preening here. No requests for glory or paybacks. The faces of the those who worked tirelessly mostly remain anonymous. They had a cause that was gloriously important and nothing else seemed to matter. People worked together to solve a grave problem and succeeded just as mankind always has whenever people have been willing to set aside differences for a common good. When the entire group was finally safe we all heaved a collective sigh of relief and shed tears of genuine joy. We realized in that moment how incredible we humans are when we use our potential for something good. The rescue represented the best of who we are as people, and it felt so wonderful to experience such pure elation without the recriminations or critiques that split us apart more often than we desire.

I just wish that we would think of all that is happening to us on any given day and emphasize the truly good things that take place, relegating the bad and the ugly to the back pages where they belong. We give far too much attention to evil and violence, and not nearly enough to our grand accomplishments. We need not ignore problems, but we would do well to put them into perspective. Most of the time the truly ugly stories are judged to be so because they are indeed the exception rather than the rule. The bad ones generally mean that we need to put our heads together to find solutions. The good ones show us just how much capacity we have to create a better world for everyone.

I remain a cockeyed optimist because I truly believe that when all is said and done we time and again grow weary of the bad and the ugly and decide that it’s time to do what we know to be right. It’s just too bad that we don’t hear a bit more about such instances because every single day there are wondrous and heroic actions taking place. Even now someone is saving the life of another human being. Somewhere a great new discovery is taking place. Children are learning the foundations of a just society in many corners of our world. Some person is quietly helping another. Such unsung acts of goodness are the true nature of the world. Sometimes we actually get to know about them and it feels fabulous.   

Better Angels

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment
angel art black and white clouds
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I’m not one to advocate fighting, especially among family and friends. A colleague once told me that I would probably be able to find something good about anyone, including Charles Manson. I suppose that I am the way I am because I so value life, and believe that each of us has the potential for great good. Nonetheless we are also imperfect, and I try to remind myself that I do not have all of the answers and neither does anyone else. Our humanity leads us in many different directions, and often it is only in retrospect that we are able to determine whether or not we have always chosen the best pathways for living. Each of us is so complex as is the world in which we live as well as the long history of mankind. I feel that we must be far kinder and less judgmental that we often are. Somehow of late we have become a very divided nation with each side virtue shaming the other. The rancor that I see is toxic, and even more troubling is that all too often anyone who attempts to bridge the ever growing gaps is viewed as lacking in values.

Mark Twain once said something to the effect that the two most important moments in a person’s life are when he/she is born and when he/she discovers why. I love the idea that each of us has a purpose, and firmly believe that it often takes us a very long time to know what that may be. In my own case I suspect that my suffering has lead me to be far more understanding and compassionate than I might otherwise have been. Losing my father taught me how fragile life truly is. My mother’s mental illness showed me that each of us has a kind of brokenness, some more severe than others. I learned to embrace people just as they are, not as I wish them to be. I have been humbled by the realization of my own imperfections. I have embraced the power of listening to each person’s story and learning from what I have heard. History speaks to the truth that humankind has struggled for centuries to survive and to understand the world’s many mysteries. That epoch journey has been wrought with both failures and glorious successes. I suspect that if we were to analyze every single person who has ever lived we would find it to be true that even the most gloriously amazing individual still had a share of doubts and mistaken beliefs. It is who we are, and something that we seem to forget from time to time.

So here we in 2018 fighting like Cain and Abel all across the world, hurling invective at one another to the point of insisting that anyone who doesn’t agree with our opinions is no longer a friend. We are defensive and angry and unwilling to stop our ranting long enough to realize that as a nation we have become our own worst enemies. It seems as though the warnings that my seventh grade teacher proposed over five decades ago have come to pass, for she was prescient in urged us to be wary of the power of propaganda. She taught us how to watch for it, and insisted that it was all around us, even when it was not apparent. It was a shocking revelation, but one that I have never forgotten. I see its impact now more than ever before, and realize that we are being manipulated into turning on people that we once may have loved simply because their ideas do not conform with ours. It is a truly sad state of affairs and it has caused me to grieve and to feel a sense of desperation as I attempt to draw people that I know back together. The din of the rancor has become oppressive and I have worries about where it will eventually end that might never otherwise have occurred to me.

In the midst of the darkness I have discovered a small ray of hope. I have heard about a group called Better Angels, an organized effort to bring disparate forces together in a spirit of understanding. The idea behind the movement is to sponsor what are known as red and blue conversations between groups of Republicans and Democrats. Participants agree to discuss issues in a highly structured environment that focuses on listening. The gatherings are weighted equally with people from both sides of the political spectrum, and kept somewhat small so as to allow each person time to speak. Using a number of formal structures there is an agreed upon topic and the emphasis is on simply hearing each point of view. Only one person speaks while everyone silently considers what is being said. It is not a debate, but rather an opportunity to learn from one another. Nobody is allowed to speak out of turn or launch into heated arguments. It is a controlled and quiet attempt to find understanding, areas of common ground and possible solutions. Those who have participated have generally reported feeling enlightened and far more open to considering new ways of thinking. The system is so powerful that many teachers and university professors use it in their classrooms to invoke more critical thinking and less emotional argument.

I have personally participated in similar groups in past years. They were not affiliated with Better Angels but they were constructed in a similar manner. Generally there were a very small number of people in the groups and there was no effort to keep them balanced, but there was a very structured set of questions and rules for speaking about them within a limited amount of time. Usually one person served as a mediator who insured that everyone followed the rules. Such situations almost uniformly resulted in more listening than talking, serving to quiet the mind and open possibilities that had not previously been considered. They worked to build a sense of team and family even among very different individuals.

I believe that we have been approaching our shared problems in the wrong manner. We only hear what we wish to hear in an atmosphere of shouting and accusations. We align ourselves with like minded people and unfairly judge those with whom we disagree. We behave as though we have it all figured out when the truth is that every problem is filled with complexities that require consideration of many different ideas. In truth it is only when we quiet our own souls and begin to listen to everyone that we will ever find ways to agree on solutions. My guess is that much like our ancestors we will have to make compromises that may not perfectly suit us, but which will settle our differences just enough to make progress. The better angels that live inside our souls need to overcome the demons that are leading us astray.