To My Mountain Mother, on Her Birthday

Today is the 150th anniversary of the founding of my home state of West Virginia. That's called a "sesquicentennial" in case you were wondering. I was born here and have lived here my entire life.

I've always been a proud West Virginian. I am not a knight of the Golden Horseshoe (you non-West Virginians will just have to Google that), but I do know a lot about our state's history. I can tell you the state flower and bird and animal. I can sing every verse of the official state song, "The West Virginia Hills."

Yet the holiday finds me with mixed emotions. I was walking with a friend the other day along the Kanawha River in Charleston, the state capital and the city where I live. The conversation turned to our state, as it often does when hillbillies get together. 

Our state has a colorful history. There is still a wild beauty to the place, which is completely enclosed in the Appalachian mountains, and that served as a type of borderland between the native nations who inhabited the eastern U.S. when Morgan Morgan, the first white settler came to the area. 

Yet by contrast, it is also a violent place, in a way that has captured the American imagination. First came the conflict with the native peoples, like the Mingo, as they were forced from their homes and hunting grounds. There were the infamous feuds between large Scots-Irish clans, the most legendary being the Hatfield-McCoy conflict.  The feud lasted decades and resulted in over a dozen murders of men and women, most of which were never prosecuted. Then came the mine wars, with bloody clashes between Baldwin-Felts detectives and coal miners led by the fiery Mother Jones. Sheriff Sid Hatfield was murdered on the McDowell County courthouse steps and the U.S. army was eventually sent in to do battle with the miners on Blair Mountain. 

Perhaps it's just my own perspective, but for such a small place, there seems to be much bloodletting: corrupt state and county officials, wielding their power to quell dissent; Klan lynchings; fights between revenuers and moonshiners; hundreds of deaths under tons of coal; unsolved murders of small-town socialites; fatal floods caused by acts of God and the carelessness of industry; and untold incidences of domestic violence.  There was even a "textbook war" - a violent conflict over a school book adoption in the 1970s that led to shootings and school bombings. 

I suppose I've been thinking about this the last few years. As I've traveled more of the state, I've become more convinced of the fundamental violence of poverty. It's not just that the poor are driven more to overt acts of violence, along with drug use, alcoholism, obesity, and all the rest. It's also that poverty itself is dehumanizing. We have accepted a myth in this country of romantic notions of poverty. But poverty is not ennobling. The lives of the very poor are lives of incredible stress, which some seek to alleviate through OxyContin or booze, and that occasionally erupt between family members or friends. Those who have not fallen prey to these likely find themselves in church pews on Sunday mornings, where they hear that poverty is only temporary, that they should busy themselves laying up treasure where moth and rust cannot destroy, that they should pray and have faith, that the God who created them wills their poverty, or else that they simply lack the faith necessary to reap the reward they desire. They live in extreme rural locations with no access to routine medical care or other services their countrymen take for granted. 

What we fail to notice is the systemic poverty - and violence - of the place. We have a government that serves the interests of the fossil fuel industries, both coal and gas. When they aren't doing that, they occupy themselves with ensuring ready and quick availability of weapons to the criminal and mentally ill, and wrap it in patriotism and Jesus. 

Lest anyone think I'm advocating some type of socialism, I am not. It's just that our entire state has built itself around one or two business interests, instead of the interest of her own people. There are still "coal barons" who pull millions (and billions) of dollars of minerals from beneath the feet of the poorest of the poor. We accept that they "own" the coal - forgetting the untold eons it took to form.  Many who comfort the poor with tales of golden streets rush to defend the rights of the super-rich to possess the Earth itself. The meek may inherit the Earth, but Don Blankenship probably owns the mineral rights. 

It's not just coal and gas, though they historically have profited the most. And it's not just our government - it's our entire culture. We do not ask our children, "What are your aspirations?"  Instead, we seek to prepare them to serve the dreams of the wealthy. 

I know that West Virginia is not alone in this regard, but it serves as a case study, perhaps, of our failures to our fellow travelers in this world. And it's also my home. 

So happy birthday, Mountain State. I hope this evening to enjoy the fireworks over the Kanawha, sitting on the sun porch of my apartment, just across the street from the governor's mansion. My dream for you is that you come to embody your motto: "Montani Semper Liberi" - "Mountaineers are always free" - and that this freedom would come to embrace the very least among us. 

The Last House on the Well-Manicured Cul-de-Sac

Let me begin by saying that The Purge, starring Ethan Hawke and Lena "House of Lannister" Hedley is not a movie for everyone.  My mother, for example, would hate this movie from the outset.  So my comments are really for those who might like this movie, if this is the type of movie one is inclined to like.  Who is that, exactly?  I'm not sure writer and director James DeMonaco knows exactly.

On the one hand, it's part home invasion thriller.  So, you know, all of the typical testosterone-filled 18-35-year-old males who go in for those movies might be the intended audience.  On the other hand, it's kind of an intelligent dystopian future political commentary, the kind that might be based on a book you had to read your junior year of high school if you had a progressive English teacher who also assigned Animal Farm and Brave New World.  Except this isn't based on a book.  So the intended audience might be the intellectual type who call movies "films" and think the NSA poses a serious threat to civil rights.

I guess the problem is that the type of film that appeals to both of these groups isn't likely to be the same film and The Purge probably falls a little short with both groups.  (See what I did there?  I called it a "film.")  In fact, I might be just the perfect intended audience member for this movie, because I like both home invasion thrillers and dystopian political commentary, but it kind of doesn't work for me either.

Briefly: the story is set in 2022 and there has been some sort of political upheaval leading to a "nation reborn."  Once a year for a twelve-hour period, all law is suspended, and many citizens go on a "hunt" - wreaking havoc and murdering others with impunity.  The net result is that crime at other times is exceptionally low and the economy is thriving.  Our supposed protagonist, James Sandin (Hawke), has benefitted considerably from the purge by selling very expensive home security systems to wealthy families.  The movie begins just an hour before the 7:00 P.M. start of the bloodletting, with Sandin arriving home to his wife (Hedley), a teenage daughter who has a boyfriend the parents don't approve of, and a misfit younger son who is luckily precocious with robots and hiding.  Two potential sources of story conflict begin when a. the boyfriend sneaks into the home just prior to the security system being armed and b. the junior Sandin, possessed of scruples of unknown origin, disarms the security system to let in a homeless man who is being hunted by a mob of entitled ivy-league collegians, dressed in school blazers, khakis, and creepy masks.  Learning that their prey has found refuge chez Sandlin, they come knocking.

As a premise, I think it's pretty brilliant.  Yet it comes apart in execution.

<Spoilers ahead>

I'm guessing it's in the interest of time, but DeMonaco gives short shrift to world building.  We're looking at a U.S. just nine years in the future and no real explanation is given about the events that led to the "nation reborn."  It strains credulity to watch the Sandins' neighbors proceed to deliver cookies, chant government mantras, and mutilate teenagers in Stepfordesque complicity.  DeMonaco seems to believe that the wealthy would happily populate the world he has created with nary a thought to the psychic repercussions of murder.  Strangely, the Sandins seem to be the only ones in the neighborhood who are troubled by the practice at all, in spite of the fact that their wealth is built on the purge.  I have no doubt that wealth may create the amoral zombies that we see in the movie, I just think it might take more than a decade.  Perhaps if the setting were 2042 instead of 2022 . . . I don't know.

What the film does best, in my opinion, is work Edwin Hodge's character, the target of the hunt.  Hodge plays the role close the reality that we see on a daily basis in this country.  We truly feel his fear as he is hunted, first in the street and later in the house.  Even as we watch him attack the family, our sympathies are with him: what else could someone backed into such a desperate corner, literally and figuratively, possibly do?

At those moments, the film's central thesis comes through clearest: poverty is violence.  In a world where even our personal security is dependent upon wealth, the poor are victims of the larger culture.  Poverty is an assault on one's personhood, an idea given an exclamation point by DeMonaco's refusal to give Hodge's character a name.  At the movie's denouement, Mrs. Sandin is left at her dining table saying goodbye to the neighbors who have terrorized her, calling them by their names.  She doesn't invite the homeless man to stay, or even inquire as to his name, even though he has saved her life and the lives of her children.  He is instead left to return to the streets where the purge is just a particularly nightmarish episode in a life of daily terrors.

(Aside: Bravo to DeMonaco for making the homeless man almost the only black face we see in the movie.  Although the film is tackling poverty, the subtext of racial inequality is given a human face through Hodge.)

On this level, the movie should work, addressing poverty, along with the country's obsession with guns, our desensitization to violence, and the sometimes sinister roles of media and government.  Yet it doesn't work, not really.

The main fault of the film is that it spends fairly substantial screen time engaging in just the sort of violent voyeurism that DeMonaco seemed to set in his sights.  We get sprays of automatic weapon fire into various torsos, axes buried into backs and skulls, and the leader of the hunting party glibly blowing off the head of a cohort.  The audience is left reacting precisely as they would in any other home invasion thriller, not only hoping the Sandins make it through the night but cheering wildly when the bad guys get their bloody comeuppance.  In the theater where I watched, the audience of mostly white twenty-somethings only really seemed to come alive when someone was being butchered.  This was made easier by the fact that the hunters themselves were dehumanized, not only through their inexplicably unconscionable acts, but also because most of them remained masked throughout the movie.  In short, DeMonaco seems to be offering a critique of the way the poor are dehumanized and then provides an alternative: dehumanize the rich instead.

Now, I'm rarely a critic of movie violence.  While I am given occasional pause considering its effects on the very young, I believe that Bowdlerized stories lead us to imagine that violence is not real.  The problem with The Purge is that its use of violence is to the detriment of the central point of the film.  Just as the audience is beginning to consider the brutal reality of poverty, they are given an out through escapist fantasy.

I really wanted to like this movie, but it was ultimately unsatisfying.  Maybe if there is a remake in a few years, they'll get it right.  In the meantime, I hope we see more art that wrestles with this uncomfortable issue in American life.

Superhero with a Thousand Faces

I am fresh from seeing Man of Steel, Christopher Nolan's Superman reboot.  A few stray observations (spoilers ahead):

1. Overall the movie is an excellent addition to the Superman canon.  For an origin story appearing in 2013, it seems to avoid most of the hipster meta-commentary on the meaning of the superhero. This seems particularly noteworthy, given director Zack Snyder's past with Watchmen and Nolan's vision for the Dark Knight trilogy.
2. Joseph Campbell needs a co-writing credit on this one.  I don't know if Nolan and Snyder immersed themselves in The Hero with a Thousand Faces or have just spent lots of weekends at Lucas Ranch, but this movie wears its mono myth on its sleeve and borrows heavily on Biblical imagery.  Clark/Kal has been made "a little lower than the angels" for awhile, the father sending his only begotten (not made, contra other children on Krypton) son, to save the world.  He is found in a basket-shapped ship, which is kept in the stable/barn, and he grows up as a normal human until he's ready to begin his ministry and ultimately his destiny . . . at age 33.  He even has his own garden moment in an inoffensive church of nondescript denomination, complete with a stained glass depiction of  Christ in Gethsemane over His his shoulder.  (According to adherents.com, Clark's family are Methodists.)
3. This is really the first Superman film fully imagined as an alien story.  Others certainly play around with the idea, but Krypton is completely developed and the alien craft would be right at home on Star Trek.
4. Speaking of which, Krypton is a pretty groovy planet that kept reminding me of Vulcan on the Star Trek reboot for some reason, maybe because we spend a good portion of our time there watching the place destruct.  They have really cool computer interfaces that frankly make me sorry I'm typing on a keyboard right now, and I really dig the art deco/Metropolis feel, especially when ghost Jor-El is telling Kal about the history of the place.
5. In case anyone forgot, Superman is a 'Merican.  He even says so, including once while American flags are waving over his shoulder.  His mom (Diane Lane) works at Sears, dammit!  (And was anyone else surprised by that product placement, including widow Kent's blue Sears polo and worker lanyard around her neck?)  He does manage to take out an unmanned drone that is spying on him.  He is currently still silent on the ones used to kill Afghans and Pakistanis, however.
6. Other unexpected product placement: IHOP.  And like, 27 times.
7. Henry Cavill is pretty great in the lead and manages to reimagine the character in a way that departs entirely from Christopher Reeves' portrayal, while keeping close to the source.  I was never personally a huge fan of Reeves' Superman, though it was certainly hard not to imagine it as commentary on his own life in later years.
8. Can someone just go ahead and acknowledge that Clark/Kal seems to have a pretty nonchalant attitude toward "collateral damage," including that which he seems to cause by, for example, chucking aliens into the gas pumps at 7-11 and watching the place blow up?
9. Amy Adams is a pretty forgettable Lois Lane.  I can't buy her as the "intrepid reporter" and really wanted Margot Kidder back.  She is given a few clever moments, however, like her inquiry about what the "S" stands for (interrupted just before she posits "Super") and her tongue-in-cheek greeting to Clark at the newspaper ("Welcome to the Planet.")
10. General Zod is one of the great villains and Michael Shannon is perfect.  He brings a lot of the self-righteous-but-ultimately-evil vibe with him from Boardwalk Empire.
11. Russell Crowe is a cool Jor-El, but I'm pretty sure they cast him for his dragon flying skills.  I didn't like his Ghost of Christmas Future bit on board the ship though.
12. The "dream sequence" (or whatever that was) between Zod and Kal seems lifted (in style at least) from Watchmen's dream sequence with Night Owl and Silk Spectre.  Except the part where Kal is sinking in human skulls, which reminded me of the climax of Drag Me to Hell.
13. Also, the Kryoptonian ship seems to employ the same technology as is used in The Matrix, where bits of metal can reform into some sort of sentience.  Scary shit.
14. Laurence Fishburne is a completely unintimidating Perry White, perhaps due to his earring.
15. Is it strange that we are now better at depicting what major American cities might look like if attacked by large destructive powers?  I mean, we know all about the clouds of ash and the papers floating around.  Did anyone think of those things pre-2001?
16. For my taste, they spend too much time just blowing shit up.  They could have easily trimmed the 143-minute run time by twenty minutes with no damage to the story.
17. Something in the Earth's gravitational pull ensures that anything entering the atmosphere (baby-ship, meteor, flying aliens, etc.) will only land in Metropolis or Smallville, KS.
18. This is my favorite suit, by far.  It's not just that the suit is stylish and indestructible, it actually looks indestructible.
19. Also indestructible: Kal's coif. 
20. Ghost Jor-El apparently insists (offscreen) that Clark/Kal shave before dawning the suit.  Which leads to the obvious question given the above observation, "How does Superman shave?"  I'm so glad you asked.
21. The cape does seem a particular disadvantage if you encounter fellow Kryptonians in battle, however.  They will use it to sling you into buildings.
22. Also cape-related: one of the flashbacks near the end shows a boy Clark Kent in his back yard pretending to be a superhero while wearing a quickly-fashioned red cape.  But, um . . . who is he imitating?
23. Kevin Costner reprises his role as Kevin Costner.
24. Was it just me, or was there some sort of under-current of faith versus science in the movie, with science wearing the black hat?  Clark/Kal discusses some nebulous "faith" at various points (and is clearly a Christ figure, as noted above), but the baddie-woman also says at one point, "If history has taught us anything, it's that evolution always wins," just before Superman and the 'Mericans kick her space ass.
25. Hans Zimmer's soundtrack is completely forgettable and although I understand they didn't want to do the whole John Williams thing, this barely rises above mood music.  Notable exceptions: some song with guitar when Clark is on a fishing boat (have to search this one out via the Google) and Allison Crowe doing "Ring of Fire."

All in all, if you care about Superman or superheroes, you should go see it.  Of course, if you care about these things, you've already seen it.  Also recommended for Jungians, Christopher Meloni completists, and people who like seeing things blown up.

P.S. For my own take on the Superman mythology, go take a listen over at Soundcloud.

A Humble Proposition

The last few weeks have me thinking a lot about guns.  In the interest of full disclosure, I should reveal here that I have been a gun owner in my life and am historically very leery of efforts to disarm the citizenry.  Jefferson famously said that where the governments fears the people, there is liberty; but where the people fear the government, there is tyranny.  This is one of his primary arguments for the second amendment to the Constitution.  It was also, of course, why Jefferson argued against a standing army.  It is interesting to me note that the disbanding of our standing army plays so little in discussion of second amendment rights.  It may also be worth noting that Jefferson rarely armed his slaves, though I'm not entirely sure what motivated his decision there.

Yet, despite my desire for an armed citizenry and a disarmed military, I think that the time has perhaps come for me to rethink my position somewhat.  I will confess here that my judgment may have become somewhat clouded by the recent events in Newtown, Conn.  I have a certain sentimentality for images of frightened children sobbing uncontrollably after their classmates have been shot multiple times with a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle.  But I recognize the media's attempt to manipulate my emotions through shocking images such as these.

It is hardly fair, after all, to attack weapons such as the AR-15 (the rifle the U.S. military refers to as an M16).  The AR-15 is actually banned as a hunting weapon in some states because the ammunition is not strong enough.  Wiser state legislatures recognize that it would be extremely inhumane to allow a less-effective weapon to be used against a 250 lb. adult deer.  Fortunately for the children at Sandyhook Elementary, the weapon was sufficiently effective in its use against first graders, as the average 40 lb. six-year-old can be felled with significantly less ammunition than his cervine counterparts.

It seems to me that a rational compromise can be reached on this front.  If we allow the state to restrict which weapons may be used against game animals, it certainly seems reasonable that they could restrict which ones may be uses against other human beings.  I realize that the language would have to be crafted rather carefully, however, taking into account the age, size, and general health of the would-be target.  For example, the state could require that those targeting adult males in the prime of life use a 50-caliber weapon, making a clean kill more certain.  If your target were kindergarten students, however, a simple 22 might suffice (though the larger caliber weapons would obviously do the job, too).  In that particular instance, however, it might be essential to craft code to insist on at least semi-automatic weapons with large magazines, since young children are small and naturally quick and all the more so if startled by the unexpected arrival of a stranger with an assault weapon at school.

The National Rifle Association has been quick to point out that more guns may have prevented the recent tragedy.  When I learned that the shooter, Adam Lanza, had taken his mother's legally-purchased hand guns and semi-automatic rifle, leaving her with only two traditional hunting rifles to defend herself against her murderous son, it really got me wondering.  What if she had owned two legally-purchased Bushmaster AR-15 rifles?  She might just have had a fighting chance herself, and prevented the needless deaths of 20 elementary school children.  (I would add here that it is probably advisable to actually own a third rifle as a back-up, as the AR-15 is known for it's tendency to jam when not kept clean. And let's face it: who has time to clean all of those weapons on a daily basis?)

In the wake of the shooting, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre called for an armed officer in every school in America.  While the closet libertarian in me may question the wisdom of putting an armed police officer in every school and vaguely wonder if this may be the precursor to the sort of police state our aforementioned third president may have been warning us against, I think LaPierre has a point.  He correctly pointed out that we have armed guards at courthouses and airports and this effectively prevents tragedies in those venues.  And please spare me the liberal diatribe about the New Jersey gunman who seized an officer's weapon in a police station filled with armed officers, just two weeks after the Newtown incident.  The fact of the matter is that in that particular case, the gunman was killed while only wounding three officers.  Were it a school and an unarmed criminal had seized an officer's weapon, it is unlikely that he could take out more than five or six children before being shot himself.

This does bring me to another salient point, however.  Many in the public sphere, such as Texas Governor Rick Perry, rightly recognize that this does not go far enough.  These critics have called for arming teachers.  I could not agree more.  Like many on the far right, I do not trust the education of our nation's youth to such a lazy and incompetent group as public school teachers, but let me be the first to say that I do trust them with the safe handling and discharge of large-caliber rifles and handguns in America's classrooms.

Yet I cannot help but wonder, "Is this enough?"  Clearly, the answer is "no."  In the average American classroom there is only one teacher.  A savvy gunman would obviously target the teacher first, preventing her from quickly accessing her safely stowed weapon and defending the children in her charge.  No, the answer is much more radical, yet ridiculously obvious: we need to arm every single student in American schools.

I know what you are thinking.  You are thinking that arming every school-age child creates myriad problems, including the likelihood that some outcast loser (like an Adam Lanza or Dylan Klebold) would use the state-provided weapon to attack other students because he was picked last in kickball.  But consider it for a moment: if you knew that the class weirdo had a 44 magnum in his backpack, would you even think of giving him a wedgie?

Is it an expensive proposition?  Certainly, but isn't the safety of America's children worth it?

So how are we going to pay for it?  Well, I wondered that, too, until I read Mr. LaPierre's comments more carefully.

What is the root cause of this violence we see in America?  Clearly, it is neither legal gun ownership nor the availability of weapons with 30+ round magazines.  No, it something much more sinister.  Hear the words of the NRA spokesman:

There exists in this country a callous, corrupt, and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people.  Through vicious, violent video games . . . blood-soaked slasher films . . . and a thousand music videos that portray life as a joke and murder as a way of life.  And they have the nerve to call it "entertainment."

Digital media creators, actors, writers, directors, singers, and musicians.  These are the true culprits in American society.

Guns don't kill people, art kills people.

To pay for the presence of a school police force, the arming of both teachers and students in every school, and the design of a comprehensive marksmanship curriculum, I suggest the complete elimination of school arts programs.  These programs are costly and encourage students to "express themselves."  It is, no doubt, this sort of self-reflection that leads many of these monsters to unleash their inner demons on society at large.  Further, the content espoused by these so-called "academic subjects" include violent music, such as murderous British folk ballads and drug-induced homicidal fantasies, like Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique; the sexualized violence of the dance stage, as evident in Le Sacre du printemps; and canvas grotesqueries, for instance, those by Hieronymus Bosch.  Theatre, of course, seems almost designed to inculcate violence in our young people, with the Bard's Scottish play practically a requirement of the high school literary curriculum.

With the complete elimination of school arts programs, those industries will soon dry up and leave our shores for more barbaric countries like Finland or the U.K.  We will have no more music, film, or literature poisoning young minds.  Our children will grow up knowing only fresh air and the joy of mastering assault weaponry.

I realize there may be resistance to this plan at first, but I can honestly think of no reasonable alternative.  I urge the president, Congress, and the U.S. Department of Education to implement this plan quickly, before it is too late.

Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and What It Means to be an American

I'm always surprised by those who suggest that you cannot change the minds of other people through reasoned discussion.  I suppose the reason it surprises me is that I have, on more than one occasion, had radical shifts in some long-held beliefs.  Friends I have recently made are often shocked when I reveal to them some of these former thoughts.  I wasn't stupid or cruel back then: I just believed different things.  Then something happened.  I read something, someone talked to me, or I had some life experience that caused me to re-evaluate my position.  Isn't it supposed to work like that?

Well, it's that time again, and my Facebook is filled with opinions, both left and right.  I've been asked by a couple of people to clarify mine, so I thought I'd write a manifesto.  Well, not really a "manifesto," so much as a numbered list of things I think about a lot.  Here it goes:

1. America is an idea.  Now, I know a lot of people have noted this, but I'm not sure everyone gets what the idea is.  Some people talk about the "American dream," or whatever, and it seems to have something to do with owning a new home with a low-interest mortgage and being able to go to church.  I think the basic idea is that it doesn't matter how much money you have, or what your family name is, or what boat your people came over on, you get to decide who you are.  To me, Bob Dylan is the quintessential American.  He was the son of Armenian Jews living in Minnesota until he heard some hillbilly music on old 78 records and decided to change his name and become a folk singer.  A few years later he found that pigeon hole a little constrictive, so he plugged in and became a rock and roller.  Then he was a farmer, an evangelical Christian, a Hasid, a radio host - whatever he wanted to be.  That's an important idea in America.  Not only that, it's a civilizing idea that we should be exporting as much as possible, not by forcing others to adopt our political system, but by simply sharing the joy of that type of liberty.  The Cold War was largely won because Russians wanted to wear blue jeans.  That also means that the idea of American exceptionalism, or that America has something to do with this piece of real estate or a certain group of European descendants, doesn't make any sense.
2. Human beings are our greatest resource.  This has really always been true, but it's more apparent in the times in which we live.  Agrarianism is not viable for the overwhelming majority of us, fossil fuels are getting harder to extract and are limited anyway, and our economic vicissitudes since 2008 should teach us not to rely on our bank too much.  We need people.  Creative people who think critically and are able to solve problems.  We talk about that as an economic imperative, but the truth is, we need people like that in every area of our lives.  We should stop viewing school children as future "earners" and imagine them instead as those who can solve the world's problems.  If we did, it would radically change how we think about education in this country, and how we treated other people, including the very poor and the elderly.
3. If we want our political system to work, or perhaps even survive, we need to stop demonizing our fellow citizens.  One of my favorite quotes is by a Scottish theologian named Ian MacLaren who said, "Be kind: everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."  When I post that on Facebook, everyone seems to like it, but it doesn't keep us from talking shit about other people.  (I include myself among the guilty.)  I've heard people refer to the President of the United States as "evil."  Others have called his opponent an "idiot."  Now, less I be misunderstood, I get that people do things that just get on your nerves at times.  Let someone attack the importance of arts education, and I can lose my cool.  But here's the thing: people on the other side are Americans, too.  Everyone talks about the "47%" or the "other 99%" or whatever, but it's all of us.  I remember sitting in a meeting of arts educators once and a national presenter said, "We need to realize that some of those 'red state' people like the arts."  It never even occurred to him that a "red-state person" could be an artist.  We're in this boat together.  Johnny Cash once said that he had been friends with every U.S. president since Richard Nixon, and that he admired them all - though he hadn't voted for all of them.  
4. We need to decide what it means to be an American.  I don't think it has anything at all to do with religion or race or place of origin or language.  Some of the most brilliant contributions to America come from those who were the "tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free."  Some talk about "protecting our borders" as if there are hoards of Mexican terrorists blowing things up all over the South.  (We seem to forget that the Mayflower was filled with illegal immigrants, or did I miss the part of American history where the Massasoit granted travel visas to the Puritans?)  The truth is that too many of us just don't like people who are different.  That's not right and we need to say that - kindly, but firmly.  We insist on being left to ourselves, to being allowed to pursue our own happiness, yet we can also be very intent on preventing others from doing so at times.  It is okay to disagree with another without denying her basic humanity, or her "American-ness."
5. Our political dialog in this country needs to be elevated.  Although I adore social media (and the Internet in general) it has allowed us to be lazy in becoming well-informed and thoughtful in our decision-making.  It seems that we are much more adept as reciting talking points of our political parties than we are at discussing issues thoughtfully and respectfully.  Everyone is an expert on limited government, but no one has read The Federalist Papers.  Everyone has an opinion on Islam but no one knows the five pillars or the history of the Near East.  When was the last time you heard someone say, "I'm not sure - I think I would have to have more information before making an informed decision on that issue"?
6. Along those same lines, our political dialog in this country is too often dictated by the opinions of the far right and far left.  (This actually merits a lengthier discussion regarding electability in increasingly gerrymandered districts.)  The abortion debate is a good example.  Virtually the entire discussion is dominated by those who hold the extreme positions, yet the majority of Americans seem to have a position that is somewhere in between.  We need to have good faith discussions about hard topics like these without trying to destroy each other.
7. I support massive campaign finance reform.  I just read that the presidential candidates have already spent $575 million on television ads alone.  When you factor in all the other campaigns and all the other media, that means that we spend billions in determining who is in power.  I think that decent people would agree that this is unconscionable.  Our elected officials spend their entire political careers working toward re-election, to the neglect of other, more important duties.  I understand the concerns of those who believe the First Amendment protects political spending as protected speech, and might be tempted to agree with them if it did not seem to actually exclude many voices from being heard at all.  There has to be a better way for finding our political leaders.
8. Speaking of the First Amendment, I will happily add here that I support the Bill of Rights without reservation.  In my lifetime I have seen both the left and the right seek to curtail certain of these rights, especially that of free speech.  Although I have yet to meet an absolutist on this issue (fire in a crowded theater, etc.), I think I come pretty close.  I also support gun rights in a way that makes some people nervous.  There are those who suggest that we do not need powerful weapons when we have a standing army, but I would tend to think we need powerful weapons because we have a standing army.  I believe that many of the actions of our current federal government, especially those conducted under the guise of protecting our national security, actually constitute violations of these rights.  
9. Race is still the biggest issue in American culture.  How could it be otherwise?  Africans and their descendants were slaves in this country for over 200 years, then were denied basic human rights for the next 100+ years.  This is the classic example of "Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind."  All Americans, black and white, owe a huge cultural debt to both Europe and Africa.  The tension of this uneasy and usually violent relationship led to poignant and expressive art, especially in music.  (All American music has elements of both northwestern Europe and west Africa: blues, ragtime, hillbilly, jazz, rock, country, bluegrass, gospel, soul, hip-hop and all the rest.)  The downside has been generations of broken families, crime, and poverty.  Those who can't see the relationship between hundreds of years of racial oppression and 850,000 African-American men in prison are just blind.
10. I'm not sure what to think about our role on the world stage right now.  (Please see #5 above.)  I'm tempted to believe we should leave others to their own devices, yet I'm personally troubled when I see our fellow travelers in this world murdered or imprisoned without good cause.  We have the unique ability as a nation to intervene, yet our history of interventions has been very far from pure in motive or outcome.  In many (most?) cases, it has tended to backfire.  I realize how wishy-washy this is for a manifesto.  Can I get back to you on this one?
11. Demand more art.  (You didn't really think I was going to leave that one out did you?)

So, this is my thinking right now.  It's certainly subject to change.  Is it too much to hope you might want to talk about your ideas, too?

Amy

I'm on lots of boards as part of my job.  Sometimes it feels like my life is one long meeting.  For someone who is not a joiner by nature, it has been a rather strange experience and generally speaking, it is not the most enjoyable part of my job.  There are some exceptions though.

Today I was with the board of the West Virginia Thespians at the Poky Dot Diner in Fairmont.  The board meetings in each discipline are all very different and reflect the nature of the artists, I think.  Music educators' meetings tend to be highly organized and more formal.  Art teachers are a little less linear, shall we say, and seem bored by Robert's Rules.  Dance educators seem honored and surprised that there is a meeting for them.  Then there are the theatre folk.

For those of you who do not know any theatre teachers, let me begin by saying that they are a unique breed.  "Dramatic" doesn't really capture it, nor does "theatrical," though these are certainly true.  In any event, they are rather loud as a group.  Couple this with the fact that the Thespians hold their board meeting in conjunction with the student board meeting just one table over and you start to get the picture.

After the conclusion of the meeting, one member, Eileen Miller, wanted to speak to me.  Actually, she wanted to introduce me to a student of hers who serves on the board.  I'll call her Amy.  Amy is a junior this year.  Eileen asked her to tell me what happened yesterday.

"Well," she started, "we got our WESTEST scores back.  I hate when we get them.  It's the worst day all year."  Eileen told me that Amy had been especially worried about her scores this week.  

"How were they?" I asked.

"I got mastery or above mastery in all my reading scores," she said.

"Tell Mr. Deskins why that's a big deal to you," Eileen prodded.

"I had never scored above novice before, "Amy said.

For those of you who do not spend your days speaking educationese, I'll explain.  Students taking our summative assessment, the WESTEST, are given numerical scores.  These are also designated novice, below mastery, mastery, above mastery, or distinguished.  Basically, Amy had leap-frogged one to two levels in one year.  That almost never happens.

So I said, "Wow!  That's impressive.  How did you improve?"

"Mrs. Miller," she said.  "I love theatre."

Eileen told me that she had had Amy her freshman year in Theatre and that during her sophomore year she also took Scriptwriting.  Amy is a special education student, but Eileen keeps the bar high in her class.  Amy wrote and re-wrote.  Her parents said she reads all the time now.  She likes school.  And even though they don't have a lot of money, Amy's parents wrote a $100 check to the school theatre department because they saw the good it was doing their little girl.

Eileen said she had come running into her class yesterday morning and told her, "I'm not stupid anymore."

"You never were," Mrs. Miller answered.

Students like Amy are the reason I get up everyday.  Some of them are those academic "ugly ducklings" - like the geeky girl in the 80s movie who goes to the dance without her glasses and becomes prom queen.  Some of them spend years in a system that regards them in terms of their numerical value to the adults managing it, only to find out late in their school careers that they are good dancers or sing well.  Some of them never find out.

I have heard advocates for our current testing regime argue about the necessity of data collection as if it were a moral imperative.  I guess I understand that.  We need data to make informed decisions.  Yet as an educator I'm concerned with what physicists might call the observer effect.  The very mechanism used to collect data has become the raison d'être of our educational system.  The result has been, in far too many instances, the crushing of student aspirations.

The defenders of the system say that it is not intended to be used this way, that this is the unfortunate by-product of administrators and policy makers who do not understand the correct use of data.  That may be true, but it seems analogous to giving Ginsu knives to a group of three-year-olds and not taking responsibility for the resultant carnage.

The thing that is so tragic from my chair is that it has resulted in too many Amy's in West Virginia being deprived of theatre - or dance or art or music.  This is so wrong-headed as to be infuriating.

In the first place, the arts are central to what it means to be an educated person.  Simple skills in literacy and numeracy will not suffice in the 21st century.  They never did.  Every West Virginia student deserves a comprehensive arts education.

Secondly, even for those whose only concern are test scores, we know that students who have an arts-rich curriculum outperform their peers in nearly every measure of academic achievement.  All the data ever collected seem to suggest this and just this week we have data specific to our own state.

The cohort of West Virginia students who began 9th grade in the 2005-2006 year were studied according to the arts classes they took and leading indicators of achievement.  The study found that students who took two or more arts classes, above the single required course, significantly outperformed their peers on the WESTEST 2 as well as the ACT PLAN.

The data was disaggregated for students with exceptionalities as well as students from poverty - all of West Virginia's Amy's.  The finding?  In every case the result held and in some instances, the effect was more profound for these students.  (You can read a one-page summary of the research study here - thanks Nate Hixson and Andy Whisman.)

And so, I am inspired again to keep fighting, and I hope you are, too.  In West Virginia, the arts are core and arts education is a civil right.  Demand more art.

West Virginians Should Demand More Art in Schools

Anyone who knows me will tell you I've become fairly radicalized in the last few years.  I guess it has something to do with the gig I have, or perhaps its just a matter of looking at the evidence again and again.  Maybe its the fact that I live a lot closer to state politics than I used to.  In any event, "radical" is probably the best way to describe my opinions.  I'll begin with a proposition.

In 2012, a comprehensive arts education is the civil right of every student in West Virginia schools.

I didn't always think this way.  It's not that I wasn't an advocate of arts education - I was.  I just didn't think of it in those terms.  I believed that the arts were core academic offerings.  I still do.  I believed that every student should have a comprehensive arts education.  I just didn't frame it in terms of "rights." 

So, why do I now?

Well, let's begin with the facts, the things that are undisputed.

First, we know that the arts are central to what it means to be an educated person.  They always have been.  If you disagree with that, you are a Philistine at best and an imbecile at worst.  The idea that an educated person would be unfamiliar with the architecture of the Egyptians, the drama of the Greeks, the sculpture of the Romans, the poetry of the Hebrews, the calligraphy of the Chinese, the dance of the West Africans, the vocal polyphony of the Italian High Renaissance, etc., ad infinitum, is simply unthinkable.  I would like to get in my Delorean and flog the idiot who coined the phrase, "The Three R's."  Apart from his miserable capacity for spelling, he seems to have missed the point of education.  It as, as Robert Hutchins once said, to unsettle minds, widen horizons, and inflame intellects.

Secondly, it has been one of the primary goals of the Republic, at least, when she was led by statesmen.  I frequently quote John Adams on this point: " I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.  My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."  Do you get the import of that?!  Our second president believed all his efforts to establish a constitutional government by the people were to give his progeny the right to study the arts.  While I would not suggest that this is the only purpose of a peaceful republic, what nobler pursuits can one imagine?  

Lastly, let me point out all that we know about the benefits of a thorough education that includes the arts.  The arts are engaging to students.  The arts address the cognitive, affective, and physical needs of students.  The arts allow students with exceptional needs to experience academic success in multiple subjects.  Students from poverty perform better in school if they have the arts.  In fact, students with an arts-rich curriculum outperform their peers in nearly every measure of academic success.

These are the facts, and they are undisputed.  (Hat tip to Kevin Bacon in A Few Good Men there.)

So what's the effin' problem?  Why don't we have schools with comprehensive arts offerings?

The short answer is: because we choose to ignore the facts.

This should not be surprising.  For most of us, beliefs matter more than facts.  As a culture, we have come to believe a story about education, and the story tells us that the arts are somehow less important than language, mathematics, or the sciences.  As Ken Robinson has noted, this is largely due to the fact that public education systems are the product of the Industrial Revolution.  Simply put, we built education systems in this country (and around the world) the way that industrial barons wished them to be built.  The skills necessary for work in the mine, the mill, or the factory were the ones that were taught.  And not only were those skills and aptitudes taught, but so were those habits of mind: conformity, compliance, obedience, hierarchy, etc.

To suggest that this will not meet the present need is to simply state the obvious.  Yet in my home state, there is simply no political decision that is made that is not beholden to the coal industry.  I used to not believe that.  I am wiser now.  Come election day, voters in West Virginia will have a choice between a party that says they support coal and a party that says they really support coal.  All else is secondary.  West Virginia gets press for being anti-Obama because of its perceived racism.  While I don't doubt that plays a significant role, the simple truth is that the president is perceived as being anti-coal.  (I once was behind a coal truck in Mingo County with a bumper sticker that read: "Vote for Coal.  It's Black, Too." True story.)

Another key belief has something to do with an individual's rights.  Here in the U.S., we believe that property rights are sacrosanct.  Now, I believe in personal property rights.  I don't think that one has the right to seize the property of another, real or otherwise, without due process of law.  I also don't support the massive redistribution of wealth.  But English common law, the foundation of all of our notions about property rights, simply did not anticipate the fossil fuel industry.  It is inconceivable to me that a few generations of industrialists have the right to seize billions of dollars of non-renewable natural resources without it redounding to the benefit of the greater society.  It would be akin to draining the oceans of the world for profit while suggesting that no responsibility is owed to the culture at large.

"But coal companies pay taxes!"  I know they do.  Yet I also know that the counties in West Virginia that produce the most coal have some of the poorest school systems in the state.  I do not think this is coincidental.  For years, many of those school systems have been preparing those students for a life in the mines or on a tipple.  I would argue that this was ethically indefensible from the start; now it is also economically untenable.  Though the coal industry has historically been a major provider of work in our state, they increasingly employ fewer and fewer people to extract the same amount of minerals from the ground.  This is just the nature of technological development.

There are very many who today talk about the need for school reform.  They point to the changing nature of work in our country, and they are absolutely right.  Very few of our students in West Virginia schools will be joining the rank and file in the mines upon graduation.  Schools need to become places that allow students to succeed in a 21st century work force.  This includes the arts.  It is no longer necessary, for example, for a professional musician to live in Los Angeles or Nashville or New York or Chicago to work.  Many work virtually, from their homes, irrespective of geography.

Yet even the changing nature of work does not begin to suggest the changes that need to happen in education today.  To suggest that the primary role of public education is to prepare a workforce still presupposes that school systems serve the needs of industry.  If we are to transform education, schools must become places where we serve the needs of our students.  It is essential that our students leave schools prepared to make a living, but they also need to be prepared to make a life.  This includes so much more than job skills.  They need to be prepared to be informed citizens in the democracy.  They need to learn how to live healthy lives.  They need to love a life of the mind.  And they need the arts.

If we allow that education is the right of every child who lives in West Virginia (as our state's constitution does), then it stands to reason that they have a right to an education that includes the arts.  To deprive a child of an comprehensive arts education is to deprive a child of an education.  Our schools are neither "thorough" nor "efficient" (as required by law) if they do not include the arts.

This was a finding of the original "Recht decision" (Pauley v. Bailey) in 1982.  The West Virginia Supreme Court found that schools were in violation of a student's civil rights when they failed to meet certain criteria, including many in the arts.  Thirty years hence we have made little to no progress on this front, even though it could be argued that the arts are more vital now to a child's education.  Our technologies demand flexible, creative thinkers that arts classes foster.  We have a society that requires visual literacy more and more.  Dance provides another outlet for addressing our childhood obesity crisis.  And fundamentally, the arts are part of what it means to be a human being - in our century, the same as any other.

When will we see this transformation in our schools?  When we demand it.  The history of civil rights in this country teaches us that little progress is made until it is demanded of legislators, policy-makers, and other power brokers.  There have been advocates for arts education in this country for over a century.  Everyone knows the benefits of the arts for our students.  It is a "white hat" issue.  Yet there are children who have school every day without dance, without theatre, without visual art, or without music.  

I contend that we should teach dance every single day to children the same way we teach them mathematics.  I believe that art matters as much as language.  I think that theatre is no less important than science.

We need to abandon terms like "enrichment."  Of course the arts enrich us - in precisely the same way literacy does.  To be deprived of an arts education is to be consigned to educational poverty.  Describing these disciplines as "related arts" or "encore subjects" likewise suggests that the arts are not for everyone, or perhaps are of lesser importance for some of our students.  All West Virginia students need the arts.  The data suggest that the arts are actually more important for students from poverty or with disabilities. 

Students, parents, teachers, and community members should begin making these demands of their schools.  We should not be satisfied with smiles and words of encouragement.  Smiles and words are easy: change is hard.  We are glad for the sympathy of others, but what we need is their action.  

If West Virginia students are to meet their aspirations, all of us must begin demanding more art in school.  I hope you'll join me.