A tale out of school

We were doing brainstorming in class today. The word of the day was "green". Instead of letting them do something else after the first layer of brainstorming, I tried to get them to go deeper. We talked about what was green, how those green things made them feel, what they did, etc, etc. Once we'd gotten a few raving responses and a few disgusted ones about various green foods (broccoli and brussels sprouts topped the list of disgusting ones) I told them to take a food we'd talked about that they either loved or hated. They were to write about how they ate it, what they felt when they ate it, what they imagined as they ate it. I told them it didn't have to be nice, it just had to mean something.

While they were doing that, I did it myself, because modelling is a powerful thing. I chose grapes. Here's what I wrote, brainstorming on the white board in green marker:

grapes
peel them with my teeth
pop cool eyeball into my mouth
tough, bitter skin gives way to soft, yielding fle

Then I stopped, realized what I'd been in the process of writing, and burst into gales of laughter.

My kids were rather miffed that I wouldn't explain the joke.

PoAC: Where Libertarians Go Wrong

I had a (thankfully brief) discussion with a libertarian yesterday in another journal. It got me thinking.

As far as I can figure out, libertarians believe that people should take responsibility for their own lives and their own choices. All people have the opportunity to make choices, good or bad, that will affect their lives, and those who make good choices will be rewarded in the long run with good results. Those who make bad or indifferent choices will be similarly rewarded with bad or indifferent results. They believe that the government should not be in the business of helping people to make bad choices by keeping the nasty consequences at bay; these consequences are the natural result of their choices and are to be learned from. Government should be as small as possible, because big government is usually engaged in supporting in some way those who refuse to support themselves or who have made bad choices resulting in their own lack of support. Intelligence and industry should be enough to see that anyone who wants to succeed, can - but if they don't, it's a result of a lack of one or the other and that should not be encouraged.

I believe in the concept of self-determination. I couldn't be a teacher if I didn't. I believe that people have the chance throughout their lives to make choices that will positively or negatively affect their state of being, and that people should strive to make choices with the future in mind. I also believe in living up to one's responsibilities. Most of the ills in society can be traced back to someone who didn't fulfill their responsibilities. Life would be better for everyone if more people attempted to meet their responsibilities.

Now, the libertarian yesterday made some comparisons about possible good and bad choices that could affect someone's long-term stability. One could spend thousands every year flying to furry conventions all over the place, or one could save and invest that money. One could spend one's time jerking off to furry porn, or one could be industrious, get a good job, work hard at it, and earn more in the process. There were one or two other examples, but one thing struck me about all of them: they had an assumption of middle-class about them. They all assumed that basic bodily needs of food, shelter, and clothing were met. They assumed a minimum level of education required to get that better job, or access to the improved education necessary. They assumed health, or at least access to enough health care to function well on a regular basis.

For me, the assumptions were valid, though the examples used were a bit off-target. I am decidedly middle-class, and always have been. There have been only a few times in my life when my parents weren't sure where the next meal was coming from; I've never lived more than a few weeks like that as an adult. I have a university education which, while expensive, was clearly not out of my reach financially or otherwise. I am in basic good health, with access to the medical care I require. It makes perfect sense that I should be reaping what I sow. I am. I have a good life.

But what about if the assumptions were not valid?

I have students in my class who regularly find themselves struggling for basic needs. I have a student who is effectively the mother to her two younger siblings. She makes their school lunches, ensures that the lunches get into their bags, checks their homework, makes at least some of the dinners in the evening. She often misses breakfast herself while seeing to the little ones. Where is Mom? In bed, mostly. This little girl - she's turning nine next week - comes close to falling asleep in class several times a week. She's undernourished, and she's behind in reading and math. The libertarian model has this child starving on the streets because of her mother's bad choices and lack of responsibility. It has her homeless and uneducated. In short, it has her repeating the cycle begun by her mother, because she doesn't know any better. In seven years, she'll get the chance to decide if she wants to remain in school or not; effectively, she could make that decision earlier than that simply by not showing up. Higher education? Where would the money come from? Who would look after the younger siblings while she got it? Will she have enough basic education to allow her to get into a college program, if we can't help her read better?

Her choices are limited, not by her own previous bad choices, but by her mother's bad choices. She herself is taking on more than any child should be expected to do. She has more responsibility than many people twice or three times her age. Yet she is the one who will suffer here.

Let's take an even more telling example. My first year teaching, I had a student named Matt. He was a really nice kid, in a boisterous, speak-his-mind kind of way. He was popular, and he was smart. He was also seriously learning disabled. He couldn't spell any word longer than three letters; he got some of those wrong. Spell-checkers were no use to him because he couldn't recognize the right word if it was in the list, and if he got the first few letters wrong the right word wouldn't even be there. I remember his face when I gave him an A for his performance in the class debate. I had placed him in a group full of strong students who did the research and discussed their findings, helping Matt to refine his arguments and writing things down for him so that the whole group could understand. Matt never once looked at his notes; they wouldn't have done him any good. He spoke from his memory and from what he believed, and it rocked the entire class.

Matt was convinced that he was stupid. Nothing I could say or do would convince him otherwise. He couldn't read, therefore he was stupid. He figured he'd probably end up living on the reserve (he was Native) for the rest of his life, unable to work because who would hire a stupid guy like him?

Where is Matt supposed to start making good choices? Higher education is, if not beyond his reach, certainly at the very limit of it. It's not easy getting the kind of accommodations he'd need at college or university, especially considering the amount of work it would take to get him there. Even a basic grade-eight reading level was probably outside of his grasp, because of a condition he was born with. Employment will always be a difficult thing for him. Valuing himself enough to make good choices was a problem when he was twelve; how much moreso when he's now eighteen?

It's all well and good to say he should pull up his socks and work to better himself. He's got a lot further to go than your average middle-class kid to get there. No one's choices are really to blame for this; just biology.

The reason I could never be a libertarian is because I believe it is in society's best interests to help people make the best choices they can - the choices that will be best, not only for them, but for their families and for society as well. I am prepared to subsidize housing for the poor if it means the parents work one job instead of two or three. I am prepared to subsidize higher education (though I'd like to look at how that's done) if it means kids who have no money can still get the best education their intelligence will allow for. I am prepared to permit a government program to provide a year-long maternity leave to working moms, so that they can breastfeed and spend time bonding with their children and recover fully from childbirth, without undue financial hardship. I am prepared to provide cheap daycare in the hope that more children will be school-ready when they get to kindergarten. All of these are things that a libertarian would say people should provide for themselves and their children, or that perhaps should be subsidized by charitable organizations rather than the public.

I am not prepared to let children slip through mile-wide cracks caused by their parents' bad choices. I am not prepared to punish the children for the sins of their parents. I'm not prepared to let people die for want of simple medicines that are widely available, but too expensive.

And, most important to yesterday's discussion, I'm not prepared to let people die in contaminated floodwaters because they didn't have the foresight to own a car.