“’I’m taking that cat. I want the black one. You can’t talk me out of it, so don’t even try.’ I was already starting to understand him. To feel for him. Or maybe even to feel with him. He was scared. He was not cuddly. He was not beautiful. If I didn’t take him, he was as good as dead. He was about to be given the death penalty for not being beautiful. Someone had to come along and love him just the way he was. I was that someone.”

Elle’s mom has fallen for her new boyfriend Donald. He’s moving in and Elle’s moving out. Into her own apartment. Just before her sixteenth birthday. Because, after all, Donald doesn’t want her around. So, pretending that she is worried about Elle’s loneliness, her mom wants to buy her a cat. Elle decides to get one from a shelter instead. And then to pick one that’s been through some serious fighting—his eye, a piece of his ear and patches of his fur are missing. He’s broken.

Like Elle.

In a bit of grace, when Elle is moving in to her new apartment, she meets her neighbor Frank. He’s small for a man, but kind and good looking and Elle has an immediate crush on him although he’s living with a woman (also kind) named Molly.

I wouldn’t say that Elle’s lived a sheltered life—her mother is much too self-centered to be nurturing. But Elle is not entirely in tune with others because she hasn’t had that nurturing she needs. Her new friends at her new school—outcasts all—know immediately what Elle hasn’t seen. That Frank is transgendered.

This tightly-written novel is so sweet and compassionate, I want to recommend it to everyone. I know I harp on how much I hate it when young adult books have repetitive scenes or action; when they redescribe all the dialogue by adding tags with adverbs. (The last one I read had something like this: ‘I wish I really was a vampire because at least then I would be understood,’ Helen thought miserably, feeling totally misunderstood.” Really?) I’m trying to stop complaining, but it does bother me because I feel like the authors and editors are disrespecting teens, who they think are so clueless that everything must be repeated. And then repeated.

Catherine Ryan Hyde, the author of Jumpstart the World respects you. She’s a wonderful writer. (Adults will remember her bestseller of a decade ago—Pay It Forward—which was made into a movie.) The breathless pace of Jumpstart the World is perfect. As are Hyde’s protagonists and their respect for one another.

Sweet.

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V: Rediscovering America

The authors reiterate that they are “frustrated optimists” who are inspired by “the number of people and small groups who are summoning themselves with their own trumpets.”

Good Signs

Sacrifice—soldiers who are willing to re-deploy to wars in the Middle East. “Never have so many asked so much of so few—and never have those few delivered so much for so many and asked so little in return.” (Again, a good book on what that sacrifice is like is War by Sebastian Junger.)

Diversity—example of the US military and particularly the Navy. “It’s amazing how you guys can be so many religions, ethnic groups, and still make this thing work, and be the best in the world.” (Authors paraphrasing an Iraqi coast guard officer)

Teach for America—“Kopp said that of all the TFA grads, about one-third stay on as teachers. . . . Not all education experts support the program, because it puts the least experienced teachers in the most challenging classrooms. It will take more time to determine how much of a difference TFA teachers are making in the lives of children . . .”

Inventors—Mike Biddle, founder of MBA Polymers, has invented processes fro separating plastic form pile sof junked computers, etc. and recycling it, using less than 10% of the energy used in making new plastic. (However, he uses plastics from China and the EU because America doesn’t have laws that require manufactures to foot the bill for recycling. According to the authors, manufacturers don’t mind these laws because recyclers compete for the junk.)

Companies that stick it out with American manufacturing and workers. “The role of the CEO now is not to dictate but to empower.” (Robert Stevenson, whose company is the oldest manufacturer in continuous operation in Buffalo, New York.) “Get your people working toward a common goal. . . .I set the goal and show the road and say, ‘How you drive on that is up to you.’”

Last thoughts:

America needs a comprehensive 21^st century job strategy. We need to address the “growing mismatch between the needs of the employers and the skills American workers get in school and in the job market.” With this in mind, it’s time to begin again to finance start up companies. (Government involvement, regulations, standards are necessary, but must be clear and simple.)

In the section entitled “Shock Therapy,” the authors say that America needs to understand that it is “’an anchor to the floating world.’ Weaken that anchor and the world will drift in directions we cannot foresee and probably will not like. A declining America will be bad for business—all business, including [that of every country in the world].”

To succeed in a way that will keep the world afloat, America needs a politics of the “radical center.” Moderates are not lukewarm–they are reasonable, and they compromise and get things done. A way of mandating change as a moderate is to have a third party candidate in national elections. Though the candidate won’t be elected, s/he will serve to moderate the opposite ends of the spectrum and influence national policy. S/he will affect the agenda of the two major parties.

The authors claim that voting for a third party candidate is not ‘throwing away’ a vote, and give the (unfortunate) example of George Wallace, but also of Ross Perot, and of the Progressives and Teddy Roosevelt. (I don’t entirely agree that a third party vote isn’t thrown away. I think of the example of Ralph Nader—not in this book. Whether you are a Democrat or not, you’d probably agree that folks who voted for Nader in the Bush v. Gore contest, ended up throwing their votes away by assuring the election of someone whose priorities were far from their own.)

The candidate that America should elect is the one who will specify which taxes s/he will raise and which programs s/he will cut, since both must happen.

Calling America exceptional doesn’t make it so and doesn’t help us. Exceptionalism isn’t a permanent state. We have to make sacrifices and get back on track

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV: Political Failure

No one ever admits they do anything wrong. At least not on Capitol Hill.

Part IV starts out with several stories of people using ‘newspeak’ with Congress, of saying they want to look forward to the future and not talk about the past—sports stars like Mark McGwire, Wall Street stars like Lloyd Blankfein, once chief executive of Goldman Sachs.

However, it is the American people who are taken to task here because we knew what we agreed to when we went to war on math and physics. We jumped into The Great Recession fighting two wars in the Middle East and not only failed to raise the taxes to pay for them, but we cut taxes. All of our artificially-created wealth disappeared. We allowed educational attainment to plunge. We didn’t keep up the country’s infrastructure. We have a brain drain because we are shutting our doors to immigrants. We don’t spend money on projects for energy breakthroughs—research and development has decreased as a fraction of the GDP by 60% in 40 years.

What we do regulate has adverse consequences. What we don’t regulate has adverse consequences.

Income inequality has become so great that it has thwarted collective action for public good. Columbia University professor and Nobel Laureate in Economics Joseph E. Stiglitz states that the top 1% (in income) of Americans takes home 25% of total of America’s income. In terms of wealth, they control 40%. While middle class income has fallen over the last ten years, for those in the top 1% it has increased 18%.

This situation leads to the wealthy opting out of paying for public goods. They don’t need those public goods because they have their own ‘subsociety’ (country clubs=parks, private schools, private jets, etc.)

The US overestimated the challenge posed by 9/11 and spent on Middle Eastern countries when the real challenge is from Asia and ‘winning’ countries. (Both authors supported the war in Iraq, so they discuss what they got right and what they underestimated.)

While the country appears to be split on opposite poles of the political spectrum, the authors make the case that politicians are the ones who are split, but that Americans are closer to the center than the people they elect to office. According to Morris Fiorina, political scientist and author, “Publicly available databases show that the culture war script embraced by journalists and politicos lies somewhere between simple exaggeration and sheer nonsense.” One reason we elect political purists is as a result of gerrymandering.

We need to stop bouncing back and forth between extreme party positions and accept compromise.

The authors discuss lobbying, lobbyists—what they do and how they do it. (This section would actually be very interesting for students.) An increase in lobbyists affects the country’s growth—interest groups, in lobbying on their own behalf, are, according to Mancur Olson (economist) “overwhelmingly oriented to struggle over the distribution of income and wealth rather than to the production of additional output.” This slows down society’s ability to adopt new technologies and to reallocate resources for changing conditions. Some examples of such lobbying are given—the fossil fuel lobby (oil and coal), AARP, etc. (“While reducing Social Security and Medicare may be unfair to older Americans, under-investing in education is harmful to everyone. In this sense, entitlements serve a special interest, while education serves in the national interest. … A dollar wisely invested in early education can do far more to meet the challenges of the world we are living in than a dollar spent on a senior citizen, no matter how deserving he or she may be.”)

The discussion of politics continues with the results of the Citizens United case which struck down the law restricting corporate campaign contributions. Senator Evan Bayh is quoted as saying that hundreds of millions of dollars will be the secret money influencing the elections of the highest offices in the land. Every politician will need a secret group to fight the money of the opponent’s secret group. The authors predict that Congress will simply become a fundraising organization.

Friedman and Mandelbaum turn their attention to media, especially talk radio and partisan political television programming. They feel that ‘narrowcasting’—targeting one end of the political spectrum and then reinforcing the opinions of those in that demographic—contributes to the country’s problems. Having politicians pay attention to what the other guys (even bloggers) say about them is too distracting. In addition, narrowcasters feed their audiences lots of misinformation. Although that misinformation will be corrected, it will happen in another venue, so that the target audience never learns of the correction and believes what it is fed. “’If Walter Cronkite were to be resurrected, nobody would hire him, let alone listen to him.’” (Robert Bennett)

The really frightening part of all this for the rest of the country is that they could end up like California—in deep debt with a crummy educational system—all because of political failure. The state has refused to take collective action to solve its problems and the country needs to see that it will be a ‘California’ if it refuses collective action as well.

The final discussion of Part IV is about the erosion of traditional American values. We don’t have a shared sense of national purpose. In financial markets, we work on the ‘I’ll be gone before this thing blows up’ model. The Boomer generation is blamed for this. (Greatest Generation=sustainable outlook. Boomers=emphasis on short term.) Authority has declined and students don’t accept honest feedback. We are all cynical rather than (healthily) skeptical.

George W, Bush takes a hit for the dissolution of collective purpose. After 9/11, he refused to rally Americans to any collective action (think WW II rationing or a gas tax—‘patriot tax.’) The one place where authority is still respected and earned is the military. (Victoria’s aside: for an interesting/divergent view on this, read War by Sebastian Junger.) We should be willing to pay a war tax, just as previous generations paid for their wars. We should be able to do inspirational things, as were done in the middle twentieth century (e.g., Peace Corps).

“Bloody Sunday: Teen Brutally Attacked.”

This is the headline from a (fictional) news article on the pages before chapter one.

“Stunned residents of Black Creek, North Carolina, pray for seventeen-year-old Patrick Truman, beaten and left for dead outside the convenience store where he works.

“’There was blood on his face. . .blood everywhere,’ says Dave Tuttle, the motorist who discovered the unconscious teen early Sunday morning.

“When Tuttle pulled up to the store’s single pump at seven thirty, he found Truman slumped on the pavement, bound to the guardrail of the fuel dispenser. The gasoline nozzle protruded from his mouth, held in place with duct tape. Across the teen’s bare chest, scrawled in blood, were the words Suck this, f–.”

While Shine is a work of fiction—and thus not the story of Matthew Shepard—it clearly begins with the Matthew Shepard murder in mind, and a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the book benefit the Matthew Shepard Foundation.

Black Creek is a small town of about 500 residents. The economic downturn hit the town particularly hard, and many of the young people have turned to partying hard—to drugs, including meth. Lots of them are dropouts, with little hope for the future. Many are dirt poor, and the details of their lives and how they try to add bright touches are heartbreaking.

Cat, the novel’s narrator, hasn’t paid much attention to the change in Black Creek over the last three years. She’s withdrawn from all of her friends after being molested by a local (popular and mean) boy at the end of eighth grade. She’s hurt that her aunt, with whom she lives, just wants her to forget the incident and move on. But Cat’s withdrawal from friends includes a rift in her long-time relationship with her childhood best friend, Patrick Truman—the boy who was attacked at the convenience store. Without him, she has been adrift. As he lies in a coma in the hospital, she realizes she may never have the chance to talk to him again.

When Sheriff Doyle doesn’t seem to be investigating the crime with any thought of finding the culprit(s), Cat realizes that he doesn’t want to know because it’s likely that a local teen committed the hate crime. It’s hard to guess what happened, as Patrick often hangs out with what Cat refers to as ‘the redneck posse,’ and it doesn’t seem any of them—no matter their prejudices—would hurt Patrick. Cat decides that she has to reenter the world of her small town and her friends, and help to find out what happened to her one time soul mate.

While the novel’s end is a tad too tidy, it’s a good mystery as well as a story of prejudice and friendship, of religious hypocrisy, of hard luck and its consequences. A good read.

In a future United States, a scourge has caused pandemic infertility. Abortion is against the law, and when Hannah Payne is caught, she is imprisoned in the “Chrome Ward” where she (as well as other prisoners) are videotaped for public humiliation. After a month of public display, she is released to try to start life anew.

Melachroming is a part of punishment for criminals. They are injected with a virus that makes their skin a color related to their crime. Hannah wakes up entirely red—crimson from head to toe—because she is a murderer. She must remain so for sixteen years. Her punishment is for ten years, but because she refuses to name the abortionist or the father of the unborn baby, three years are tacked on for each. Should she try to flee once her month-long sentence in the Chrome Ward is up, she will die—‘frag out’ as they say in the book. She has another virus implanted that will start to cause mental derangement if she doesn’t go in for her regular sessions to be re-chromed.

Hannah doesn’t name the father of the baby because he is her minister. He is widely known as a holy man and does a lot of good work for the impoverished. Hannah doesn’t want to see that work stopped. If all of these direct connections to The Scarlet Letter don’t grab you, the quote from that novel at the beginning of the book is another big hint. This is a future dystopia with a Hester Prynne and Reverend Dimmsdale (here simply Reverend Dale) working out their sins over video mail.

When Hannah is released from the Chrome Ward, her mother, a very strict, upright Christian, refuses to take her in. She must go to a halfway house run by a (extremely self-righteous and voyeuristic) Christian couple. Only capable of taking so much humiliation, Hannah flees, and, being sought by anti-abortion terrorists, finds herself in the arms of a pro-choice underground group. Ironically, what they have in common with the unforgiving Christians is that they, too, are unwavering in their beliefs. They will not let anything get in the way of their mission.

Although Hannah does question her decision to have an abortion, just as she questions her strict religious upbringing, ultimately—just as with Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter—she feels more sinned against than sinning and rejects the moral certitude of those who torment her.

I would love to talk about the end of this book with someone who has also read The Scarlet Letter. When She Woke would be a great read for teens who are looking for literary readalikes. However, here’s a caveat: This novel is not for everyone; I can say with certainty that conservative Christians will object to the content and to the outcome. It’s for mature, older teens, not the middle school set. Mature topics and situations appear throughout the book.

In the year between June 2007 and June 2008, the Korengal Valley was the most dangerous place for a soldier to be at war. The daily temperatures of one hundred degrees, the rough and barren terrain, as well as the many unsympathetic locals (many village elders were working with the Taliban) compounded problems for Second Platoon, Battle Company, which was involved in more firefights than soldiers in any other area of the war, sometimes in more than one battle a day.

During this period, author Sebastian Junger was embedded with Second Platoon, Battle Company. He had photojournalist Tim Hetherington with him. They shot 150 hours of videotape and used that for their documentary film Restrepo. War received many notable book commendations and has been a bestseller. Restrepo received the Grand Jury Prize for best documentary at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary in 2011.

Junger tells us at the beginning of the book that he was wholly dependent on the Army for food, shelter, and protection, but that Army officials never tried to censor what he recorded nor to “alter [his] reporting in any way or to show the contents of [his] notebooks or [his] cameras.” So, this is a true picture of warriors in battle. Although it was published for an adult audience, it’s an important read for students who are considering joining a branch of the military because it does give such a realistic picture of war. And, it’s not a bad read for the rest of us either—Americans who are forgetting that one percent of our population is fighting this war without a whole lot of support from the rest of us.

War has scenes of intense battle and of the subsequent deaths and maiming, of how these losses affect the psyches of the men who are not physically harmed. (Junger is there when Second Platoon members are caught in an ambush and an IEU blows up their Humvee.) It also shows the boredom of the men between battles. And Junger delves into the warrior mentally in a way I haven’t read in another book. “War is a lot of things and it’s useless to pretend that exciting isn’t one of them.”

These men are some of the best trained soldiers around, but they are also undisciplined. “O’Byrne’s 203 gunner, Steiner, once got stabbed trying to help deliver a group beating to Sergeant Mac, his squad leader, who had backed into a corner with a combat knife. In Second Platoon you got beat on your birthday, you got beat before you left the platoon—on leave, say—and you got beat when you came back. The only way to leave Second Platoon without a beating was to get shot.”

Junger deals honestly with the fact that a lot of guys in Second Platoon live for the high, for the adrenaline rush, of being in a firefight, of shooting weapons. He shows that returning to civilian life is often difficult for them because they can’t get that rush back. They also can’t duplicate the intense love they have for one another in a situation where each would, without a second thought, sacrifice his life for his warrior brothers. “’I never got in trouble, but Bobby beat up a few MPs, threatened them with a fire extinguisher, pissed on their boot. But what do you expect from the infantry, you know? I know that all the guys that were bad in garrison were perfect f– soldiers in combat. They’re troublemakers and they like to fight. That’s a bad garrison trait but a good combat trait—right?’”

Adults will remember Junger’s work from the bestselling books A Death in Belmont and The Perfect Storm (which was made into a movie). This is an equally good book, and I highly recommend it. It does contain a lot of profanity—perfectly natural as the soldiers are quoted frequently.

Part I

Part II

That Used to Be Us—Part III: The War on Math and Physics

Part III of That Used to Be Us starts with more bad news. Part I tells us that we underestimated the impact of globalization and the IT revolution. Part II says we failed to respond to the above by improving our educational system. Part III? Ditto for the deficit and energy and climate challenges.

“When the flattening of the world created not only two billion more competitors but two billion more consumers, . . . just when all the rising energy demand from all these new consumers was affecting the climate and food prices and creating the need for cheap, clean, renewable energy, and just when China recognized all this and began investing heavily in wind, solar, battery, and nuclear power, America dithered, delayed, and underinvested in energy and in the wider foundations of its economic growth.”

The section on ‘the war on math’ discusses debt and borrowing power (and shows that a company/country can have great debt and great borrowing power as well as long as it has the assets to pay the debt if suddenly called.) The authors argue that when the international monetary system known as “Bretton Woods” (dollar tied to price of gold/fixed international exchange rates) was collapsed—Nixon didn’t want the country to go through a recession to pay for spending on the Vietnam War—ballooning deficits had to follow, but it took time.

But it did happen, and deficits ballooned under Reagan. The authors take Dick Cheney to task over his comment, “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.” They show that Reagan worried about deficits and called taxes ‘revenue enhancements’ in order to create them. Though deficits were reined in under Clinton, Alan Blinder, Princeton economist and former vice chairman if the Federal Reserve, is quoted from a Wall Street Journal essay as saying that “’The nation took leave of its fiscal senses, and simply stopped paying for anything during President Bush 43’s eight years.’” Under Obama, that deficit blew up.

The Republican Party takes a hit for a few pages, and then the authors turn on the Democrats—both are chastised for their willingness to enact policies that hurt the fiscal health of the country but that bolster their political careers and allies.

The authors believe that reductions in Social Security and Medicare are inevitable. We are not going to be able to spend so much for end-of-life care that doesn’t do anything but prolong the period of wasting away into death; we are going to have to take more responsibility for our health and not be so fat.

Across the board cuts to entitlements are required including in the defense budget.

Taxes must be raised, not just on the rich, but on the middle class as well. Tax loopholes must be closed.

The section on the ‘war on physics’ is about climate change. The authors indicate that climate change is a fact, and we need to stop pretending that it’s still a big question mark. They give examples and documentation from reports and scientists. There’s also a discussion of “low-probability, high-impact” events. (A phrase based on Dick Cheney’s discussion of Pakistani scientist and a 1% chance that they are helping Al Qaeda develop nuclear weapons. Here, it is turned around and used to discuss climate change. In general, Dick Cheney doesn’t come off very well with the authors.)

There are some examples of ways to make changes—one of the most interesting to me was that having the military use renewable power not only is environmentally sound, but can save many service men and women’s lives by avoiding roadside bombs to vehicles trucking fuel around.

The authors are telling us that the country needs oil-addiction rehab, but has refused to have an intervention because “The Democrats were cowardly and the Republicans were crazy. . . . The Democrats understood the world they were living in but didn’t want to pay the political price—alone—for adapting to it. The Republicans simply denied the reality of this world.”

Climate change will create an unstable world with a larger and larger population requiring greater global food production at the same time that global natural resources are stressed and water demand soars. California is commended for some sensible environmental policies that the country should adopt.

Part IV coming soon.  Eventually, the positive stuff arrives.

Part II: The Education Challenge

Teachers who are overwhelmed should try to make time to read, at the very least, this section of the book.

The global market and the IT revolution discussed in Part I means big changes for education. In the global marketplace, we’re familiar with low wage, low skill workers. What we need to contend with now is low wage, high skill workers. America’s past success was “based on real innovation, real education, real research, real industries, real markets, and real growth—but the playing field was also tilted in our direction. Now we have to try to sustain all those good things without all those structural advantages.” (This is the idea behind The World is Flat, by the way.) If you don’t believe this, read this book for lots of flat world examples—examples, in fact, of how much has changed since The World is Flat was published. Even top level researchers and Ph.D.s can work for a US company from their home countries halfway across the world.

The IT revolution means that our students are going to have to be very diverse thinkers. The authors suggest that they will have to combine “the skills of MIT, MTV, and Madison Avenue.” Certainly, they will have to have a solid base of knowledge in several areas and will need to be creative thinkers and imaginers as well. (Note: one of the best books I’ve read which shows that those coming into adulthood are entering a world of work that is utterly different from that experienced by their parents is A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink. It was recommended to me by a colleague at COHS. I reviewed it here. It warns that what parents and teachers are telling kids about the world of work (“Be an accountant! A lawyer! A computer programmer!”) is probably wrong.)

The IT revolution also means that ‘people skills’ are also going to matter more than ever. With technology available to everyone, the ‘human touch’ is what will set people apart.

To show that traditional, low skill or manufacturing jobs will not return, Friedman and Mandelbaum site examples, showing that after recessions, workers laid off are not all rehired because firms restructure their operations. More and more, the labor market will reward those with college degrees, a trend called ‘employment polarization.’ The IT revolution makes well-educated people more productive in a global market; it also makes less-educated people “less employable.”

There are four types of jobs in today’s labor market:

Creative creators: people doing “nonroutine work in a . . .nonroutine way.”

Routine creators: people doing nonroutine work in a routine way

Creative servers: nonroutine low-skilled workers doing work in an inspired way

Routine servers: people who do routine serving work in a routine way

No matter what their skill level or educational background, workers who do things in a routine way are in trouble. Employers say that they are looking for ‘presence’ in their employees (engaged and paying attention). The authors point to their interviews with major employers/industry leaders as proof. Even the lowliest job will require a critical thinker, but critical thinking will be only the most basic skill. Employees must be able to innovate as well as collaborate well with others—others who may be located far away. Lots of work will migrate to a wiki format: “up-to-date, self-correcting, adaptable in real time.” New jobs like ‘chief innovation officer’ are on the way. (Again, I recommend Daniel Pink for more on this idea.)

Despite the ability to move jobs overseas, America will need to keep some manufacturing in the country or risk losing touch with a source of innovation, “working directly with a product and figuring out how to improve it.” In this discussion, the authors coin ‘Carlson’s Law’: “Innovation that happens from the top down tends to be orderly but dumb. Innovation that happens from the bottom up tends to be chaotic but smart.”

The authors move into a discussion of how the country should treat education. They quote Michelle Rhee (former chancellor Washington, D.C. school system, controversial in educational circles): “We treat education as a social issue. And I’ll tell you what happens with social issues: When the budget crunch comes, they get swept under the rug, they get pushed aside. We have to start treating education as an economic issue.”

I think this is the point in the book where the educator’s heart starts palpitating. Basically, this discussion can be summed up in the authors’ insistence that “maintaining the American dream will require learning, working, producing, relearning, and innovating twice as hard, twice as fast, twice as often, and twice as much.”

The argument shifts to whether our students really are competitive in a worldwide workplace. The authors say they aren’t, that our top students and schools are not as good as those in other countries, and that poverty is not the issue. They point to a study entitled “The Myths and Realities about International Comparisons” as evidence. (I’ve read of studies that show that poverty is the real issue, and that our top students do quite well on a world platform. I will provide some links in the next installment of this review along with links on the direction education is moving. However, I will note now that even within this argument, the authors do a few twists. They say that studies from other countries that do well are not from a small part of the population, and then go on later to mention that China’s scores are derived entirely from Shanghai. Can’t be both, boys.)

Another educational area that needs work is our system of vocational training as some future jobs will require a high-level vocational education.

Folks both inside and outside of education must be willing to sacrifice in order for education to have what it needs: “better teachers and principals; parents who are more involved in and demanding of their children’s education; politicians who push to raise educational standards . . .; neighbors who are ready to invest in schools even though their children do not attend them; business leaders committed to raising educational standards in their communities; and . . .students who come to school prepared to learn, not to text.”

A part of this argument that will interest all teachers is that the authors assert that in the US, we don’t do much to develop or reward excellent teaching. We should, and to this end, the authors recommend 50% of teacher and principal evaluation be based on student growth. They give examples of helping teachers improve by using newer technology—say videoing the top teachers in the state, tagging their lessons by specific standards and then allowing others to see how great teachers meet those standards.

Communities need to celebrate teachers and back their efforts—and not just with gift cards from the PTA, but with performance bonuses through which the top fliers collect some serious cash. The community should recognize that good schools are foundations for good neighborhoods.

Parenting is discussed here, and the controversial Amy Chua (author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, a book she says is about Chinese-style parenting) is quoted. I found her statements at odds with what the authors had said earlier in the book about the needs for creativity and imagining. (Chua never allowed her kids to have play dates, go to a sleepover, play computer games, choose an extracurricular activity—the list goes on. Not quoted here, but in the book is Chua’s admission that she shamed and insulted her kids publicly in her quest to make them the envy of other parents in the neighborhood. Some readers look at the book as more of a cautionary tale about to what ends a parent will go to twist a child into the mold s/he desires. However, her kids did end up as models, excelling in everything that she allowed them to try.) At any rate, the authors eventually make the point that results, rather than effort, pay off.

Although this is mentioned in the section on parenting, it warmed my librarian’s heart: Kids need books to succeed. Having more books in the home is as great an advantage to a child as having university-educated parents. (What That Used to Be Us doesn’t mention is that research also shows that a well-stocked, well-staffed school library can make up the difference for kids that don’t have books at home. OK, off my soap box.)

In concluding this discussion, the authors mention that getting an education should be about more than getting a job and that we want kids to become good citizens. They finish by giving a little slap to the movie Race to Nowhere.

The next discussion on educating kids revisits earlier themes in the book, reinforcing the idea that people must be able to communicate well in order to collaborate, and if they can’t collaborate, they will be less creative. Successful creators are, first, self-confident. (While I believe collaboration is very important, I want to play the devil’s advocate here on one aspect of collaboration. A recent study suggests that brainstorming in groups can be a waste of time and that the ideas generated won’t be as good as the best ideas that the best people will have alone. It suggests that to work well together, people must be grouped with others of similar abilities. This wasn’t in an educational setting, but if it is true, it’s a vote for tracking in education.)

Interestingly enough, in this section on creativity, Steve Jobs and Tony Wagner are quoted and the theme is that the problem with schools is that they don’t “respect play, passion, and purpose—and [isolate] those who won’t conform.” We need to teach the kind of risk-taking that develops self-confidence (God forbid we use the term self-esteem, with all its current negative connotations.) The reason these activities and qualities aren’t valued is that they can’t be tested. While I agree with the authors, I find this section at odds with the earlier hailing of ‘tiger mothering’ and Amy Chua. Even in That Used to Be Us, which is overwhelmingly a cogent argument, here, the authors have the same mixed messages for educators that we’ve been getting for years.

The whole of Part II ends with a section called “I Kill Jobs” and indicates that the only people who can’t be eliminated (in the job market—not murdered!) are the creative ones.

Yes—this is long, but so is Part II. It is also the most vital section of the book for educators. In my next post on That Used to Be Us, rather than looking at Part III, I will put up some links and titles that may be of interest as we grapple with the future of public education and what our jobs will look like in a few years. Then I’ll get to Part III.

Happy teaching!

“This is a book of exceptional importance, written on a sweeping scale with remarkable clarity by two of our most gifted thinkers. . . . It should be read by policymakers and every American concerned about our country’s future.” Library Journal

When I first saw That Used to be Us, I didn’t want to pick it up because I have approximately 70 books (but who’s counting? ) at home on my shelves, on my Kindle, or on my iPad that I haven’t gotten to. In addition, I’ve already read Friedman’s other two books on the subject—The World is Flat and Hot, Flat and Crowded. (Click here for review.) But I started finding the kind of recommendation quoted above. And then our principal recommended it so, I figured I’d go ahead.

That Used to be Us is a very worthwhile read. I want to try a bit of an unusual review of it here for two reasons. First, some teachers are looking for serious non-fiction for students and have mentioned The World is Flat. However, that book is seven years old, and already a bit dated. (No, the US intervention in the Middle East didn’t pan out the way Friedman predicted.) If teachers are going to recommend this type of non-fiction outside reading as students all enroll in ERWC courses, it would be better to start with the newest version.

Second, I know that all the teachers don’t have the time to read the book, but it would be nice to at least have an overview of it. So—this is a detailed review with links to other documents related to topics within That Used to be Us that might interest you.

First, if you happened to have read The World is Flat, and you want to cherry pick sections of this book that weren’t covered there, Read Sections II (The Educational Challenge) and III (The War on Math and Physics). If you read Hot, Flat and Crowded, you could skip Section III, as it is the ‘hot’ (global climate change) part; however, That Used to Be Us is up-to-date and more scary.

Four copies of That Used to Be Us are available at the Ontario City Library, so it can easily be picked up at COHS.

OK—here’s a look at Part I:

Part I: The Diagnosis:

While we are sleepwalking, China is using ideas we came up with to overtake our place as a world leader. We’ve gotten used to living in an entirely dysfunctional state while China gets things done. Many anecdotal examples of this are given, including incidents from one of the author’s visit to China. The authors quote plenty of folks to drive home the frustration. (“We are nearly complete in our evolution from Lewis and Clark into Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam.”) A big part of the problem is that Americans don’t understand how urgent the situation is (and other sections of the book detail proofs that it is urgent), so that urgency must be created before it’s too late. Americans used the next generation’s money to fight terrorism while “indulging ourselves with tax cuts and cheap credit.”

The solution is not to become more like China, but to “become more like ourselves.” By this, the authors mean that unlike China, which lacks freedom, has widespread corruption, horrible pollution and an educational system that inhibits creativity, we need to make our democratic system work with “focus, moral authority, seriousness, collective action, and stick-to-itiveness.”

A second problem, ironically, is that the U.S. no longer has the Soviet Union as a Cold War enemy. The death of communism in many countries has enabled a much greater percentage of the world’s population to reach for the American dream—and so, all these people are new competitors in a global market. We all compete with them for jobs. Our children need to be educated to compete with them for jobs.

There are four core challenges to America in the post-Cold War era: adapt to globalization, adjust to the technology revolution, cope with soaring budget deficits (growing demands on government), and manage rising energy consumption and climate threats. If we can’t do this, it will not only affect Americans but could be disastrous for the whole world as there is no country capable of stepping in as the world’s leader. This is the crux of the book. If the authors can make you understand this, you will pay attention to their solutions.

The solution depends on five pillars that are a partnership between the public and private sectors and will promote economic growth: provide public education for more Americans; build and modernize infrastructure; keep doors open to immigration; provide government support for basic research and development; and regulate private economic activity.

The authors detail successful public-private partnerships over the history of the United States. Examples are given from both ends of the political spectrum. They assert that the two camps no longer pay attention to our history, and this may be the death of our future. “Liberals blame all of America’s problems on Wall Street and big business while advocating a more equal distribution of an ever shrinking economic pie. Conservatives assert that the key to our economic future is simple: close our eyes, click our heels three times, and say ‘tax cuts,’ and the pie will miraculously grow.” Yes, there’s something here to offend everyone—which is good, because it challenges the status quo, as it hopes to.

Next up: Part II—the section on education—the largest and, according to the authors, the most important section of the book.

Big Guy by Robin Stevenson

Derek thinks he might be falling in love for the first time ever. The problem is, he hasn’t been entirely honest with his online boyfriend.

Battle of the Bands by K. L. Denman

The smell in the garage is lousy. Old bulbs coated with years of dust and cobwebs don’t cast the best light either. But when I pick up my guitar and my fingers find the strings, and that first riff comes screaming out of the amp, the only thing that matters is sound.

Crush by Carrie Mac

Are Hope’s feelings for Nat, who is a lesbian, just a crush or something more serious?