So first of all, I didn't really realize until yesterday that when I get nervous, my voice gets very waver-y and very, very quiet. He had us go around the table and introduce ourselves, and asked a lot of questions (he was incredibly friendly) about our families and our undergrad experiences, etc. Turns out his neighbor growing up went to my undergrad, he knows the head of our poli sci department, and is generally a big fan of the Wildcats. I'm really surprised our conversation even got to this point, though, because my introduction basically consisted of the following: "My name's um....Kathryn...and um....Texas." Imagine this at the volume of a small mouse. I'm usually a pretty competent public speaker but this was one of my heroes. And he was smiling. It was too much.
The rest of the class was amazing. He told us some great stories, and it turns out he does pretty fabulous impressions of Bill Clinton, James Carville and Barack Obama. And he still calls Clinton "Mr. President". Just like on West Wing. *Tear*.
So now on to the actual content of the class. Mostly we talked about the concept of "rational ignorance". The basic idea is that most people stay uninformed about politics and political strategy because they don't see how it affects their day-to-day lives. This made me think of my grandmother in Israel. When asked what she thought about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, her response was, "Well, I do wish they would be better about taking care of their trash bins". This is, first of all, my grandmother in a nutshell. In the middle of an incredibly racially divided Zimbabwe (Rhodesia at the time), she was the only white woman in her college class and was elected student body president. She cares about people as people, and their political affiliations or societal stature mean little to nothing. I wish I had inherited more of those genes.
But in relation to my class, this is also a prime example of rational ignorance. The broader political implications of the peace (ha) process are meaningless in her daily life. What matters is their trash habits. In the same way, all those polls that say that "only x% of Americans can name a Supreme Court justice!" or "most Americans don't know when the election is!" mostly show that politicos have done a really bad job convincing people that these facts have any impact on their daily life, not that anyone is stupid. Begala's contention was that people on the left are particularly prone to this kind of arrogance. If you hold an argument for long enough with a liberal, the argument will eventually break down to, "The American people are too stupid to know what to do on their own and they should just leave it to me. If you disagree, you are clearly stupid, too." I may or may not have been guilty of this sentiment. Of course, this is not to say the right is without its own problems. His claim was that an argument with conservatives will eventually break down to, "Everyone who tries to give power to the government is anti-American and elitist. If you disagree, you are clearly a bad Christian/bad patriot." Either way, not a very productive conversation.
All of this made me think of the discussion happening in ed policy circles. I'm sure this could be applied to pretty much any area (seems like a pretty fundamental divide) but of course, for me, ed policy seems the clearest example. On one side, we have arrogant anti-union folks. Unions are clearly the cause of every problem (they cause cheating, they prevent accountability, they demand unreasonable salaries) and if you disagree you are caught in the past and don't know how this new generation of teachers is going to work. On the other side, we have sanctimonious pro-union folks. Unions are the only thing holding our schools together (TFA teachers are incompetent, school "reformers" hate teachers and want to take away their benefits, teachers are paid peanuts) and if you disagree you are a terrible person who doesn't care about children or teachers. This leaves very little room for collaboration or even just a reasonable conversation. Just recently, Matt Damon's mother turned down an award from the NEA (not my favourite organization) just because their president had written an article with (yup, written an article. Not started a new organization with, not gotten married to, not became blood brothers with) Wendy Kopp, the founder of TFA. All the original article said was that we should make sure we're holding teacher prep programs accountable - it didn't even really go into how we should do that, or what specific standards should be. If we can't even agree on that basic point (maybe we should make sure we're preparing our teachers well? No?) then where the hell are we?
Like I said, I'm sure ed policy is not the only arena in which this kind of fundamental disagreement is happening. I guess it just stands out more because the accusations always come down to caring/not caring about "the children". Those children to whom we're supposed to be teaching the value of empathy and cooperation and seeing the world in shades of grey, right? Right.
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