Midlife Crisis Bingo Recap: Buckle Up

In 1993, my partner and I climbed into my Ford Escort to go on a “backroads” trip across the country, inspired in part by William Least Heat Moon’s Blue Highways: A Journey into America. That book followed the author along literal roads less travelled and featured his conversations with people outside of the usual American gaze. "What does it mean to be an American?" was a guiding question for his trip, and ours.

 

Along the way, my car’s air conditioning crapped out, so we were able to experience America in all its summertime sensory glory: sticky and buggy. And also, this was before cell phones and GPS, so getting lost was very possible. In fact, getting lost was kind of the point.  

 

Most kids today will never know what it’s like to be lost. Their connection to their location is constant, and if for some reason their GPS isn’t working, they can always call their mom. In fact, their mom is probably tracking them right now, following their every move from afar with a Stalk My Grownup Baby app. Hint to young adults: Are you not in your dorm room tonight? Your mom knows this!

 

But back in the day, maps were paper and hard to read. Sometimes you’d go right instead of left or miss the turn. And you’d find yourself at the most amazing place, a place that felt like it was waiting for you to find it. Of course, that was also the moment that the car would start making weird noises, and your paper map would suggest that you were 10 miles from the nearest anything. You wished you had a way to call your mom, but you didn’t see a pay phone. And besides, you didn’t have a quarter to make the call. Your mom was probably out celebrating her empty nest anyway, not sitting around at home waiting to solve your problem.

 

One of the best parts about our trip in 1993 was stopping at just about every roadside historical marker. If you want to go beyond textbook broad-sweep history, spend a little time in the middle of nowhere! You’ll see towns that rose and vanished because of the railroad, groups that pushed others out, and you’ll see how those others fought back. The names of towns and rivers speak all about migration and aspiration.

 

However, lest we get caught up in the glory of purple mountains majesty and amber waves of grain, it’s important to remember that those historical markers are political storytelling. For the Midlife Crisis Bingo square, Buckle Up, I want to talk about How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith.

 

Category Description: Sometimes the way forward involves crossing difficult terrain. Read a book that challenges you, or makes you look something difficult in the eye, or asks you to do hard work.

The author asks the reader to consider the public history around slavery. He visits several sites that feature that story: some plantations, a prison, a New York City history tour, a cemetery, a local Juneteenth celebration, and a site of capture and departure of enslaved people before they were placed on ships to America. Each site offers a slightly different purpose – for instance, “to commemorate,” or “to give voice,” or even, “to make people uncomfortable.” The book leaves the reader with a set of questions about public history. First, in the face of limited historical evidence, how certain do the creators of the sites have to be to make what they say "true?" Second, what are the consequences of foregrounding some narratives (or objects or locations) over others? And third, how central should slavery be in American history and storytelling? Since the publication of Smith’s book, that final question has anchored all sorts of messy conversations on our political stage, leading to the likely possibility that some communities might not even put this book on their library shelves.

 

I don’t think that Smith would consider his work to be a “road trip” book, but I immediately thought about myself as a consumer of American history on my long-ago journey. I’m also struck by the fact it feels like our country’s air conditioner has broken. Things are sticky and buggy, and Smith wants us to lean into the heat.

 

Writing this post sent me on a deep dive into my old photo albums (remember when you took pictures and had to wait to see them until you took your film into the drugstore to be developed?).  I stumbled upon this unlabeled picture from our trip through the South in 2000.

 

I’m sure we just drove by it, snapped a photo, and said, “Weird!” After all, there was no smart phone in my pocket to quickly name and explain and situate every curious thing on demand. But all these years later, I do have a smart phone, and Smith’s book has made me wonder what this site was and why I am filled with unease.

 

Turns out that Wigwam Village No. 2 was built in 1937 in Kentucky to serve people on “automobile vacations.” Eleanor Roosevelt gave it some publicity in a newspaper column, and now it is on the National Register of Historic Places. The tents are not actually wigwams, but no one said that this venue was on the National Register of ACCURATE Historic Places, did they?* The website claims that the motel is “an enduring testament to a time past,” with all the comforts of home (WiFi, cable TV, coffee pots, a swimming pool, and “plenty of hot water”).

 

I seem to recall that things didn’t go so well for the Cherokee people in Kentucky. One of the online reviews (one star out of five!) says, “The place was dirty and damaged, the bed linens had tears and stains.” At first, I misread that as tears of grief, like the kind one might cry on a violent, forced exodus. But no, this historical site must be telling a different story altogether. It occurs to me, uncomfortably, that what we are giving “enduring testament” to with this National Historic Register designation is twentieth century white people’s travel culture, where the land is yours to explore, and your comfort is the most important thing. It’s a memorial to the American road trip, just like the one I was on.

 

Well, crap.

 

History is messy and hard and full of dragons. We have a lot of work to do. 

 

This is a random dragon we found in Cullman, Alabama. It's at the Ave Maria Grotto, which is a four acre miniature city built by a really bored monk in the 1950s. It features 125 replicas of holy places, and also this dragon. The lesson? Keep at it with your weird hobby.

*The National Archives and Records Association has placed a "Potentially Harmful Content" warning on its webpage about Wigwam Village No.2. Does that help? Hurt? Add texture? Do nothing?

Midlife Crisis Bingo Recap: Group Dynamics

The whole class of sixth graders at my middle school back in 19XX were bused to a camp for a week-long outdoor educational experience. I look back with dismay that we were organized into Native American tribes*, in which we picked new Native names for ourselves, made jewelry out of natural objects, tromped through the woods, and played the occasional game of Capture the Flag. As you might imagine, one girl horrifyingly got her period for the first time, and others experienced some light hazing (tied up in dental floss while sleeping, sometimes also covered in shaving cream).

 

But my most profound memory from that time is the “solo experience.” Each camper was plopped in the woods somewhere and had to sit there, alone. There was some sort of writing task, as well, but what struck me most was the sound of absolute solitude. The high-pitched squeals of my classmates were gone. So too was their quiet judgement and the creak of shifting adolescent power structures. There was no distracting TV, no music videos, no record players. It was just quiet. And quiet was uncomfortable.

 

Fast forward several decades, and there was no more quiet. Parenthood brought the endless questions of toddlers, cloying children's songs, the forced practice of brass instruments for the school band, the holler and slam of teen angst. And then, Covid! We were all together, all day, endlessly. Remember those first months, where we were all getting used to the sound of too many people on Zoom, separately but simultaneously?

 

I love reading books about the noisy interactions of families, both biological and found. To fill the Group Dynamics bingo square, I chose Deacon King Kong by James McBride. Here’s the square description: You never get the front seat. There are so many secrets. Why didn’t she/he/they love you the way you deserve to be loved? You can’t stand to be apart, and you can’t stand to be together. Read a book about group life that makes you feel less alone, or one that reminds you about why you actually enjoy quarantine.

 

This novel involves a sprawling New York City housing project full of wacky characters of different backgrounds, most of whom live tightly packed together. The development of these characters is masterful, and while there is an active plot, this is really a book about meeting all these interesting people and coming to understand their role in the city's history. The author also wants us to see the humanity in each of them, despite their sometimes-questionable choices. Ultimately, this novel is one about people's deep commitment to a place and to others.

 

I suppose that midlife crisis-ing has involved figuring out my own deep commitments, and it turns out that figuring stuff out involves managing my new “solo time.” The kids are gone, and with them went all their structures and institutions and negotiations. No more carpool schedules. No more Saturday sporting events in the rain. No more curriculum nights. No more arguments about whose turn it is return the milk carton the refrigerator (This was a real thing; after one loud debate about milk carton politics, I equally loudly declared that there would be no more milk drinking in our household Ever! Again!).  In the kids’ absence, it’s quiet. I know that some of you are probably drooling with jealousy, but I am here to tell you that it’s weird.

 

I’ve been on a bit of a reading jag about solitude lately. I read Jenny O’Dell’s How to Do Nothing. It was very intellectual dive into the politics of our technologically connected life. She suggests that we are clicking our way into corporate algorithms and their financial pockets at the expense of our ability to creatively solve common problems. I read Katherine May’s Wintering, which is about the “fallow” spaces that exist between periods of creativity. And I also read The Art of the Wasted Day by Patricia Hampl, which is about the relationship between uninterrupted time and creative work. Together, these books provide a great reminder that solitude is a generative thing, and that I should absolutely, without question, put down my phone.

 

Also, for the record, milk drinking resumed in our home shortly after my decree. And still, no one put the carton away. It turns out that I’m a lousy dictator.

 

Burgermeister Meisterburger. Also a lousy dictator.

*I checked out my school’s website, and the outdoor program continues to this day. However, kids are now organized into “guilds” instead of tribes. Progress? They must be doing that same medieval history unit in social studies, the one where we had to make shields representing ourselves and our interests. I got a C on that project because I couldn’t adequately draw my deep interest in soap operas. At the time, my goal was to be a leading lady. I figured that people might see past the braces and the acne and the shy slouch and notice the glittery starlet within.

Blogtastic!: Janesville by Amy Goldstein

 We’ve made it to the “free square” on the 2017 Leaning Stack of Books Diversity Challenge bingo card. I’ve decided to choose the category, “Nonfiction About Race or Class in America.” And the book that fills that category is Janesville: An American Story by Amy Goldstein.

I listened to Janesville on audio, and come to think of it, audio books offered a great way for me to branch out from my go-to diet of fiction about sad white ladies. In the final half of 2017, I listened to three audio books that filled squares on my bingo card. Yay, broadened horizons!

Janesville is a true case of narrative ethnography -- only rarely do I feel like the author steps in the middle of it. It follows the trajectory of residents of Janesville, Wisconsin after the General Motors plant closes and offers a complicated story of the declining middle class. I was most struck by the hope that gets pinned on education (workforce retraining) as a way to bolster the middle class in the face of economic change -- and, in this case, its lack of impact.

This book will clearly appeal to people wondering what happened during the 2016 election, and frankly, I think it is better than Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance – which was the book that has received the most praise for trying to explain the mindset that propelled some economically struggling white people to become Trump’s base. Goldstein brings a journalist’s eye and craft to her work, while Vance is talking about his family and his neighbors and his own history. Janesville is part of this same conversation because of Wisconsin’s Electoral College vote outcome and also because it is Paul Ryan’s hometown. It is notable, however, that this is NOT a book about Trump, and Goldstein doesn’t even mention him until the epilogue. Plus, Janesville voted Democratic during the election.

Several reviewers have noted that Janesville needs a part 2. Understanding the state of our politics requires grappling with race, and Goldstein does not do that with much depth. It’s true that the Janesville community is over 95% white, but the existence of the all-white communities is part of the story of racial segregation and exclusion that is central to American economic history. Goldstein does give a nod to the fact that Beloit, Wisconsin – just down the freeway from Janesville – is more racially diverse (15% African American and 17% Latino). The politics that led to a region that has those racialized elements is important.

Of course, there might be a bigger question at stake for readers who pick up a book about Wisconsin. What is the appeal of cheese curds? Why?!?!?!

 

Vat O'Curds

Valentine's Day Themed Curds?????

Here’s a link to a Marketplace interview with Goldstein, with an edited print transcript included. And here’s a review that I liked from The New Yorker.  Janesville won the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year for 2017.

Blogtastic!: Dear Ijeawele: A Feminist Manifesto In Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Today I’m focusing on bingo square #2 on the 2017 Leaning Stack of Books Diversity Challenge: Nonfiction About Gender or Gender Roles. Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a letter the author writes to a friend about how to raise a feminist.

Like in her fiction (Americanah is my favorite!), Adichie is writing about her understanding of both Nigerian and Western/American contexts. Growing up a feminist is both culturally specific and more universally political, and it was interesting to think about the idea of equality with that in mind.

I listened to this book on audio, but I have since read excerpts of it in print. Though I am enjoying the way I can grow my stack of books by listening to audio versions in the car, I will say that audio does this book a disservice.  Adichie is a powerful speaker. I have used her TED Talk, "The Danger of a Single Story," in my classes. THIS is the voice readers need to hear in their head when they read this book. The American audio reader sounds particularly disconnected from the letter in her hands.

I listened to this book before the #MeToo events of this fall, but the book is even more profound with that movement in mind. Raising a child is a political act, and it helps to be thoughtful about our language (princess?) and about binaries (can you be both feminist and feminine? Or are those opposite constructs?) I was especially compelled with her critique of the idea of “likeability.” We certainly expect powerful women to be likeable, but we don’t expect the same of men (think: 2016 election). Here’s a little excerpt, which I took from her Facebook page:

Please do not ever put this pressure on your daughter. We teach girls to be likeable, to be nice, to be false. And we do not teach boys the same. This is dangerous. Many sexual predators have capitalized on this. Many girls remain silent when abused because they want to be nice. Many girls spend too much time trying to be ‘nice’ to people who do them harm. Many girls think of the ‘feelings’ of those who are hurting them… We have a world full of women who are unable fully to exhale because they have for so long been conditioned to fold themselves into shapes to make themselves likeable.

Helping a child become a good person is such hard work. Adichie reminds us that consciousness-raising requires being conscious of all the little things. Now that the holidays are over, I'd like to add a 16^th suggestion. Can we get real about Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer? I think it might be time to stop celebrating Rudolf's story – or at least call out his sexist dad – don’t you think?

I recently listened to an interesting Atlantic Interview podcast featuring Adichie and Ta-Nehisi Coates. I downloaded it from Apple Podcasts, but the YouTube link gives you the audio. And here’s an article about her from The Guardian.

The Top 5 of 2017: #5

This choice might come as a surprise to those of you who know me well. Reading With Patrick: A Teacher, a Student, and a Life-Changing Friendship by Michelle Kuo is a nonfiction account of a very young teacher who does her service with Teach For America in the rural south. I think that the Teach for America organization is problematic in so many ways, most notably for its role in the privatization of the education system and the ongoing policy attack on experienced teachers. But. BUT. I have to say that I was riveted by this account of a young woman’s struggle with her own idealism and privilege in the face of injustice. I enjoyed thinking about the larger philosophical questions that sat just underneath the surface of her writing – What is the role of education if there’s not a larger “point?” What counts as "achievement?" What if you will never see growth gains? Good scores? Is the learning itself – and the relationship that inspires it – valuable on its own terms?

Idealism has been on my mind over the course of this past year. My belief that an ordinary person can have an impact in our society has been shaken, and I find that I am drawn to stories of people who have that faith. It seems as if that is what Kuo is wrestling with here, too.  It’s not as if this book doesn’t have problems, but for me, the problems were the things that generated my questions. And I need to keep asking questions, to keep caring about people and the society we create.

Reading With Patrick was part of my foray into audio books this year. I am in the car a lot, and I have found that I add a solid handful of books to my cosmic shelves this way.

Here’s a little interview with Kuo from the New York Times.

Review of Lit Up: One Reporter. Three Schools. Twenty-four Books That Can Change Lives by David Denby

We bookish types tend to do a lot of hand wringing about the future of reading. I have read two such pieces lately by David Denby – a New Yorker article titled, “Do Teens Read Seriously Anymore?” and his new book, Lit Up: One Reporter. Three Schools. 24 Books That Can Change Lives.  In both cases, his premise is that the kids are definitely not alright.

Their problem, Denby claims, is technology. Kids’ desire to be tethered to a device 24/7 has put a tragic dent in what he calls “serious reading.” He’s on a bit of a slippery slope, because he’s really talking about The Canon, with maybe several notable works by writers of color sprinkled in (e.g. Ellison). He contends that the Canon provides opportunities for serious reading, because those works provide complicated moral questions that young people should be considering. They’re “hard,” because life’s questions are hard. And they take determination and time and a willingness to focus for longer than it requires to “like” your best friend’s selfie.

In Lit Up, he looks at three schools, following some terrific high school English teachers as they teach “serious books.” He spends most of his time at a selective school in Manhattan, but adds on some briefer descriptions of teaching at an affluent suburban school and a urban school that serves low income students. His takeaway is that the kind of reading and thinking he worries about IS possible with deep commitment. His book is supposed to be a feel-good exploration, and he almost succeeds.

However, Denby has this way of coming off as an old man who screams, “Get off my lawn!” at neighborhood hooligans. He might be right that technology changes attention spans or that it changes how and where and when people read. But anchoring a discussion of reading in this way feels like a “remember the good old days” argument, the kind that never excites or motivates or persuades young people to listen.

I think there’s another (better) argument to be made. Denby’s focus is on good teachers, ones who meet kids where they’re at and pull them to more sophisticated places. The teachers he profiles use books to motivate and inspire and push and encourage. A more meaningful question might be why many kids don’t get this kind of opportunity. My guess is that it’s not a lack of special English teachers; rather, it’s a policy focus that stresses “proficiency” in “skills” rather than meaningful engagement with big ideas. In other words, who cares what kids read as long as they can perform well on a Common Core exam?

And if that’s the case, it might be more politically purposeful to stop barking about the pesky internet and start instead pushing for an educational shift. The kids might just join you in that!

Review of Ghettoside by Jill Leovy

There’s nothing like a book about murder to send 2015 out with a bang.

Los Angeles Times Journalist Jill Leovy chronicled every murder in that city over the course of a single year.  She wrote Ghettoside after noting that the media does not cover most of the deaths of young, African-American men and boys. And with that lack of attention comes the lack of resources to solve those crimes or to push them through the justice system.

In her book, Leovy focuses tightly on one particular crime – the seemingly random shooting of a detective’s son in a Los Angeles neighborhood with a particularly high murder rate. We get to know the victim and the victim’s family. We get to know the police division that serves this neighborhood and different detectives’ relationships with the community they serve. And specifically, Leovy introduces the lead detective on the case, and that detective is white. 

The case -- as Leovy reported it in the Los Angeles Times. The red dots represent other murders in the same area.

Ghettoside is a timely book, given our current grappling with relationships between the police and African-American communities across the country. This account is different than others, because it is not focusing on explicit police violence against citizens. We do, however, get to see how the police are still part of the story of “black on black violence,” the kind of violence that so rarely makes the news. Different police divisions do or do not receive priority funds to tackle these often difficult-to-solve cases. Different police officers do or do not come to know and care about the neighborhoods they serve. Different police officers do or do not believe that crimes against black men are as important as any other crimes.

Leovy comes to the conclusion that the problem that this neighborhood faces is that the American justice system does not really operate there. In the absence of a fair legal system, a different set of rules and a different logic of justice took root. The failure is not, she contends, a failure of individual morals or a consequence of poverty; rather, we as Americans have distributed justice, and the means to get there, unequally.

It is worthwhile to think about this book alongside two others that have addressed similar themes last year: Claudia Rankine’s Citizen and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me.  It would be interesting to discuss whether people think that it matters – or how it matters --  that the author is white or that the “hero” in the book is white. One thing that Leovy herself suggests is that race is never neutral.

I do think that Ghettoside is most devastating when Leovy simply lists murders. The names go on and on. The book could be reduced to a single essay with just those lists and make as much of an impact on me as this entire work of narrative nonfiction.

You can find a good interview with Leovy here.

Thoughts on The Prize and Between the World and Me, Together

I read two (deeply depressing) nonfiction books this week, and they ended up working together in an interesting way.  I was excited to read The Prize: Who’s In Charge of America’s Schools by Dale Russakoff, because it looked, on the surface, like the kind of book I’d assign in my classes. This journalistic account of the reform effort in Newark, NJ focuses in on the players and politics that were involved in Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million dollar gift to the Newark Public Schools and the changes that the gift inspired (hint about the outcome: the Newark schools still struggle).

Now that I’ve read the book, I won’t be assigning it in my classes – not because it’s not excellent (it is!), but because it is so profoundly dispiriting. Russakoff’s research reveals the flaws of a strategy that imposes outsiders’ ideas onto an unfamiliar context. It also reveals the flaws of a strategy that fails to meaningfully engage community members in considering the value (if there is any) of those ideas. 

The fact that corporate reform hasn’t been successful isn’t news, but Russakoff’s storytelling helps us understand why. Zuckerberg and his alliance of reformers truly believed that the linchpin of Newark’s problem was the teacher contract, and the bulk of his philanthropic project went to dismantling and rebuilding this element of the Newark school system. But Russakoff gets into the schools and walks alongside the “good teachers.”  She finds that the problems involved in teaching are much more complex than just evaluation and tenure. There are questions of how many teachers should be in a classroom. There are questions of social supports and psychological need and supplies and programs. The failure to direct money toward those issues crippled the reformers’ efforts to change the teaching landscape in the city.  

Russakoff also looks at the resistance of community members to reformers’ ideas. This resistance persisted even in the face of the schools’ repeated and ongoing failure to prepare kids for graduation. In some cases, the resistance existed for its own sake – ideas were rejected only because they came from an outsider.  Zuckerberg ultimately turned his attention to different projects – perhaps with greater wisdom, but away, decisively, from Newark.

With heavy heart, I picked up  Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me, which just won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. Coates begins this letter to his teenaged son by suggesting that there is no “hope” that can be pulled from his writing. His intent is not to give the reader hope; rather, it’s to expose the way that violence against African Americans is built into the very fabric of American values. He suggests that if your idea of justice involves working toward a more perfect set of democratic relationships between groups of people, you are ignoring the fact that the American foundational idea of democracy was built upon owning and exploiting African Americans’ bodies. It is impossible to work for justice through an ideal that incorporates that ownership and exploitation.

Truthfully, I need to read this book again. I think it will take me more than a single pass to fully absorb Coates’ ideas. But one thing that reading this book did for me was to give me a new way to look at The Prize. Russakoff is most interested in the political tangle in Newark. (Whose money? Whose turf? Whose ideas?) But what if we were to look at this school reform episode with Coates’ discussion of violence in mind? What if we were to insert the words “white and black” for “insiders and outsiders?”

The Newark school project aimed to “shake up” a failing system. The effects of that shake up – closing neighborhood schools, removing teachers, switching leaders – were all changes that were “done to” African American residents by external (and mostly white) hands. The reformers struggled to understand why community members would want to send their kids to schools that repeatedly failed them. Perhaps black community members experienced the “shake up” as just another act of violence against their children, another way to impose physical control. Would looking at school reform in Newark as an act of violence change what we can take away from the project?

It’s nearing the end of Nonfiction November, and one thing I’ve noticed about good nonfiction is that it opens me up to conversations I wouldn’t ordinarily have. Both of these books gave me the opportunity to think about my own assumptions about race and social change in new ways.

Review of Beyond Measure by Vicki Abeles

I want to start off by saying that I love it when ordinary citizens take action around a topic they care deeply about. I felt that immediately when I saw Vicki Abeles’ film, Race to Nowhere, as part of a school screening/conversation in 2011. Abeles’ wants us to challenge – and change --  the “achievement culture” that pushes children to aggressively build resumes on their path to a narrowly defined version of success.

Abeles has followed up that initial film with a second one – Beyond Measure – which I haven’t yet seen. I did, however, read the companion book with the same name.  Abeles, who lives in the Bay area, describes the constant scheduling of young children, the endless hours of homework, and the pressure for kids build a deep and broad, multidimensional resume to get into the very best colleges. This pressure, she writes, takes away from family time, diminishes the capacity for exploration, and leads to a whole host of stress-related problems. And she points to a hysterical competitive culture as the culprit – a treadmill of fear-driven expectations that stems in equal measure from institutions and parents and peers.

As much as I love Abeles’ activism, one thing about her work consistently bugs me: She collapses the experiences of low income kids and the experiences of middle/upper class kids into one “epidemic.” But the bulk of what Abeles is interested in concerns the choices that affluent families make – signing kids up for multiple elite sports teams and activities so that they can get into good colleges (regardless of how far into the future college lies); sending them to schools that foster that achievement culture and that assign multiple hours of homework nightly; hiring tutors to follow up after school activities with SAT preparation, and anxiously worrying so much about their kids’ performance that the family’s entire life revolves around it. And for that behavior, Abeles has some clear advice: STOP IT. And really, if you live in this type of community and in a family that has the means to live in this type of community, STOPPING IT is well within your power. Tell your kid she can only play one sport after school. Tell him to go to the park and hang out. Tell her to go to bed even if there’s more homework to do, because he’s ten years old, and who cares whether he gets a B in homework? Move to a different town that values different things. Find a different school. Change it if you want to, because you can. (Oh yeah, and those standardized tests? Opt out. ).

The school related pressures that face low income kids can be different, however, and Abeles isn’t interested in exploring this nuance.  In many schools in struggling neighborhoods, the pressure to demonstrate growth on state standardized tests is extreme. Remember that the ultimate “sanction” we level against schools that don’t demonstrate adequate yearly progress on standardized measures after five years is closure. As a result, many such schools relentlessly test prep all year long, which can lead to soulless, uncreative, thin educational experiences. There are fewer resources and time for art, music, drama, and recess as everyone is geared toward a standardized outcome.

  

On top of that, many parents in these communities don’t have the resources available to them to move, to take their kids out of school, and to navigate bureaucracy. And the stresses that many of these communities face are more profound than helping Johnny manage all of his activities so he can get into Harvard.  Kids and schools have to navigate violence, health care, housing, lack of food. These problems are the social issues we should all rally around. These are the ones that really need a film and a cry of urgency.

So, on the one hand, I’m on board with the idea of creating a larger conversation about achievement culture, health, and sanity. But we also have to get real about what constitutes an epidemic and what kinds of problems demand our outcry.

Review of The Boys In the Boat by Daniel James Brown

I finally got around to reading The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown. I completely understand why this book received so many rave reviews from critics and readers alike. Somehow, Brown managed to make a book about a somewhat obscure historical sporting event deeply compelling and accessible.  I never would have picked this book up without the buzz, so I’m very glad for all the press this one received. This is truly terrific narrative nonfiction – meticulously researched and richly described.

The story follows the University of Washington 1936 Varsity Crew team’s path to the Olympics. The role of the 1936 Olympics in obscuring Nazi activity is a subplot of this book, and it also makes it clear which team the reader is supposed to root for in the race (hint: America).

The main “character” Brown follows is Joe Rantz, a boy who grew up in rural Washington State with few resources. OK, that is an understatement. Rantz grew up in Depression-era rural Washington with an evil stepmother. He was eventually abandoned by his whole family and had to fend for himself. The reader follows Rantz as he tries to support himself as a kid on his own, as he gets himself into college, and as he finds his way to the crew team and then works to stay there. In this sense, The Boys in the Boat can be seen as a story of individual “grit.” How does this boy push himself up and over obstacles to succeed?

The other part of the story concerns the crew team and the coaches that built this winning team without much money or a legacy of support. The head coach found that his top athletes, who were so strong as individuals, didn’t always work together well. There was something in the relationship between the athletes that was important. In this sense, The Boys in the Boat can be seen as a story of the value of connection and trust and common endeavor.

These two themes – the triumph of the individual against-all-odds and the deep value of community -- are clichés in sports stories, so The Boys in the Boat isn’t really journeying into new territory here. But, if my book club conversation is any indication, both of these themes continue to matter. We talked about the parental role in developing “grit,” but we also saw that individual grit alone wasn’t enough to propel success for Rantz and his teammates. There had to be “public” support (mentorship; institutional commitment; the commitment to develop relationships, etc.).

That question – whether “success” is a result of individual characteristics and behaviors or a result of social conditions created by policy -- is an issue that policy makers continue to deliberate. When Paul Tough released How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character in 2012, critics suggested that the conversation about grit was deflecting from the fact that we are reducing our public funding of institutions that build strong communities and networks. An example of that can be found in public willingness to invest in character education programs in schools that serve low-income students while reducing funding for after-school programs, community centers, and family support.  The flip side can be seen in affluent communities, where there are all sorts of community supports but very little willingness to let children experience obstacles.

While The Boys in the Boat fits into this larger conversation, this is still a book about sports. My heart pounded during the sports scenes, even though I don’t really care about crew races, and I was pretty clear about who was going to win. It is being made into a movie, which will likely involve buff young actors, triumphant music, and a feel-good ending. When it makes it to the big screen, I will be in the audience, with popcorn.

You can find a good interview with Brown here. He helpfully points out that he is NOT the DaVinci Code Dan Brown.