#617 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #42. Thinking "Conservative"

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A number of years ago I began receiving what I’ve come to call “forwards”. I decided to receive them, not ask to be taken off the mailing list for them, fact-check them usually through snopes.com, and respond to the sender if not always, frequently.
These forwards were uniformly false, either in fact or in implication. The rare ones that were true were simply somebody’s angry opinion. President Obama, or Democrats, or some specific lawmaker, Pelosi or Reid were favorite targets. Some of them would be considered hate mail. Others were nostalgia laced items about the good old days – the days in which I also grew up, and didn’t see quite so positively.
Their appearance seemed to spike after an announcement from Karl Rove’s operation that they were going to be spending money on advertising. Of course, I can’t prove the announcements and spikes in forwards were connected but….
I’d often respond to the sender, usually somebody I knew, with the other side of the story. Sometimes I’d get an angry retort that the responder didn’t care: he (rarely she) declared he/she was “conservative”, and that was that.
The word “conservative” came to interest me. It is very commonly used on the right, but in many ways I consider myself a conservative, and I know many people way to the left of me that are far more truly conservative than I am.
Recently, I had reason to look up Newt Gingrich’s GOPAC “100 words” from 1996 (which really are 128 words – 64 good, and 64 bad) which have been effectively used for years to label supposedly good people and bad people (apparently, people like me). For instance, “unionized” is a bad word, and I spent my whole career in or working for a union, which labels me as bad.
Interestingly, in this list, which was doubtless very carefully composed, the word “conservative” does not appear. One wonders why.
Definitions matter. And the word conservative is not owned by the angry right-wingers.
For the heck of it, I looked up conservative in my big dictionary here at home. Here are the definitions of Conservative, without further comment:
conservative, a
1) conserving or tending to conserve; preservation
2) tending to preserve old institutions, methods, customs, and the like; adhering to what is old or established; opposing of resisting change; as, a conservative political party, conservative art.
3) of or characteristic of a conservative; as conservative views
“The slow progress which Sweden has made in introducing needful reforms is owing to the conservative spirit of the nobility and the priesthood.” – Bayard Taylor.
4) moderate; prudent; safe; as a conservative estimate.
5) [Canada] pertaining to the English or Canadian Conservatives or their principles
conservative system: any physical system exemplifying the principle of the conservation of energy; any system the total energy of which is constant, whatever form or forms that energy may take.
conservative, n.
1. a person or thing tending to preserve; a preservative
2. one who wishes to preserve traditions or institutions and resists innovation or change; a conservative person.
3. [Canada] a member of the major right-wing political party of Great Britain or of the similar one in Canada.
Just interesting.

#613 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #39. A Parade: why I walked with JoAnn Ward in Woodbury Days on Sunday.

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Sunday I walked in the Woodbury Days Parade with/for JoAnn Ward, local (District 53A) candidate for Minnesota State Legislature.
We were unit 48 of (I understand) over 120 units in this very long parade in the middle of a pretty sultry day.
Speaking for myself, I’d rather be many places other than on display in the middle of a city street, more or less on exhibit.
So, why walk?
(click on photos to enlarge them)

Waiting for the start. I'm the gray-beard behind the JoAnn Ward sign. JoAnn is attending to one of her grandkids.


JoAnn and a spectator getting acquainted


Being caught on local TV - Channel 18?


The parade route as seen by a parade walker


JoAnn Ward chats with husband Joe during a moment when we stopped on the route.


I was delighted when I learned some months ago that JoAnn Ward had agreed to run for the new District 53A legislative seat.
While I’ve lived in Woodbury since 2000, I had met and worked with JoAnn the previous year on a national pilot project called Community Conversations About Public Schools (CCAPS) whose participants included the United Teachers of South Washington County.
The National Education Association was initiator/funder.
I was the staff liaison from Education Minnesota at the time.
Someway or other, JoAnn learned of the project, and became involved as a citizen volunteer, along with other community members, and school district personnel.
Back then, I had one grandchild, age 13, in Littleton Co. Today there are nine, two of them returning to South Washington County schools next week; six others in school in South St. Paul and Rosemount-Apple Valley.
Back in 1999, the Woodbury area community members – all of them, including JoAnn – stood out as really caring about public education in Woodbury and the other towns of ISD #833.

Our purpose, then, was very simple: to help communities practice a process of civil conversation about public education. The project also took place in a number of other school districts around the United States.
I thought of this 1999 event recently when Woodbury resident Kelly DeBrine publicized a community conversation on Taxes in Woodbury.
I attended that meeting as well.
In 1999, CCAPS was a success.
I retired shortly after the last conversation, so I had no opportunity to follow up.
But the CCAPS file is one of the files I kept as I ended my career.
The citizens of South Washington County (Woodbury et al), including JoAnn Ward, were integral to the success of the process (which even then was not simple to initiate for all the kinds of reasons Ms DeBrine and her group doubtless experienced recently.)
Civil conversation – call it whatever one wants – is not an easy process in these politically polarized days where politics have become warfare, played by rules of war.
Even then, in 1999, there was suspicion: what do THEY want?
In reality, I’d been involved in the general initiatives leading to CCAPS for five years by then.
We thought school districts would be healthier if citizens could just talk with each other, rather than work always at dominance and control.
The key unstated word in our project was “we”.
There are never permanent winners in any war; only temporary residents on the top of whatever the hill a combatant wants to reign over.
Back then, now thirteen years ago, JoAnn Ward appeared, volunteered, and quietly worked to make a difference in her long-time town of Woodbury, and the South Washington County School District.
When JoAnn Ward is elected November 6, I can reasonably expect that she will continue to be as she was in 1999, and has shown herself to be since I re-met her this year: a person committed to finding collaborative solutions – “we” – rather than aggravating problems; working for common ground, rather than winning battles against an enemy.
That’s why I support JoAnn Ward.

#591 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #29. One Week After the Supreme Court Ruling. On Words in Politics and In defense of "Taxes".

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After the first week the conversation about the Affordable Health Care Act has (it seems) been politically narrowed down to this: “it’s a tax” (therefore it’s evil).
It is this because geniuses with words like Frank Luntz have determined that the word “tax” resonates negatively with people. It’s a ‘dog whistle’ word.
We’ve been conditioned to respond to words or images like Pavlov observed in his dogs. “Tax” is only one of those stimuli, but it is a very major one.
So, where words like “mandate”, “Premium”, “license”, “fee”, “assessment” and a host of other synonyms for “tax” could be used, “tax” it is. In fact, those alternative words are abundantly used with the current Republican majorities, including in my state, to avoid calling a tax they’ve levied what it is: a tax.
They’ve made the very word “tax” toxic.
Of course, this will be denied by the architects: We’re heavy duty into the political lie season, and it will be far, far worse than it has ever been.
It’s only just begun. If one can accept lies as truth, you’ve truly reached the newspeak of Orwells 1984.
Tax is used because it is a good hate word causing certain types of folks to almost froth at the mouth and attack like rabid dogs anyone who suggests that tax might even be good.
(A lot of these folks look a lot like me: older people who benefit by things like medicare. But they forget that medicare is not an entitlement, rather something they ‘earned’, though it was earned through a tax they and their employer paid for many years.)
So be it.
It’s time to take back the language, and each one of us can do it, one conversation at a time.
Take that word “tax” (a word hardly anybody has ever liked).
The smaller than normal Afton Parade I attended yesterday gave lots of examples, just within its units, of the word “tax”.
The military veterans who led – who always lead – the parade were, as military, public employees – consumers of taxes.
There are lots of legitimate beefs with defense expenditures, but military is one of the “taxes” that tax-haters seem to love.

Reenacting war on a sunny day.


There was a public school unit in the parade: tax. And several fire trucks: more tax. Even Vulcan’s Krewe annually rides in an old fire truck purchased by tax.

Vulcans in the Afton Parade


I got to the parade by public road: tax. There was traffic control in the town through police of assorted kinds: more tax.
Taxes is ubiquitous in our society, and the reason it is is that tax makes a civil and liveable society possible.
Everyone can pick and choose taxes that they would like to get rid of, but along will come someone else who depends on that very tax.
And which of us is not protective of our own tax benefit!?
That ambulance may be something I need sometime.
(One of the articles I noted this week was that the aging fleet that provides air support in the time of forest fires is inadequate and underfunded, just in time for the disastrous wild fires in Colorado Springs and elsewhere. I’m sure there is plenty of rationale for why those planes weren’t really necessary at the time of crisis, but living on the edge can be dangerous. You can’t turn on a dime when there are major crisis, but we seem inclined to lurch from one to the next.)
Still hate taxes? Then start by fighting to cut every thing you receive, direct or indirect, past, present or future, as some kind of benefit from taxes. You’ll change your mind quickly.
And bring back the “vision thing”.
We can be willing victims of the lies, and respond as Pavlov’s dogs did to it.
Or we can take the offensive and take it on.

#545 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #6. Continuing #4 Voter Suppression Amendment

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(#4 is here.)
Tuesday I was at the Capitol to deliver personal letters in opposition to Voter Suppression as embodied in HF 2738. Enroute there I stopped at the office of the Secretary of State and picked up a Voter Registration form, which is here: MN Voter Registration001
Print out this form, get to know it, well, and start to exercise it with people you know who tend to be slow to getting around to these kinds of things. This is about as simple a process as there is. But it is a process.
There is no reason for the constitutional amendments to pass, IF people get out to vote and pay reasonably close attention to the implications of the issues. The amendments do not go into effect until after they are adopted. And there is still time to urge your legislators to vote no.
Tuesday I happened to be in the Capitol as an AFSCME rally was concluding. There was a sea of public workers, apparently at a lobby day. As I entered the Capitol the loudest chants I’ve ever heard there were pealing through the Capitol. I thought to myself, this is what we, the people, look like. This was a demonstration worthy of notice.
On the way out, an apparent spokesperson for AFSCME was being interviewed. Congratulations to AFSCME and to her, specifically.

At the Minnesota Capitol rotunda March 27, 2012


Back to the proposed Voter Suppression Amendment to the MN Constitution:
Here is a response concerning #4:
Spencer Jay Reppe: The most misleading promotion of the amendment always speaks to the showing of a photo ID. Though this poses problems for a great many registered voters, the real travesty of this amendment is the clause “substantially equivalent eligibility verification”. This simple clause places 500,000-600,000 Election Day Registrations into jeopardy, which I feel is the real target of the amendment. They will have to go into a pool of “Provisional Ballots” that will need to be verified over a period of weeks or months after the election. Municipalities are not staffed to handle such a wall of paper and have neither the resources nor the budget to manage the task. Furthermore, it places the election judges, who for the most part are volunteer citizens who simply want to help in the election process, into being “polling policemen”. It is a role many will not want to take on. This amendment will not expand voting rights to one single voter, but rather, it will take voting rights away for thousands of registered voters, as well as thousands of same-day registrants. The selling of this amendment is dishonest, a sham and needs to be challenged to the nth degree. [Spencer indicates that Lori Sturdevant’s column in the Sunday Minneapolis Star Tribune is especially good on this issue. It is here.]
Dick: Again, no proposed amendments to the Constitution will pass if people get out to vote, and say they don’t want the amendments to go into effect. But the need is to get out and vote in November.
In order to give some personal context to the potential effect of this amendment, I decided to review my own election history, going back 50 years. This is a useful exercise for anyone who thinks that amendments like this make no difference to them, personally:
The issue in this bill is much more disenfranchisement on Election Day, than on Voter ID. The intent is to decrease turnout of people like us by making voting less convenient. The issue is not crooks – never has been. It is voter suppression.
I’ve been eligible to vote for over 50 years – I turned 21 in 1961, so I wasn’t eligible to vote in 1960. Since then I’ve been an almost ‘religious’ voter. I very rarely miss an election, even a mid-term one.
A few days ago I decided to relive those 25 biennial election days, just to get an idea of elections I participated in, or might have missed. It’s an exercise you might do for yourself. You might find that the odds favor your missing an election even if you intended to participate.
My first election I was in the Army, and most likely didn’t even think of voting for anybody. I was in Colorado and I was a resident of North Dakota. The Cuban Missile Crisis had happened a couple of weeks prior, and we were otherwise occupied….
In those 25 election years, I did a little chart:
1. I lived in ten different towns over those years
2. I lived in three states
3. At the time of four of those elections, I’d lived in the town for three months or less.
4. In five of the elections I was a relatively new resident, one to two years.
We’ve lived here in Woodbury since 2000, the longest I’ve lived in a single place in my entire life. I would guess that our cohort is similarly well-settled, which makes it less likely that we concern ourselves with the issues affecting college kids, the poor, etc.
We’re the folks who’ll have to step up to the plate in educating others about this issue.
I challenge you to make your own voting history chart. I’ll bet you find it interesting.

#524 – Dick Bernard: Birthdays and Memories.

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Today is one of those Birth Days in my family circle.
It is unusual in that there are three today: Oldest son, Tom; spouse, Cathy; daughter-in-law Robin all begin a new year in their respective histories. Tom was born less than three weeks after the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan ‘shew’, February 9, 1964. So here, thanks to YouTube, is their appearance on that show. (I wrote a comment.)
Happy birthday to all. (You can see a brief cameo appearance of Tom in a Denver television spot about his wife, Jennifers, popular eatery, Simply Sloppy Joe’s here. More here.)
To this list of Feb 26ers, I could add my grandfather Bernard, who, were he alive today would be 140 (he lived to a ripe old age of 85 before passing on in 1957. I was 17 when he died, and I have lots of memories of him.) Born in rural Quebec in 1872, he grew up in a different world than we live in. His to-be mother-in-law, Clotilde Blondeau, later Collette, had come to what is now suburban Minneapolis (Dayton MN) as a young girl in the early 1850s, long before there were roads and railroads, and before Minnesota became a state. Blondeau’s were here nearly a decade before the Civil War and the beginning of Abraham Lincoln’s Presidency.
Time passes on, and the best we can do is the best we can do.
Birthdays are one of the two things we have in common. The other, death, comes unannounced. There is a certain ‘menu’ selected: sudden, lingering, on and on. I’m old enough to remember lots of these, some very recent; most of those recent deaths younger than I am; a tragic one learned about just this week.) Every one reminds us of good times and bad; relationships fine or complicated…death is really for the living, in the end. That’s what obituaries and funerals and memorial services are all about.
Recently I had a pleasant and unexpected reunion with a classmate from high school days, Duane Zwinger of Carrington, ND. He popped in at my coffee place unannounced and we had a couple of great visits. His daughter and family live, it turned out, two short blocks from my birthday-girl daughter-in-law Robin, son-in-law David and grandson Ben. (Their proximity is a reminder that today the whole world is our ‘neighborhood’.)

Duane and Dick, February, 2012


He and I had reconnected in 2008, on the occasion of the anniversary of my 50th year out of high school in Sykeston ND. He’s a year younger, and we re-met at the towns all-school reunion. We’d last seen each other in college days. I hauled out the little high school yearbook, and we read, and laughed about, the prophecy for my class Sykeston Sr Hist 1958001(there were nine graduating seniors; a tenth left school and joined the Air Force mid-year. Two have died.)
At that town reunion, several of we family members slept in one of the top floor classrooms of the no longer used Sykeston High School. It was a school several of us had attended, and my Dad was Superintendent and Mom taught elementary there. It was a nostalgia time.
The last morning, I wandered the halls of the old place, and decided to take photos of the senior class photos still hanging on the wall of the school. This was before I knew there was such a thing as Facebook, and probably before Facebook had perfected the technology of on-line photo albums.
But that was then. A couple of days ago I entered all of those class pictures – they began in 1944; the school began in 1913 – on Facebook.
Here they are, over 60 years worth, of people born from about 1926 to 1957. (If you’re unfamiliar with Facebook albums, you can click on any photo, it will be enlarged and you can do a ‘slide show’ on screen. Note arrow at right side of photo, and click on it.)
Happy Birthday all!
And here’s the Sykeston School Song! Sykeston School Song002
Best wishes.

#473 – Dick Bernard: Occupy Wall Street – Minneapolis (OWS) and the Tea Party

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As I write, 6:30 p.m. on November 14, a big rally of Occupy Wall Street is apparently taking place in downtown Minneapolis. I say “apparently” because I don’t know for sure if, or how, plans may have changed due to posturing by local government, and response by the OWS folks to that.
That will be part of the news tomorrow IF the news media choose to cover the event*.
I’m one of those gluttons for punishment, accepting into my e-mail in-box anti-Obama hate mail, Tea Party, right and left wing commentaries. It tends to get overwhelming at times, but it is good to see what the assorted folks are dispensing as their particular reality.
Both OWS and Tea Party claim support of the “99%” of the country who are not wealthy. My support is strongly with the OWS folks, though I couldn’t see sufficient reason to travel to Minneapolis this evening.
Occupy Wall Street is the more recent visitor to the news. It began with an unpublicized protest in Zuccotti Park in New York City in September. It took a couple of weeks to get any news notice. OWSs apparent website – “unofficial” it emphasizes – is here.
It has since spread nation-wide, and at this writing seems to be enjoying positive momentum.
So far, OWS appears to have managed to resist the pitfall of many spontaneous movements to be co-opted by the traditional Power structure (see ** here). It is my hope that OWS retains its present character, which enhances its potential for long term success.
The Tea Party, on the other hand, was almost without any question born as a creature of power: angry people were considered a tool by the very people against whom their anger was directed.
If not that, the “Tea Party” was quickly taken over by the radical right wing power structure. Its populist members seem to despise government generally (except those very limited functions that apply directly to them, personally: Medicare, Guns, etc.) and have in a short time gained an immense amount of power (a function of being a part of the traditional power structure)…but have not used that power wisely. (Below are some common elements of Power. Relationship Power (“power to the people”, shall I say) is seldom used in our society, including by those who could most successfully leverage it. Rather, we stick with the old traditions that kept kings and the like in control of their subjects. It strikes me as an odd reality.)

For all intents and purposes the Tea Party partisans control Congress, which in turn has an approval rating which remains at about 9%, lower than any time in history. Like Occupy Wall Street it is somewhat difficult to identify exactly who the Tea Party is; it is not as difficult to identify where it gets its power, and its not from the people at large. Long time right-wing Republican politician Dick Armey was early and visibly involved in Tea Party activities, as were others like present day Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann.
Amongst my flood of e-mails recently, have come a couple of recent commentaries that have helped me, at least, become informed about these polar opposite movements. Neither article is written by a partisan for either, and if you have any interest, the two commentaries are worth the time to read:
1. A recent commentary, here, describes the Tea Party as it currently exists in the United States**. Writer Eric Black is a retired and highly respected writer on politics who spent most of his career with the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
2. A second commentary describes the deep, seemingly unbridgeable, gulf between what are considered the Left and the Right in this country. You can read it here.
I remain fascinated with the ‘relationship’ between the ideological poles which seem so very similar in so many ways (here).
At the same time, as noted in the article in #2, the poles are very different: on the right side there seems an obsession with the absolute rights of the individual, including the right to control others; on the left seems an equal but opposite obsession emphasizing what I would call larger community ideals – “we’re all in this together”.
Whatever….
In the end analysis, in the fall of 2012, the deciding votes will not be those who occupy the poles, but rather those in the silent middle of the ideological landscape.
Those at the poles are best advised to consider the moderate middle in all of their actions.
UPDATE Nov. 15 a.m.:
* – There was relatively little news about the demonstration. Here is the account on page two of the Nov. 15 Minneapolis Star Tribune.
** – A ‘takeaway’ for me on reading this article was the relatively tiny actual membership in active Tea Party groups. 200,000 in the United States would translate into one member per app. 1500 population in the U.S. Their political clout has obviously been much, much greater than their relative strength in terms of membership.
From Lee, in St. Paul:
The recently approved and implemented Hennepin County Board Building Use policy regarding OccupyMN demonstrations at the Hennepin County Government Center in downtown Minneapolis is not in fact
“aimed at shutting down the occupation” as its supporters claim. That’s overblown rhetoric.*
I’ve followed this issue because the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in Minneapolis by OccupyMN could possibly become another 2008 Republican National Convention “train wreck” that diverts media and public attention from important “peace and justice” issues to preventable law-enforcement issues. Unfortunately, “train wreck” damage is already occurring with Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in other cities.
As I told one OccupyMN organizer whom we well know, the 2008 RNC civil court decisions on where and when protesters could march and demonstrate near the Convention site (the Xcel Energy Center) in downtown St. Paul, and the upheld criminal court convictions of protesters for illegal trespass and other law violations clearly reinforced the fact that “free speech” rights aren’t necessarily the same as occupancy rights on public or private property–especially when there’s probable cause to believe that occupation is violating city and county codes or even state laws that protect public health, safety and free access to government or private property.**
Moreover, the mounting law enforcement costs of securing the Government Center (reportedly about $200,000) are apparently diverting funds from other public needs at a time when county and city budgets are very tight and state aid to local governments has been sharply reduced.
Yes, OccupyMN demonstrations should continue and deliver their vital messages, but in ways that respect the rule of law and budget priorities. One unnecessary and costly Minnesota “train wreck” is more than enough.
Richard Lee Dechert
*See “Board Approves Changes to Building Use Policy” here
**See “The ‘RNC 8’ ‘criminalizing dissent’ conspiracy: A blatant case of ends-justify-the-means anarchy” here.

#384 – Dick Bernard: The Multiplier Effect

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under construction

#371 – Mary Ellen Weller: Reflecting on Teachers, Teaching and the current situation in Wisconsin

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UPDATE: Note response at end of this post.
Mary Ellen Weller is a retired teacher whose career was spent in Minnesota schools, and who presently lives in Madison WI. She responds to Dick Bernards National Teacher Day Reflection.
I read the text of your letter concerning teaching and the current attacks on teachers in general and our contracts in particular.
AND, I am inspired to share some thoughts. Here goes.
Teachers are nearly all people who are motivated to share, and not very motivated by money. We go into this profession because we enjoy learning ourselves and because we want to share our learning, and our enthusiasm for learning, with the next generation. We make this decision with our eyes open, knowing we are never going to be rich.
In the 1990s, when the economy was more robust, a younger friend said to me that she couldn’t understand why anyone would choose to be a teacher. She observed that I worked very hard and noted that “Teachers don’t make any money and they have to put up with all those squirrely kids”. She also said, “well, thank God someone’s willing to do it”. At the time she was approaching 30 and her salary was more than double mine. She worked for a large corporation.
About the same time I had colleagues who looked enviously at the greener grass of corporate jobs with starting salaries that equaled the top pay step in our teaching contract. Some actually left teaching to join the economic boom, or the real estate bubble. The rest of us kept on making lesson plans and exploring ways to improve our teaching. We often reminded ourselves that we did have a good bit of security, good benefits, and a dependable retirement. After several of the mining companies on the Range went bankrupt and employees lost even those supposedly secure retirement programs, it was a solid consolation. People like my young friend always continue to deride teaching as a profession. They often think we are saps or perhaps unable to ‘make it’ anywhere else. I Thank God those people are not licensed to be in my grandchildren’s classrooms!
In 2011, it seems to me that some of these corporate people are now the envious ones. Some have learned the hard way that along with the tremendous opportunity of the corporate ladder, there is also tremendous risk. Unemployment is up, salaries are down, benefits are not as freely and readily available as before. Suddenly, those saps who are teaching seem to have a good deal and the attack is on. The proposals explain that teachers and public employees should share in the economic downturn. Never mind that we did not share in the boom times.
Nonetheless, I still think that teachers and other public employees are motivated to share. Rather than cut excellent programs like Social Security, Medicare, state healthcare programs like Wisconsin’s BadgerCare program, we should be extending them to the entire population. Some say we can’t afford it. The truth is we can’t afford not to do it. Continuing to develop policy based on envy and resentment will harm our society in very fundamental ways. It should be just plain impossible to loot retirement funds. Tax cuts? This is not the time. Rather than fight each other we all need to share.
Sooooo, I’d be happy if you would comment and continue this dialog.
Mary Ellen’s e-mail is her first, middle, last name as one word AT aol.com
She has previously written for this blog: here.
Her background: First teaching assignment was as a Teaching Assistant for the level one French classes at the University of Minnesota in 1968.
BA-French, BS-French and Spanish certification, and MA-French all from the University of Minnesota; 19 years at Apple Valley (MN) HS and 7 years at Mesabi Range Community and Technical College in Virginia MN.
She took a few years off from teaching when her son was little; and did a year as a Fulbright Exchange Teacher in a suburb of Paris.
She now substitute teaches in the Madison WI Public Schools.
RESPONSE:
Dick Bernard: To Mary Ellen: speaking in general, from lifelong experience growing up in a family of teachers, being a teacher myself, and then serving a long career representing teachers, I agree with your analysis.
Very, very briefly: collective bargaining issues were almost always framed by both ‘sides’ in economic terms (things with an economic cost) that the local newspaper could understand and report, but the true underlying issues – the ones which got a contract ratified or rejected – were, in my opinion, more often than not around issues of basic respect, often on what most would consider tiny items such as, can the teacher be trusted to take personal leave only when necessary, that sort of thing. Money was important, yes; but, when a package was ratified, almost always there was some “respect” provision included.
Business notions of teachers and teaching, on the other hand, seem most often to be based on the traditional business model: put someone in charge, pay him or her well and make them CEO of the school district, or of the school or of the Department. “Respect” comes from raising test scores, getting rid of ‘dead wood’, or such….)
It was rare, in my experience, to find a teacher who lusted after CEO status (and salary); or to find a CEO type who successfully could manage a school, or teach. Still, the factory paradigm still seems to prevail in judging schools and teachers: hire somebody who’s willing to manage as if the school is a manufacturer of widgets; increase “productivity” (test scores); identify and get rid of the “ineffective” or “bad” workers on the floor of the shop.
Personally, I find myself most offended by the critics labeling teachers as “ineffective”. First of all, every day every classroom teacher is faced by numerous “judges” in students, parents, peers and – worst – themselves. Not all of these judges are fair or balanced (including the self-criticism). And they all have power to punish, whether deserved or not. Then comes the current mantra: make at least part of the evaluation the aggregate test scores of the students. This presumes that students can be forced to do their best on tests, when this is never true.
There is, I would agree, a lot of room for improvement. But the current method of threatening punishment is not the way to reform.

#366 – Jermitt Krage and Karen Alexander: In Wisconsin, Gov. Walker's Budget Repair Bill Indicates Need for Collaboration

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Wisconsin, like many other states, is faced with attacks by some of its citizens on public employees, public education, and local community services. These attacks are a direct outgrowth of how all of the parties have developed, used, and abused their power relationships with each other over a period of many years. While these attacks must be vigorously resisted, they also point to a need to deal with each other in a dramatically different way. We believe that way is to build collaborative relationships among all the stakeholder groups in the community.
School district and community stakeholders should be fully informed and engaged in a collaborative process to determine the potential reduction in educational opportunities and community services for students and adults. Collaborative processes allow the school district and community stakeholders to successfully assess the current reality, evaluate the interests of the parties and determine the best solutions for these complex issues created by the financial burdens placed on local school districts and communities.
The context/environment/climate for public schools, like our communities, has changed. The context of the community can’t be ignored in how we move public education forward. Community governance and school governance should be interdependent rather than independent entities. They are part of the same system.
School Districts and communities are systems whose constituent groups are intertwined within other larger systems such as the state legislature. When traditional governance structures are threatened as they are now due to the reduction in state aid for schools and communities and re-alignment of school district and community roles in managing budgets, programs and staff, it clearly demonstrates the need for collaboration within the various governmental entities at the local community level.
Public school districts and local towns, villages, and cities, as traditional systems, are structured in ways that limit their ability to make decisions on complex issues through collaborative and synergistic thinking. To increase our ability to make meaningful decisions, based on our collective knowledge, skills, abilities and thinking, the structure of these systems must become more collegial and collaborative. Strong positive relationships with all stakeholder groups are the basis for transforming the school districts and local communities from separate traditional organizations into collaborative systems. Working together, school districts and local communities are in a better position to transform a hostile environment and to sustain their roles within the democratic society.
All school district and community stakeholders including city and town councils, school board members, administrators, staff and their associations, politicians and the critics must assume a greater role in the ownership, accountability and responsibility for improving public education and local community services.
We believe that all school district stakeholders, and especially those community leaders not often included in educational decision-making, must become part of collaborative planning processes. These processes include Future Search Conferences, Appreciative Inquiry Summits, Stakeholder Focus Groups, and other processes that engage all stakeholders in dialog focused on the needs and interests of students and adults and suspend preconceived solutions.
One way to begin this new way of working together is to bring a group to the Collaborative Leadership Trust Conference. The Collaborative Leadership Trust is a national non-profit network designed to support school districts, communities and other organizations in their efforts to build and sustain a collaborative culture, shared governance systems and shared consensus decision making processes. (Click here for more information.)
Collaboration is the model for how we want our children to live. We believe the effort we put into resolving these issues collaboratively is a measure of how much we value our children. Collaborative processes allow the school district and community in concert with all stakeholders to successfully assess the current reality, evaluate the interests of the parties and determine the best solutions to the complex issues created by the financial, educational, and social burdens placed on local school districts and communities.
Written by Karen Alexander and Jermitt Krage
Collaborative Partners LLC

from left: Jermitt Krage, Karen Alexander, Dick Bernard, at Portage WI March 4, 2011


Jermitt Krage is team member with Collaborative Partners LLC. He has dedicated his career in public education to “working with those who want to change the culture of schools and who are willing to make schools better for children and to improve the quality of learning for children and adults.” After public school teaching in Wisconsin, Iowa and Nebraska, Jermitt served over 30 years as an organizational development and training specialist with Wisconsin Education Association Council. For the past 20 years as a facilitator, trainer and consultant, he has worked with over 100 school districts across the country conducting more than 1000 sessions with school personnel, parents and community members. To e-mail jermitt, his name (one word) @netzero.net
Karen Alexander‘s background includes 10 years of teaching in wisconsin, and over 15 years working for the Wisconsin Education Association Council and the National Education Association innegotiations and as an organizational consultant. Karen’s work includes executive induction processes, consensus bargaining, organizational restructure, and strategic planning/vision processes. To e-mail Karen, kdalexanderATwildblueDOTnet

#353 – Dick Bernard: The Lobbyist and the Legislator and "We, the people"

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Followup to this post is here.
Recently I was at a reception at a major Minnesota agency which for its entire history has been at minimum a quasi-public agency, funded in substantial part by state and federal government. It has an outstanding reputation and a large staff and impressive Board of Directors and a very attractive headquarters building.
It has done, and still does, extraordinarily good work, though it is financially pinched.
The current President of the agency briefly spoke to our group, and one of his remarks leads to this post. When I arrived home I decided to google the agency to find out how big its budget was and how it was funded. I found the information, and it was basically incomprehensible to a novice. I found the Law that seemed to fit the agency, and it was equally incomprehensible. I am wonkish enough so that with adequate time – and interest – I could make sense of the seeming nonsense I was viewing on line. But I’m not sufficiently interested nor is it sufficiently relevant for me to take the time or expand on it.
The President was recounting, in the very guarded way folks like him speak to audiences they don’t know well, recent meetings he’d had with state legislators in his capacity as a lobbyist for his agency.
He didn’t mention any specific politicians, nor parties, and he only mentioned the word “ideology” once, but it was pretty clear what he meant by that word.
Lawmakers he knew, he said, were very anguished by the position they were in.
Without saying so specifically, he suggested that they found themselves in a box: they knew that his, and other similar programs, were very, very important, and deserved funding. On the other hand, these same people were elected by citizens who had been drummed into fever pitch – including in their own campaigns – to vote against government, specifically supposedly useless projects carried forward by groups like his own agency.
What were these legislators to do?
To vote against their base would jeopardize their reelection. And their reelection was their most important (though unstated) and understood objective.
The President/Lobbyist could not expose these people; if he did, they would no longer talk to him and, worse, would find ways to punish him through their lawmaking powers. So he said tons without actually saying anything at all. He protected the very people who were killing his agency….
Meanwhile, these same folks were likely saying to the rabble that elected them that they were following through on their campaign promises to ‘slash and burn’. The term “two-faced” comes to mind.
It all reminded me of an abortive e-mail conversation I had with a friend ten or more years ago. He had grown up in the family of a politically well connected major political appointee in a large city. From an early age, he got to know the ‘movers and shakers’ as they came to his parents home, some of one party, some of another. He learned how politics worked from early on.
On the other hand, I had grown up in a low level public servants household. We were not visited by power people, and we were only told what we were expected to do.
The gulf between my e-mail friend and I was huge, and unbridgeable. He was of the Power Class, and I was not. And so it was.
We drifted apart….
Ironically, as I was writing these words, I looked at an incoming e-mail, Just Above Sunset, where the writer dealt with essentially the same topic as I have, only on a broader level. Take a look if you have the inclination.