Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again

Cherry Creek High School put on a wonderful production of "Mamma Mia!" this weekend. My review is this week's column for The Villager.

Musical theater is back at Cherry Creek High School, and their production of “Mamma Mia” played to packed houses last weekend. Based on songs from Swedish pop band ABBA, this festive musical tells the story of 20-year-old Sophie on a Greek island about to marry her fiance Sky. Sophie doesn’t know her father, but wants him to walk her down the aisle, so unbeknownst to her mother Donna, Sophie invites Donna’s three former boyfriends, and drama ensues.

The lead roles were perfectly cast with Bella Mitchell, bringing an adorable charm and powerful, melodic voice to the role of Sophie. Mitchell, who’s been accepted for musical theater to NYU’s elite Tisch School, put on an impressive performance, masterfully connecting soulful solo scenes to energetic ensemble pieces. “Mamma Mia” has a girls night vibe with Sophie, Donna, and Donna’s lifelong friends Tanya and Rosie, known as the Dynamos, laughing, longing, and loving their way through a tumultuous weekend.

Donna was beautifully played by Miranda Joyce, and her two backup Dynamos literally brightened the stage every time they were on it. Lexi Casey as the sassy, fun-loving Rosie and Eliana Yokomichi as the sardonic thrice-divorced Tanya absolutely owned their roles with vaudevillian-like humor. Yokomichi’s portrayal of Tanya’s clumsy elegance charmed audiences, and her boisterous flirtation with barman Pepper, played by Alex Mitchell, was hilarious. Yokomichi danced across the stage with class and sass in four-inch stiletto heels. “I’d have broken my ankle just walking in those,” one woman in the audience quipped.

The stage was literally filled all night with a huge ensemble of “Dancing Queens,” and Emily Fisher’s choreography led by dance captain Chloe Mazenko was truly a spectacle to behold. During “Voulez-vous” nearly fifty dancers smoothly glided past each other in mesmerizing layered movements, and the true beauty of the scenes was the seemingly natural and effortless interplay of the singers and dancers. Scenes with villagers just spontaneously breaking into song and dance is the magic of well-done musical theater.

The show was an emotional roller coaster from the energetic, joyous “Dancing Queen” to the dramatically artful “Under Attack.” In a poignant mother-daughter scene, Sophie and Donna reflect on the past, singing “Slipping Through My Fingers,” while dancers Catherine Healy and Becca Dwyer performed a poetic ballet, visually mirroring the characters' emotions. It was a hauntingly beautiful scene of love and nostalgia. Moments later Miranda Joyce nearly brought down the house with her rendition of “Winner Takes It All.” Her soaring voicing, filled with soulful angst was a stunning moment, as her suitor Sam, played so smoothly by Jack Diamante, stands stoically across the stage, feeling her pain and longing for connection. “It literally gave me chills,” said Terri Margolies, who saw the show twice.

Donna’s other suitors wonderfully complimented the drama, with senior Caleb Meyerhoff bringing a cool vibe to former musician “Headbanger Harry,” and Hayden Noe filling the stage with his warm “aw shucks” schtick of the kind-hearted Bill. The scene where Noe’s Bill is audaciously, seductively wooed by Casey’s Rosie singing “Take a Chance on Me” was a sassy, saucy, laugh riot. It’s easy to forget these thespians are just high school kids with their mature stage presence.

The set was masterfully designed with the Fine Arts Theater transformed into a small Greek village and taverna, complete with white stucco, blue shutters, and shifting backdrops reflecting the Grecian sky. Associate set designer Dylan List and his crew created a warm, hip Mediterranean vibe, and the audience half-expected the cast to emerge soaking wet from the Aegean. They came close when the groomsmen suited up in scuba gear for a hysterical chorus in “Lay All Your Love on Me.”

Creek theater is an all-student led production, including the exquisitely detailed costumes. It’s no surprise costume designer Sarah Manos is also headed to NYU’s esteemed Tisch School. The directors pulled out all the stops at the end of the show when the entire cast hit the stage for an extended ten-minute dance extravaganza in eye-popping 70s disco costumes for the party anthem “Waterloo.” As confetti fell from the sky, some audience members waving glow sticks and wearing feather boas danced in the aisles. “I’m literally speechless,” said Creek administrator Marcus McDavid, who attended with his two Creek kids. “That was just so fun.”

Burkhart and musical director Sarah Harrison both said of the show, “We just wanted to have fun. We needed to have fun.” Mission accomplished. The thespians of Cherry Creek gave their community a night to remember. With Burkhart in just his third year at Creek, and the school’s seemingly endless line of talented kids, it appears musical theater is in great shape for many years to come.

Neither Joy, nor Sorrow

As part of my unit on Transcendentalism, and later with my students thinking about their personal legends while reading Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist, I like to draw upon the wisdom of Henry Longfellow's poem A Psalm of Life. That topic is this week's column.

Heather Mallick, a Canadian writer, recently observed “Canadians are catching the American disease: expecting personal happiness.” In fact, she speculates that for Americans the situation is even worse because they have moved from expecting happiness to actually demanding it.

This uniquely American affliction, the expectation of bliss and happiness and aversion to discomfort, has been brewing for a while. In fact, it is ironically the result of the positive and optimistic belief in the American Dream. Somewhere along society’s progression over two hundred years, Americans moved past simply valuing the opportunity for prosperity and happiness. Personal comfort and satisfaction are now expected, even perceived as a Constitutional right. When our lives are not perfect and endlessly rewarding, we assume something is wrong, or worse that we have been wronged.

Political philosopher and Notre Dame professor Patrick Deneen, author of the book Why Liberalism Failed, believes the national condition is a natural and expected side effect of success. Deneen asserts that classical liberalism based on the concept of individual liberty has failed because it succeeded. Both offshoots of classical liberalism, the progressives and the conservatives, promise more than just opportunity. They promise ideal societies free of any disappointment. In pursuing individual liberty as the greatest value and right, people have become unmoored from the virtues that enable them to responsibly handle and appreciate liberty. The classical concept of freedom includes being free from base self-absorbed instincts that can cause harm.

In the poem “A Psalm of Life,” the Transcendentalist New England poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow observed “Neither joy and not sorrow is our destined end or way, but to act that each tomorrow find us further than today.” The point of life is not to be happy, though there’s nothing wrong with that outcome. Of course, the point of life is not to suffer either, a claim Wadsworth made in protest to and rejection of Puritan beliefs about suffering on Earth while waiting for joy in the afterlife. Instead, Longfellow asserts the point of life is simply progress. It’s about getting better day to day. So, we should regularly ask ourselves: am I a better person today than I was yesterday? A better husband or wife? A better mother or father? A better son or daughter? A better friend? A better practitioner of my faith? A better citizen? A better member of my community? A better person?

I’m just guessing, but I suspect many people who are suffering do so because they have unrealistic beliefs about happiness. Some people suffer because they mistakenly believe they are supposed to be blissful, comfortable, and thriving all the time. And if life is not all sunshine and roses, then something must be wrong. But there’s nothing actually wrong – that’s just life, which is neither great nor awful. It just is. Feeling anxious is not the same as suffering from anxiety. Feeling sad is not the same as being clinically depressed. Feeling stressed is not unto itself a bad thing – in fact, it’s often good. Stress is what tells the body and the mind to be aware, mindful, and attentive to significant, even urgent matters. It is a natural defense system. However, contemporary society is too quick to diagnose a pathology for discomfort and medicate the natural ups and downs of existence.

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche is considered the happiest man in the world, yet he has no possessions, and seemingly no worries. He is a Nepalese Buddhist monk whose brain has been extensively studied to understand his incredible calm and contentment. The most interesting part of his story is that as a young man he suffered from incredible anxiety and debilitating panic attacks. And he suffered despite having a close, supportive family. As a child he says, “my life in general was wonderful.” It was when he turned to a lifetime practice of meditation that his anxiety lessened and his well-being increased.

The daily ups and downs of life, including achievements and failures, stressors and joys, are natural and to be expected. The downsides of life often teach us as much or more as the positives. Granted, when stress and anxiety go into overdrive, they can become like an autoimmune allergic reaction where the body or mind’s response is disproportionate to the threat. The challenge is figuring out when we are overreacting to the natural rhythms of life.

Thus, happiness is a blessing, and disappointment is inevitable. The point is simply to acknowledge and move forward.

What is Comfortable?

When does necessity become luxury? When does comfort become affluence? Thoughts on being comfortable are this week's column for The Villager. 

Renowned bioethicist Peter Singer once published an article entitled “The Singer Solution to World Poverty,” in which he spotlighted the increasingly dire need for basic necessities of food, water, clothing, shelter, and medicine in many parts of the world. Singer suggested that prosperous and affluent people in developed countries have a responsibility to provide those necessities to the less privileged. “The formula is simple,” Singer writes. “Whatever money you’re spending on luxuries, not necessities, should be given away.”

Of course, nothing is ever simple, certainly not the challenge of solving world poverty. The beginning point to addressing Singer’s plan would be to first establish a definition of luxury and necessity. And the subjective nature of our experiences makes that nearly impossible. In 2005 when the College Board put Singer’s idea on the AP English exam and asked students to defend or challenge his plan, one clever student asked that simple question with one key example – how necessary is toilet paper? In reality and across history, such a simple commodity is clearly not necessary. That said, few people in contemporary society would agree, unless they recently installed a bidet, which should actually be considered a luxury.

Another key component of Singer’s idea is determining if redistribution of wealth and assets can, in fact, end world poverty. The history of allegedly communist and certainly socialist countries seems to indicate the answer is no. Collectivism simply doesn’t work on any large scale, though small successful communities like a kibbutz suggest collaborative societies are certainly viable. Critics of redistribution are fond of referencing the “Ten Cannots” from Reverend William Boetcker who asserts “You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.” Incidentally, that platitude is often incorrectly aligned with Abraham Lincoln, a mistake made by Ronald Reagan in his speech at the 1992 Republican Convention.

Granted, Boetcker words are simple platitudes which don’t necessarily make them valid or true. On the other hand, the ideas of Peter Singer are not simple quips, but instead the summation of decades of research and investigation. And, as a professor of philosophy and ethics, Peter Singer is an advocate for practicing what he preaches, giving away a large amount of his earnings over his lifetime. In fact, following his winning of the 2021 Berggruen Prize, Singer quickly announced he will not keep the million dollar prize, instead distributing it among his charitable foundations. Thus, it’s not easy to dismiss Singer’s ideas when backed up by his actions, and it should make us question our ideas about luxury and necessity.

As a middle-class wage earner living in contemporary suburban America, I try to remind myself that by nearly every measure, I am one of the wealthiest people in all of human history. The relative comfort in which I live and the conveniences that I take for granted as basic necessities of life could be considered luxury and even a lavish lifestyle when compared to the majority of the world’s population. In fact, compared to the record of human history, I am in many ways more comfortable, if not actually wealthier, than kings and queens of yesteryear.

What does it really mean to be “comfortable”? In a world of increasing wage and wealth gaps, the concepts of comfort and middle class have become muddled. Wharton Business School professor Nina Strohminger recently asked her students what they thought the average American worker makes annually. One-quarter of them thought it was more than six figures, and one student actually guessed $800K – the actual answer is $45K a year. The aloof nature of elite business students is unsettling to say the least, and it complicates talk of comfort. In fact, a Denver area realtor recently told the Denver Post, the measure of a “luxury home” is no longer a million dollars. In determining luxury and wealth, “it really starts at two million.”

Americans have a strange relationship with wealth and status, striving diligently for it, then liking to pretend they haven’t made it. In fact, the news and social media is filled with stories of people talking about “struggling” financially while living upper-middle class lives. Instead of calling themselves rich, affluent, or wealthy, many Americans tend to refer to themselves as simply “comfortable.” Such modesty is a rather significant understatement, though everything is, of course, relative. People can downplay affluence as mere comfort, but for Peter Singer and the world’s four billion people living on five dollars a day, that’s a bit hard to accept.

Whose Classroom?

In this week's column for The Villager, I ponder the growing interest and influence that parents, families, and community members have or are requesting in their local schools.

An interesting thing happened when schools went online last year – parents were given an insider's view of what goes on in the classrooms where they send their kids to learn. And now that the parents have been inadvertently invited into the classroom, some of them don’t want to leave.

Joanne Jacobs, an education researcher, has been writing about the issue of parental interest, involvement, and control that has arisen following the pandemic. Those issues came to a head last November in the Virginia governor’s race where controversies in Loudon County Schools became a factor in Glenn Youngkin’s campaign. Observers described the rise of a “parents matter” movement and credited it with Youngkin’s surprise victory. Jacobs believes that, after a year of depending on parents to be very involved in the actual teaching of the kids, parents may have a case for more influence in the classroom.

Discussion about parents’ role in what and how students are actually taught has been brewing for a while now, emerging ten years ago with the Common Core State Standards. Countless parents were shocked to realize they couldn’t help their kids with math homework under the new expectations. Recently, parents have questioned everything from cursive handwriting in elementary schools to the study of literature for seniors. In Michigan recently, the Democratic Party was criticized for a statement on the role parents play in the education of their kids. A post on the party’s Facebook page argued "The purpose of public education in public schools is not to teach kids only what parents want them to be taught."

In one regard, the very nature of schooling suggests parents should not be in charge of the education of their children. Unless they choose to homeschool and manage the curriculum and instruction, the decision to send kids away defers that authority to others. That deference is what the Michigan Democrats meant when they clarified that the role of public schools "is to teach them what society needs them to know. The client of the public school is not the parent, but the entire community, the public." Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire made a similar claim in a Washington Post op-ed titled, “Parents Claim They Have a Right to Shape Their Kids’ Curriculum – They Don’t.” While that claim may seem inflammatory, their argument really isn’t. Education is about teaching students to “think for themselves,” even if some of those ideas run counter to the views of their parents. And in regards to many topics, parents may make decisions that aren’t always in the best interest of their children.

Similar debates are unfolding across the country, as in Indiana where late last year the attorney general introduced a Parents Bill of Rights. The fifty-page document reiterates numerous legal rights such as the opportunity to run for school board and the legal access to special education. However, the platform also makes general and ambiguous claims like “education policy and curriculum should accurately reflect the values of Indiana families.” In reality, policies and curriculum should reflect the best practices of content and pedagogy that will prepare students for post-graduate life which includes college and careers. It’s about creating a well-educated populace and fully actualized adults, not just reflecting a broad term like values. And it’s odd to envision one uniform, homogenous Indiana family which represents all seven million Hoosiers.

The transient nature of a student body and the inconsistent participation of families also makes such uniformity problematic. Even in the current era when school board meetings are politically charged and more widely attended, participation remains a miniscule percentage of a community. Thus, parent control of curriculum, standards, and pedagogy would inevitably represent only a small but vocal group. Curriculum cannot simply be adjusted year-to-year or even month-to-month, nor should it be, for that would be an inefficient model for instruction. Kids are in elementary, middle, and high school for at best five years, while staff are there for decades. Educators spend entire careers refining their content and craft, not a few hours watching a board meeting, reading a magazine article, or following a brief discussion on talk news.

In a recent editorial for the St. Louis Post Dispatch, Marita Malone, a professor and school board director advised that “Public schools must return to teaching and let parents do the parenting.” That pragmatic view is a rather astute observation that should guide this issue.

Walk Your Line; Don’t Cross Others’

When the supermarket service workers recently went on strike against the Kroger corporation in Colorado, some people cross the picket line and shopped there anyway. I did not. The why is my column this week for The Villager:

I did not cross the picket line. I did so out of simple respect. When the commercial service workers went on strike against King Soopers and the Kroger corporation for ten days, I did not cross the line. I did not shop there. I did not interfere in or subvert these workers’ efforts to negotiate wages and working conditions with their employer. As a middle class wage earner living in suburbia, I did not presume to know their business and fully understand the challenges they face in the workplace everyday. So, I did not cross the line because I respect the working class people of the service industry.

In a recent column for the Denver Post, writer, part-time professor, and aspiring politician, Krista Kafer explained why she crossed the picket line. In her somewhat curt and straightforward manner, she said she crossed the line because she needed groceries and the labor dispute wasn’t her business. “It’s not personal,” she says. People who choose to cross picket lines do so out of one of two positions – privilege or principle. Kafer’s choice was clearly one of privilege, which she cleverly masks in principle. While Kafer argues that she crossed the line because she wasn’t a pawn in the game, she let her privileged principle blind her to the role she plays as a consumer. And, of course, she capitalized on the opportunity by crafting a column out of it. Despite claiming she had no stake in the issue, Kafer actually did take a side, supporting the Kroger corporation over the people who work the aisles.

Growing up in the river town of Alton, Illinois, outside St. Louis, I lived near three steel mills, two automotive plants, several refineries, and numerous manufacturing plants. I grew up around Owens-Illinois Glass, Alton Boxboard, Olin Brass, and numerous other factories whose collective bargaining agreements with their workers built much of the middle class in the areas around St. Louis. My father worked in labor relations for decades, albeit from the management side. But through the experience of my community and my father’s job, I learned a great deal about labor, about contract negotiations, about work stoppages, and about collective bargaining. It’s where I learned to not cross a picket line. As a point of disclosure, I should note that while I am a teacher, I am not a member of the local education association.

As a young man, I came of age during the 1980s and the Reagan Revolution, and the first political leader I supported to succeed the Gipper was New York Representative Jack Kemp, the original compassionate conservative. As a former NFL player and a resident of Buffalo, Kemp had an authentic understanding of the working class. As co-founder and president of the AFL Players Association, he had a deep understanding of labor. Kemp knew well how collective bargaining simply makes sense. Why would anyone go it alone when everyone knows there’s strength in numbers? It’s not for naught that Ben Franklin reminded the colonists, “we must all hang together or we will surely hang separately.” Collective action in pursuit of just goals is an American tradition.

I live across the street from my local King Soopers, and for twenty years I’ve shopped there, sometimes daily. My children grew up knowing the names of the produce stockers and the deli counter workers who chatted with them, often letting them sample the selections. By contrast, I suspect Krista Kafer’s experience working many years for politicians inside the DC Beltway has left her aloof to the everyday lives and working conditions of service workers. She knows little of the people she passes in the aisles. Kafer said the contract negotiation is not her fight. If so, she should have stayed out of it; instead she chose a side. She chose to interfere and subvert the service workers association’s ability to negotiate a contract.

If people like Ms. Kafer want to understand the workers she disrespected, the essential workers she dismissively walked past on their picket line, then she might consider reading some books about the history of organized labor and the challenge to create a middle class for the working class. As an English teacher, I’d recommend she check out Upton Sinclair's The Jungle or Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed. Or perhaps she could simply talk to the people she has so casually dismissed.

I respected the picket line, and I always will.

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Groundhog Day - An Existential New Year

I've posted about Groundhog Day the movie before, and it's this week's column for The Villager:

Ever since the 1993 film from Harold Ramis and Bill Murray, the term "Groundhog Day" has become synonymous with mundane repetition and mindless redundancy in our daily lives and jobs. The term has become the punchline for people describing the empty and repetitive nature of their jobs or even their lives. However, the film was never really about that. Instead, the message of the movie about weatherman Phil Connor is about rebirth and the chance every day to make our seemingly boring repetitive lives whatever we truly want them to be.

Let’s face it, by February 2, New Year’s resolutions are fading, fitness centers are back to the regulars, and we’re all bogged down in the drudgery of winter. These moments are ripe for a bit of pop culture existentialism, and the quirky film from Harold Ramis and Danny Rubin puts that long cold winter, the odd little holiday, and the repetitiveness of daily life in perspective. Watching the story of a disgruntled weatherman pondering the absurdity of a weather-forecasting rodent provides a second chance at mid-winter self-reflection and re-invention. The conceit of the film is not only the ridiculous holiday but also the inexplicable weirdness of Phil Connors’ predicament.

The film Groundhog Day is actually a wonderful primer for the wisdom of existentialism, and when I taught the philosophy in my college literature class, I would often lead or conclude with a viewing of Bill Murray’s brilliant portrayal of a man trying to bring some sense of meaning to a life that seems nothing short of absurd. Clearly, the idea of living the same day over and over again in an unfulfilling, mundane place and repeating the seemingly mindless tasks of a pointless job is portrayed as a curse and a cruel joke. That realization is actually at the heart of existentialism. Life makes no sense, and the absurdity of it all can lead us to feel our entire existence is meaningless. In the movie Phil spends many years in that disgruntled fashion, viewing his life as a cruel joke. However, the movie shifts when Phil considers his situation as an opportunity to get it right.

Granted, Phil’s initial reaction to his epiphany of a life without consequences is to indulge his most base fantasies. It’s understandable — who wouldn’t at least consider that? He seizes the opportunity, drinking to excess, smoking indiscriminately, gulping coffee and pastries, manipulating women, and even robbing an armored car. Of course, the freedom and control he ultimately achieves is freedom from and power over those primal and materialistic urges. Even hedonism and debauchery apparently becomes boring after a while. A pivotal moment finds Phil sitting quietly in the cafe reading, when he notices a piano playing in the background. Rather than simply enjoy the music, he seeks out a teacher and begins learning piano, offering his piano teacher “a thousand dollars if we could get started today.” He also masters other art forms like ice sculpting, but most importantly he learns deeply the details, hopes, and dreams of the people in his life.

Groundhog Day is a film with a message — each of us will wake up again and again to the same existence that at times seems pointless. The only point is that you have the rest of your life to make it exactly what you want it to be. Bringing meaning to our daily lives was a focus of the numerous American writers like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, whose poem “A Psalm of Life” advised us that “neither joy, and not sorrow is our destined end or way, but to act that each tomorrow find us further than today.” The point is progress; the goal is getting better. What F. Scott Fitzgerald called Gatsby’s “Platonic conception of himself” was simply the eternal quest for the ideal, for striving to become our own best selves. Life is an endlessly repeating opportunity to improve. In Bill Murray’s role as Phil Connor, we can find a second chance at New Year’s resolutions and an opportunity to, in the words of Henry David Thoreau, “live the life you have imagined.”

Thus, rather than a sad story about emptiness, the film and the day are a great chance to re-think and embrace the rich potential of our lives every day we live. Think about it. And perhaps even consider watching Groundhog Day to brighten and warm up the dark days of winter.

Regis Jesuit High School Should Reverse & Rehire

Regis Jesuit High School in Aurora, Colorado retracted its student newspaper and fired the two staff sponsors following the publication of a pro-choice opinion piece written by a student. The following is my response and this week's column for The Villager:

Forgiveness is the heart of Catholic doctrine. It can also be the virtue least likely practiced.

When I heard of the controversy regarding Regis Jesuit High School’s decision to fire two staff members over publication of a pro-abortion-rights editorial in the student newspaper, my first inclination was to support the action taken by the school administration. Regis is a private Catholic institution whose position on abortion is very clear. If students and teachers don’t agree with, support, and adhere to the guidelines and expectations, then they are free to attend and work elsewhere. However, upon closer examination of the story and their clearly stated guidelines regarding student media, it became obvious the administration of Regis is clearly wrong in this case.

In a recent piece of commentary for the Denver Post, two former Regis students criticized and challenged the school’s action as both inappropriate and inconsistent with stated policies and precedent in the school’s student media program. Harvard University student Madeline Proctor and Seattle University student Sophia Marcinek were editors-in-chief of Regis Jesuit’s Elevate magazine when they attended the school. As has been widely reported, the students explained how Regis High School’s clearly stated policy establishes that “school officials… shall not practice prior review or to censor any student media.” Yet, following the publication of an opinion piece supporting the “right of choice,” school officials violated their own policy, recalling the entire magazine and firing the two faculty sponsors. Such action is not only hypocritical but an egregious overreach of power and a betrayal of trust between the school, its students, and the staff.

As a former altar boy and a graduate of Catholic education, I understand and believe deeply in the institution of faith-based school. For a brief time in my adolescence I considered pursuing the Jesuit path. A key to that interest was an advisor who explained to me how the Jesuits are scholars. First and foremost, the Jesuit order is pious and devout in the Catholic faith, but it is also an order committed to academic and intellectual rigor. The Jesuits are not afraid of debate. The Jesuits do not hide from intellectual challenge. The Jesuits embrace the pursuit of scholarship and inquiry. Clearly, the Jesuit history of practicing and deepening their faith through education in the arts, sciences, and philosophy would seem to indicate an openness to debate and discussion. Nothing could be more important and relevant to cultivating young minds to be astute thinkers.

Thus, the Regis administration’s reactionary response is all the more problematic for its abdication of the spirit of education and the tradition of the Jesuit Order. An equally troubling condition of the current censorship is the school’s hypocritical rejection of not just its policy regarding student media but also the contradiction of the values and practices the school publicly preaches and promotes. In the Denver Post, Proctor and Marcinek point out how the school’s own website claims “We do not teach our students what to think; we teach them how to think.” That’s a dubious promise at best. The school also establishes as its mission the responsibility of being “called to create environments in which our students may encounter and engage multiple points of view that are presented thoughtfully and respectfully.” Clearly, nothing could be more blatantly inaccurate in this case.

In the 1990s a popular fad among Catholic and Christian young people was the wearing of bracelets which asked “What would Jesus do?” It was a reminder that the Christian faith is not simply a label – it is an expectation. Especially in the case of Catholic dogma, the Church expects the faithful to follow the path of Christ in their actions, choices, and daily living. Faith is more than just claiming belief and attending weekly services. It’s a way of life. We should, to the best of our ability despite our inevitable and inherent flaws, try to live as He lived.

So, in the case of a ninth grade student who writes an opinion piece for her school newspaper advocating for the right of choice, what would Jesus do? In response to that column which was cleared for publication by two staff members who simply followed established school policies, what would Jesus do? I’m fairly certain Jesus would never stifle the thoughts, ideas, and questions of students. And, other than the money lenders in the Temple, I’m positive Jesus wouldn’t fire anyone.

Schools are in crisis -- and always have been

This week's column for The Villager:

"Everything about American education is getting bigger all the time: the number of students enrolled, the amount of dollars it spends--and the vast amount of pedagogical gobbledygook. As it gets bigger, more and more people are insistently asking: is it any good? The complaining voice is not that of a few carping malcontents but a multitude of doubters deeply skeptical of what is being produced in the way of a people who should be personally content, socially responsible, and politically effective. Thoughtful parents – often aghast at what is being done and not being done – organize, agitate, protest and petition.”

While the passage above would seem to be an accurate reflection of contemporary America in 2022, the words actually come from an article entitled "U.S. Schools: They Face a Crisis," which was published in LIFE Magazine on October 16, 1950. Though we like to look to the past with nostalgic rose-colored glasses, all was clearly not well in the post-war years portrayed so placidly in television shows such as Leave It to Beaver and Happy Days. So much for “the Golden Age” of America when all kids were above average. For as long as there have been schools, people have been complaining about them. The kids complain about the work. The teachers complain about the kids. Parents and taxpayers complain about the teachers. And everyone complains about “schools these days,” decrying the state of public education and offering dire warnings about the future.

As I’ve noted before, the education system is simultaneously a great American success story and an inadequate institution which regularly fails to meet the needs of its most vulnerable members. Every year when standardized test scores are released and seized upon by the print media and the talking heads of television, the country frets about the abysmal scores which would seem to indicate that few students can read. The literacy battles will continue to wage over theories and pedagogy with terms like phonemic awareness, whole language, balanced literacy, and calls to simply get “back-to-basics.” However, anyone criticizing literacy today might want to remember that Rudolph Flesch wrote and published Why Johnny Can’t Read back in 1951.

Of course, it’s disappointing to learn that as few as 40% of middle and high school students read anything outside of assigned schoolwork. But is that any surprise considering all the toddlers and pre-school kids out there playing with their parents’ cell phones and watching endless videos online and on television? Can schools really have that much influence on literacy rates when teachers may be the only people to ever tell kids to put the phone down, turn the TV off, close the laptop and pick up a book? In expecting schools to influence and change the behavior of students, it’s helpful to remember that between kindergarten and high school graduation, children will spend roughly 10% of their time in school and 90% of it elsewhere.

Obviously, schools and schooling are no guarantee of success and achievement. Educational institutions represent an opportunity for growth and learning. And while the opportunity must be guaranteed, the outcomes gleaned from students, families, and communities are generally commensurate with what they put into the institution. And that includes the faith, trust, and resources of stakeholders. With nearly fifty million children in K-12 education, the staffing of all those classrooms is no small task. Forbes and Bloomberg have recently reported on the coming crisis in education, as fewer people enter the field while an increasing number of teachers are leaving at a time the demands and expectations placed on schools increase on what seems like a daily basis.

The most important consideration is to be pragmatic about what schools can and should be expected to do, as well as acknowledging and accepting the limitations. Many of the controversies, concerns, and criticisms about schools today are simply distractions at best, as are warnings of a crisis. The very nature of schools can be messy and unsettling at times. In a column on education and the role institutions play in our lives, David Brooks discussed a Harvard study on the purpose of education. According to the report, “The aim of a liberal [arts] education is to unsettle presumptions, to defamiliarize the familiar, to reveal what is going on beneath and behind appearances, to disorient young people and to help them to find ways to reorient themselves.”

Schools may be in crisis, but no more or less than they always have been.

Serving Up the Best Education

This week's column in The Villager:

Serving Up the Best Education

I have two college degrees, two professional certificates, and I’ve worked in my field for nearly thirty years. Yet I still believe the best education I ever received were the years I spent in my teens and early twenties working in a restaurant.

The restaurant world is a job experience and an education quite unlike any other. There’s a special fraternity among workers who know the intensity of a dinner rush, the frenzied choreography of cooking on the line, the subtle ballet of taking orders and delivering dishes, the ordered chaos of clearing and resetting tables. And the camaraderie of a restaurant crew tends to create a tight bond, especially because the required hours often infringe upon the social lives of the workers. Still, I wouldn’t exchange the hours I spent peddling pasta for anything. Life on the restaurant floor taught me as much as any class.

Restaurant jobs are, of course, part of the service industry, and the term server is now synonymous with waiter and waitress. Waiting on people is still the essence of service, which means restaurant work requires an inner calm that can test the patience of anyone. Yet, it can also be quite rewarding. In the classic comedy Arthur, the title character played by Dudley Moore tells his date, “Aren't waiters wonderful? You ask them for things and they bring them... It's the same principle as Santa Claus.” There is a unique pleasure in providing customers with a pleasant dining experience, and we learn a lot about life and ourselves when we do it.

Much of what students learn during the course of a K-12 education is actually quite arbitrary, even trivial, and not necessarily applicable to what we call real life. In fact, the answer to the age-old question of students, “When am I ever going to use this?” is likely, “Never.” Education is not a utilitarian practice of job training skills. However, the soft skills that come from attending school are indispensable to living a successful life. Organization, time management, communication, collaboration, and personal responsibility are not generally listed in any syllabus or curriculum guide. Yet they are as integral to education as books, and those skills are the essence of the service industry as well.

Many educators, researchers, and employers agree that the EQ is more important than the IQ in predicting success. That term EQ refers to the “emotional quotient,” as opposed to the standard but somewhat ambiguous IQ as a measure of intelligence. There are many highly intelligent people who never quite achieve the success commensurate with their test scores. Other highly successful people who lack academic credentials often achieve because of qualities developed in the workplace rather than the classroom. My Dad was fond of saying, “there are many people who are far smarter than I am, but you won’t find anyone who works harder.” The spirit of hard work has a special meaning for people who can calmly weather a Saturday night dinner rush. Business writer Daniel Pink has written extensively about the value of the non-academic skills necessary to success. Whether it's The Power of Regret or the importance of Drive, the soft skills of service work can be uniquely relevant to success.

Over many years in education across numerous school systems, I always notice and appreciate what I like to call the “wink-and-a-smile kids.” They might not be the best students from a purely academic standpoint. However, they are the kids who improve a class simply by being there. These are the people I would want on my team, regardless of the task and often in exclusion of any academic qualification like test scores, GPA, or even a diploma. These are the people who could sell me a car or a steak dinner just based on character and hard work.

Working a restaurant floor truly can be the best education. I’d even go as far as saying everyone should work in a restaurant at some point, if for no other reason than to develop a sense of respect for the jobs and empathy for the people who do them. Restaurants are so pervasive in our experience that it’s hard not to believe we could even paraphrase the classic essay from Robert Fulghum about kindergarten and instead say, “All I really need to know about how to live I learned while working in a restaurant.”

Sync Gallery in Denver

Visiting art galleries is truly one of my great joys. And the Denver metro area is a wonderful place to experience art. Recently I visited Sync Gallery, an art cooperative located in the Santa Fe Arts District. The gallery and the visit inspired me to write up a profile of the current show, and it was recently published by 303 Magazine.

"Sync Gallery Brings Connection to Denver's Art Community"

The gallery experience is all about making a personal, even physical, connection with art. As digital mediums provide non-stop access to images, and as artists reach an ever-widening audience via pictures on Instagram, there’s still no substitute for entering an art space, getting up close with the creations, examining and appreciating paintings and sculptures from many angles. That experience, personally connecting with art, can be found in abundance when wandering into Sync Gallery on Santa Fe Drive.

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Shovel

I've blogged this idea before, and in response to the first serious snowfall of the year, I'm revisiting it for my column in this week's Villager

I shovel.

This weekend Denver woke, finally, to several inches of snow which had accumulated all night and continued through the early morning. Because the wonderful white flakes fell on a weekend during winter break from school, there was no need to debate the granting of snow days for school districts. And, with so many people on vacation, city plows were free to clear the streets. So, as the kids slept, and the buses stayed nestled in their lot, I sipped my coffee and skimmed the paper while warming up and preparing for the task that awaited – shoveling the driveway and the sidewalks.

On each snowy winter morning, the scene is always the same. With my snow pants and boots, my heaviest coat and gloves, a bit of chapstick, and a giddy sense of anticipation, I stand on the garage stairs as the door slowly rises on command, and I get the first glimpse of the powder just across the garage threshold. It's always a bit different than it looked from the upstairs window. And as I step forward and push the first little path to check the depth, the weight, the water level, I always smile to see the darkness of the wet concrete reveal itself.

I don't understand people who don't shovel. What happened to shoveling? For as long as I can remember, shoveling is just something you do, like mowing the grass, getting the mail, and cleaning the dishes. But in many ways it's so much more. It'll certainly get your blood pumping, even as it brings a deep sense of calm and repose. The world just seems more alive at that time. Maybe it's the brightness across the drives, lawns, trees, and sky that accentuates angles you hadn't noticed before. At the same time, the calm muffled air relaxes the world and slows its pace. As the paths are cleared and the driveway comes into view, there’s a sense of order and accomplishment in a job well done.

Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit that last winter for the first time in my adult life, I bought a snow blower. It was during that stretch of spring snowstorms which dumped more than a foot over a couple days, and my wife and I decided it was finally time to rely on a bit of technology to assist in clearing the hundreds of feet of concrete in front of our home. We always shovel the driveway for our retired neighbor, as well as the short stretch of common drive that leads to the street. With all that square footage to handle, the possibility of two feet of powder motivated our purchase. And looking back, I don’t regret it a minute.

When we first moved into our townhouse eighteen years ago, our neighborhood seemed to care more about the responsibility and the opportunity that a snowfall provided. My neighbor and I across the way would be out soon enough working on the common drive and trying to clear it before too many cars packed the snow down, perpetuating the time it would take to melt later. Of course, we always cleared the sidewalks and made a path for the mailman as well. As the kids grew, it always became a family affair, with each taking shifts and sections. And that second cup of coffee or hot chocolate was so much better after coming in from a round of shoveling.

These days I still shovel, but I mostly take care of the common drive and the sidewalks alone. Most of the other driveways remain covered in snow, with either cars buried, or deep tracks from when the owner just tramped out through the snow to the car and drove away. And the peace that comes from shoveling is missed by all the people who take the weather event to spend even more time in front of their televisions or computers or phones. Kids don't seem to wander the streets anymore with shovels slung over their shoulders looking for some quick cash, or simply the chance to help an older resident. And the general consensus seems to be that if the car can drive over the snow, there's no reason to move it out of the way.

But, for me, there is still a reason. The reason is, simply, I shovel. Because that's what you do. When it snows, you shovel.

The Life You Have Imagined

As we approach the end of the year, it's time for the obligatory reflection on where we've been, where we're going, and how we feel about it.

Near the end of Walden, (Life in the Woods), transcendental writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau advises readers to believe “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” As the world wraps up another calendar year, amidst a pandemic approaching its second year of disruption, we will all again take stock of our lives and our year as the clock ticks toward midnight on December 31. While the examined life is not always a satisfying experience, the inclination to reflect and even judge our lives is a natural feeling that is nearly impossible to ignore.

Thoreau’s advice in Walden is a reminder of our powers of self determination and our ability to not only chart our course in life but to also manage how we perceive it. It’s easy to feel a lack of control at points in our lives, and it’s even easier to fall prey to that inclination in times of crisis and uncertainty, like in a global pandemic that just won’t seem to end. Thoreau certainly faced his share of challenge and uncertainty, losing his siblings to disease early in life before succumbing to tuberculosis himself at the age of forty-four. Yet by all accounts, including his own extensive writings, he seemed to never miss a chance to live the life he wanted. Many other writers and artists have sought to explain the conundrum we all face in making sense of our daily lives. And sometimes the lessons can be found in the most unexpected places.

In the film Stranger Than Fiction, the character Harold Crick played by Will Ferrell realizes his life is being narrated by some nameless voice, and he is actually the character in a story, one where he is going to die very soon. As Harold attempts to understand the voice and find some explanation for the dire fate that is quickly approaching, he begins to look at his life with fresh eyes and a sense of urgency. In a rather panicked conversation with an English scholar who has tried to discover the narrative Harold is living, the professor, played whimsically by Dustin Hoffman, advises him to simply live his life and accept the story as it is plays out. That somewhat dismissive advice is, of course, the same guideline we must all live by. Obviously Harold protests, saying “this isn’t a story to me or a philosophy or literary theory, it’s my life.” The professor smiles and tells him to simply “Go out and make it the one you’ve always wanted.” That guidance is the key to the film, and it is also the insight offered by Thoreau.

In many ways the movie Stranger Than Fiction and the advice from the English professor are a succinct reflection of the philosophy of existentialism. Life is basically what the individual makes of it, nothing more and nothing less. Starting with Soren Kierkegaard in the late nineteenth century and continuing with Jean Paul Sarte and Albert Camus in the middle of the twentieth, the existentialists addressed the challenge of living in a seemingly absurdist world, an increasingly apt description these days. At times it seems like the only meaning and purpose in our life is that which we individually and randomly assign to it. In his essay The Myth of Sisyphus, the existentialist writer Albert Camus ponders the absurd fate of the mythical Greek hero Sisyphus, condemned by the gods to endlessly roll a huge rock to the top of a mountain, at which point the stone would roll back down. Yet, in embracing a fate rather than lamenting a burden, Camus ends by asserting we “must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

So, as we continue to enjoy the holiday season, bidding farewell to one year while preparing to welcome another, we will again succumb to the irresistible need to reflect on the past and make resolutions for the future. As we seek to understand the lives we live, the benefits we enjoy, the opportunities we receive, and the challenges we face, we can look to Thoreau, we can commiserate with Harold Crick, we can ponder Camus and Sisyphus. And, as we do, looking back in reflection and forward with anticipation on the last day of December, here’s to imagining ourselves happy and living the lives we have imagined.