What Makes a Good School Board Member?

LT broaches the subject of educational attainment and participation on the Lebanon School Board, asking about the levels of education of the board members and whether or not education matters in this context.

I've wondered about that, and my thinking has changed substantially over time. It is clear to me based on LT's post that they think educational attainment does matter, and that not having education past the high school level is problematic when it comes to serving on the school board.

Part of me wants to agree with this statement; after all, I have a four-year degree and getting it was the best experience of my life. And it's real easy to slip from "Rick Alexander" to "education matters."

That said, I think framing the question in the way LT does has two problems:

1. It shows a class bias. While on its face it shows an education bias, the two are very clearly (and often closely) related. The people LT mentions as good school board candidates tend to have advanced degrees (lawyer, doctor) that often lead to pleasant incomes or are personally invested people (parents) who have the time to volunteer - both of which indicate a certain level of socioeconomic status. I don't think such a bias is a good thing, and I've certainly had to fight it in my own thinking and writing on this issue.

I think it's important for most, if not all, groups in Lebanon to be involved in the process. Right now, I see a large gap where the professional class (the McHills, Wopats, Barishes, etc) used to be. I would like to see them (and/or their colleagues) re-enter the field, as distasteful and filled with infighting as it may be. Just because their kids are out of school doesn't mean they should walk away.

2. What are the criteria by which a good school board member is evaluated? That is, what makes a good school board member? (The point being, of course, to see if education itself matters as a criteria, or if education correlates to something that matters, or if it does not matter at all - or if it's somewhere in between).

I don't have a concrete answer to the latter question, actually, but I'll throw out some suggestions and see what sticks:

a) The ability to listen - this is just a good skill for people to have in general, but I think it becomes especially relevant when one is part of a deliberative body that conducts oversight. The LCSD board members can't personally oversee everything in the district, so being able to filter and understand the information presented to them is key to being able to process the big picture.

b) The ability (and inclination) to separate one's own interests from that of the district as a whole. This is easy - Rick doesn't even try. In fact, he goes the opposite direction: His interests become board interests because he pushes them until he gets his way. See for examples anything related to Sand Ridge and/or getting rid of Robinson for an example.

c) The ability to critically evaluate the information presented to you and make decisions based on that evaluation. This is, for me, the one that correlates the most closely with educational attainment by far. Certainly in my case - with half of my degree in Philosophy (aka critical thinking), this is something I personally value quite a bit. After all, it's managed to get me a long way.

As well, I think it's pretty important for a school board member - though I should be clear about where critical thinking skill can come from: Increased critical thinking skills and education have a relationship based on correlation, not causation, since one can be a critical thinker without getting an education. (Yes, I just denigrated the necessity of my own degree. I have no few illusions about that.)

All that said, being able to accurately evaluate the information in front of you and make a sound decision is incredibly important: Often those decisions have a significant impact, whether it be financial or otherwise.

d) Perspective - that is (and I know this is not the best way to put it), having spent a significant amount of time outside of Lebanon. Or something along those lines; I brings this up not because there are Lebanon Lifers involved (which can be a very good thing), but because the more expansive one's consciousness is when it comes to the larger world, the more accurate a context one can place the LCSD in. Or something. This one definitely warrants a bit more thinking about.

So that's it for my short list of things a school board member needs to be able to do. I don't think it's a complete list by any means, but I think it's a start.

Notice the absence of a few things: Education (no, I don't think it's absolutely necessary, but damn does it appear to help in light of the current situation), the presence of a child in a district school, public speaking skills, a background in education policy or finance. Those things might be useful, but are not, strictly speaking, necessary to be effective.

And yes, I realize I am on record as saying conflicting things about education and being a school board member. That's because my thinking on the matter is conflicted.

Kindergarten and Social Class

From a recent story in Willamette Week:

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Susan Castillo has made a huge mistake and now she wants the Legislature to fix it.

A key piece of Castillo's advice: to consider charging tuition for full-day kindergarten programs. Historically, public schools have provided free kindergarten for a half-day but more parents over time have asked districts for full-day services and Castillo was eager to meet that demand.

Castillo green-lighted the change without seeking a legal opinion affirming that pubilc school districts had the right to charge tuition. That was a mistake.

...

"A district school board cannot charge tuition for either an extended kindergarten program or a program that supplements a kindergarten program," acting legislative counsel Joan Robinson wrote Courtney in a Nov. 30 letter.

...

In Portland Public Schools, parents pay about $300 a month for the extra half-day. If students attend school for eight months, that's $2,400 per student and for 6,000 students the cost statewide would be $14.4 million. (In 2006-07, more than half those kids were in Multnomah County.)

Mayhap the reason charging tuition for public school became illegal in the first place was the giant class divide that it created between parents who could pay for their childrens' education and those who couldn't? Not to mention the fact that everyone pays taxes, so how could you justify the differing treatment?

It strikes me that charging parents for an extra serving of education is in the same vein - it will create two classes of students, to boot.

Bad idea. I hope the Leg doesn't make it legal.

Can you imagine if a local high school starting charging students for any classes taken after noon? It would be an outrage. I don't understand how this situation is different enough to justify the different treatment.

h/t CA.

Is This For Real?

Via something, probably BoingBoing, a column on the subprime market that sounds like it was taken from The Onion.

Sept. 5 (Bloomberg) -- So right after the Bear Stearns funds blew up, I had a thought: This is what happens when you lend money to poor people.

Don't get me wrong: I have nothing personally against the poor. To my knowledge, I have nothing personally to do with the poor at all. It's not personal when a guy cuts your grass: that's business. He does what you say, you pay him. But you don't pay him in advance: That would be finance. And finance is one thing you should never engage in with the poor. (By poor, I mean anyone who the SEC wouldn't allow to invest in my hedge fund.)

That's the biggest lesson I've learned from the subprime crisis. Along the way, as these people have torpedoed my portfolio, I had some other thoughts about the poor. I'll share them with you.

I honestly can't decide if this is satire or not. Anybody got an answer?

Competitive Breeding

Over at Feministing, a link to an NPR story about wealthy mothers who have lots of kids:

Given the incredibly high cost of raising children these days -- with housing, child care, camps, clothing, and college tuition -- big families are apparently now a status symbol.

The funny thing is that I'm pretty sure having lots of kids was a status symbol in lots and lots of indigenous cultures for a long time, since having kids was a way to ensure one had enough labor on hand to provide for the family - and therefore not starve. Here, the motivation appears to be ex-career women who need a competitive outlet.

We have come so very far, haven't we? It's almost like we've been socially regressing in these last, I don't know, six years.

Again:

Jurgen Habermas, a German philosopher, who once wrote that he fears that humanity is in trouble because while we've accumulated massive amounts of technical knowledge (I think he called it technical-rational) about how the world works, we're real short on other knowledge, what I would call wisdom. (Wisdom being primarily concerned with how we ought to live.)

Gaining the sort of knowledge that leads to wisdom requires, I think, a means-based outlook and a heavy emphasis on process. The United States has neither.

Smarter People Have Less Sex

I feel compelled to point this one out, even thought it's in the Reader feed at the moment.

A study found a relationship between IQ and sexual activity.

As I read the post, I found that it actually responded to all the question I had about the study and the relationships. So I don't have any snarky comments.

Just go read it; it's really good.

Invisible Tension

I spent a few hours Sunday at the house of a relative in Salem. Some folks from back east were there, along with with my immediate family and the kids and grandkids of the host.

The host is in his late 70s or early 80s, and his grandkids are between 8th grade and 20 or so years old. The host - let's call him 'M' - had two kids there, a son and a daughter. The son, M Jr., is a very, very successful consultant. He has three daughters of his own - M, M, and M - and a wife, M. (I am not making this up. Their names all start with the same letter. It would be hilarious except of how friggin' pretentious it is.) They live in the greater Portland area, and the kids attend a private school. The wife/mother M is very, very used to being rich. The husband drives a Ford Excursion, which is second in size only to a Hummer.

The daughter of the original M, S (making the kids S & M), has two children, a son (A) and a daughter (B), one of whom is 18 and the other 20 or so. The daughter, who is the oldest, works at one location of a chain of Shari's-like restaurants in the greater Portland area. A and B, and their mother, S, are pretty damn working class. The mother works at a retirement home, the daughter, B, lives with her Mexican boyfriend, J. The father is in and out of prison and hasn't lived with them as long as I can remember.

There were lots of other people, including some of my dad's cousins, but the ones mentioned are the ones relevant at this point. Oh, and the other people are almost all either working class or lower-middle class. Most are conservative, some very much so, and pretty much everyone else is well over 40 or even 50.

In other words, there is a strong family history with being working class or identifying with working class behaviors and desires, even if it's not a conscious one; the one son, M, has broken the chain by being pretty wealthy.

When I got there, a bit late and sunburnt due to the Kinetic Challenge (I was an offishul), I grabbed some food ham, potato salad, deviled eggs, bread, and too-sugary lemonade, avoided the crowd, and found a chair. As I sat and ate, I tuned into the conversation happening between - sort of - one of my cousins, B, and the three M's, who are all sisters. The mother of the M's was also sitting in. When I say 'sort of', what I really mean is that one cousin, B, was talking at the M's at a very rapid pace (A had disappeared with my brother).

As I listened, I noticed that B was talking about her everyday life - her very, very dramatic life. I would say she used some sort of bubblegum/pop/slight Valley Girl speaking style (quick, lots of filler words, injections of perceived drama). She talked about pretty normal stuff: Babysitting a Mexican child (who I think is related to her boyfriend) and how much the child likes her (and how much she likes the child), working at the restaurant (and how much the milkshake machine sucks), hitting her regular customers, a few stories about how people she knew had been really drunk (but, of course, B thinks alcohol is gross) and various other pretty typical adventures she's had while working and living on her own at age 20. It seemed like a pretty typical retelling of her life, made hyper-dramatic.

However, according to the faces of all the female M's - mother and all three daughters - it was anything but normal. No, I think the three rich daughters had barely heard anything like what she was saying before (though I could be wrong, of course). To the best of my knowledge, the three sisters have never had jobs, all go to church, vacation in Italy, etc, etc...they are practically living caricatures of rich people for how much they have been trained to emote in public. The mother was also listening, I suspect for two reasons: First, because those were stories she had never heard before (I've never actually met anyone this bourgeoisie in the flesh before - it's awkward and crazy-intense), and half because she didn't want her daughters hearing anything "inappropriate."

It seemed to me that what other people were seeing was four teenage girls talking, even gossiping. What I saw was a living, breathing collision between two very, very different social classes. I don't think B really understood that one of the reasons her audience wasn't talking back was because they were in the midst of being exposed to a bunch of stuff they'd never really heard before due to their sheltered, private-school, upper-class upbringing, nor do I think the M's really understood that as far as I saw them, they might as well have been staring and drooling (that pretty much includes the mother).

The whole thing was made funnier by the fact that B would ask for the time every 15 minutes and, upon hearing it, shriek that she was going to be late for work, only to resume her story without moving an inch. I honestly don't think the M sisters had ever seen this before, even though I would consider it almost normal behavior for someone who doesn't want to go to work.

So yeah - I was sitting there, my sociologist tri-fold hat glued to my head (with a philosophical feather attached), trying not to laugh at how wrapped up each participant was in their part of the interaction. I was almost afraid to open my mouth because I wasn't sure what would come out.

Was this mean on my part? Maybe. Hilarious? I thought so. Infuriating? Only because the family of rich M's either isn't fully aware of the class difference or, far more likely, is doing their best to bury it to avoid feelings of guilt, because it's written all over their faces that they are slumming whenever they visit the rest of the family and no one ever talks about it.

Addendum: Despite the fact that my immediate family is probably the only real middle-class family that attends these gatherings (in terms of cultural values), I identify far more with the working-class side of things (given the choice between the two present), even though I abhor their politics and occasional outbursts of racism and sexism. Life is some complicated shit, let me tell you, and as the dude said, you don't get to choose your community.

QUICK UPDATE: I don't mean to imply that the M's were malicious or anything towards the rest of the family (with the possible exception of the mother, yikes), but more that their privilege came across in the way they acted.

UPDATE: One thing I forgot to mention about this little family reunion was something the rich lady M said. She was, I think, talking about either a person who was going to rent a room in her mother's house or maybe be employed by here mother. In either case, her mother is undoubtedly into her 70s, so I can understand her paranoia about wanting to find someone trustworthy.

Turns out, though, that she gets their Social Security with their application and then proceeds to run the name and information through all sorts of online private-eye sites. She was bragging about how detailed they were ("they even found a ticket she got for wearing earphones in the car!") with absolutely no idea that what she was doing was weird, or wrong, or even creepy. She was elated that she got to run her own background checks on people and spy into their private lives (all known addresses, all schooling, names of relatives, credit ratings, basically any time one has an encounter with the law or anything "official").

Am I the only one who finds that behavior repulsive?

Social Networking and Class Divisions

Via lots of places, an essay that came out recently on the class nature of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

I should preface this by saying I've never really even seen Facebook, and I don't have a MySpace account, though many of my friends do. I do spend a lot of time online, but from what I've seen, both sites tend to encourage people to act stupid, for whatever reason. Not that they are useless, but that they have been mostly useless thus far (the exception seems to be keeping track of what folks are up to these days).

I'm also thinking that Boyd's essay provides a great window into the way in which cultural values are replicated and transmitted, from who is on each site and why to the differing visual aesthetics of the two sites. Oh, and why do you think folks using MySpace think cluttered backgrounds and crappy designs are appealing? Hegemony, folks. MySpace is set apart - and sets itself apart - from Facebook by adopting a different set of design ideas, one that are then labeled "immature" and the like by - surprise, surprise - Facebook users and their parents. It's a vicious circle, and the worst part is that some of the more bizarre and outlandish designs on MySpace are probably pretty good.

The author, Danah Boyd, tells me that there's some serious shit going down on the aforementioned sites:

The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other "good" kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college. They are part of what we'd call hegemonic society. They are primarily white, but not exclusively. They are in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities.

MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, "burnouts," "alternative kids," "art fags," punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn't play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn't go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. These are the teens who plan to go into the military immediately after schools. Teens who are really into music or in a band are also on MySpace. MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers.

Damn. That's fucked up. What we're seeing is the golf course of the future. Instead of networking at the right clubs, or parties, or at the 19th hole, folks are going to network - and get their (online) friends jobs - through MySpace, Facebook, and the like. What seems to be happening is the perpetuation of a closed system: it's still who you know, not what you know. (Disclosure: This totally applies to me.) So yeah - for anyone who thinks this stuff is either a waste of time to participate in (and that includes me) or a waste of time to study, um, no. It's got consequences, people. That 17-year-old jackass with his shirt off and the spilled PBR in his right hand? He's going to be your boss because he friended someone's rich kid. Welcome to America, land of opportunity.