Tag: politics

Revolution

One of my students expressed an interest today in learning more about the French and Russian revolutions. Coincidentally, there’s a piece by Josef Joffe that makes the connection between the recent Tunisian revolution and Marx’s ideas about the recipe for a successful revolution.

A country needs to have a certain level of education and wealth to overthrow a tyrant:

If you are poor, you have neither the time nor the energy to engage in politics. If you are not educated, you lack the cultural skills to articulate your demands—to agitate and organize.
— Joffe (2010) in Why Tunisia Isn’t a Tipping Point for the Arab World

Samuel Huntington, took this idea forward in his book, The Third Wave. He looked at democratic revolutions between 1974 and 1989 from around the world and found that 75% of countries had a revolution when they developed to the point where the per-capita (per person) income was between $1,000 and $3,000. Tunisia’s per-capita income is $1,000 (when adjusted for inflation).

P.S.: The Boston Globe’s Big Picture has an excellent picture series from the last few weeks.

Food and Nutrition

Darya Pino from Summer Tomato has a cute little flow chart to help you identify “Real Food” in the supermarket. It takes the conservative approach to eating shared by Michael Pollan, who recommends only eating thing your grandmother would have recognized as food, and Food Politics‘ Marion Nestle’s interdiction against foods with more than five ingredients.

Lessons from the Arizona Shooting: Connecting texts and inflammatory rhetoric

The attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords will come up tomorrow, (I have one student who is extremely interested in politics who is sure to recognize the importance of this), so I’ve been trying to figure out how to approach the issue. The New York Times’ Learning Network Blog has an excellent resource on, “Ways to Teach About the Arizona Shootings” that starts with allowing students to have a personal response, provides lots of great links relating to political violence and inflammatory rhetoric, and ends with a review of the history of assassinations in the U.S..

For my class, however, the two places I see the most relevant connections, that are developmentally appropriate, are in our ongoing discussion of rhetoric and argument, and in the language lessons focusing on connecting issues in texts.

Reading List

In the wake of the shooting, as everyone’s been trying to make sense of the attacker, his reading list has been a key focal point for trying to understand his motives.

There are lots of ways to link Mein Kampf, Animal Farm, and Brave New World; the latter two are secondary school staples for one thing. However, considering the issues in these texts, here’s one interesting observation by adriejan from Light Sound Dimension, “While these are all masterpieces, they have in common that they deal with the topic of reality perception being controlled by higher powers.” Does this hint at someone struggling with their identity and feeling powerless in the face of a complex world? Perhaps. This is what Jacob Mooney at Vox Populism calls “forensic bibliography”.

Whether we recognize it or not, we most often connect with the themes of books, even more than the quality of the writing I think (how else to explain the success of the early Harry Potter books, or Twilight). So our preferred reading lists tell us a lot about ourselves.

Inflammatory Rhetoric

I’m glad I’ve started on rhetoric and argument this cycle, because that’s another key intersection with the curriculum given where my early adolescents are morally and philosophically. There two points about extreme rhetoric that need to be made here (at least). The specific point deals with the direct consequences of the language you use. Extreme language like the statement, “I’m going to kill you for that!” limits your options, even if meant as hyperbole. If it’s taken seriously, backing down from the threat diminishes your reputation, tempting you to try to back up your unintended extremism. And when it’s not taken seriously, you’re requiring the content of your statement to be ignored, which sets a precedent for everything else you say.

The more general point about using inflammatory rhetoric, that it’s bad for the political and social culture, is probably the harder one to get across, because in insisting on temperate language you’re ultimately arguing against free-speech. Free-speech is fundamental principle that idealists latch onto easily. Adolescents have a predilection for idealism. Principles also offer good, solid, defendable positions when dealing with complex issues. Put free-speech against the idea that inflammatory language helps create a culture of violence, especially when it’s difficult to find any clear link between the language and the action, and I have no idea where the discussion will end up. Yet I have some confidence that my students will see the point, even if they don’t concede it. They have dealt with this type of ambiguity before, especially when they’re arguing about the limits of my power in the classroom (“Let’s vote not to have any math this cycle”).

We’ll see how it goes.

Perusing Wikileaks’ Cables

Wikileaks’ recent leak of U.S. State Department cables offers the student with a politics/geography interest an amazing glance into the role of U.S. diplomats. There are however, a lot of cables.

The Atlantic magazine has come up with an interesting way of perusing the information. Their Cablegate Roulette webpage puts up a random cable every time you press the “Load a new story” button.

What’s also nice is that they provide a sentence or two that gives the context of the cable so you don’t have to puzzle it out on your own.

The cable excerpts are brief, well written and quite informative about the political goings-on in different parts of the world. They could make an interesting supplement to the geography curriculum. The self-motivated student with a geography interest would find these quite fascinating because you have to have a basic knowledge of the world and recent history to understand what’s going on.

An example:

An executive with Kazakhstan’s national gas company has dinner with the U.S. ambassador at the Radisson hotel in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan.

FROM: ASTANA, KAZAKHSTAN
TO: STATE DEPARTMENT
DATE: JANUARY 10, 2010
CLASSIFICATION: SECRET
SEE FULL CABLE

¶7. (S) The Ambassador asked if the corruption and infighting are worse now than before. Idenov paused, thought, and then replied, “No, not really. It’s business as usual.” Idenov brushed off a question if the current maneuverings are part of a succession struggle. “Of course not. It’s too early for that. As it’s always been, it’s about big money. Capitalism — you call it market economy — means huge money. Listen, almost everyone at the top is confused. They’re confused by their Soviet mentality. They’re confused by the corrupt excesses of capitalism. ‘If Goldman Sachs executives can make $50 million a year and then run America’s economy in Washington, what’s so different about what we do?’ they ask.”

Surveys say …

Another nice resource that provides neat graphs of real data that are easy for students to understand is Pollster.com. The graphs of survey results are constantly updated and, if you want to, you can go into how they were created (survey questions, averages etc.). They’re great for current event discussions and research projects.

In addition to the national polls, like the president’s job approval (see below), the site also has charts for state level races, like for governor, which are handy around election time.

Pollster.com aggregates polls, because, depending on how a question is phrased, each poll will have it’s own bias. However, since not all of the poll data is freely available to the public, the sites of the major polling organizations, like GALLUP, are also quite useful. The polling organizations tend to have a much wider variety of poll results available. Gallup in particular provides some very nice graphs.

Education Secretary to speak at Clark Montessori

Education Secretary, Arne Duncan will be the commencement speaker at Clark Montessori in Cincinnati.

“Clark Montessori Jr. and Sr. High School shows an extraordinary commitment to encouraging their students to take responsibility for their education, get involved in their community and go to college,” said Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. “I look forward to congratulating them and celebrating their hard work as their 2010 commencement speaker.” – Official Whitehouse Press Release

Gay marriage and civil rights

World homosexuality laws (from Wikimedia Commons).

Gay marriage is one of those current issues that allows for a fascinating perspective on civil and human rights. Although in many parts of the US racial discrimination and prejudice are still alive and pertinent, the issue has been decided; arguing for racial discrimination has no place in government policy and in the vast majority of society. The right of gay people to marry, however, still splits the country.

Terry Gross’ NPR interview with reporter Margaret Talbot is an excellent introduction to the topic based around the court case being argued in California right now. It starts with a discussion of fact that one of the lawyers arguing for marriage rights is a conservative, while the other is a liberal. This fact allows for a discussion that is much broader than a simple left-right political argument.

The interview also goes in to the role of the supreme court and its interpretation of the constitution in assuring civil rights for minorities. Loving vs. Virginia, the case striking down bans on interracial marriage, is a precedence that is key to the arguments of supporters of gay marriage.

Gross and Talbot also talk about the “orginialist” position that many conservatives take, where the Supreme Court must interpret the Constitution based on what the people who wrote it believed rather than allowing for the changes that have occurred over the past two centuries.

It’s a fascinating interview, that delves into a number of topics relating to government, courts and human rights, and uses intelligent, challenging, but not impossible language. Our next immersion trip deals with civil rights, and I plan on playing this podcast on the drive to our camping site. I suspect the students may not be too happy about this, but if it puts them to sleep, at least they’ll be well rested when we get to our destination.