Mwenye Baraka--Jemmimah Thiong'o

"Hey, Rock, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat."

"Agaiiin?"

"Roaaaar."

"...and now, for something that we hope you'll really like."

Baraka: "Disposition" Tool: What Do We Know?

What Is Creativity?

Sleeping On The Job: Are We Keeping You Awake, Bill?

Pictures From Iraq: What We Learn From War

In all the debate about Iraq, we forget that human faces are attached. Living, dying, connecting. Iraqis, American troops, civilian personnel, they all have stories to tell about the lives they have led and friends they have lost.

Tim Clemente, former FBI agent, and a friend, has been a counter-terrorism expert, but he found some humanity in the work that he does. We probably wouldn't agree on politics, per se, but he has been a good friend and tremendous father to eight beautiful children. Good kids.

Make no mistake, the Iraqi War is a tremendously unpopular conflict complete with epic villains and Shakespearean deceivers, but the soldiers who went there to fight and show a human side of a nation in turmoil, won't face the scorn that their brethren from Vietnam went through nor will they have the heroes welcome that the "greatest generation" received after World War II.

What will be their legacy? These troops, former students, humans, all.

Bill on Obama: Whose Line Is It Anyway?

Stay out of the race.

It seems that Bill Clinton is getting it from all sides. Bill the Clinton has been all over the country stumping for Hillary and setting the record straight. To the point where Barack Obama retorted at the CNN Congressional Black Caucus Institute debate on Monday evening (1.21.08), "Sometimes I don't know who I'm running against."

Senator Obama's query is certainly justified. Rarely does a former president take sides in the primary election, usually letting the events before the party's convention play themselves out. Today's Chicago Tribune's editorial (1.22.08), "President Heckler," makes the case that Bill should keep his mouth shut, indicating that the former President always did have a problem with restraint.

Can you blame, Bill? Before Hillary teared up in New Hampshire and "found" her voice, she needed help--a great deal of it. Out came the big guns. Enter Bill Clinton, stage right, in full Lady MacBeth regalia.

However, now that Hillary has regained her frontrunner status, do we need to hear Bill being oh so un-presidential and slinging the mud.

The Clinton's have been known for their fierce loyalty to each other, even in the face of infidelity and other acrimony. It's all about the power. Just win baby.

The Clinton's have also been known for their equally vociferous destruction of the opposition. For them, politics is a blood sport (think 2007 New England Patriots and Mike Tyson chomping Evander Holyfield's ear).

When Barack Obama talks about wanting a change in business as usual in Washington, DC, he is speaking directly to and about the Clintons.

So, where does this leave us, the voters? Well, we watch and we wait, looking for one of them--Bill or Hillary--to slip up on the slippery rocks of presidential politics, waiting for the O'Reilly's of the world to pounce. That's what David Axelrod, Obama's chief political strategist, is banking on.

As a result, Bill and Hillary Clinton have to play Barack's game. It's the audacity of hope, baby.

The Clintons have been baited into giving up their "win at all cost" and "destroy your opponent" game because, in the end, they will need Barack's support and supporters to have a snowball's chance in hell of beating the Republicans in November. If Barack doesn't win the Democratic nomination outright, he won't be anybody's number two. His ego is way too big to allow that. So, he'll be a power-broker of a different sort.

So, again, where does that leave us?

Unfortunately, as one reader of this blog observed, the Democrats are squandering their best chance of winning the most winnable election they have had in more than a generation.

Thanks, Bill.

Presidio Hill School: What is a Progressive School?

A few months ago (October 5 – 6, 2007), the teachers at Presidio Hill School joined other progressive educators from around the country for the first national Progressive Schools Conference in more than a decade. You’ll be happy to note that we helped to host the event by sponsoring 15 progressive educators at the school for a lunch and tour. Many of the other area progressive schools were involved with the conference planning, including San Francisco School, Park Day School in Oakland, Blue Oak School in Napa, and several others. Two of our own teachers presented at the conference, talking about progressive practices and what they are up to in their classrooms.

As I have often said, progressive education is less about regurgitating rigid content standards (although content is very important as students mature) and more about creating habits of mind that make life-long learners successful. Progressive Education is also democracy in action.

Thinking about Presidio Hill School as not only the oldest progressive school in California, but also as one of the exemplars of progressive practices, I put together some questions that people ask me about our school. The questions serve as a starting point for this discussion.


What are the hallmarks of a truly progressive school?
Progressive schools value the social-emotional growth of students. Progressive Schools also value collaboration over competition, which is part of both democracy in action and our social activist heritage. Also, progressive schools promote depth over breadth in all content areas, which spurs student interests and helps students pave their own way into a particular subject or discipline. Additionally, many Progressive Schools either de-emphasize or just don’t give grades as a way to tell that a student is progressing. Written comments take the place of just having grades only.

Don’t many other schools do this?
Absolutely, comments and commenting is a hallmark of not just progressive schools but most independent schools in general. What’s unique about our school is that parents, teachers, and even students are in on the conversation. It’s not just a one-way monologue, but the whole community is engaged in the discussion. Comments serve as a way for teachers, parents, and students to understand what can be done to improve and how we all can work together to usher that improvement along.

Who decides what gets taught at PHS?
At many independent schools, the school decides. It is the school’s curriculum. It is what the school values.

At PHS, teachers have great autonomy on what is taught, what is added, and what is taken out. The school (in teams of educators) does “scope and sequence work” to determine what should be taught where and when in the curriculum. The school audits what we teach by having conversations around what students know and should know, and what skills they have or should have from teacher to teacher and year to year. Nearly all our teachers belong to national and local organizations where best practices (and even standards) are shared. Our teachers present what they know at conferences, workshops and staff meetings and learn from each other and from conferences, workshops and other means all the time. We don’t rely on textbook companies or the state to tell us what gets taught when.

In what other ways do teachers collaborate?
Teachers discuss students constantly. This is a very important point: teachers know more about students and their world—socially, emotionally, and academically—than at any other school that I have worked. I have worked in traditional schools, progressive schools, and alternative schools. Teachers also tend to know other students that aren’t in their classroom, too. The great thing about being the size that we are is that we get to know one another well.

Last question, my child really loves PHS, can I go to school here?
Absolutely. Many parents and adults involved with PHS report they get so much satisfaction from engaging the students they love with what they are learning. By attending the Corporation Meetings, Follies, driving on field trips, going to Dialogue Circles, volunteering at the auction, and many other kinds of endeavors gives parents and the adults in the community a progressive school education too.

REPRINTED FROM MY BIMONTHLY
FRIDAY LETTER 10-19-2007
(http://www.presidiohill.org/news/archives/from_the_director/)

Barack Obama at Ebenezer Baptist Church on January 20, 2008

The cadence is not exactly King-like, but Barack Obama, on Dr. King's birthday, captures the essence of King in talking about the substance of hope in a speech that he gave in the pulpit of the Ebenezer Baptist Church: Martin Luther King's Church (both senior and junior). Ebenezer was Dr. King's church for most of his career as a Civil Rights leader.

In the end, Obama's speech is more Lincoln-esque than King-like in the theme that it tackles: Unity.

The biggest complaint against Barack Obama is not that he's inexperienced, per se, but that he's short on ideas. I'm not sure if the speech at Ebenezer changes that perception. What he does do for the very first time in the campaign is light a small fire under the core of the national African American electorate, perhaps save the remaining lions of the Civil Rights Movement.

Why such a small fire for people who want to trust and follow him? Why such a small fire for a people who want to be excited and ignited?

Some people would say that Obama has kept Black people at arms length. However, exhorting Black people to take responsibility for themselves, more of a Bill Cosby theme rather than a King one, gives Barack Obama a different dimension than other African American presidential candidates and leaders in the recent past. He tells Black people what they must do rather than what others must do for them.

It's why most African American Civil Rights leaders have been luke-warm to Obama's candidacy. He refuses to strike the same refrains that Civil Rights leaders have struck since King's death. King's "promissory note" and "insufficient funds" are the stuff that Barack avoids on the stump and in the pulpit at Ebenezer. Obama's "fierce urgency of now" is to join him and elect him because there will not be a him without a broader us.

At the very end of his Ebenezer Baptist Church sermon, Obama tells a story of a young white worker in his campaign, Ashley, which explains all you need to know about Barack Obama.

For most of Senator Obama's speech he has had the flights of oratory that hearkens the Kennedy (both JFK and RFK) rather than King, yet when he mentions Ashley, people seem a bit more skeptical about where Barack intends to take them next.

Would King have advanced a trope like Ashley into one of his speeches? Probably not. You could hear a pin drop in Ebenezer because Barack is leading them home to where he wants to go.

Ashley's story is about self-sacrifice. She has gotten Black people mobilized in South Carolina since the start of Obama's campaign. It's not just him, as Barack states, that people want to follow. It's the hope that an Ashley feels from his candidacy, which elevates her out of the degradation of poverty, eating mustard and relish sandwiches while her mother struggled with cancer when she was nine years old.

It's not exactly what Black people want to hear at the end of the speech where Barack has had them in the palm of his hands, but it is, I suspect, why so many white liberals embrace Barack's candidacy. He speaks to them. He certainly speaks to a number of Black folk, too. But has he convinced them yet. Has he convinced all of us.

In this house divided, only time will tell.

---

A Dream Deferred: Dr. King's Mountaintop Speech

The greatest speech that Dr. King delivered happened just two days before his death. King was a pretty defeated man by April 1968, understanding that his time in this world was nigh. He was the prophet predicting his own demise.

The Memphis Sanitation Worker's strike gave King a bit of a bounce in his step, while he was preparing for the Poor People's March on Washington, the site of King's greatest triumph up until that time. Yet, King took a moment in the Memphis march during what would be his last campaign to fire up his peaceful warriors.

Dark days were ahead, and King was beyond worrying. He had given all he could to advance a movement in the South to finally rip the chains from the sharecroppers and children of sharecroppers where he grew up and cut his teeth as a young preacher. Although the North gave King the money he needed, he saw intense opposition to his own opposition to the War in Vietnam. King's fiery furnace phrase, "I don't fear any man" was less a taunt to his would-be killer(s) and more a challenge to the people who would pick up his historical mantle of direct yet radical non-violent movements four decades later: Us.

In my estimation, politicians are not these peaceful warriors--sorry Barack Obama. High-flying and churchy oratory aside, the next people's leader will come from the fields, jungles, or forests of the developing nations rather than the halls of our current version of the House of Lords, also known as the US Senate.

The new Kings are leading their people in second and third world nations where the grassroots movements can halt the scythe of dictators, industrialized nations, multinational corporations, and time.

There will never be another King in our nation, I fear, because we are all too much in and of this world.