Turning heads, one book at a time

Here comes Leisure Bum, shuffling slowly and deliberately into the far reaches of the Sidewalk Master Plan, in all his godless and jobless glory. He's going places, doing things. He's mobile.

But what's that he's carrying under his arm? (No, the other arm, the one that actually bends.) It looks like a book. A rather large book with a stiff, proud spine. Why is he carrying a book? Isn't he aware of the dangers of reading and walking at the same time? Shall we call him Thales?

But he's not reading it--he's just lugging it around. Maybe he's trying to impress people with it, or he intends to read it once he arrives at his destination, or it serves (because of its heft) as a tool for self-defense, or he intends to sell it for a mere fraction of its cover price to the entrepreneurs that sold it to him in the first place.

Here comes trouble...there's a rather vulnerable looking fitness enthusiast jogging straight toward Leisure Bum. That sidewalk is pretty narrow...she sees him now, all 6'2" 270 lbs of him--the flowing goatee, the worn jeans, the baggy sweatshirt (number 2 of a 3 sweatshirt rotation), the backwards cap. She's casually reaching for her pepper spray, but she pauses. What's going on? She sees the book under Leisure Bum's arm and seemingly forgets the pepper spray, flashing him a polite smile as he creates space for her to pass (not an easy task). Is it possible that Leisure Bum transitioned from menacing miscreant to harmless oaf just because he was carrying a book?

There goes Leisure Bum, book in hand, creeping into a densely populated area. He's heading straight for the tavern (hardly surprising). Oh, it's one of those taverns--aging, distinguished faculty with doctoral prototypes in tow, toasting one another on yet another successful grant awarded, or a book chapter completed, or a promotion to Associate Dean, or the fine skiing weather at the latest conference. Leisure Bum doesn't belong in there, does he?

They're creating a space for Leisure Bum! He's pulling up a chair, he's ordering drinks, he's answering questions. Cheers, Leisure Bum!

Wait a second...what's going on here? Ah, they see Leisure Bum's book. A rolling of eyes, impatient tapping of fingers on Merlot glasses, satiric nodding of heads as someone asks the (supposed) obligatory question (one that is not expected to be answered), "So, Leisure Bum, what are you reading?" Is it possible that Leisure Bum has re-transitioned from harmless to menace just because he was carrying a book?

Conversations resume--dogs and dinner dates, the exploits of grandchildren, petty departmental gossip. Hi-tech devices are fondled as attractive bodies glide by, just out of reach.

Where is Leisure Bum? He must have found the Exit. Yes, there he is, outside amidst the tattooed knuckles strumming the blues, hats upturned to capture the rare falling object. What's he doing? Can it be? Leisure Bum has opened the book, leaning slightly forward on a park bench, cradling. What could he possibly be smiling about?

Every form of refuge (has its price)

It may seem odd that I've chosen stay-at-home dads as the new blog post, since I am away from home (and children) for nearly three months. However, this brief seclusion has forced me to reflect on the previous calendar year as a full-time stay-at-home dad.

The popular way to examine the stay-at-home dad is to generate some good natured fun and laughs (at his expense, of course) as his daily routine clumsily unfolds within the confines of the "domestic prison." This fictional dad will bungle just about every household chore. This fictional dad seems destined (because of his "relaxing" of the bed-jumping rule) for yet another visit to the Emergency Room (where freshly increased co-pays apply). This fictional dad will seem to be on the verge of total psychosis before miraculously turning things around (cleaning messes, helping with homework, food preparation, repairing/hiding minor breakages) just before Professional Mom strides confidently through the door. This fictional dad is, indeed, fictional. Sort of.

There are over 150,000 stay-at-home dads currently struggling in the U.S. I am a full-fledged member of this group, evidenced by my first contribution of a "goose egg" to this year's Maynard family IRS tax return. My writing projects grind to a halt (along with my USCF Chess Rating progress) and I experience a soul crushing depression at least weekly. Loneliness seems to be a major contributing factor to my woes, but how could this be when I'm constantly surrounded with lively, talkative, and loving children?

Simone de Beauvoir's description of women in the home in The Second Sex--ennui, lassitude, isolation--is much more meaningful to me these days than when I studied existentialism in grad school. One feels cut off from the world as a stay-at-home dad, even when he avoids staying at home, and instead, takes the kids out into the community. With small children, just getting out the door is a major accomplishment and consumes lots of energy (and patience). The car ride is chaotic democracy in action with its arguments regarding, 1) What music, if any, we listen to, 2) Where (and when) we will eat, 3) Whether we will go to the library, the children's museum, or the park (or some combination of these), 4) Whether we will circle back to the apartment to retrieve the scooters dad forgot to load, 5) Frustration with Parker's tendency to change his vote multiple times for each of these issues (he's 3 years old--give him a break, right?).

A wife exists somewhere in all of this madness. A wife that is the consummate professional in her field--intelligent, competent, confident, informed--and she really likes to talk about her job. So after an eventful day with the kids, we (my wife and I) will discuss all of the interesting and important decisions/experiences she made/had. And she's tired.

You can see where this is going. Poor stay-at-home dad. Does anyone care about his day? He's tired also.

But there's no time for self-pity because it's off to tae kwon do practice, then dinner, then homework, then baths (plural--for some reason all three now want their own private baths), then bedtime reading, then fight with Noah about watching wrestling because "Mysterio has an important grudge match," then a midnight run to the grocery for the breakfast items we will need in the morning, then, then, then... Does stay-at-home dad realize that the "fuel low" light is on? (both literally and figuratively)

Stay-at-home dad is also a bookish, artsy, writer-type with entirely too many interests, entirely too little success, and few friends.

So...send this stay-at-home dad packing. Give him his freedom and space. Give him time for reading, writing, reflection and the occasional pint (or three) of a strongly hopped British-style ale as he re-connects with old friends. Give him the opportunity to wander into the cinema at his leisure. Allow stay-at-home dad to gorge on Five Guys Burgers and Fries and then play some casual chess games with fellow leisure bum-types as his food digests.

Dad (formerly known as stay-at-home dad) has now ventured boldly into the commons. He is no longer confined to his private enclosure. He is striking up conversations. He is crawling through the bottom shelves of an independent bookstore (which is awkward given his massive body size).

You can see where this is going.

Dad (formerly known as stay-at-home dad) finds the quiet and solitude of his new dive unsettling. His heater is not working, and he throws on the sweatshirt/pants and cocoons into his one blanket, alone. Dad begins showing everyone he meets pictures of his kids and wife stored on his cell phone. Dad is genuinely concerned about staffing issues at Professional Wife's hospital. Dad misses the chaos and noise (and fellow stay-at-home dads) of the tae kwon do lobby. Dad misses bath time.

Dad (formerly known as stay-at-home dad) is staring at the blinking cursor of MS Word. He is listening to the Eagles Greatest Hits. He hears Glenn Frey lament that "every form of refuge has its price" and nods in silent agreement.

Mutually Assured Rejection

Most Americans believe school teachers deserve substantial salary increases. Most Americans believe that success in school translates to success in life. Most Americans believe that schools should be drug-free, alcohol-free, tobacco-free, firearm-free, bully-free, asbestos-free, pedophile-free zones for learning. Most Americans (especially heavy-hitting intellectual divas like Whitney Houston) believe that children are our future.

But are most Americans willing to ask themselves the difficult (but deceptively simple) questions regarding education and public schools? A typical exchange with my fellow parents on a park bench, or in the tae kwon do lobby, or in the kids' section of the library, usually goes something like this:

(informed parent) "So, I hear you guys have excellent schools in northwest city."

(Stephen) "I'm not sure. What constitutes an excellent school, in your opinion?"

(informed parent) blank stare

(Stephen) "Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself. What I meant to ask was what are schools for?"

(informed parent) flees in minivan to the closest Chick-fil-a

(Stephen) surreptitiously sniffs armpit

Although we may evade many of these fundamental questions, schooling and education continue to command headlines in the media and hot topics abound: the No Child Left Behind Act, the new Washington DC school czar, various book banning initiatives, school vouchers, privatization, Darwin (sigh--45% of Americans continue to believe in creationism), billions of dollars dedicated to schools/education in the Obama stimulus plan. To put ourselves in a position to weigh in on these important issues (and many others), we can begin by simply reflecting on our own (very distant) school experiences.

The late social critic (and former elementary school teacher) Neil Postman stated:

At its best, schooling can be about how to make a life, which is quite different from how to make a living. With such a purpose, schooling becomes the central institution through which the young may find reasons for continuing to educate themselves.

My experience in public school was a disheartening one (I failed to learn how to make a life or a living). High school was particularly bad since the 1000+ students were "detained" in an architectural nightmare resembling Bentham's Panopticon. Let's see what's going on inside, shall we?

My 10th grade English teacher/automaton stomps methodically through Edith Hamilton's Mythology, pausing occasionally to coldly dismantle an unorthodox notebook. Another teacher accuses me of plagiarizing a research paper on replacement players during an NFL strike (because it reads so well). An assistant principal measures the flesh between the top of my kneecap and the edge of my shorts with a wooden ruler and sends me immediately to ISS. I watch three solid hours of Iraq war coverage on CNN in drafting class. I am banished from the library for quietly discussing a novel with a friend. I haul my entire John Bonham-replica drum kit into speech class for a disruptive "how to" speech. I listen to a history teacher complain about his hemorrhoids and wonder if he's referring to me and my classmates. I watch a sophomore nearly choke to death on a piece of celery.

It was clear to me that the great majority of my teachers were less than enthusiastic about coming to work, and I certainly did not want to be there (I've created a name for this phenomenon--mutually assured rejection). I was not invited to register for any advanced coursework, and the only reason I took the SAT (which I knew absolutely nothing about) was because of the baseball recruitment letters I was receiving from various colleges and universities. I remember the bewilderment of my elderly guidance counselor when she saw my SAT score ("You can actually go to college with this score!")

The one highlight for me was reading Mary Shelly's Frankenstein because it made me feel less lonely (monster secretly watches "normals" going about their lives, wishing he could be a part of it). In this same class, my teacher allowed me to choose a novel (I turned to Dickens) and be as creative with the "book report" as I dared. I constructed a newspaper with various "columns" and quirky headlines discussing the characters' plights, and it was well received.

Despite the mostly disappointing experience of public schooling, I developed an almost immediate passion for educating myself by building a broader and more sophisticated reading list (or self-willed literacy, as Fred Kaplan calls it) once I hit the university campus. This new found joy for learning was probably due to 1) escaping my home life, and 2) escaping my school life.

These days I'm observing my own kids' schooling with mixed feelings. The textbooks are DOA, many of the teachers seem frustrated and burdened (and sometimes outright hostile), administrators are increasingly playing politics with school boards, PTA's are consumed with fundraising and jockeying for highly prized leadership positions, educational researchers are testing theories that often seem out of touch with reality, and the students are slowly losing their joy and enthusiasm for learning, worrying over report cards, end-of-year testing, and the impending bully confrontation.

So...back to the uncomfortable questions we began with. What constitutes an excellent school? What are schools for? A brief blog posting will not suffice, and I'm not sure that I really know anyway (perhaps I'm the one that fled to Chick-fil-a). Perhaps all we can ask for is a safe place for our children to be engaged by an enthusiastic (and caring) faculty/staff that is committed to the notion of learning for its own sake (maybe throw in an experiential component) and, as Postman suggests, "the cultivation of a skeptical outlook based on reason." Some people call this critical thinking.

What I find most depressing is that many college and university students now resemble the lifeless masses I described in my previous recollections. Most view education merely as a credentialing process, an anti-intellectual gateway to the American middle class. In this scenario (described with chilling accuracy in the PBS documentary Declining By Degrees) students are not seeking education as a life changing experience (which implies growth). Instead, they are treading water. Meanwhile, the university machine becomes increasingly more business-like (as does the faculty reward structure) with external funding, student credit hours, and customer satisfaction surveys taking precedent over scholarship, mentorship, and curriculum issues.

I suppose if all else fails, my kids and I will cozy-up in some remote nook of the public library, deep in the stacks, reading and whispering until closing time.

Going with the gut, or pretending to review an Oscar nominated film when all you really want to do is talk politics.

What is amazing about the film Doubt is...

OK This is not really a review of the (excellent) film mentioned above. However, the writing that follows was at least inspired by it.

Basically, a nun spends her every waking hour building a case against a priest for alleged inappropriate behavior with a child in a Catholic school. However, the tools she uses to confirm her suspicions are purely speculative with hardly a scrap of evidence. That is, she uses her suspicions to confirm her suspicions. But this nun exhibits a certain smugness about the whole affair, and expects others to take her word for it as she demands (with sincere conviction) the priest's removal. Was the nun's intuitive judgment correct?

The film (as good films tend to do) refuses to wrap it up nice and neat for us moviegoers, so we'll never really know what the priest was up to, but the film does raise some interesting (and timely) questions for us as citizens.

When elected officials ask us to concur with their proposals, they (the elected officials) assume the burden of demonstrating why we should agree and cooperate, without resorting to classic parental dogmatism (e.g. because I said so). Unfortunately, we've been the (not so proud) recipients of just this sort of dogmatism, from the 2003 request of President Bush to invade Iraq (to avoid an impending military catastrophe) to President Obama's current request to spend tremendous sums of public money (to avoid an impending economic catastrophe).

In both instances speedy and efficient action are not only emphasized, but demanded, while deliberation and debate, the essential tools of any democracy, languish on the sidelines. This suggests that democratic processes, an inefficient and messy business, must be temporarily discontinued when "serious" decisions need to be made. "Trust me on this one" is the bi-partisan mantra, but should we settle for a democracy of convenience?

Ralph Nader once said:

One of the strengths of a democracy is that it trusts its citizens to make intelligent choices about how they should live and be governed. But knowledge is necessary in order to make such intelligent choices and openness in government helps to achieve that end. Information is the currency of democracy.

What we should be asking for (as well as those in Congress) is the necessary information required to make an honest and informed evaluation--criteria, evidence, judgment--of crises as they present themselves. We should refuse to be shut out of this process, especially in times of severe crisis, for these are the decisions that will impact our lives the most (both in the short and long term). After all, democracy, in its classic sense, is comprised of citizens dedicated to managing their own affairs.

Currently, President Obama, as well as key members of his administration, have implored Americans to support his plan for economic recovery. What I expect from President Obama (a President that I voted for) are detailed arguments--premises and conclusions--explaining how, exactly, his proposal will work, as well as the probabilities of success or failure. What I expect, as every citizen should, is a seat at the table of democracy, a place where we can (as President Obama phrased it) "come together."

Postmortem: What chess tournaments can teach us about democracy

The great chess tactician, Mikhail Tal, once said:

When one of us first plays chess, he is like a man who has already caught a dose of microbes. Such a man walks along the street, and he does not yet know that he is ill. He is healthy, he feels fine, but the microbes are doing their work.

I contracted my "dose of microbes" during graduate school and immediately set out to conquer the game of chess. I approached it just as I did my studies--establish a command of elementary fundamentals, study the relevant historical literature, utilize a professional mentor, prepare to make my own unique contributions. Nearly four years have passed and I realize that the struggle to make even minimal progress is just beginning.

So, I've been thrashed in over the board chess competition dozens of times (not to mention my thousands of losses on the Internet Chess Club--to date I have played 15, 932 blitz games!) in cities all over the map: Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta. What I've learned in my chess travels (besides the fact that competitive chess players are eccentric and often ignore basic hygiene) is that chess tournaments stand as exemplars of democracy and creative collaboration. Let me explain.

Chess tournaments enforce rigid rules structures (established by the United States Chess Federation or USCF) regarding competitive play during "rated games." There is virtually no conversation allowed during the game, complex timing devices (digital chess clocks) are used according to strict protocol (e.g. players must touch the clock with the same hand they use to move the chess piece), and both players record the game in algebraic notation on an official score sheet. This certainly does not sound very democratic, but the civic engagement magic actually occurs after the game is over. Hence, the term "postmortem" (in this instance it literally means examining a deceased chess game).

Players will retire to the "skittles room" (usually a large room with many tables and lots of chatter) to roll out their boards and re-create the game just played with the intention of analyzing the moves, sharing their thoughts on strategic and tactical considerations made during the game, and, most importantly, exploring alternative moves (or plans--a series of purposive moves intended) that were not actually made during the game. The primary objective of this exercise is to see where the players went wrong, and to determine if a different outcome may have been achievable. This activity usually begins with just the two chess players, but as they begin their analysis multiple players (usually strangers) will drift over to the table (uninvited) and begin to make contributions to the conversation. Before you know it, a small community has formed, fueled by meaningful conversation, as they try and solve problems of common interest. Some have high ratings and substantial chess experience, while others have low ratings and little experience. A sixty year old Russian male may listen respectfully to the analysis of a teenage, African American female. All proposals are considered, although some suggestions are politely, but firmly refuted utilizing reasoning and logic. As the activity concludes, players drift away from the table as quietly as they arrived, some seeking other postmortems. But sometimes, friendships are forged, e-mails exchanged, obscure chess books recommended, lunches (with beer) between rounds consumed.

The beauty of chess is its blending of art with science--intuitive evaluation of a position based upon experience or aesthetics balanced (sometimes precariously) against the cold logic and memorization of established chess theory. Creative collaboration (as well as competitive excellence) depends upon both. It is just this sort of activity--open, honest, creative, critical, productive, enjoyable--that may find meaning and application in the expression of citizenship, as we attempt to solve social problems with our fellow citizens. And if we're lucky, we may just make a friend or two.