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David Brooks wrote an op-ed piece two days ago called “The Great Divorce.” In it, he talks about Coming Apart, a book by Charles Murray, in which Murray argues that the US is increasingly a two-caste society. Brooks concedes that this argument isn’t new but, he says, “Murray provides an incredible amount of data” to illustrate his claims.

Okay, Mr. Brooks, first. Do you really need data to be convinced that the US is a society with a deep, deep fissure running down the middle, a fissure that’s looking more and more like that trench at the bottom of the ocean where various bad movies featuring Jackie Bissett and Ed Harris ended up?

If you’re a New Yorker who lives on 63rd street and the East River, the likelihood of you ever, ever stepping into a Wal-Mart other than on a whimsical Marie-Antoinette-as-milkmaid sort of errand is almost nil. If you’re a New Yorker who lives on Central Park West, perhaps facing the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the chances of your kids going to a school where there aren’t enough math books for everyone in the class is an impossibility.

You don’t need data to know that (although it sounds fancier if you do).

I mean, I applaud Mr. Murray for finding ways to measure the gaping chasm between “have” and “have not,” and his research challenges my own assumptions. Seems it’s the “Have” tribe who goes to church and operates out of a conservative ideology, while the lower tribe goes to church less often and is more likely to live in sin (probably because they don’t go to church).

But Brooks goes on to say that “the members of the upper tribe have made themselves phenomenally productive. They may mimic bohemian manners, but they have returned to 1950s traditionalist values and practices. They have low divorce rates, arduous work ethics and strict codes to regulate their kids.”

Hmm.

1950s traditionalist values. That’s a bit tricky, isn’t it, given what those “values” included? Segregation, sexism, homophobia…Middle-class white women didn’t work; lower-class women of color had to work; men of color were called “boy; mixed-race marriages were illegal. Yes, there was perhaps an “arduous work ethic” but what, exactly, does that mean? Other social scientists have shown that people in the late 20th and early 21st century are working longer and longer hours–and are less and less able to “turn off” work, due to all those iDevices that keep us tethered to work even when we’re, you know, relaxing with a martini brought to us by either Betty Draper or our crisply aproned help. (No names needed, just “the help.” After all, isn’t that a 1950s traditionalist practice?)

Okay. Okay, so we’ll let that slide…sort of. For me, actually, the real sticking point is when Brooks calls for National Service (which, actually, I think is a a great idea but mostly because after a year of mandatory services, then when/if kids go to college, they might know why the hell they’re there, instead of just using the next four years to dick around and drink beer).

Brooks calls for a National Service Program “in which people from both tribes work together to spread out the values, practices and institutions that lead to achievement. If we could jam the tribes together, we’d have a better elite and a better mass.”

Let’s overlook his assumption that we’re always going to have “the masses.” Let’s instead say to him that actually, the country already has a national program that could, potentially jam the tribes together so that they’d work together, spread out their values, learn from one another.

It’s called public school.

Thats what we want to restore. Not the fucking 1950s, for god’s sake.

Public schools. Public schools with sufficient materials for all children, with teachers who are given creative license to work with the people sitting in front of them instead of being told to treat these people like they’re widgets; public schools that have safe and inviting physical plants, regardless of whether the building is in South Harlem, Tribeca, Illinois, Nebraska, Oregon.  Public schools that haven’t been gutted by the imperious purse strings of Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and others, whose ideas about testing, testing, testing, seem designed to keep “the masses” as precisely that, and whose own educations (and the educations of their children and friends’ children) contradict every single policy they want to institute.

What if a “good” elementary school were free instead of costing upwards of 36K. No, that’s not a typo, Mr. Brooks. Your own paper, in your own city, reported that private school tuitions, for first-grade, frequently starts at thirty-six thousand dollars.  Which is cheap, I guess, because the kids are obviously finger-painting with liquid platinum.

Public education is uniquely suited to building bridges between these “tribes,” but Brooks ignores that fact, perhaps because he’s been one of the cheerleaders for more, more, more testing, and more “teacher accountability” and all the things that are rendering public schools absolutely incapable of doing anything other than…teaching the test.

And you know what?

Test scores make really, really crappy bridges.

When Liam and Caleb were little, they both loved Going on a Bear Hunt. Remember that?

Going on a bear hunt.

We’re going to catch a big one.

What a beautiful day!

We’re not scared!

And then there’s the long tall grass to get through, swishy-swashy; and the mud, squelch-squerch…and pretty much every other obstacle known to human kind, each with its own sound effect.

And the refrain, of course is “we can’t go over it, we can’t go under it… oh no! We’ve got to go through it!”

They do get through it, find a bear, are afraid of the bear, run back through all that crap, and climb into bed with the covers over their heads.  Very satisfying. Except for the poor bear, who is left alone to wander the seashore.

I’m thinking about bear hunts these days as older son tries to adjust to his new school.  It’s his second new school in six months–not easy to do, by a long shot, I know–and he’s pretty clear that we’ve ruined his life.  I don’t have the heart to tell him that he’s only eleven. The life-ruining hasn’t even begun. Wait till he’s sixteen and I show up at some party where he’s all cool with the hair gel and the soccer jersey and then I trill from the front hall that it’s time to come home and practice the euphonium. That will be life-ruining.

He has forgotten the lesson of the bear hunt. He can’t believe that he won’t be in the middle of a rocky transition forever. As far as he’s concerned, his new school is an abysmal failure, a prison, a nightmare from which he will never, ever awake. And we’ve ruined his life.

School is stupid and British spelling is stupid and English history is stupid and oh by the way, we ruined his life.

Here’s the thing about Liam: he hates not knowing. He’s a perfectionist in pretty much everything and as a result of that (says moi, armchair shrink), when he explodes because of all the pressure he puts on himself, he explodes BIG and DRAMATICAL and WITH BAD WORDS.  Let’s keep in mind that his mamma is a card carrying member of the Good Enough Club and Husband aims for perfection but then he can’t ever remember where he put it, so we’re both quite puzzled about Liam’s need to be perfect.  Fortunately–or unfortunately–he often comes quite close: perfect report cards; chosen for this honor or that selective program or that elite soccer squad.  He works hard; he pushes himself; he’ll kill himself trying to get something right.  And also manages to be goofy and silly and dance around in his underpants to Kesha songs.

“Passionate” is the word I always use for Liam and I am reminded again, in these past few weeks, that passion is a double-edged emotion.  The highs are really, really high, and the lows are cataclysmic.  He’s in a cataclysmic low right now as he tries to suss out the new system, tries to remember that gray is now grey, and color is now colour.  There have been sinkers–not quite as epic as when we first arrived in Abu Dhabi, but close–and as usual, I try to deal with them with some ad hoc mixture of empathy, firmness, listening, berating, whispers, shouts, hugs, threats, and bribes.

Yes. My parenting has lacked consistency lately.  Thanks for that insight.  And Husband and I aren’t always on the same parenting page at the same time, which adds a whole ‘nother level of wonderfulness to the situation: he wants to cajole when I want to be firm; he berates when I want to offer hugs. I don’t know if we’re complementing each other or just muddying the already swirling waters.

I am trying to remember my own bear hunt lessons, oh yes I am. I tell myself we’ve just got to get through all this swishy-swashy grass–and my sister (so wise and yet…younger. How can that be?) reminds me (and I then remind Liam) that it won’t be like this forever. But. When your adorable boy in his navy blue blazer is whisper-screaming at you that you’re an idiot and (say it with me) you’ve ruined his life–in the elevator of our building–with other people on the elevator- AT 6:50 IN THE MORNING…well, let’s just say it’s hard to hang on.

For a brief nano-second I thought, what if I just smacked him? Just flipped his cheek with my hand to jolt him out of his hysteria?

I didn’t flip his cheek. In a triumph of will over emotion, I hugged him close and told him it wouldn’t be like this forever.

I am not sure he believes me. I am, after all, the woman who has ruined his life.

Going through it. That’s the thing that sucks, about life and bear hunts, both.

squelch-squerch-squelch-squerch…

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this post is linked up with the new improved (probably lemon-scented) blog formerly known as lovelinks: yeah, write. so yeah, right, click on over, read some fabulous writing, then come back later in the week and vote vote vote.

Blackout!

Wikipedia, among others, is staging a protest to raise awareness about two bills being discussed in the US Congress today–SOPA and PIPA.  They sound sort of like Spanish restaurants, don’t they, where you might get a sangria and some tapas?

Nope. SOPA is the Stop Online Piracy Act and PIPA is Protect IP Act (click here for more, or here). Both pieces of legislation would allow the government to shut down entire sites if even one piece of content is thought to violate copyright–but violations don’t need to be proven to be removed. The mere allegation of violation is enough to get a site shut down.  Marvin Ammori points out that if SOPA and PIPA are passed, “aspects of the legislation would make… State Department-sponsored free-speech technology illegal in the United States.” Isn’t irony like that supposed to be solely the purview of Colbert and Stewart?

I live in a country where websites, twitter feeds, and video feeds are routinely blocked for one reason or another.  It’s only when I’m in the bubble created by the university where I teach that I can access any material I want.  Does the United States really want to implement legislation that would be more repressive than the Emirates’ laws? Or China’s?

And more importantly, the next time that Caleb asks me about the Egyptian god Anubis, or Liam wants to know precisely how fast the water is rising around the Maldives, or when I want to know what a tiffin is, or if I need a giggle and want to watch Michelle Bachman try to answer policy questions…what will I do?  I mean, forget your larger political issues and pesky crap like freedom of speech.  If this legislation skates through on the rhetoric of the Far Right, then I’m going to look stupid in front of my kids.  And that just won’t do.

Today he went on a field trip, to the Hezbollah Museum.

I’ll let that sink in a bit. Hezbollah. Museum.

I’m thinking this museum will not be a big draw among the “ladies who lunch” set.

And while the ladies who lunch may not be flocking to the museum for the latest exhibits in heavy artillery, tanks, and guerilla bunkers, hundreds of thousands of other people have thronged the museum since it opened last May.

According to this article from Reuters, plans for the museum site include a five-star hotel, a swimming complex, and a cable car.  I don’t know about you, but riding a cable car in what amounts to a war zone doesn’t sound like any ride I want to take unless it’s a re-enactment at Epcot.

What are the politics of visiting this museum, I wonder. Is paying the admission fee tantamount to supporting Hezbollah?  Would it be wrong to buy a shwarma at the snack bar after you’ve made your way through the exhibits?

And what’s going to be sold in the inevitable gift shop?  T-shirts that say “Daddy went to Hezbollah and all I got was this lousy t-shirt?”  Or do you suppose someone will actually market what Liam asked for, on the morning Husband left for his trip: Can you bring me a terrorist bobble-head doll?

I don’t suppose I would win a worst-job contest–I’ve never had to muck toilets for a living or clean out the holds of fishing boats–but I’ve had a lot of crappy jobs. There’ve been a few where I just walked out the back door and kept moving and a few where I’ve been fired asked to “pursue opportunities elsewhere.”

All I’ve ever really wanted to do in my life is be a writer (seriously–I had my writer’s pseudonym picked out when I was in 4th grade–very precocious, except I pronounced pseudonym as puh-sood-oh-nim), but until  I can figure out how to “monetize” my words (as they say in the corporate world),  I’ve got probably the best job I’ve ever had, right now. Except for the small but pressing detail that most of the people I love are about six thousand miles away. But that’s why god invented skype, right?

These crappy jobs all contributed, in some long-view sense, to me being where I am now.  And as a result, that’s probably why I’m going to insist that my kids go get their own crappy jobswhen they hit working age (which, according to Newt Gingrich, is right now. I mean, Liam is eleven and has not contributed one red cent to this household yet. Slacker. I’m going to apprentice him to the school custodian, that’s what).

1. Babysitter. In high school, I babysat for a neighbor whose house was, even to my adolescent eyes, disgusting. Dirty dishes piled in the sink, overflowing garbage pail, make-up covering every surface of the bathroom counters and bureau tops.  I barely remember the girl I babysat for, but I will never forget her dog: a huge sheepdog whose fur was the equivalent of the dirty-dish filled sink. Matted dreadlocks of hair, long streams of drool sort of patted into its chin whiskers, and it stank of old food. The mother chain-smoked long skinny cigarettes and she would frequently leave one burning in the ashtray downstairs while she went upstairs to get dressed for her night out.  Of course, the smoke itself didn’t bother me because I smoked too (on the sly) and being at her house gave me the excuse I needed: I smelled like smoke because I’d been at the Ingrassia’s house. On the other hand, I was always worried the house would burn down.

2. Usher at a convention center. Sometimes this was a great job, at least in the early 1980s when the rock shows would come to town. I totally got to see Loverboy, dude, and Foreigner (the “Jukebox Hero” tour? Surely you still have that t-shirt?), and of course Judas Priest. Big hair, big fun. Got to wear a cool uniform and hang with my friends who came to the shows. Of course, then they would leave for the after-party and I would be left in the arena picking up bottles and cigarettes and vomit. Lovely.  Working for the Ice Capades show, the gift conventions, and the Gospel Music Tour was hellishly boring, by comparision, but at least there wasn’t vomit in the aisles afterwards. Or at least not as much.

3. Short-order grill cook. I worked the grill every Saturday morning at the women’s college I went to, which meant I was the witness to the morning walk of shame.

(Sidebar: to appreciate the walk of shame, you need to know something about women’s colleges, or at least the one I went to, in the mid 1980s: frequently of a Friday night at our college, there would be a dance with a band, and guys would come from other schools–friends of friends, or friends of somebody’s boyfriend or brother or whatever. The conversation often went something like this (imagine loud bad 1980s music and tepid beer): “Hi, I’m Keith. Howyadoin? Is your roommate home?”  The phrase “is your roommate home” was code for: you go to a woman’s college and therefore must be horny as hell and would like to take me to bed)

Sometimes Muffy or Bitsy or Boopsy (the school was in New England; there were girls there who actually answered to these names) would accommodate Keith or whomever, and then it would be morning and there would be this…guy wedged into that hideous single bed (how did anyone have sex in college give the beds we all had?) and this guy would have to eat. So she’d bring him over to the grill and they’d order. Me? I’d be behind the grill in my Izod shirt with the Grateful Dead skeletons silk-screened on the back, nursing my own sad hangover, and wondering how to explain to Bitsy that if you try to cook an omelette on a grill with NO BUTTER it will burn.  Working the grill (with or without Bitsy’s butter habits to deal with) is ugly: the grease gets everywhere: under your nails, coated across your skin, in your nose, your hair, your ears, your mouth. It’s hot and dirty and smells bad. Now imagine doing that on three hours of sleep and a hangover.  Thank god I was only nineteen or I’d have died.

4. Cumberland Farms. Do they still have these any more? They’re like 7-11 stores or NYC bodegas: band-aids, porn, soda, coffee, condoms, newspapers. I worked the Sunday 6AM shift. That meant putting together the Sunday papers. Oh, you say, I thought the newspapers just came like that? Oh no, my dear, oh no. Some poor slob has to fold the sections, pile them together, stick in all those circulars you’re going to throw away. Not hard work but it did mean having newsprint pretty much embedded into my skin until Tuesday. In true colleagiate fashion, after a particularly long Saturday night, I may have called in sick for Sunday morning and then never gone back. Sorry!

5. Waitress, waitress, waitress. I can still sling a full tray onto my left shoulder, carry it through a crowded room, and then hand out the plates and drinks without spilling anything. It’s a very macho skill, acquired through a looong time in the food-service trenches.  All I can say is that if everyone in the world had to work in food service for a full year–either line cook, busboy, waitress, front-of-house…we would all be a helluva lot nicer to one another. Plus waitressing was the best training for being a parent I’ve ever had: Multi-tasking? yep. Being nice to idiots? yep. Cleaning up messes not your own? yep. Being asked the same idiotic questions over and over again? Oh yeah. Not getting paid what you’re worth? You bet your sweet bippy.

6. Temp secretary in any number of office buildings in Manhattan. As a graduate student, before I started teaching, I temped. Shuffled into some random office where someone showed me how to answer the phones, and then left alone. Actually, as jobs go, it was clean, air-conditioned (this was in the summer), and I had access to office supplies.  There may or may not have been petty theft during my temping time.

7. Writing coach for the Department of Labor in NYC.  Yes. True story. I spent about three months as part of a pilot project (that never took off, probably due to my own ineptitude) trying to teach statisticians at the NYC Department of Labor how to put their numbers and data into words that regular humans could understand.  I had no idea what I was doing; the bureaucrats who were working with me had no idea what they were doing there, and the whole thing was something of a fiasco. To all of you still writing passive-voice sentences comprised primarily of numbers…I’m sorry! I was finishing my master’s thesis, breaking up with a boyfriend, and living on about 10K a year, in Manhattan. None of these things is conducive to being a productive worker (although I’m not sure how you measure that fact, statistically).

I’m going to stop this list at seven instead of my usual ten. After the Department of Labor gig, my work life starts to be more grownup (although frequently still crappy).  I did a long stint (like fifteen years) teaching at a conservative Catholic college (despite having never been conservative nor Catholic, myself), where more than once I realized that I’d sworn in front of a nun (she wasn’t wearing her outfit! How was I supposed to know!), and now here I am…in Abu Dhabi. Still working and still very, very nice to waitresses.