Moving on From the News

I write this post during yet another transition in my life. As I go through the process of reinvention, I have decided to break old routines and make new ones. One routine that I will be doing away with during this transition is how I follow the news. Although I have closely followed the news for the past twelve-odd years or so, I’ve reached a saturation point where I no longer feel the need to be an active consumer of the news. 

During the time that I have been an active consumer of the news, I have learned a tremendous deal about the world, global affairs, and current events through reading, discussing, watching, and talking about the news. As a result, I feel satisfied with the ideas, opinions, and knowledge I have developed in this area. I have read widely and have been exposed to diverse opinions and ideas. I have shared many articles and have had numerous discussions with an array of people on any range of issues.

Through my discussions, one thing that has been consistent is that I have found many people who buy into whatever the “standard” narrative that is being disseminated by the mainstream media. The power of repetition and the prestige of certain mainstream news outlets – be they print media like the NY Times or news media like CNN – has the power to dictate the discourse on the airwaves. Consequently, the airwaves are saturated with a narrow field of topics, most of which are then looked at in a more careful and analytical way through alternative news sources (such as blogs or independent news organizations like DemocracyNow!). The really novel and innovative discussions are mostly only had on alternative news sources. Yet even with these sources the range of topics remains inadequate and incomplete. As human beings tend to talk about whatever is being talked about, and as our national and international discourse becomes increasingly homogenized through whatever information is being discussed over the dominant media outlets, our collective ability to look at a wider range of topics that deserve to be looked at remains limited. Consequently, it is only through a deeper analysis of topics – be they the environment, war and peace, or really anything else – is what is really needed. Hence I think this will be the next area that I will start to focus on more carefully.

One of the projects that I intend to start doing more of in lieu of following the news is writing. Although I have only infrequently updated my blog over the past decade or so, it is likely that I will begin to post here again more frequently. As I have several different projects in the works, posting may be infrequent at times, but I do hope to try and write here to share my thoughts on any subject that comes to mind. Feel free to read and comment on anything I write and I hope that you find it worthwhile.

I would like to end by noting that I’m not completely abandoning the news per se, as I still want to keep up with a general overview of what is going on in the news. However, I’m transitioning to a phase where it is unlikely I will be posting news articles anymore, or following the news that closely. While I do hope that the range of subjects and discussions in the news media increase over time, I will no longer be an active consumer of the news.

Public v. Private Sector Education

Is a high-quality education something that all Americans deserve? If so, is the public or private sector better equipped to deliver this education? This topic is front and center in the national discourse on education right now and Diane Ravitch commented on this topic in a recent blog post. The post was called "The Miseducation of Mitt Romney" and it derides Romney's plan to turn education over to the private sector. The post itself raises a number of salient points about the public v. private sector education debate and there are two specific points I would like to elaborate on.

Above all, one of the major points in her post was about school vouchers. Proponents of privatizing education love to point to the effectiveness of school vouchers. However, Ravitch points out that:

A Congressionally-mandated evaluation of the D.C. program found that students with vouchers made no gains in either reading or math. As the report stated, “There is no conclusive evidence that the OSP [Opportunity Scholarship Program] affected student achievement.”

This data seems incredibly relevant, especially since it shows that students with vouchers made no gains in either reading or math. If the government is paying students to go to private schools (which could be for-profit, religious, or run by some other type of organization) that are not enhancing student achievement, why should we support a voucher system? Although this report is only a snapshot of data on one particular voucher program, it still raises a cautionary flag about the overall efficacy of vouchers. The efficacy of voucher programs need to be proven before hailing them as a panacea to correct problems within our current educational system.

The other major point that is incredibly important is how bipartisan these so-called "solutions" have become. As Ravitch explained:

Apart from vouchers and the slap at teacher certification, Obama’s Race to the Top program for schools promotes virtually everything Romney proposes—charters, competition, accountability, evaluating teachers by student test scores. If anything, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has been as outspoken on behalf of charters and test-based accountability as Mitt Romney. And, like Romney, Duncan has disdained the issue of reducing the number of students per teacher.

If there is a growing bipartisan political consensus on the policies that should be in place to fix our educational system, what can opponents of these policies do? Some of these policies - namely the voucher system, charters, tying teacher evaluations to student performance - used to be extremely controversial. But because of this growing bipartisan consensus, these once controversial ideas have been mainstreamed and opponents of these ideas have been isolated and marginalized. This is extremely troubling to me as I see this as part of a broader push towards privatization in all sectors of the economy. Seeing as what privatization has done in other areas (e.g. military contractors in Iraq, parts of the prison system, parking meters in Chicago and New York, etc.), I maintain a healthy skepticism about the reliability - and intentions - of privatization in general. If privatization can really bring about better education for students in America, then this would be a great idea. However, I don't think it is wise to go down this path with as much chutzpah as our current political class is doing. We should be very wary of going down the path of privatization given its track-record in general and for educational reform in particular. This is especially relevant since even more controversial ideas - such as abolishing teacher tenure and unions - are also slowly being mainstreamed. Overall, the push towards privatization seems inexorable even though the true costs of this push are currently unknown.

On some level, we as corps members implicitly believe in TFA's mantra that "One day, all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education." Whether these children actually get that excellent education depends a lot on the current debate over public v. private sector education.

Looking back at 10-years of War

It has been ten years since the fateful attacks of September 11, 2001. These attacks had a dramatic impact on the world and fundamentally shifted the direction of international politics. Although I recognize that much ink has been spilt on this issue already, I feel compelled to add my own personal reflections on these events. 911 had a direct impact on my life’s trajectory and through this post I aim to highlight some of its effects on me, America, and the world. I believe that we must reflect on the past if we hope to create a better, more positive future. If we do not, we will continue down our current path of perdition.

On 911, I was in the 10th grade at King High School in Tampa, Florida. I heard about the attacks just as I was about to leave my homeroom class that morning. I had been chatting with the always affable Mr. Carrell when an 11th grader came in and told us that a plane had hit the World Trade Center in New York. We immediately checked the TV and, sure enough, there was footage playing of the burning World Trade Center. With that image in mind and having no idea what was going on, I headed over to Spanish class.

My memory of the rest of the day is a bit foggy but there are a few memorable moments that I do recall. I remember going into Mr. Cimorra’s Spanish class and doing our classwork as though nothing had happened. I remember going into my AP European History class and having an epic conversation on what was going on in the world. I led that discussion, even though I only had – at best – a very rudimentary knowledge of global politics. It seemed to me that something dramatic had happened based on the sketchy information that was available at the time and that this event would have global reverberations well into the future.

The news media and government almost immediately blamed the attacks on a loosely defined organization known as Al Qaeda, led by the former CIA-trained Osama Bin Laden. He was hiding out in Afghanistan at the time and President Bush belligerently declared to the world that “You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists.” Although the Taliban had offered to hand over Osama Bin Laden for a trial to a neutral third country, the Bush Administration would hear none of it. Instead, President Bush preferred to entertain a Manichean fantasy in which the good guys – i.e. America – would righteously destroy evil doers all over the world in an epic war of terror.

For me, these events ushered in a period of intense personal growth. To say that I was at an impressionable age is a bit of an understatement. These attacks marked for me an awareness of my “Otherness,” since I was a foreign-born Muslim in a country whose President had decided to launch a “crusade” on evil doers who were exclusively Muslim. But why was the US doing this? And why was it targeting the Muslim world? I did not know the answer to these and similar questions, but I wanted to find these answers. I needed to know how and why this happened, both to satisfy my interest and to also be able to partially answer these questions for others. I thus set off on a multi-year journey to understand the broad arc of global history. What I found was that the more I learned, the more questions I had. After some time, I had managed to pick up a decent amount of history, but I was constantly in need of more answers. I became a sponge trying to understand the world. Every event was interrelated and so I had to keep digging deeper and deeper for more and more knowledge.

The journey for answers has taken me all over the world and I now can make some educated statements about 911, its consequences, and global significance. Although I recognize that it is next to impossible to cover these topics briefly, I will still attempt to grapple with some key themes.

911 was the direct result of terrible American foreign policy choices. By choosing to arm “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union in the 80s, we laid the seeds for future attacks against America. By giving Iraq a green-light to invade Kuwait in 1990, we set the basis for the new unipolar world. We went ahead and attacked Iraq for invading Kuwait which, in turn, inspired Osama Bin Laden to launch a global jihad against America. The raison d'être for Osama Bin Laden and his ilk would have been eliminated had the US not based troops in Saudi Arabia and offered unconditional support for all Israeli policies.

As tragic as 911 was, the events of that day pale in comparison to what has happened since then. The US has doubled-down on failed foreign policy positions and has decided to fight fire with fire. The US launched immoral and illegal wars abroad, which caused the needless death of hundreds and thousands of innocent civilians. The hubris of imperial overstretch has drained our treasury and cost us our moral standing in the world. We have seen the evisceration of the rule of law and our government has destroyed core civil liberties in the name of security. Finally, the coup de grâce has been the bipartisan consolidation of the corporate/national-security state.

But how should we move forward? Since we have collectively destroyed the basis of our individual-rights based social compact, should we be like the Chinese and adopt a more collectivist approach to rights? Is it necessary to do so to deal with the myriad of problems that we face, from massive environmental degradation to increased competition over scarce resources? Should we continue to wage endless wars abroad and be distracted by the kabuki theater of electoral politics? Or should we demand more from our leaders, like much of the pro-democracy activists have been across the Middle East? And if we do, will we be coopted by counter-revolutionaries, as is the norm? Is it even possible to expect change, when we fall for craven salesman like Obama who offers us the Madison Avenue type of change that feeds us with the same – albeit more articulate – bullshit?

Honestly, I have no idea the answer to these questions. For America, our government behaves more like an African anocracy rather than a global superpower. And yet, there is hope in other parts of the globe. Much of Latin America has seen the rise of populist governments that have been more receptive and responsive to the needs of their people. Turkey has emerged as a regional power in the Middle East and an inspiration for the entire Muslim world. The so called “rise of the rest” has seen the redistribution of global wealth to many developing countries around the world and the improvement of millions of people’s standards of living. All of these things are positive indicators of change, but we need to do so much more.

We as a species have long since passed the point of no return. We are burning through more resources than our earth can replenish and yet we continue to maim and kill each other around the world. Although it is true that deaths from global conflict have dropped substantially and that there are many positive indicators across the developing world, there are still many changes that need to be made. If we as individuals can resolve to treat each other with respect, humility, and patience our species may yet still have a chance. Most importantly, we must truly want the best for our brothers and sisters around the world, and meet others with empathy and love, not arrogance and hatred. Then perhaps we can begin to make our Eden here instead of waiting for it in the sky above.