The Math of Social Justice

I’m thinking about a new math equation for us all to solve:

WI + PP = SJ

WI = The Width of the Imagination. How far can we imagine that others different from us have dreams so like our own? That those who look different or call God a different name or love a different gender or value different things face the same issues and challenges of love and its loss, friendship and aloneness, child-raising, economic stability and that big one that unites each and every one of us, our own mortality? The first cause of social injustice is our narrow imaginations hardening into fear and distrust and hatred of “the other” and putting practices and policies in motion that keep them in the cage we create for them where we can control them, dismiss them, keep them at a safe distance from us.

The only antidote is to widen our capacity to imagine the other and thus, come to know them. It helps if we begin to work with them, to play with them, to date them. Even then, our culturally inherited borders can keep us biased against the whole group even as we accept our one friend because we finally see his or her character rather than our notions of his or her group. So the War on Poverty of the Imagination, while it hopefully includes real positive experiences, is an effort to expand our ability to imagine.

PP = Public Policy. While we wait for everyone to open the gates to understanding and compassion, we need laws and ethics and public policies in place to protect us from those suffering from poverty of imagination. The rise of child-protection laws, sexual harassment policies, anti-gay discrimination, environmental protection laws, the legacy of civil rights and more, are all steps in the right direction, helping that moral arc keep bending toward justice. But laws don’t change minds and indeed, can be reversed in a slip of an election. They need to walk hand in hand with a true moral, social and aesthetic education that trains the imagination to widen its scope and include all creatures great and small in the great convocation of a truly democratic world.

There is no limit to the imagination, but each time and culture proclaims a national standard of its width. Individuals have the freedom to expand it and join with others in a collective bid to open dreams, but we often are limited by what the greater public accepts. I just saw Frank Capra’s beautiful film You Can’t Take It With You, a radical, fun and profound statement about how money shrinks the soul and following your bliss brings healing to all. I couldn't help but notice that while all the people in the household are free to follow their dreams—dancing, playing vibraphone, writing plays, inventing strange things, experimenting with fireworks— the two black servants are never asked about their dreams. For the times (the film was made in 1938), they’re treated well as fellow humans and respected within the narrow framework of their job, but they don’t sit at the table with the family nor get to wholly participate in the household of dream-catching. The times and the culture put up a border on the imagination that few can leap over.

But that’s what makes things interesting, yes? Finding that border and sneaking through without a passport and then waving to others to follow. And if enough join, the border guards themselves come over as well. And then doing the work of policy-making to protect from those unfriendly to the imagination.

WI + PP = SJ. Let’s start teaching this new math in schools!

Who Cares?

I was at a meeting recently where everyone researched where Bernie Sanders and Hilary Clinton stood on different issues and where they agree and where they differed. Each of the people there picked a topic of interest—the economy, health care, climate change, gun control, Black Lives Matter, the military and so on. I picked education.

What I found was their respective positions on the exorbitant costs of higher education and the crime of a Federal Government that earns 110 billion dollars a year from high interest student loans. So when an issue hits our pocketbook, the people and the politicians pay attention. I get it. Everybody cares about money.

But not a single word about “lower education,” the place where habits of mind and heart are really built long before college education. Not a word about the fact that we’re still reeling from 16 years of mindless testing, about teachers feeling dispirited having to tether their passion to the next fad that comes down the pike, about arts still being cut or off in the margins. We have millions of kids who go to school everyday feeling like it’s an interminable prison sentence and speaking of that, we continue to spend more money on prisons than schools in many states. And of course, money is a key player and budgets often don’t meet the real needs of the kids.

But the real issue is the quality of the education. Growing future citizens who have the capacity to actually think, to feel, to dream, to care. And the irony is that from my point of view, education is THE crucial issue. Voters who can’t distinguish fact from fantasy, who go to rallies that feel like bullies fighting in the playground with the emotional maturity of spoiled 3-year olds, who can’t dream beyond their own narrow situation and whether their taxes will go up, who not only have a low capacity for caring about others, but don’t care to develop it—all these people are graduates of our failed educational system. How did we let them graduate? The 5^th graders at my school studying the plight of refugees, discussing intelligently the complex issues, imagining solutions and feeling the pain of their plight under the guidance of an intelligent, caring, dedicated teacher (well, yes, she’s my daughter, but the other teachers also do this kind of work)—well, they seem to be far ahead of a sizable portion of our voting public.

So education, a real, vibrant, dynamic, imaginative, intelligent and effective education, the lack of which just about every other issue can be traced back to, doesn’t even make it onto the table. The issues that do are all about dollars and cents and ideologies, but where is there discussion about how to grow decent human beings who stand a chance of getting along with each other better and maybe even turning around, with shared intelligence and imagination, the havoc we’ve wreaked on our fragile planet and continue to wreak? I know it doesn’t make for sound-byte debate, doesn’t play well with posturing, seems too abstract to solve, but hey, these are real issues that we face everyday in schools and why the hell can’t a candidate at least mention that we need to think about how to do this better? Shouldn't they care? Shouldn't we?

And why won’t whoever wins appoint me (or my daughter) as Secretary of Education? Just sayin’.

Rain

It’s raining in San Francisco. A lot. Out my window, sheets of rain are pounding the pavement, the mayten trees are dancing in the wind, little rivulets are running down 2^nd Avenue. All the teachers I know are huddled around their computers filling out report cards and no one loves it, but if it has to be, a rainy day is perfect.

In the Sierras, the snow is falling, the ski lodge owners are huddled around roaring fires raising their glasses to each snowflake. Out on the farms, the farmers and their vegetables are happy. The California grasses are pleased to be dressed in green again after a too-long season of dull brown. The streams and rivers are flowing, the salmon swimming upstream (I saw some last week in Marin County!). The reservoirs are slowly filling and happily await the Spring’s snowpack melt.

No one is complaining. Nor should they in these years of drought. And though the rain is a great sign, we're not out of the woods yet. It feels like it has rained more this year by this time than last, but turns out November and December last year had 25 rainy days with 14 inches of rain and this year, just 20 days with a mere 7 inches. But last year, it barely rained from January to April and this year, there is a lot predicted. And should the rains persist back to a normal annual rainfall, there still is the backlog of dry years that demands a bit more. So we take comfort in each drop that falls and hope for more and yet more.

Rain is nature’s way of renewal, of sustaining the cycles that nourish life, of quenching World’s thirsts, clearing the air and making the reappearance of sun and blue sky yet more welcome and savored. In the human world, it’s a great excuse to stay under the covers in bed reading Sherlock Holmes, listen to (or play) Chopin, watch an old film noir. All of which is more fun than writing report cards.

But 4^th grade calls. Happy rainy day!

Almost Famous: Terry, Oprah, Wynton and Me

Yesterday, Fred Newman, the sound effects guy on Garrison Keillor’s radio show Prairie Home Companion, gave a fabulous workshop at our school. He had visited us once before and when we found out that the show was coming to San Francisco, we wrote to see if our kids could be on it. He did his best to advocate for us, but Garrison didn’t take the bait. The consolation prize was this wonderful workshop with some 15 teachers in our school music room. An intimate time off the national radar that was the real deal, filled with laughter, intelligence and soul.

And yet. I’ve been hungry my whole working life to have this powerful approach to music education get into a more national spotlight and get the attention it deserves. Why wouldn’t Garrison, whose life has been so touched by music, take the little daring step to have kids from San Francisco from a music program as old as his radio show perform instead of those three young women from Portland? Would it have been so terrible to give five or ten minutes of attention to an enormous following and get them thinking that maybe more kids in our schools should have experiences like this? Just wondering.

I had the same almost-famous one-step away moments with other people who have the power to shine the light on this. Marcus Printup, trumpet player in Wynton Marsalis’s Lincoln Center jazz Orchestra, came to our school to check out my work with a radical new approach to jaxz education and left both uplifted and impressed. But somehow he couldn’t get Wynton to do the same. I went to a talk by Terry Gross once and when she mentioned her husband's interest in jazz (he had written a book on the blues I had read) and her own admiration for teachers, I was convinced that my work would be interview-worthy. I wrote a few letters and sent in some samples, a school alum parent who knew her said he'd put in a word, the bait was on the hook and the line in the water, but she didn’t bite. As for Oprah, well, no connection there, but I think she’d be thrilled to see what’s going on not only in our music classes, but in the school itself.

Then there’s the world of jazz. Bobby McFerrin was a parent at our school for six years, Milt Jackson came to visit, as did Stefon Harris, Jim Nadel of Stanford Jazz Festival was a parent for a year. Stefon did invite our kids to play with him at Herbst Theater and had me teach a workshop at New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Jim Nadel had my group the Pentatonics play at a couple of Family Jazz Concerts, Rebecca Mauleon of SF Jazz has me doing a series of workshops after the Family Jazz Concert, so there is some movement afoot. But it’s so slow—music education for kids apparently is just not sexy enough or anywhere close to the radar screen of our national discourse to be of interest.

Of course, it could be me. Maybe I’m too bald or the wrong persona or my lifetime of dedicated work not as good or interesting as the people in workshops tell me it is or the kids in my classes show me it is. And believe me or not, my lingering bitterness at being “almost famous” is not my ego’s disappointment, but my sense that the work itself deserves more attention. If some Brad Pitt or Scarlet Johannson kind of guy or gal who did authentic work in this field was getting the national spotlight, that would be fine with me.

On some level, I’m exactly famous enough to get to travel around the world with my portable temple of small workshops that lift people up into their highest possibilities, held up by a community of spirit. I sell just enough books to keep my little publishing business afoot, have just enough blog readers (about 100 a day—thank you!) to help me feel I’m not just talking to the wind. I don’t need to wear sunglasses in public or live up to any inflated image of myself. 

But still, part of me is that little boy doing tricks on the monkey bars in the playground shouting to the adults “Look at me! Look!” I’m just slightly bitter that someone writing a blog about trying to cook like Julia Childs will have thousands (millions?) of followers and a movie made about her but the amount of time, effort and thought I’ve put into trying to fulfill children’s deepest needs is not considered as interesting as making the perfect omelette.

Okay, I’ve confessed myself clean here and now back to work. Somewhere deep in my heart I know that size doesn’t matter. Still, if any of you have some contacts…

Andrew or Martin?

Yesterday was our beloved Martin Luther King Ceremony at school. Each part of it was wonderful—poems recited by 1^st and 4^th grade, an eloquent short talk by an 8^th grader, a passionate poem by a staff member (my daughter!), powerful slides from the 60’s Civil Rights Movement and of course, songs, songs, songs, sung so beautifully by the children. 

Though each part was well done, I felt unhappy with the total effect. There is a feng shui to such ceremonies and our Community Center simply was too big for the number of people we had to create the powerful intimacy the event has had and deserves. Space is a key component of Soul and something we need to keep in mind. And Time too. Near the end, everyone was nervous about Car Pool time and the closing chords of the building cadence felt marred by the tyranny of the clock.

Still though the tear ducts opened for me when I caught sight of a 2^nd grader with eyes closed singing “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to be Free," feeling it from the bottom of her heart and with every cell in her body. “We Shall Not Be Moved” sung by young children is a wonder to behear and broke the title’s promise—I believe we were moved. So don’t get me wrong—Soul found its way in spite of the large space and less intimate lighting. But next year, we’re going to a smaller room.

I gave the opening remarks and I include them here:

Who knows whose picture is on a $20 bill? (Three hands go up and one student gets it—Andrew Jackson). Who knows anything about him? (No hands) When I in 4^th or 5^th grade, I read a biography of Andrew Jackson and decided he was my hero. I had my father paint a picture of him and every day when I woke up, there he was looking down at me.

Turns out that biography didn’t tell the whole story. Jackson had hundreds of slaves, often had them whipped and he also sold slaves. He had bitter feuds with other politicians and killed a man in a duel who he felt had insulted his wife. He went to war against various Native American groups in Florida, tricked them into selling their land so there could be more plantations with slaves and when he was President and signed the Indian Relocation Act, taking thousands of Native Americans from their land and moving them to a reservation in Oklahoma.  Their forced march became known as “The Trail of Tears.”

People like Andrew Jackson who did bad things can get on money or get airports named after them, but they don’t get national holidays like Martin Luther King. That means that our country is still trying to erase the gap between what it promised—“Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" for ALL its people and the way it actually treated—and still treats— different groups of people—Native Americans, African-Americans, Latino-Americans, women, workers, gay people, poor people and so on.

And make no mistake about it—despite maddening setbacks, the arc of the moral universe is bending toward justice. A few years ago I showed a photo of my daughter and her African-American husband and told you how their marriage would have been illegal some 50 years ago. Now they can walk down the street without people’s heads turning. And some of us here can introduce our parents Mary and Susan or Rob and Richard and people will simply say “Nice to meet you.”

But of course, not all people understand that the content of our character is more important than any superficial difference like race, religion, class, sexual preference. There are plenty of people who still worship Andrew Jackson's hateful values and they need to be educated. There are plenty of politicians— some of them running for President!—who come out swinging with Jacksonian ideas to cheering crowds—and they need to be stopped. 

So we have days like this to tell the stories to both teach what really matters and also help us figure out how to speak out against bad laws and practices and stand up for the good and decent. Almost 50 years after Mr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, there is still plenty of work to do. Maybe 50 years from now, children will hear the stories about what happened in this country and think, “What was wrong with those people? Why would they treat each other like that?” Wouldn’t that be nice.

That's why we have a national holiday called Martin Luther King Day and we don’t have one called Andrew Jackson Day. What would we do on Andrew Jackson day? Teach children how to treat people badly? Make plans to make people leave their homes and go to Oklahoma? Give classes on whipping techniques and how to win a duel?

So that’s a good lesson. People who stand up for truth and justice and fair treatment of all people may be treated badly while they’re alive, but they’ll be remembered And the best way to remember them is not to worship them like a celebrity, but to think about what they stood for and learn how to stand up ourselves, to be as thoughtful, courageous and compassionate as they were then in our lives here and now. Each of us from our little corner of the universe. It could mean speaking up for a friend, speaking out at a business board meeting, speaking out in a school staff meeting. In the little and big things—size doesn’t matter. The habit of speaking out courageously and living a life pursuing your happiness alongside the happiness of all. That's what counts.

That’s what we’re here for today. As we learn something about Martin Luther King today, let's think about how he had to use his mind to plan his strategies, his imagination to dream a happier future, his heart to reach out to all people, his body to put himself out on the street and cross an actual bridge in Selma to cross the larger bridge of the gap between our ignorance and our humanitarian promise. Let’s look at what he had to do to accomplish what he did and then think about what we have to do to keep his work moving forward.

Okay? Let’s go!