So, as you all know, I finally got hired by a new school a few weeks ago. For a while, I was really happy and confident. Now, an incredible fear is setting in. It's a new grade level for me, and two new courses. When I was younger, I might've continued to feel fearless. Now I wake up in the morning wishing I could forget this job offer had ever happened.
A lot has happened in the 17 years I've been around the Dept. of Education. I've had many good years and learned from mistakes. However, I'd become good with certain populations and my strengths were very much natural outgrowths of my own personality and history. I tried to get work at schools which work with this population, but they are almost completely controlled by New Visions -- a non-profit which doesn't seem very interested in teachers over 40. In fact, that company consistently only offered me substitute positions. When I wrote to them repeatedly explaining that I was an experienced, full-time teacher and didn't know why they kept making me these offers, they would apologize, then repeat the pattern.
Many people believe if you can teach, you can teach anyone, but think about it: do you hand an internist who has been working with diabetics and heart patients in their middle age to a population of pre-teens? Of course, the doctor can read up on this group, but it's not the same as knowing them from long experience. Doctors become known as good for particular problems. Why would you deny teachers the right to a certain expertise? Do you think the same methodology works for ten year olds as it does for sixteen year olds? It doesn't, and actually, the populations require very different personalities.
So, I'm sick to my stomach with the prospects of the job ahead. Not that I don't want to learn new skills, but wondering if the learning curve is too large given the time I have before September. I know that if I am not emotionally connected to the material I teach, I am very unconvincing in delivering it. I haven't quite found what I want to present and when I settle on something I wonder if it will work or not.
The Dept. of Education's purposeful removal of teachers from their areas of strength, first by putting them in the Assigned Teacher Reserve, and then by denying us the right to use our seniority to help us find jobs which best meet our skill sets is destructive to students and teachers. Teachers are methodical creatures and those who have survived as long as I have usually have excelled in a particular area. As with pitchers, some of us are starters and some of us are relievers. Principals have used us to their advantage the way managers have.
Not many people are John Smoltz and can move from reliever to starter at any point in our careers. The blessing came for us, as it does for pitchers, doctors, lawyers, etc. when we found our niche and proved excellent within it. I face the prospect of my new position now as if I were a new teacher again, but I lack the novice's ignorance of what can go wrong. I know that in this economy, people are loathe to care about fairness: a job is a job. I wonder if that is the recipe for a system which will sustain itself, however. How many people will find themselves readily unemployed by moving from position to position after first having had a lifetime of success at something which they have been forced out of doing.
I don't remember ever thinking of my teachers as cogs in a machine -- placeable wherever you put them. I don't know if anyone, given a chance to think about it, would want their first grade teacher to have reappeared in high school, gold stars and rubber stamps in hand. Nor would you have wanted your intrepid, psychologically astute 11th grade literature teacher to be teaching second grade.
My life feels no more secure now than when I was an ATR and I feel very much like I've made a terrible mistake.
30 July, 2009
17 July, 2009
FOR HENRY, aka Hennybee, Henny, Neenee, "Little King," etc.
A rare moment when he was not cuddling someone, playing or just generally being warm and effusive
CHARTER SCHOOL DATA
Reprinted from GEM New York
"Grassroots Education Movement (NYC)" - 1 new article
The Truth about Charter Schools
More Recent Articles
Search Grassroots Education Movement (NYC)
The Truth about Charter Schools
A study on charter schools released on June 15, 2009 by Stanford University (sponsored by PRO-CHARTER groups: Walton Family and Susan Dell Foundation) studying 15 states and District of Columbia found that:
• 80 % of charter schools performed the same or worse than traditional public schools: (37% that did significantly worse and 46% that performed the same). • African American and Hispanic students were found to do worse in charter schools in math and reading scores. • In Florida, the leading state with charters (389 schools), “Black students, bottom-tier students and top-tier students in Florida charter schools all perform "significantly worse" in reading and math than their peers in other public schools. A study released on August 22, 2006 by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) found:
• Students in charter schools performed several points lower on reading and math scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress Test (the gold standard). A report by the United States Department of Education (under George W. Bush) in 2003 found:
• Charter schools in all five case-study states were less likely than traditional public schools to meet performance standards even after controlling for several school characteristics. • More than half of authorizers (of Charter schools) report difficulty closing a school that is having problems - a key responsibility of authorizers in this educational reform.”
• The reality is that only 36 percent of authorizers had a charter school office, or staff in 2001-02, suggesting limited capacity to address charter school oversight. • Only four percent of authorizers had NOT renewed a school’s charter and six percent had revoked a charter as of 2001-02. (Bad charters keep on going).
• Charter schools are more likely to serve minority and low income students but less likely to serve students in special education. • According to the 1999-2000 SASS, 79 percent of teachers in charter schools held certification, compared with 92 percent of teachers in traditional public schools.
A study by Arizona State University (EPAA) in August 2002 finds:
• charters in economically depressed areas may receive more funding than the traditional public schools that surround them, placing traditional public schools at a funding disadvantage. • In the case of DC charter schools, private funding was found to have accounted for $780 per pupil and, combined with a higher level of public funding (mostly due to non-district funding), resulted in considerably higher funding for charters than comparable public schools. We at GEM (Grassroots Education Movement) believe: The invasion of charter schools is an issue of race. If white affluent public schools have low teacher-to-student ratios and access to top notch academic building and programs, why is a lottery system the only means by which urban minority students can access these equitable conditions. A lottery system of winners and losers, is abandoning the conversation that ALL students, regardless of race and socio-economic backround deserve the greatest of educational opportunities. Charter schools, like those in Harlem, vastly under-serve English Language Learners and Special Education Students. Due to the self selection process of lottery systems, not only are Charter schools creaming off the top of various student sub-groups, their lack of programs for Special Education and ELL students dissuade those parents from seeking their children’s enrollment. Charter schools are a political and corporate tool used by those favoring privatization to access the 800 billion dollars spent yearly in public education. If public education goes the way of the current health care model, a vast number of students will get education on the cheap. Profit not education, and shortcuts not support, will be the guiding principle. The funding gap and resource gap will become even more stark than it is now. The current limited success of a few charter schools bedazzled by huge corporate sponsored budgets can not be replicated on a system wide basis. For example, the budget of Harlem Promise Schools requires a yearly 36 million in private funding alone. If Harlem Promise Schools have shown anything, it is that lowering class size, providing the best supporting services and resources, should be the goal for every student in the inner city – not just those that win a lottery. We are abandoning the goals of an equitable public education, which although never fully realized, have made significant gains since Brown vs the Board of Education. Charter schools are in essence legitimizing the two tiered system of education for the lucky versus those left behind. Furthermore, charter schools open the door for skirting a fine line between church and state. Recent controversies pertaining to Hebrew Language Charter Schools, Arabic Language Charters, Hellenistic Language Charter Schools, and the conversion of Catholic private schools into charter schools, may provide loopholes that may further segregate rather than hold the public school ideals of democratic multiculturalism.
"Grassroots Education Movement (NYC)" - 1 new article
The Truth about Charter Schools
More Recent Articles
Search Grassroots Education Movement (NYC)
The Truth about Charter Schools
A study on charter schools released on June 15, 2009 by Stanford University (sponsored by PRO-CHARTER groups: Walton Family and Susan Dell Foundation) studying 15 states and District of Columbia found that:
• 80 % of charter schools performed the same or worse than traditional public schools: (37% that did significantly worse and 46% that performed the same). • African American and Hispanic students were found to do worse in charter schools in math and reading scores. • In Florida, the leading state with charters (389 schools), “Black students, bottom-tier students and top-tier students in Florida charter schools all perform "significantly worse" in reading and math than their peers in other public schools. A study released on August 22, 2006 by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) found:
• Students in charter schools performed several points lower on reading and math scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress Test (the gold standard). A report by the United States Department of Education (under George W. Bush) in 2003 found:
• Charter schools in all five case-study states were less likely than traditional public schools to meet performance standards even after controlling for several school characteristics. • More than half of authorizers (of Charter schools) report difficulty closing a school that is having problems - a key responsibility of authorizers in this educational reform.”
• The reality is that only 36 percent of authorizers had a charter school office, or staff in 2001-02, suggesting limited capacity to address charter school oversight. • Only four percent of authorizers had NOT renewed a school’s charter and six percent had revoked a charter as of 2001-02. (Bad charters keep on going).
• Charter schools are more likely to serve minority and low income students but less likely to serve students in special education. • According to the 1999-2000 SASS, 79 percent of teachers in charter schools held certification, compared with 92 percent of teachers in traditional public schools.
A study by Arizona State University (EPAA) in August 2002 finds:
• charters in economically depressed areas may receive more funding than the traditional public schools that surround them, placing traditional public schools at a funding disadvantage. • In the case of DC charter schools, private funding was found to have accounted for $780 per pupil and, combined with a higher level of public funding (mostly due to non-district funding), resulted in considerably higher funding for charters than comparable public schools. We at GEM (Grassroots Education Movement) believe: The invasion of charter schools is an issue of race. If white affluent public schools have low teacher-to-student ratios and access to top notch academic building and programs, why is a lottery system the only means by which urban minority students can access these equitable conditions. A lottery system of winners and losers, is abandoning the conversation that ALL students, regardless of race and socio-economic backround deserve the greatest of educational opportunities. Charter schools, like those in Harlem, vastly under-serve English Language Learners and Special Education Students. Due to the self selection process of lottery systems, not only are Charter schools creaming off the top of various student sub-groups, their lack of programs for Special Education and ELL students dissuade those parents from seeking their children’s enrollment. Charter schools are a political and corporate tool used by those favoring privatization to access the 800 billion dollars spent yearly in public education. If public education goes the way of the current health care model, a vast number of students will get education on the cheap. Profit not education, and shortcuts not support, will be the guiding principle. The funding gap and resource gap will become even more stark than it is now. The current limited success of a few charter schools bedazzled by huge corporate sponsored budgets can not be replicated on a system wide basis. For example, the budget of Harlem Promise Schools requires a yearly 36 million in private funding alone. If Harlem Promise Schools have shown anything, it is that lowering class size, providing the best supporting services and resources, should be the goal for every student in the inner city – not just those that win a lottery. We are abandoning the goals of an equitable public education, which although never fully realized, have made significant gains since Brown vs the Board of Education. Charter schools are in essence legitimizing the two tiered system of education for the lucky versus those left behind. Furthermore, charter schools open the door for skirting a fine line between church and state. Recent controversies pertaining to Hebrew Language Charter Schools, Arabic Language Charters, Hellenistic Language Charter Schools, and the conversion of Catholic private schools into charter schools, may provide loopholes that may further segregate rather than hold the public school ideals of democratic multiculturalism.
14 July, 2009
Living in New York City
The voice on the radio was over 40 and old school. He sounded about as comfortable mouthing the words of the Rap song he just played as I felt hearing it billowing in through the screens on my windows. It was embarassing to hear his intro and his reference to the artist whom he was pretending to understand. Since I've faked understanding Rap and been caught, I know the sound, the affectation, very well.
Now I listen to more Rap than I used to so I can stay in touch with what my students are listening to. And I like a lot of it.
There is no need to blast this OR ANY OTHER MUSIC in front of building on a residential street in mid-evening on a weekday night. There is no reason to blast any music ANYWHERE at ANY TIME.
Why do people do this? If I drove by in a car and blasted Jussi Bjoerling people would become irate. People are intimidated by Rap music. I hate that part of it. I should sit outside with my speakers and my computer and play the entire Ring Cycle. Now that will intimidate anyone. Why don't I do that? It's wrong, that's why.
Someday, I will find a way to convince people NOT to invade each others' spaces. We live in a city, one atop the other, ceilings and walls caving in further every night. We pay for our little bit of privacy. Why do we think we can abuse others by stepping on theirs?
I live in Brooklyn, in a section between Boro Park, Bensonhurst, Bay Ridge and Chinatown. Muslim and Jew, Christian, Zoroastrian -- we have every religion and multiple ethnicites and nationalities represented here. All of us get along -- this is a very, very low crime neighborhood. So much so that the police COME when you call about people disturbing the peace. I just wish I didn't have to make that call.
So, I ask as if my neighbors could hear me, "Was that necessary? Did you have to crack the air like plastic and trap me with what you felt you needed to say? If you came to this blog it was because you wanted to do so -- I don't throw my words, my website, my voice or anything with volume. Why are you so cruel to me and others?" And it's cruelty, no twoways about it, whether I like it or whether it sounds fake and designed to catch you with a commercial edge.
Now I listen to more Rap than I used to so I can stay in touch with what my students are listening to. And I like a lot of it.
There is no need to blast this OR ANY OTHER MUSIC in front of building on a residential street in mid-evening on a weekday night. There is no reason to blast any music ANYWHERE at ANY TIME.
Why do people do this? If I drove by in a car and blasted Jussi Bjoerling people would become irate. People are intimidated by Rap music. I hate that part of it. I should sit outside with my speakers and my computer and play the entire Ring Cycle. Now that will intimidate anyone. Why don't I do that? It's wrong, that's why.
Someday, I will find a way to convince people NOT to invade each others' spaces. We live in a city, one atop the other, ceilings and walls caving in further every night. We pay for our little bit of privacy. Why do we think we can abuse others by stepping on theirs?
I live in Brooklyn, in a section between Boro Park, Bensonhurst, Bay Ridge and Chinatown. Muslim and Jew, Christian, Zoroastrian -- we have every religion and multiple ethnicites and nationalities represented here. All of us get along -- this is a very, very low crime neighborhood. So much so that the police COME when you call about people disturbing the peace. I just wish I didn't have to make that call.
So, I ask as if my neighbors could hear me, "Was that necessary? Did you have to crack the air like plastic and trap me with what you felt you needed to say? If you came to this blog it was because you wanted to do so -- I don't throw my words, my website, my voice or anything with volume. Why are you so cruel to me and others?" And it's cruelty, no twoways about it, whether I like it or whether it sounds fake and designed to catch you with a commercial edge.
12 July, 2009
The Children of Willy Loman Updated
This is the second draft of a post I will work on for a while, but I'm putting it up in case anyone has any comments along the way.
All my life, I have struggled with Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. The language feels sifted of any ethnic connection, yet it only makes sense to me within the context of being Jewish in Brooklyn in the 1940's. That other cultures have been able to adapt it doesn't take away the feeling for me that to thoroughly understand it, you have to imagine it from my mother's point of view.
Arthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman in 1949, when my mother was nine year's old. One year earlier, she had lost her 38 year old father to a heart attack precipitated by pneumonia and a life working as many hours as possible and filling what remained with whatever it took to become an accountant. On the wall, next to the dinner table was a black and white photograph of an entire generation of Greenbergs who had been recently slaughtered, each one with a story more gruesome of how his/her death took place. One had her baby tossed in the air and shot before her own throat was slit, another starved to death and some of the rest followed the now familiar last walk into a gas chamber. At eight years old, my mother had accompanied her mother to her father's funeral because she was expected by that age to understand death and be ready. For all she knew, the Nazis were still waiting around the corner to grab her by the neck and march her into a pile of bodies. The sense of expectation that your life could be ripped away from you by evil forces -- and that little would stand in their way -- took hold of children in the 1940's the same way it did Miller's Willy Loman. He held onto the idea of being "Well-liked" as his last armament against a city which had gone from being lush with space to one literally closing in on him.
Industry had made it nearly impossible for him to do more than scratch out a living at a job he committed to because it held more practical promise, say, than being a carpenter or a bricklayer at the turn of the century. For that reason, he also dreamed repeatedly of his brother Ben's magificent and seemingly luck-driven landing in riches. The "America" my grandmother knew when she came here in 1922 was a place you called, "charming," "enthusiastic," and "gay," and "full of opportunity." Whether you were 14 year old Benny Goodman playing with major Jazz bands or you sold paper or fur coats, you could put together a living and eventually you could rise in stature enough to have some kind of savings. The 30's took away the opportunity, but not initially, the promise it might be back. Benny Goodman's father never got to see his son perform because he did not want to be seen in shabby clothes (and he was hit by a car and killed early in his son's career.) In that refusal, lay the belief that there would be a time in which he would have the right clothes. I don't know if it was the rise of Hitler or the mercilessness of unchecked capitalism or both which gave Americans, especially new immigrants, their first sense of themselves as corpses.
Perhaps it was this sense that helped The New Deal to be passed and allowed the government to just create jobs in an economy which had been eager for cheap and disposable labor. Some of the audience who heard Willy Loman's famous complaint, "A man is not a piece of fruit!" had memories of a time, place and government which didn't tolerate the abuse Loman railed against. The children, however, grew up with the tension that remained around the frailty of the government created jobs at which their parents worked. This combined with growingly vivid pictures of mass genocide was part of their normal day. For the baby-boomers, things were not the same. Their parents were coming home after a conquest and were eager to make things safe and pleasant and better for their children. A friend told me that the baby boomers were the first group of teenagers to be targetted as a specific market.
My mother found dolls like Ken and Barbie very frivolous. For her, the 60's were not a time to blossom and dream big, but a time to corner a piece of the stock market in male form and to guard your every posession in plastic or moth balls. The many elegant services of silverware remained in the closet. She said they were supposedly for me, but I knew intuititively that no one, not even I would use them. They remained as possible barter for hard times. Though she dyed her hair and she wore the full "Jackie-O" make-up, she could not and cannot to this day smile convincingly. Most of her life was spent with a simple cloth or vinyl hat on her head, a "car coat," and bags and bags of food in her arms, on her hips and stomach. We stored food in our house in permanent fear of the inevitable day of either joblessness or homelessness or what we would now call, "the haters" appearing at our doorstep. "You can't trust anybody," and "Nobody will appreciate you," were two of the mantras in the tiny apartment across from the Belt Parkway, in which we lived.
As though it were expected of her, my mother effectively killed the part of her that wanted joy, improvement, education, sex, physical activity -- any part of young life. At 8 years old, she'd been prepped for the life of Willy Loman. She worked a job in the civil service -- the one place left you couldn't be disposed of when you hit a certain age or lack of production. And she was forced to retire at 55, anyway, because the mindlessness of the job contributed to the overall destruction of her mind that a life without pleasure induced. She had no hope of pleasure, except in prurient gasps -- in cheating. In taking me out of school to go to the theater (it was okay because it would be educational for me, so it wasn't just a joyride.). In looking too closely at the teeth or the legs of someone nearby. She clobbered through her days and her muscles stretched the skin around her broad cheekbones to their limits. No rouge could make her look anything less than a heavyweight boxer, too thick to move quickly enough to win, but strong enough to make people afraid and give her dominion over the tiny space within our apartment which was hers.
IT IS TRUE, AS SHARON PEARCE POINTS OUT, that what my mother (and her generation or her clique within it) could've learned from the baby-boomers' was, simply, to fight back. As a rule, the Lomans expect to be treated fairly for mostly playing by the rules -- or not deviating anymore than anyone else. And they didn't "make waves." Even in the 1970's, my Hebrew school was still teaching us "Don't break away from the group," -- don't be strange, don't protest, don't act up. An entire generation's impulse against this hadn't made an impact on the lower-middle class Jewish community in Brooklyn in which I grew up. I didn't get a full sense of the power of civil disobedience until college when I was taught by professors who had participated within the civil rights movement.
The boomers were asked to do two completely hideous things -- to continue to repress civil rights even as African-Americans laid down their lives for basic freedoms and to fight in Vietnam. And mostly they refused. My unde went for the Loman reasons -- "America is this great country and I thought I should give something back." I don't disparage those reasons. They are the response of grateful immigrants who tried to be everything they thought that this country wanted them to be. I don't know what gave the boomers the power to protest, except for the heinous and un-American nature of what was being asked of them. I guess, also, having not been inundated with WWII and the Holocaust, they didn't have the sense that you can't stop a gigantic hate machine. At least, that's where I get that feeling from. That and my mother's insistence, "you can't fight City Hall." The fervor left from her unqueched passion went into the chaotic raising of me -- the second generation of Lomans. I, too, became a civil servant. I've never expected to travel, own a car or a house. I snatch pleasure in the quick and cheap --- chocolate soy milk, soy pudding, etc. My fervor goes into my cats whose lives are built on simple pleasures, too. My education was carefully planned as Jews didn't let go of that trope within The American Dream publicly. Sure, we knew imbeciles who opened delicatessens and made fortunes, but the pristine nature of the intellect has not yet been fouled by the cruelties of industrialization. Look who beat Willy Loman? Bernard, the nerdy kid next door who went on to defend cases in The Supreme Court. How had he done so? By avoiding the "evil eye" of talking about what you do before you do it. And Miller maintains a belief that academic achievement will help an individual survive in the corporate world, which I don't think people share commonly today.
Never forget, however, how nervous Bernard is for Biff -- he sees the edge of doom coming toward him in the same way that Willy does. But, he never gave up his end of the bargain with Biff, either -- he was always assisting him in the hopes that his athletic efforts would pull him out of high school and safely to a career, after all. I wonder, if when Willy Loman talked about being "well-liked," and not being "a piece of fruit," if there weren't people in the audience who never expected that he would be treated so badly. True, he's not perfect. But, one year earlier Harry Truman had just won the presidency. Describing his campaign, David McCullough writes
No president ever campaigned so hard or so far. Truman was sixty-four years old. Younger men who were with him through it all would describe the time on the train as one of the worst ordeals of their lives. The roadbed was rough and Truman would get the train up to 80 miles an hour at night. The food was awful, the work unrelenting. One of them told me, "It's one thing to work that hard and to stay the course when you think you're going to win, but it's quite another thing when you know you're going to lose." The only reason they were there, they all said, was Harry Truman. For Truman, I think, it was an act of faith--a heroic, memorable American act of faith. The poll takers, the political reporters, the pundits, all the sundry prognosticators, and professional politicians--it didn't matter what they said, what they thought. Only the people decide, Truman was reminding the country. "Here I am, here's what I stand for--here's what I'm going to do if you keep me in the job. You decide." (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/character/essays/truman.html)
The country had just voted, essentially for Willy Loman. All the more reason that Linda Loman is so shocked that the businessworld has shown such disrespect for her husband, when they are even debt free. Why is it, now, it is so hard to feel that same disgust and how did Miller know we would become such traitors to ourselves? It isn't Biff that's right, Bernard that's right -- but in fact, the country agreed with Willy Loman at the time. You rewarded people for steadfastness and you permitted them faults. However terrible a salesman (and I'll take the fifth on arguments that technology would've helped him to be better as some articles say, missing the whole point of the play) Willy had been loyal, mostly hard-working and had trudged down those roads on an act of faith, just like Harry Truman had come to the White House. He deserved better, and though it was clear he wasn't going to get it, I think the audience would've been much more outraged at the end of the play than we usually believe. Maybe they wouldn't have protested or "made waves," but they would've expected more from the people they worked with -- or hoped for more, against their best instincts and fears. Just as people didn't leave New York City for Wyoming at that time, I think no one expected anyone to be put out on the street after long years of service. It wasn't supposed to be done. My grandmother would've been disgusted with the company. My mother would've hoped for better, but not been surprised. I grew up learning that Biff had the right idea and that Loman's tragedy was his own failure to see his own flaws. That never made complete sense to me, I think because I was raised to expect the worst from my mother -- but to know it was "the worst" -- that it was treacherous. If we are supposed to feel horror about Willy then why not stop the play after we find out he cheats on his wife? Why not kill him off there? The horror is to see this Everyman be treated so miserably by his company -- yes, he should've seen it coming, like his children did, but there was no way he could've. Abandoning someone to the streets was unheard of -- there had been a New Deal and even my grandmother's family moved into the new government sponsored housing projects built after World War Two. My mother clinged to hope against hope and she practically made it, small pension and insurance and all. What Willy wanted was NOT unheard of, and it really shouldn't ever be.
All my life, I have struggled with Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. The language feels sifted of any ethnic connection, yet it only makes sense to me within the context of being Jewish in Brooklyn in the 1940's. That other cultures have been able to adapt it doesn't take away the feeling for me that to thoroughly understand it, you have to imagine it from my mother's point of view.
Arthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman in 1949, when my mother was nine year's old. One year earlier, she had lost her 38 year old father to a heart attack precipitated by pneumonia and a life working as many hours as possible and filling what remained with whatever it took to become an accountant. On the wall, next to the dinner table was a black and white photograph of an entire generation of Greenbergs who had been recently slaughtered, each one with a story more gruesome of how his/her death took place. One had her baby tossed in the air and shot before her own throat was slit, another starved to death and some of the rest followed the now familiar last walk into a gas chamber. At eight years old, my mother had accompanied her mother to her father's funeral because she was expected by that age to understand death and be ready. For all she knew, the Nazis were still waiting around the corner to grab her by the neck and march her into a pile of bodies. The sense of expectation that your life could be ripped away from you by evil forces -- and that little would stand in their way -- took hold of children in the 1940's the same way it did Miller's Willy Loman. He held onto the idea of being "Well-liked" as his last armament against a city which had gone from being lush with space to one literally closing in on him.
Industry had made it nearly impossible for him to do more than scratch out a living at a job he committed to because it held more practical promise, say, than being a carpenter or a bricklayer at the turn of the century. For that reason, he also dreamed repeatedly of his brother Ben's magificent and seemingly luck-driven landing in riches. The "America" my grandmother knew when she came here in 1922 was a place you called, "charming," "enthusiastic," and "gay," and "full of opportunity." Whether you were 14 year old Benny Goodman playing with major Jazz bands or you sold paper or fur coats, you could put together a living and eventually you could rise in stature enough to have some kind of savings. The 30's took away the opportunity, but not initially, the promise it might be back. Benny Goodman's father never got to see his son perform because he did not want to be seen in shabby clothes (and he was hit by a car and killed early in his son's career.) In that refusal, lay the belief that there would be a time in which he would have the right clothes. I don't know if it was the rise of Hitler or the mercilessness of unchecked capitalism or both which gave Americans, especially new immigrants, their first sense of themselves as corpses.
Perhaps it was this sense that helped The New Deal to be passed and allowed the government to just create jobs in an economy which had been eager for cheap and disposable labor. Some of the audience who heard Willy Loman's famous complaint, "A man is not a piece of fruit!" had memories of a time, place and government which didn't tolerate the abuse Loman railed against. The children, however, grew up with the tension that remained around the frailty of the government created jobs at which their parents worked. This combined with growingly vivid pictures of mass genocide was part of their normal day. For the baby-boomers, things were not the same. Their parents were coming home after a conquest and were eager to make things safe and pleasant and better for their children. A friend told me that the baby boomers were the first group of teenagers to be targetted as a specific market.
My mother found dolls like Ken and Barbie very frivolous. For her, the 60's were not a time to blossom and dream big, but a time to corner a piece of the stock market in male form and to guard your every posession in plastic or moth balls. The many elegant services of silverware remained in the closet. She said they were supposedly for me, but I knew intuititively that no one, not even I would use them. They remained as possible barter for hard times. Though she dyed her hair and she wore the full "Jackie-O" make-up, she could not and cannot to this day smile convincingly. Most of her life was spent with a simple cloth or vinyl hat on her head, a "car coat," and bags and bags of food in her arms, on her hips and stomach. We stored food in our house in permanent fear of the inevitable day of either joblessness or homelessness or what we would now call, "the haters" appearing at our doorstep. "You can't trust anybody," and "Nobody will appreciate you," were two of the mantras in the tiny apartment across from the Belt Parkway, in which we lived.
As though it were expected of her, my mother effectively killed the part of her that wanted joy, improvement, education, sex, physical activity -- any part of young life. At 8 years old, she'd been prepped for the life of Willy Loman. She worked a job in the civil service -- the one place left you couldn't be disposed of when you hit a certain age or lack of production. And she was forced to retire at 55, anyway, because the mindlessness of the job contributed to the overall destruction of her mind that a life without pleasure induced. She had no hope of pleasure, except in prurient gasps -- in cheating. In taking me out of school to go to the theater (it was okay because it would be educational for me, so it wasn't just a joyride.). In looking too closely at the teeth or the legs of someone nearby. She clobbered through her days and her muscles stretched the skin around her broad cheekbones to their limits. No rouge could make her look anything less than a heavyweight boxer, too thick to move quickly enough to win, but strong enough to make people afraid and give her dominion over the tiny space within our apartment which was hers.
IT IS TRUE, AS SHARON PEARCE POINTS OUT, that what my mother (and her generation or her clique within it) could've learned from the baby-boomers' was, simply, to fight back. As a rule, the Lomans expect to be treated fairly for mostly playing by the rules -- or not deviating anymore than anyone else. And they didn't "make waves." Even in the 1970's, my Hebrew school was still teaching us "Don't break away from the group," -- don't be strange, don't protest, don't act up. An entire generation's impulse against this hadn't made an impact on the lower-middle class Jewish community in Brooklyn in which I grew up. I didn't get a full sense of the power of civil disobedience until college when I was taught by professors who had participated within the civil rights movement.
The boomers were asked to do two completely hideous things -- to continue to repress civil rights even as African-Americans laid down their lives for basic freedoms and to fight in Vietnam. And mostly they refused. My unde went for the Loman reasons -- "America is this great country and I thought I should give something back." I don't disparage those reasons. They are the response of grateful immigrants who tried to be everything they thought that this country wanted them to be. I don't know what gave the boomers the power to protest, except for the heinous and un-American nature of what was being asked of them. I guess, also, having not been inundated with WWII and the Holocaust, they didn't have the sense that you can't stop a gigantic hate machine. At least, that's where I get that feeling from. That and my mother's insistence, "you can't fight City Hall." The fervor left from her unqueched passion went into the chaotic raising of me -- the second generation of Lomans. I, too, became a civil servant. I've never expected to travel, own a car or a house. I snatch pleasure in the quick and cheap --- chocolate soy milk, soy pudding, etc. My fervor goes into my cats whose lives are built on simple pleasures, too. My education was carefully planned as Jews didn't let go of that trope within The American Dream publicly. Sure, we knew imbeciles who opened delicatessens and made fortunes, but the pristine nature of the intellect has not yet been fouled by the cruelties of industrialization. Look who beat Willy Loman? Bernard, the nerdy kid next door who went on to defend cases in The Supreme Court. How had he done so? By avoiding the "evil eye" of talking about what you do before you do it. And Miller maintains a belief that academic achievement will help an individual survive in the corporate world, which I don't think people share commonly today.
Never forget, however, how nervous Bernard is for Biff -- he sees the edge of doom coming toward him in the same way that Willy does. But, he never gave up his end of the bargain with Biff, either -- he was always assisting him in the hopes that his athletic efforts would pull him out of high school and safely to a career, after all. I wonder, if when Willy Loman talked about being "well-liked," and not being "a piece of fruit," if there weren't people in the audience who never expected that he would be treated so badly. True, he's not perfect. But, one year earlier Harry Truman had just won the presidency. Describing his campaign, David McCullough writes
No president ever campaigned so hard or so far. Truman was sixty-four years old. Younger men who were with him through it all would describe the time on the train as one of the worst ordeals of their lives. The roadbed was rough and Truman would get the train up to 80 miles an hour at night. The food was awful, the work unrelenting. One of them told me, "It's one thing to work that hard and to stay the course when you think you're going to win, but it's quite another thing when you know you're going to lose." The only reason they were there, they all said, was Harry Truman. For Truman, I think, it was an act of faith--a heroic, memorable American act of faith. The poll takers, the political reporters, the pundits, all the sundry prognosticators, and professional politicians--it didn't matter what they said, what they thought. Only the people decide, Truman was reminding the country. "Here I am, here's what I stand for--here's what I'm going to do if you keep me in the job. You decide." (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/character/essays/truman.html)
The country had just voted, essentially for Willy Loman. All the more reason that Linda Loman is so shocked that the businessworld has shown such disrespect for her husband, when they are even debt free. Why is it, now, it is so hard to feel that same disgust and how did Miller know we would become such traitors to ourselves? It isn't Biff that's right, Bernard that's right -- but in fact, the country agreed with Willy Loman at the time. You rewarded people for steadfastness and you permitted them faults. However terrible a salesman (and I'll take the fifth on arguments that technology would've helped him to be better as some articles say, missing the whole point of the play) Willy had been loyal, mostly hard-working and had trudged down those roads on an act of faith, just like Harry Truman had come to the White House. He deserved better, and though it was clear he wasn't going to get it, I think the audience would've been much more outraged at the end of the play than we usually believe. Maybe they wouldn't have protested or "made waves," but they would've expected more from the people they worked with -- or hoped for more, against their best instincts and fears. Just as people didn't leave New York City for Wyoming at that time, I think no one expected anyone to be put out on the street after long years of service. It wasn't supposed to be done. My grandmother would've been disgusted with the company. My mother would've hoped for better, but not been surprised. I grew up learning that Biff had the right idea and that Loman's tragedy was his own failure to see his own flaws. That never made complete sense to me, I think because I was raised to expect the worst from my mother -- but to know it was "the worst" -- that it was treacherous. If we are supposed to feel horror about Willy then why not stop the play after we find out he cheats on his wife? Why not kill him off there? The horror is to see this Everyman be treated so miserably by his company -- yes, he should've seen it coming, like his children did, but there was no way he could've. Abandoning someone to the streets was unheard of -- there had been a New Deal and even my grandmother's family moved into the new government sponsored housing projects built after World War Two. My mother clinged to hope against hope and she practically made it, small pension and insurance and all. What Willy wanted was NOT unheard of, and it really shouldn't ever be.
08 July, 2009
Got a job!
Won't say where yet until September or so....fear of all sorts of budgetary craziness. But, so far so good!
Flower growing out of stones
The stones did not stop it from finding roots nor keep it from growing.04 July, 2009
02 July, 2009
Why Tony Avella must win for Mayor
This is right off his webpage. Link to his Homepage http://www.tonyavellaformayor.com/
Take Back Our Schools
Tony Avella's record shows his commitment to creating an education system that works for all New Yorkers. As a City Council member, he worked closely with Parent Teacher Associations in Northeast Queens to make his school districts the best in the five boroughs. And when the Mayor failed to provide money for classroom technology, Tony secured the funding to acquire state-of-the-art computer labs and to install Internet wiring in schools. As Mayor, the first thing Tony will do is fire Joel Klein and replace him with an experienced educator. He'll also allocate funds so that we're investing in our kids, not in bloated bureaucracies or corporate testing systems. Tony believes no one understands education better than the teachers, principals, and parents. He'll make sure these stakeholders have a voice and a seat at the table when planning the future of our schools. As Mayor, Tony will:
Fire Joel Klein as the head of the Department of Education and replace him with an experienced educator
Open up the Department of Education to the parents and teachers who know our schools best
Stop teaching to the test so that our kids can enjoy learning again
Ensure that every school and every child has access to the latest technology and computers
Begin the process of reinstating free tuition at the CUNY colleges
Take Back Our Schools
Tony Avella's record shows his commitment to creating an education system that works for all New Yorkers. As a City Council member, he worked closely with Parent Teacher Associations in Northeast Queens to make his school districts the best in the five boroughs. And when the Mayor failed to provide money for classroom technology, Tony secured the funding to acquire state-of-the-art computer labs and to install Internet wiring in schools. As Mayor, the first thing Tony will do is fire Joel Klein and replace him with an experienced educator. He'll also allocate funds so that we're investing in our kids, not in bloated bureaucracies or corporate testing systems. Tony believes no one understands education better than the teachers, principals, and parents. He'll make sure these stakeholders have a voice and a seat at the table when planning the future of our schools. As Mayor, Tony will:
Fire Joel Klein as the head of the Department of Education and replace him with an experienced educator
Open up the Department of Education to the parents and teachers who know our schools best
Stop teaching to the test so that our kids can enjoy learning again
Ensure that every school and every child has access to the latest technology and computers
Begin the process of reinstating free tuition at the CUNY colleges
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