Labels: Social Observation, Theater of the Absurd

Over the past few weeks, America’s colleges have sent another class of graduates off into the world. These graduates possess something of inestimable value. Nearly every sensible middle-aged person would give away all their money to be able to go back to age 22 and begin adulthood anew. 

But, especially this year, one is conscious of the many ways in which this year’s graduating class has been ill served by their elders. They enter a bad job market, the hangover from decades of excessive borrowing. They inherit a ruinous federal debt.

More important, their lives have been perversely structured. This year’s graduates are members of the most supervised generation in American history. Through their childhoods and teenage years, they have been monitored, tutored, coached and honed to an unprecedented degree.

Yet upon graduation they will enter a world that is unprecedentedly wide open and unstructured. Most of them will not quickly get married, buy a home and have kids, as previous generations did. Instead, they will confront amazingly diverse job markets, social landscapes and lifestyle niches. Most will spend a decade wandering from job to job and clique to clique, searching for a role.

No one would design a system of extreme supervision to prepare people for a decade of extreme openness. But this is exactly what has emerged in modern America. College students are raised in an environment that demands one set of navigational skills, and they are then cast out into a different environment requiring a different set of skills, which they have to figure out on their own.

Worst of all, they are sent off into this world with the whole baby-boomer theology ringing in their ears. If you sample some of the commencement addresses being broadcast on C-Span these days, you see that many graduates are told to: Follow your passion, chart your own course, march to the beat of your own drummer, follow your dreams and findyourself. This is the litany of expressive individualism, which is still the dominant note in American culture.

But, of course, this mantra misleads on nearly every front.

College grads are often sent out into the world amid rapturous talk of limitless possibilities. But this talk is of no help to the central business of adulthood, finding serious things to tie yourself down to. The successful young adult is beginning to make sacred commitments — to a spouse, a community and calling — yet mostly hears about freedom and autonomy.

Today’s graduates are also told to find their passion and then pursue their dreams. The implication is that they should find themselves first and then go off and live their quest. But, of course, very few people at age 22 or 24 can take an inward journey and come out having discovered a developed self.

Most successful young people don’t look inside and then plan a life. They look outside and find a problem, which summons their life. A relative suffers from Alzheimer’s and a young woman feels called to help cure that disease. A young man works under a miserable boss and must develop management skills so his department can function. Another young woman finds herself confronted by an opportunity she never thought of in a job category she never imagined. This wasn’t in her plans, but this is where she can make her contribution.

Most people don’t form a self and then lead a life. They are called by a problem, and the self is constructed gradually by their calling.

The graduates are also told to pursue happiness and joy. But, of course, when you read a biography of someone you admire, it’s rarely the things that made them happy that compel your admiration. It’s the things they did to court unhappiness — the things they did that were arduous and miserable, which sometimes cost them friends and aroused hatred. It’s excellence, not happiness, that we admire most.

Finally, graduates are told to be independent-minded and to express their inner spirit. But, of course, doing your job well often means suppressing yourself. As Atul Gawande mentioned during his countercultural address last week at Harvard Medical School, being a good doctor often means being part of a team, following the rules of an institution, going down a regimented checklist.

Today’s grads enter a cultural climate that preaches the self as the center of a life. But, of course, as they age, they’ll discover that the tasks of a life are at the center. Fulfillment is a byproduct of how people engage their tasks, and can’t be pursued directly. Most of us are egotistical and most are self-concerned most of the time, but it’s nonetheless true that life comes to a point only in those moments when the self dissolves into some task. The purpose in life is not to find yourself. It’s to lose yourself.

Labels: Social Observation

Labels: Education, Social Observation

Labels: Books, Family, News, Political Observation, Social Observation, Summer, Sundays

Labels: Social Observation

Labels: Education, Kids, ObamaNation, Social Observation

Labels: Social Observation

Labels: Money, Political Observation, Social Observation, Theater of the Absurd

Labels: Social Observation, Theater of the Absurd

Dozens of breast-feeding women plan to descend on the Hirshhorn Museum on Saturday for a "nurse-in" to highlight their federally protected right to nourish their babies in public. 

Labels: Social Observation, Theater of the Absurd

Last Thursday, CNN reported that a Florida legislator has proposed a bill that would have public school teachers issuing a grade to parents. Yes, grading the parents. HB 255 provides that “each prekindergarten through grade 3 student report card shall include a section in which the teacher grades the parental involvement as satisfactory, needs improvement, or unsatisfactory…” based on criteria set by the bill.

The whole idea of setting up public schools as overseers of parents is one more sign that American parental rights are in danger. Parents should not have to answer to government agents unless and until there is solid evidence of abuse or neglect on the part of that parent. Giving a grade to every parent clearly violates this constitutional principle.

In fact, this bill would espouse the same foundational principle as the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child: assume that all parents are bad parents, and that only government oversight can save our children from parental incompetence.

Totalitarian regimes are built on assumed guilt; the nanny state determines which citizens do or do not require their “services.” Florida’s bill would establish a system to do the same. A free nation, on the other hand, operates on the assumption of innocence until proven guilty. Parents do not need government intervention (interference) unless there is proof to the contrary. The Supreme Court has held that “historically, [the law] has recognized that natural bonds of affection lead parents to act in the best interest of their children.” Parham v. J.R., 442 U.S. 584 (1979) Sadly, Florida’s proposed bill recognizes no such thing.

Labels: Education, ObamaNation, Social Observation, Theater of the Absurd

Labels: Political Observation, Social Observation

A study of more than 2,300 undergraduates found 45 percent of students show no significant improvement in the key measures of critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing by the end of their sophomore years.

Not much is asked of students, either. Half did not take a single course requiring 20 pages of writing during their prior semester, and one-third did not take a single course requiring even 40 pages of reading per week.

The findings are in a new book, "Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses," by sociologists Richard Arum of New York University and Josipa Roksa of the University of Virginia. An accompanying report argues against federal mandates holding schools accountable, a prospect long feared in American higher education.

"The great thing — if you can call it that — is that it's going to spark a dialogue and focus on the actual learning issue," said David Paris, president of the New Leadership Alliance for Student Learning and Accountability, which is pressing the cause in higher education. "What kind of intellectual growth are we seeing in college?"

The study, an unusually large-scale effort to track student learning over time, comes as the federal government, reformers and others argue that the U.S. must produce more college graduates to remain competitive globally. But if students aren't learning much, that calls into question whether boosting graduation rates will provide that edge.

Labels: Education, Social Observation

Today, as we celebrate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., signs of King’s legacy are everywhere - in government, business, sports, the arts. The president and his attorney general are black. We have had two highly respected African-American secretaries of State.

In Massachusetts, our governor and chief justice are black. Blacks lead some of this country’s most powerful business institutions, including American Express, Merrill Lynch, Xerox and Aetna. And in the fields of sports and entertainment, many of our nation’s most identifiable cultural icons are black.

Gone are the days when successful black politicians, business leaders and celebrities were considered novelties or tokens. That black Americans have achieved so much since the 1963 March on Washington is cause for celebration indeed.

Yet in 2011, many liberals regard black conservatives - indeed any African-American who questions the liberal establishment - not only as novelties, but as ignorant or traitors to their race.

...

Today, we celebrate the accomplishments of African-Americans in all areas. But let us also look forward to a time when blacks (and all minorities) are free to deviate from the liberal script without being dismissed as ignorant, traitors or crazy.

Labels: Social Observation

Less than two weeks into her new gig, Schools Chancellor Cathie Black has riled parents and public officials by jokingly suggesting that "birth control" was the solution to school overcrowding. 

The off-color quip came in response to concerns by public-school dad Eric Greenleaf, who said at a meeting of parents and officials at state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver's downtown office that there will be "huge shortages" of classroom space in lower Manhattan in coming years. 

"Could we just have some birth control for a while?" Black cracked. "It could really help us all out a lot."

Labels: Social Observation, Theater of the Absurd

Bobby and Amanda Herring spent more than a year providing food to homeless people in downtown Houston every day. They fed them, left behind no trash and doled out warm meals peacefully without a single crime being committed, Bobby Herring said.

That ended two weeks ago when the city shut down their "Feed a Friend" effort for lack of a permit. And city officials say the couple most likely will not be able to obtain one.

"We don't really know what they want, we just think that they don't want us down there feeding people," said Bobby Herring, a Christian rapper who goes by the stage name Tre9.

Anyone serving food for public consumption, whether for the homeless or for sale, must have a permit, said Kathy Barton, a spokeswoman for the Health and Human Services Department. To get that permit, the food must be prepared in a certified kitchen with a certified food manager.

The regulations are all the more essential in the case of the homeless, Barton said, because "poor people are the most vulnerable to foodborne illness and also are the least likely to have access to health care."

Bobby Herring said those rules would preclude them from continuing to feed the 60 to 120 people they assisted nightly for more than a year. The food had been donated from area businesses and prepared in various kitchens by volunteers or by his wife.

Labels: Social Observation, Theater of the Absurd

Floating just below the surface of the annual moaning and groaning about the sorry state of Christmas is a more complicated and more important consideration: what place does authentic Christianity have in 21st century America?

Christmas is hard for everyone. But it’s particularly hard for people who actually believe in it.

In a sense, of course, there’s no better time to be a Christian than the first 25 days of December. But this is also the season when American Christians can feel most embattled. Their piety is overshadowed by materialist ticky-tack. Their great feast is compromised by Christmukkwanzaa multiculturalism. And the once-a-year churchgoers crowding the pews beside them are a reminder of how many Americans regard religion as just another form of midwinter entertainment, wedged in between “The Nutcracker” and “Miracle on 34th Street.”

These anxieties can be overdrawn, and they’re frequently turned to cynical purposes. (Think of the annual “war on Christmas” drumbeat, or last week’s complaints from Republican senators about the supposed “sacrilege” of keeping Congress in session through the holiday.) But they also reflect the peculiar and complicated status of Christian faith in American life. Depending on the angle you take, Christianity is either dominant or under siege, ubiquitous or marginal, the strongest religion in the country or a waning and increasingly archaic faith. 

Labels: Holidays, Social Observation

Well, here we are at Christmas week. The last Sunday of Advent, and a beautiful one it was in the Lord's house. Praise Him for beautiful music, meaningful communion, sweet baptism, the Word preached powerfully, and the loving family of God worshiping together...

Every year I watch "Christmas in Washington", currently aired on TNT. What a disappointment this year, despite its gorgeous venue. One big political agenda set to really, REALLY bad music. On the other hand, this year's CMA Country Christmas on ABC (Nov. 29) was a pure delight!

Labels: Devotional, Family, Holidays, Memories, Music, Social Observation, TV

Labels: Social Observation, Theater of the Absurd

Labels: Political Observation, Social Observation