2014 … A Year with Little to Recommend It … Send in the Clowns

EDUCATION AND OTHER MUSINGS-Charles Dickens pretty much invented the modern secular Christmas in a novella published in 1843. “Marley was dead” it begins. Thankfully 2014 … far, far from the best+worst of times … is almost dead too.

In her annual Christmas message, H.M. The Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland, and of Her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, etc., singled out two (if you can ‘single out ‘two) items for specific mention:

THE FIRST was the selfless heroism of those fighting the battle against Ebola.

THE SECOND was the centennial of the Christmas Truce of 1914, when peace broke out spontaneously on the Western Front of World War I. The war would last four years, but four months into it the fighting stopped and No Man’s Land was occupied in Peace. For one brief instant in the bloodiest century in the history of mankind (no disrespect to our sisters, but we of the masculine gender own that title!) the promise of “Silent Night”/”Stille Nacht” was kept and the melody and verse sung in true harmony. Football games may have been played.

The generals were horrified. The Powers That Be made sure that precedent was never repeated, – not in that war or in any since. One hundred years later it is a singular moment of unauthorized heroism.

Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,
Hirten erst kundgemacht
Durch der Engel Halleluja,
Tönt es laut von fern und nah

Silent night, holy night,
Shepherds quake at the sight.
Glories stream from heaven afar,
Heav'nly hosts sing Alleluia;

…with apologies to Leonard Cohen: It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah.
May they all sleep in that heavenly peace.

●●●

2014: A year with little to recommend it. A year that celebrates the Triumph of Fracking and the Reemergence of Terrorism.

Terrorism reestablished a caliphate, kidnapped and enslaved and married-off schoolgirls and slaughtered schoolboys. It annexed Crimea and shot down airliners while other planes from the same airline vanished into thin air and/or the deep blue sea.

Fracking brought us the appearance of energy independence; $2.50-a-gallon gasoline, cheap natural gas, an 18,000 point Dow Jones Average and the collapse of the ruble. Capitalism so rocks! Of course fracking also uses and/or contaminates water during an historic draught, adds more CO² to the atmospheric soup (which warms the globe), possibly triggers seismic disturbance and depletes whatever oil reserves are left – creating an economic bubble in the energy business while doing nothing for sustainability or renewability. It’s a stay, not a reprieve.

Fracking+Terrorism. “A plague o' both your houses!” A plague named Ebola.

●●●

MORE LOCALLY we have issues with GOP Hacking Sony and North Korean Cinema Criticism, Police Use of Deadly Force against Black men, GOP Congressional Gridlock, Immigration Policy and iPads and MiSiS. (Rhymes with Isis!) The good news is that we have neither Donald Sterling nor John Deasy to kick around anymore – next Wednesday is officially Dr. DZ’s last day! The bad news is that that catchall excuse-for-everything (…and answer to the question: “What else could go wrong?”) won’t work for anything new in 2015.

Some LAUSD students are hoping they get a full class schedule when the next term starts; kids everywhere are wondering when they can have their chocolate milk back.

●●●

Here I Will Wander Afield and Upset Everyone, One Way or Another:
COMPARE+CONTRAST: BAD TEACHERS & BAD POLICEMEN.

The pinhead conventional wisdom has it that If only we could eliminate The Bad Teachers and/or The Bad Policemen, everything would be better. The media seems to agree. Sure these are complicated problems … but surely there are simple solutions!

• If only there was more accountability/more classroom observations/CCTV in every room/more dashboard and body cams. Video fixes everything – remember Rodney King? / Remember Eric Garner?

• If only the Teacher’s Unions/Police Unions/and the rank+ file wouldn’t blindly rally around their own. Sure we’ve been attacking them …but what’s with them defending themselves?

• Maybe the problem isn’t bad teachers/bad police officers. Maybe the problem is bad public sector unions.

• Most teachers and most police do a fine job; we just need to root out the bad ones – whatever that percentage is.

• Peer review doesn’t work; the conflict-of-self- interest is too great.

• Prosecutors and principals and downtown brass and grand Juries and school boards are too close/too intertwined/too systemically embedded to be trusted to self police.

There ought to be an algorithm. An independent third party. There ought to be The National Council on Teacher Quality or some other Bill Gates/Eli Broad off-the-shelf grassroots organization. Where is ALEC when we need them?

In the words+music of Mr. Sondheim:

Don't you love a farce; my fault I fear
I thought that you'd want what I want - sorry my dear
But where are the clowns?
Send in the clowns
…Don't bother they're here

Some will say that my comparison doesn’t work; police make life or death decisions – teachers shape young lives, deciding over time. Generally cops are politically red; teachers're blue. Most cops would probably agree that teachers’ unions are the problem – buncha’ knee jerk liberals. Likewise teachers will blame police unions – paramilitary right-wingers. Both are control valves in the School-to-Prison Pipeline. And the truth is that both teachers and police can ruin lives in a single moment and/or over time - by mistake or by design or by pure unadulterated ignorance.

“We have met the enemy,” the possum said,”… and he is us."

And so it was and need not forever be.

Next week: 2015.

 

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