Critics Harshly Slam David Brooks' Marijuana Column - But He's Not Entirely Wrong

Since posting his response to the "legalization" of recreational and commercial marijuana in Colorado (and coming soon in Washington) New York Times columnist David Brooks has been widely criticized - even chastised - by other commentators from Slate to more Slate to The Nation to Esquire. However, despite the critics' desire to portray his comments as aloof and misguided, Brooks' basic premise is not wrong, and his criticism of legalized cannabis is being distorted.

Brooks' basic argument - smoking weed is not generally a good thing and shouldn't be promoted or condoned - is a fairly accurate and innocuous statement, and one that is being greatly misinterpreted. For example, people have criticized Brooks for wanting to perpetuate the arrest and incarceration of millions for an arguably minor criminal offense, one that disproportionately affects minorities and the poor. Yet, David Brooks has not endorsed such problematic legal penalties and, in fact, has been on record as opposing such problems in our criminal justice system. Opposing legalization isn't the same as supporting the current legal ramifications for it. And neither Brooks, nor Ruth Marcus, argued for continued criminalization or harsh legal penalties for possession, use, or sales. Certainly, decriminalization of cannabis possession was a necessary change, and such an approach has functioned pretty effectively elsewhere in the world.

Additionally, comparisons between alcohol and marijuana are obtuse and knee-jerk reactions that at best obfuscate the issue and are inherently logically flawed. Arguing that one drug should be legal because another is already legal does not make a lot of sense. Simply put, having one potentially dangerous substance legal does not mean we should have two. If that were the case, proponents should be arguing for legalization of all illicit substances - and no one is doing that. And the comparison is not apt because the substances are not similarly used. Alcohol is not only an established industry and indelible part of the societal fabric, but it can be (and is) enjoyed without the requisite purpose of all other illicit drugs, which is to "get messed up." Certainly, the use and abuse of alcohol can have catastrophic consequences and shouldn't be praised or elevated either. America truly does have a drinking and substance abuse problem. And that is the point made by Brooks and Marcus - substance abuse is a problem.

Ultimately, I don't strongly oppose what Colorado and Washington and Uruguay have done, and I think it will be folded into the fabric of society pretty smoothly in the next decade or so. But there will be a lot of collateral damage that should not be celebrated. In general, doing drugs is simply not a good thing. That was the only point Brooks was making. And his critics have their panties in a bunch simply because they think he's an arrogant, elitist snob. Which is probably more or less true. But it doesn't make him wrong. Critics like to take shots at Brooks' philosophy, and he often makes himself an easy target for criticism as a sort of nerdy, wonkish, elitist. But the attacks on Brooks' marijuana column are off-base.

Science Teacher Challenges Super-Size Me - Loses Weight at McDs

Morgan Spurlock helped set the standard for the new age of documentary filmmaking in the late 1990s when he "nearly killed himself" with a diet based solely on McDonalds' food while documenting the entire experiment in the film Super-Size Me.  While many critics - and the food industry itself - challenged Spurlock's methods and conclusions, science teacher John Cisna took it one step further.



Now, the discussion must shift a bit to the choices we make at the food counter and supermarket.

Mike Rowe - Fewer College Degrees, More Employed Skilled Workers

According to labor statistics, there are currently as many as 3-4 million unfilled jobs in the United States, many of which pay upper middle class salaries … and they don't require a bachelor's degree. In fact, as few as 12% of them require four years of college (and the associated tens of thousands of dollars in debt). Yet, parents and counselors and teachers and principals are still sending millions of students on to four-year colleges with the belief that those degrees are necessary for them to get a job … or get a "good job."  As I've noted many times before:

Mike Rowe disagrees.

Mike Rowe, who gained fame on the Discovery Channel as the host of Dirty Jobs and Deadliest Catch, has spent the past few years developing a PR campaign for "Work." That is, he is promoting skilled labor as the necessary emphasis for our education system. Rowe makes the rounds to as many talk shows and forums as he possibly can, talking about the need for skilled labors. He has many partners in this task, such as Caterpillar who has an invested interested in skilled laborers. And Mike would like to connect young people in search of a future with companies like Caterpillar, where heavy equipment repair mechanics can make a $100,000 a year. So, Mike is promoting many great "schools you've never heard of" like Midwestern Technical Institute, where students can learn about and learn the trades that are currently lacking in the labor market.











So, it's time to stop all the nonsense about how everyone needs to go to college, and start promoting the type of learning that will lead people to careers. And, if you have never seen Mike's TED Talk about his PR Campaign for work, you have to see this. It's one of the smartest segments I've ever heard.

Lights, Camera, Teach! Questioning The Value of the Feel-Good Teacher Movie

Don't watch Stand and Deliver. Don't quote Dead Poet's Society. Don't reference Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds. Is it time to be done with the inspirational, feel-good teacher movies? Or is at least time to stop watching them with any hope that they will provide the answers on how to "fix schools"? That's the recommendation from middle school teacher Joshua Mackin for a New Year's Resolution in 2014: "Stop Watching Feel-Good Teacher Movies."

There are obviously many problems with using Hollywood's portrayal of anything as a guide or blueprint for how things should be. Certainly, "fixing public education" is a task far more complicated than any story can begin to crack in ninety minutes. And, between the necessary over-simplification and the requisite "Hollywood Ending," the teacher movies may do more harm than good. As Mackin points out in a succinct and well-argued criticism,  inspirational teacher films do not offer a realistic portrait of what it’s like to be a teacher or a student in an underserved school.  One of the biggest problems is that the movies require a happy ending. This simply dishonors the daily and on-going struggle in the public schools. The movies also revel in stereotypes, and mistakenly portray urban school teachers as superheroes. The reality is far more "boring" at times.

Certainly, the movie industry has all the best intentions of portraying the educational successes - some might call miracles - of people like Jaime Escalante and Ron Clark and Joe Clark.  And the more fictionalized stories behind Robin Williams "Mr. Keating" or Richard Dreyfuss' "Mr. Holland" are certainly wonderful narratives that can inspire as they entertain. However, they risk becoming cliche and doing more harm than good, especially when they fall into the trap of being a WTSM - White Teacher Savior Movie. We've all enjoyed the stories of teachers and students defying the odds, and we all have that favorite teacher who made a difference for us. And there is nothing wrong with honoring them and the ideas they represent.  However, we do have to be careful with the conclusions drawn from a movie's representation of real world struggles.

For more perspective on the portrayal of teachers, consider checking out books like:

The Hollywood Curriculum: Teachers in the Movies - by Mary Dalton

Carry on Teacher: Representations of Teaching in Screen Culture - by Susan Ellismore

Hollywood Goes to High School - Robert Bulman

Don't Become a Teacher

In every year I've taught, I've heard some of my best and brightest aspire to be teachers. The idealistic side of me is so excited for this possibility, and I understand that it is their great educational experience and love of learning that led them to their decision. And my first instinct is to praise, congratulate, and encourage them. My second thought, however, is more melancholy, and my instinct resting just below the excitement is to counsel them away from the profession. For, in far too many places, teaching has become a thankless task. This week Valerie Strauss' Answer Sheet offers a "letter of resignation" of sorts from a seemingly passionate, skilled, and veteran teacher who simply can't do it anymore. In response to Valerie's request for stories, she writes, "I would love to teach, but …"

It is with a heavy, frustrated heart that I announce the end of my personal career in education, disappointed and resigned because I believe in learning. I was brought up to believe that education meant exploring new things, experimenting, and broadening horizons … However, as the whipping boy for society’s ills, I could do none of these things. I was lambasted by parents as being ineffective because their child had a B or a C. “They are not allowed to fail.” “If they have D’s or F’s, there is something that you are not doing for them.” What am I not doing for them? I suppose I was not giving them the answers, I was not physically picking up their hands to write for them, I was not following them home each night to make sure they did their work on time, I was not excusing their lack of discipline, I was not going back in time and raising them from birth, but I could do none of these things. I was called down to the principal’s office many more times before I was broken, before I ended up assigning stupid assignments for large amounts of credit, ones I knew I could get students to do. Even then, I still had students failing, purely through their own refusal to put any sort of effort into anything, and I had lowered the bar so much that it took hardly anything to pass. I would love to teach, but I will not spend another day under the expectations that I prepare every student for the increasing numbers of meaningless tests that take advantage of children for the sake of profit. I refuse to subject students to every ridiculous standardized test that the state and/or district thinks is important. I refuse to have my higher-level and deep thinking lessons disrupted by meaningless assessments (like the Global Scholars test) that do little more than increase stress among children and teachers, waste instructional time and resources, and attempt to guide young adolescents into narrow choices. “Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, and understanding is not wisdom.” It is time that we fall on our sword. In our rabid pursuit of data and blame, we have sacrificed wisdom and abandoned its fruits. We cannot broaden our students’ horizons by placing them and their teachers into narrow boxes, unless we then plan to bury them.

Stories like these - and they are not uncommon - distress me to no end. And they would seem to validate my concerns about encouraging students to pursue teaching.  Of course, the issue is so complicated because, as most in education know, there are far too many unsatisfactory teachers out there producing little of the incredibly hard work and results that are mentioned by this teacher.  There is no easy answer to the problems that plague education - and I am certain that many of our current reforms are misguided attempts which will only worsen the situation. But I am not without hope.

So, with guarded optimism, I will still encourage my best and brightest to "Become a Teacher."

Stop Wearing High Heel Shoes in 2014

If I could recommend one New Year's Resolution for all women in 2014, it would be to end the torturous act of wearing high-heeled shoes. My students have long known - and laughed about - this rant of mine. In fact, I've been known to argue that women will truly take over the world once they shave their heads, throw away their make-up, and ditch the high heels. My example to students is any high school dance (Homecoming, Prom, etc) or any formal party (such as New Year's Eve balls). Inevitably, we will see women walking around and dancing in stocking feet, probably holding their shoes in their hands. Why? "Because they hurt my feet." The obvious question is why the women bought them in the first place. The answer, of course, is "because they are so cute."

Baffled, I am.

The sad reality is that "High Heels May Look Good, But They Are Killing Your [Health]." There is so much research and medical history in opposition to the wearing of high heeled shoes, and they are certainly a form of clothing that objectifies and even subjugates women. The damage done by these implements of high fashion is endless.

Therefore, lots of bad things happen. Shall we count the ways? Among the more common problems podiatrists say they see in women are calluses and, more painfully, corns, hard nuggets of keratin buildup caused by pressure on the skin. With high heels, corns develop up under the balls of the foot where the weight of your body presses down, and they feel like small rocks underfoot when you walk.  Liebow also sees capsulitis, a painful inflammation of the joints where the toes attach to the foot, and neuromas, or pinched nerves, where pointy high heels squeeze the toes. And when the heel is frequently in a high-heel shoe, it can cause the Achilles tendon (which connects the calf muscle to the heel bone) to tighten. When you kick off your shoes and the heel comes down to the floor at the end of the day, the extra stretching of the tendon can lead to a condition called Achilles tendinitis. Wearing high heels can also cause inflammation of the connective tissue at the bottom of the foot, the plantar fascia. That can result in severe heel pain and the need for aggressive treatments such as oral anti-inflammatories, oral steroids, cortisone injections, walking boots and crutches.

(Giuseppe Aresu, The Associated Press)

And, the history of high heels doesn't bode well for women's rights. High heels were, no doubt, invented by a man, and they were designed to promote women's feet as objects of desire. I know, I know, that sounds creepy. But is it not true? Granted, high heels were at one time also worn by men.  And the boost in stature is no doubt grounded in insecurity about height. But the male gender must be in some ways moving past that, as no contemporary man would subject himself to such torture, as pictured above - cowboy boots notwithstanding, which I've never worn but heard great things about.  In reality, no man would buy shoes that he then has to carry around because they hurt his feet. And, I've always understood that men who wore them for professional purposes suffered, too. If I'm not mistaken, rock star Prince has undergone hip replacement surgery which was necessitated by years of performing in high heeled boots. So, that seems reason enough to ditch the heels.

Now, we may have to talk about the necktie.

Top Education Reform Stories in 2013

Valerie Strauss - whose Answer Sheet blog in the Washington Post is a top source for education news - takes the end of the year to reflect on the top stories in education reform in 2013.  With Common Core finally raising the controversial debates that should have preceded adoption and implementation, the year of 2013 provided the spark that will drive education talk for years to come. From new "standards" to "standardized testing" to teacher evaluations based on assessment standards, 2013 has set the standard for the education debate to come.  Some of the debate will be driven by former teachers like David Greene who are speaking out in retirement about what they believe is going wrong - and right - in the profession.

“Teaching is a performing art as much as a science,” he said. “It takes talent. And personality. The match of your personality and skill set determines what kind of teacher you are. What works for one teacher may not work for another. You can’t expect everyone to do it the same way. And yet…” Like many teachers, Greene is mystified by the reforms currently favored by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and New York’s educational leadership.In general terms, he thinks there’s plenty to like about the Common Core standards and even efforts to improve teacher evaluations.In fact, he argues in his conversational but impassioned book for many of the same things favored by reformers: greater depth in instruction; lessons that engage students; focused reading that leads to tight writing; and regular assessment of students. But Greene believes that reformers are betraying their cause by overloading the school day with too many new goals, over-emphasizing tests and trying to grade teachers with formulas and test scores. The result, he said, will be a uniformity that sucks the life out of teaching and learning.

Greene's book - Doing the Right Thing: A Teacher Speaks - is intended to spark the debate about what effective teaching and relevant effective reform is all about.

Education Commentary Proves Lucrative for Edu-vocates like Rick Hess in Era of Reform

As a teacher, I have always been a bit of an education geek. Beyond just teaching English or working in school administration, I enjoy reading and writing about the issues of the day. However, the recent news out of Douglas County, Colorado indicates I may be in the wrong part of the education field if I want to rake in the dough for writing about education.  A judge in Denver has ruled that the Douglas County School District "violated the Fair Campaign Act when it contracted for and distributed a paper that espoused" the reforms implemented by the school board. While the reforms - and the inherent controversy - around Douglas County Schools are not news, I was quite surprised to learn that education researcher and writer Frederick "Rick" Hess of the American Enterprise Institute was paid $30,000 for the paper in question.  Hess's article "The Most Interesting School District in America" was published in various places and distributed by the district.

Here in Colorado’s third-largest school district, with 65,000 students — an enrollment larger than Washington, D.C.’s and as large as Detroit’s — the superintendent and board are pursuing perhaps the nation’s boldest attempt at suburban school reform. The Douglas County School District is trying to do something truly new. An all-Republican school board has created the nation’s first suburban school-voucher program, introduced market-based pay, allowed its teachers’ union contract to expire, and developed a regimen of home-crafted standards and assessments in lieu of the Common Core (which superintendent Liz Celania-Fagen dismisses as the “Common Floor”). Former Reagan secretary of education William Bennett has opined that Douglas County is “trying to do all the good reforms at once.”

Unwilling to settle for just adding merit raises atop the old industrial pay scale, Douglas County has adopted a market-based pay system. After hiring a former human-resources manager from GE to lead its effort to rethink teacher pay, Douglas County has established five broad pay bands based on the supply and demand for various teaching roles. This allows the districts to pay more for hard-to-find teachers, such as a special-education audiologist, and less for teachers in easier-to-fill roles. For the first time in memory, superintendent Celania-Fagen reports, the district had more quality applicants for special education than they had positions available. Douglas County has shown, with little media fanfare, that it is possible to pay teachers what the market requires instead of being tied to a rigid, union-imposed, one-size-fits-all pay scale.

Certainly, the Era of Reform has become a lucrative new aspect to the field of public education. With the rise of Common Core reforms and new education legislation that links teacher pay with student performance, education consultants are earning big money. This is certainly true for new College Board  president David Coleman who stands to earn more than a half-million dollars in base salary for his new position. Of course, that's no more than the head of the National Education Association (NEA) who earns north of $500K as well - and that comes out of teacher's dues which should support collective bargaining for, among other things, a respectable salary.  And back in Douglas County, it's not surprising that big money is going to consultants and researchers. The district allegedly paid former Education Secretary William Bennet as much as $80,000 for speeches touting the districts reforms.

Apparently, this blogging for ad revenue is the low end of education writing.

Anyone need an education consultant who will work for cheap?

Hollywood's Heads of the Class

The "Inspirational Teacher Story" has been a time-honored tradition in Hollywood for more than fifty years. From impassioned but frustrated teacher Richard Dadier - played by Glenn Ford - in 1955's Blackboard Jungle to pathetic but ironically effective Elizabeth Halsey - played by Cameron Diaz - in Bad Teacher, audiences can't seem to get enough of engaging heads of the class.  Whether the films are documentaries or "based on a true story," or some scriptwriter's fantasy of what effective teaching looks like, the teacher movies are generally based on one idea - inspiring reluctant learners to achieve by caring about them and having high expectations.  They can certainly become cliched, though the connection between the true stories and the imagined ones are often so vivid that we have to wonder if it's really so simple.  Everyone has their favorite "teacher movie," but there are some standards that top any list.  Some of the "Best in Class" are:

To Sir, with Love

Stand and Deliver

Dead Poets Society

Mr. Holland's Opus

Dangerous Minds



Freedom Writers

The Great Debaters

And, of course, we can't neglect
Bad Teacher

Disc Golf on the Rise as that Other "Frisbee" Sport

When I was growing up in the 1980s, my friends and I spent countless hours criss-crossing the neighborhood throwing our frisbees toward trees and mailboxes and front porches in "pursuit of par." We called it "frisbee golf," and the course was usually the whole neighborhood, and the holes might be a par-15 or more. Who knew it would actually develop into a sport with a national organization and formal courses in parks across the country.  But it has.  Of course, now it's called "Disc Golf," and the purists would take great offense to anyone calling the discs "Frisbee." 

Living in Greenwood Village, Colorado, I hadn't played any formal disc golf until the city re-designed Village Greens Park and put in an 18-hole disc golf course, alongside a new mountain bike trail. Disc golf has become the new obsession for my 11-year-old son and his friends, and this Christmas they received new discs and a disc golf bag. And, I am catching the bug and re-living a bit of my childhood playing the game. My best so far is two-over par.

Love, Actually Turns Ten as Critics Declare Death of the Romantic Comedy

For five or six years now, our Christmas Eve tradition has been to wrap presents and drink eggnog while watching what has quickly become a holiday classic, Love, Actually. The British ensemble rom-com has reached the decade mark in 2013, and that milestone seemed to touch off debate about the health of the genre Love, Actually so perfectly encapsulates. Is Love, Actually a really great movie? Or is it the worst romantic comedy every?  Is it destined to become a Christmas holiday classic on par with It's a Wonderful Life or Christmas Story? Or is the movie overrated and deserving of all the controversy?  As Love, Actually turns ten, have we seen the apex, decline, and death of the romantic comedy?

The romantic-comedy is a truly classic American film genre which actually has its roots at least as far back as Shakespeare and his classic "Much Ado about Nothing." The romantic-tension fueled bickering of Beatrice and Benedict is the foundation of practically every version of how "Harry Met Sally."  While the genre has often been derided as fluff filmmaking and nothing more than "chick flicks," the rom-com can be an incredibly rich character study that frames the battle of the sexes as representative of the human condition and the struggle for identity. And contemporary filmmakers can provide entertaining satire and social criticism as well as any Jane Austen novel. In fact, when I begin teaching her classic Pride and Prejudice, I open the discussion with several clips from the non-fiction-book-turned-romantic-comedy He's Just Not that Into You. And despite contempt from some critics and the claims by many men that they would never watch such films if their girlfriends didn't make them, nearly everyone has a favorite scene or example of the genre.

Movies like Annie Hall, When Harry Met Sally, Crazy Sexy Love, or 500 Days of Summer are tough to criticize as nothing but cheesy romance. They are often deeply philosophical and psychological studies that ask tough question and do more than tug at our heartstrings - they can rattle our existential existence. And some would argue that in the contemporary age, the romantic-comedy is getting even better.  With the philosophical beauty of movies like Enough Said - the full film from gone-too-soon actor James Gandolfini - Kevin Craft argues at Salon.com that "The Romantic Comedy Is Not Dead." I would argue the same about a nice little small-release gem starring Greg Kinnear and Jennifer Connelly called Stuck in Love. More than a Rom-Com, it is a story of complicated relationships in a family led by a writer and his dysfunctional family who seemed to have "lost their plot." The story which contains some great writing about the metaphor of writing and storytelling is more than just a romance.

Of course, like any genre, there are plenty of really poor examples which tend to taint the field. And contemporary studios have begun to dilute the genre as much as they blur it when the rom-com becomes the rom-com action flick.  And any genre is ripe for cliche when Hollywood finds something that works.  Often the films are just cheesy escapism.  And, maybe that's OK.  As far as Love, Actually is concerned, the "carol singers" scene may be ripe for criticism as cheesy and overdone , but for me it is a classic rom-com romantic moment on par with John Cusack blasting Peter Gabriel's In Your Eyes outside Ione Skye's window.

The Affluenza Defense Tests the Bounds of Sanity

The term affluenza was first coined - at least as far as I know - by John de Graff whose book began to spotlight the negative effects of wealth on humanity. Truly, lives of excessive privilege can blind individuals to any understanding of fairness and personal responsibility. And such conditions can cost people the basic empathy that must reside at the heart of any civilization.  The term "affluenza" gained new attention in recent weeks as news of the Affluenza Defense made headlines when a teenage drunk driver responsible for the deaths of four people was basically freed by a judge who bought the defense's argument that the defendant's wealth had left him unable to exercise proper judgment.

Basically, Ethan Couch is not guilty or responsible for the four deaths he caused because he grew up with such privilege that he never learned right from wrong.  It is, I know, the most preposterous argument you've probably ever heard, and it distorts the American justice system in ways rarely so explicitly blind. Certainly, we know there is a disparity between wealth and justice, a situation most clearly defined decades ago by the OJ case, when OJ Simpson was freed in the deaths of his ex-wife and her acquaintance Ronald Goldman.  Most Americans have little doubt that OJ's wealth bought his not guilty verdict. For, no average citizen could have mounted such a high powered defense with the likes of Johnny Cochran and F. Lee Bailey.

Now, Ethan Couch is the new poster child for the wealthy's ability to kill with impunity.