Thou shalt not steal (from public education)...for now anyway

I look back with fondness on 2018, for lots of reasons. One of the biggest was the unexpected (by me anyway) wave of unrest by teachers and school service workers tired of being insulted and jerked around that resulted in a successful work stoppage that in turn set off a national--and mostly successful--wave of school strikes.

And they've paid for it ever since. The following year, the legislature rammed through laws enabling charter schools, a step mostly supported by enemies of public education and those out for payback, a Venn diagram with significant overlap. In 2021, it passed a so-called "paycheck protection" act, which was more like a paycheck reduction act, that prohibited the withholding of dues from public employee paychecks. In 2022, they shot the moon with a truly horrible False Hope Scholarship Act, that would basically allow parents to take thousands of dollars from public education funding to do whatever they want.

(It was so bad that I even heard Senator Joe Manchin talk about how crazy it was to pay people to take kids out of school at a recent event in McDowell County.)

The case went to court and fortunately today Judge Joanna Tabit overturned the law. The judge was quoted in WV MetroNews as saying 

“The Hope Scholarship Program in my view undermines the free education system by requiring the Department of Education to take funds appropriated by the Legislature and transferring them to the Hope Scholarship Fund, which is then tasked for dispersing funds for private education.

“And in my view, the Legislature has violated its constitutional level obligations regarding public education and funding by enacting House Bill 2013 for the Hope scholarship fund.”

Supporters of the bill plan to appeal the decision, including the state's attorney general, whose greatest recent achievement is blocking federal action on climate change. Nuff said on that.

Still, it's a win for public education today and I'm going to savor it for as long as it lasts. Good court decisions are rare these days.

 

I knew things were bad but...

It takes a lot to surprise me when it comes to bad statistics about West Virginia, but I didn't see this coming: according  to the WV Department of Education, 10,522 public school students in the state are homeless. 

Recall that West Virginia is a small state population-wise and getting smaller every day. This means that 4 percent of students are living in a vehicle, on a relative or friend's couch or in a shelter. That would average out to one student in every class of 25 kids.

The counties with the highest numbers include:

* Jefferson County — 1,411 students, or 16 percent of students
* Kanawha County — 652 students, or 3 percent of students
* Clay County — 633 students, or 34 percent of students
* Mercer County — 588 students, or 7 percent of students
* Cabell County — 455 students, or 4 percent of students

According to officials, some of this may be due to the lingering effects of the 2016 floods, but opioids are probably a leading cause.

Needless to say, none of this came up in all the time wasted by the legislature in pushing for privatization, charter schools and education savings accounts.

This is another example of how public schools are expected to deal with problems they didn't create, even while some legislators undermine them.

Unforced error or deliberate double cross?

The most infuriating thing about the 2019 special session of the WV legislature, which rammed through charter schools and other unwanted education policies, was that it only happened due to the random antics of WV Governor Jim Justice.

On several occasions over the last year, Justice voiced his opposition to charter schools and other nasty aspects of the ominous omnibus bills that were proposed. All he had to do to keep those things from happening was, literally,  nothing.

Had he done literally nothing, the proposals that were defeated in the regular session would go back to wherever bad ideas live until the 2020 regular session. Then there would be time for bills to work their way through the normal legislative process, with plenty of time for committee meetings, debate and amendments.  During an election year.

But noooooo.

Instead, he called for a special session on "education betterment." This allowed foes of public education to short circuit the process and ram bad ideas through. It's a terrible way to make public policy and a betray of the best principles of old-school conservatism, which are all about cautious approaches to change.

Anyone could have seen that coming.

It didn't have to be that way.

The next best thing to do is organize and educate to make sure that the people who made this happen own it. All of it.

Mine Workers pledge solidarity with teachers, school workers

In case you missed it, below is a statement from United Mine Workers president Cecil Roberts about the WV senate majority's attack on teachers and school support workers (I italilcized my favorite part):

“Once again, the Republican leadership in the West Virginia State Senate have demonstrated that they are mere tools of the radical out-of-state billionaires who pull their puppet strings. No one who actually cares about West Virginia schools, children and families would ever propose such meaningless nonsense, let alone codify it in legislation.

“Teachers and school support personnel already do not have the right to strike in West Virginia, but they ignored that and demonstrated the power of solidarity in each of the last two years. Their fight for better education for our kids remains an inspiration to education professionals across the nation, and the UMWA was proud to stand with them.

“From the Baldwin-Felts thugs at Paint Creek and Cabin Creek to Sherriff Chafin at Blair Mountain to Don Blankenship at Massey Energy, the UMWA has a long history of standing up to union-busting bullies in West Virginia. Mitch Carmicheal and his minions in the Senate are no different, and we will never back down to their kind.

“Let me make this very clear: If our state’s education workers believe they need to take to the streets once again, we will be there with them. And if someone comes to arrest them, they will have to go through us first.”​

Another attack on public education

The West Virginia Chamber of Commerce does a great job of representing the economic interests of its members. It can kill bills with a frown and win without even showing up. That’s been true with both Democratic and Republican majorities.

Of course, this is probably easier to do when one represents the power of organized money. However, those interests aren’t necessarily the same as those of ordinary West Virginians, especially working people, kids, families and those just trying to get by.

For example, the Chamber supported the repeal of a prevailing wage policy for building trade workers on state construction jobs, claiming it would save taxpayers money.

It didn’t.

In fact, a new report suggests that repealing prevailing wage lowered wages for local workers, reduced the number of apprenticeships that open the way to middle-class careers and gave more contracts to out-of- state contractors. On-the-job injuries have gone up by 26 percent since the repeal.

Since 2007, the Chamber supported major business tax cuts on the grounds they’d help create jobs. All told, various state tax cuts and credits favoring business groups or the wealthiest West Virginians have reduced state revenues by $478 million per year. That’s more than enough to lift all West Virginia families above the poverty line. Or to provide free in-state tuition to our colleges and universities. Or fix PEIA. Or deal with students’ mental health issues. Or whatever.

Here’s the kicker: we have fewer jobs now than we did in 2007. And West Virginians are earning less in constant dollars. But some folks did pretty well.

For reasons like that, I suspect the interests of the Chamber might not be identical with those of the 270,000 or so students in the state’s public schools.

The Chamber recently released its report on education reform in West Virginia, which not surprisingly highlights the shortcomings of the school system, supports charter schools (which can function as basically unaccountable private schools paid for with public money) and education savings accounts.

It’s a good strategy. Undermining support for and the legitimacy of public institutions has opened doors more than once to profiting at public expense and eventual privatization.

The report is mostly about money and standardized tests. The intent seems to be to demonstrate that schools are failing despite generous funding.

One thing the report doesn’t do is analyze is the effect of poverty and inequality on educational performance, despite the fact that one in four West Virginia children live in poverty and that we all live in a time of runaway inequality.

(If I was them, I’d probably try to avoid that subject too; it helps avoid certain unpleasant conversations and conclusions.)

The word poverty occurs as a blip four times in the report with no in-depth discussion.

But, as Helen Ladd demonstrated in an article on the connection between poverty and education in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, “Study after study has demonstrated that children from disadvantaged households perform less well in school on average than those from more advantaged households.”

We don’t have to look far to see how poverty can impact standardized measures of educational success. Sean O’Leary of the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy recently pointed out the contrasts between George Washington and Riverside high schools in Kanawha County.

GW’s math, reading and science proficiency rates “are 30, 23, and 36 percentage points higher respectively, than Riverside High School’s scores. So what is the difference between the two schools? Only 20 percent of George Washington’s students are eligible for free/reduced lunches, compared to nearly 40 percent for Riverside. Riverside has nearly twice as many low-income students as George Washington. Two schools in the same district with the same policies, and same funding source, with vastly different educational outcomes.

Given all that, how do you expect students in the fourth poorest state in the nation to compare with more affluent states?

Much of the discussion in the Chamber report revolves around numbers from the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP), which is mentioned 24 times. NAEP data is sometimes referred to as “the nation’s report card.” But, as the Urban Institute argues, “comparing NAEP scores assumes that states serve the same students — and we know they don’t.”

The Urban Institute argues that a more accurate way to talk about NAEP performance is to “use adjusted NAEP scores that account for demographic differences across students in each state.” These adjusted scores allow for students to be compared with those in similar circumstances.

(A full list of those factors includes gender, race and ethnicity, eligibility for free or reduced lunch, English proficiency, special education, age, whether the student was given an accommodation on the NAEP exam, whether the student has various amenities in the home — computer, internet, own room, dishwasher and clothes dryer — the number of books in the home, the language spoken in the home, and the family structure.)

If you adjust for these factors that impact learning and compare our students with others in similar conditions, for example, West Virginia’s fourth-grade math scores rise from 37th to 11th.

Maybe something else is broken ...

There are powerful forces at work in West Virginia to hold public schools responsible for problems they didn’t create. But maybe, it might be more productive to address the real issues that are holding back West Virginia’s kids and communities — even if some people would rather avoid the issue.

A long time ago, Henry David Thoreau observed that “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”

Maybe it’s time to change that.

(This ran as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

WV teachers and school workers brace for round three

West Virginia teachers and schools support workers have won two major victories over the last year or so.The successful 2018 strike help set off a wave of similar rebellions around the country, and the dominoes are still falling.

This weekend I had the pleasure of attending a presentation by Eric Blanc, author of the new book Red State Revolt: The Teachers' Strikes and Working-class Politics. Blanc was in West Virginia at the time of the 2018 strike and has followed the wave around the country. It was nice to hear how great the reputation of WV school workers is around the country.

I'm starting to get anxious about round three, which will be the special session of the legislature that could begin on May 22. This Metro News article highlights some of the issues. It's not clear how much of SB 451, the bad old "ominous omnibus" bill will be brought back. During many hearings around the state, stakeholders called for more mental health services, small class sizes and such.

Aside from outside astroturf groups, there has been no groundswell in support of privatization.

Still, I think a lot will depend on how teachers, school service workers and their allies stay engaged on this one. As the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass said, "Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.”

Making federal education policy a joke

The antics of the US Secretary of Education would be funny if they were a Saturday Night Live skit.

Oh wait...that already happened...let me rephrase that. It would be great if they were JUST a Saturday Night Live skit.

Alas, it's not a joke. Even in an administration as whack as this one, I still can't get over someone in that position who was never a student in any public education institution and who wants to defund the Special Olympics, have bigger class sizes and fewer teachers, and who is devoted to the idea of paying for private schools public money.

I keep hoping for a "Just kidding!" announcement but I don't think one is forthcoming.

What just happened with the 2019 WV education strike, anyway?

West Virginia teachers and school service workers just won another historic victory with their two-day walkout to kill Senate Bill 451, the "ominous omnibus" bill.

If I had to explain what has happened over the last few weeks to an intelligent person from somewhere else relying on memory alone, it would go something like this. Please jump in and correct me where I'm wrong. (Sneak preview: Putnam County bus drivers are heroes!):

1. WV education workers won an historic victory with their work stoppage last year and some people on the losing end (fill in the blanks) never forgave them for that.

2. This session, those same people ambushed the senate with radical ideas about education "deform," which included privatization, charter schools, educational savings accounts, punishments for union workers and such along with benign measures like a 5 percent raise and help with PEIA and retirement. The bad ideas were pushed by out of state big money groups like ALEC and others who want to take down public education.

3. Education workers and allies began to mobilize against this and to come up with alternative ideas.

4. Gov. Justice, to his credit, came  out against the senate bill, admitting it was partly motivated by revenge and pledging to veto it in its current form. Alas, the framers of WV's constitution apparently dozed off at some point and made it possible to override a governor's veto with a simple majority.

5.  The bill was rammed down the metaphorical throat of the senate education committee. And, when it looked like the bill wouldn't make it through the senate finance committee (thanks to the defection of two Republicans), leadership went around it to adopt a rarely used "committee of the whole" to get it through the senate. (Some of us thought of it as a "committee of the hole.")

5. Education workers voted to authorize a work stoppage if and when it seemed like the right thing to do to oppose 451.

6. SB 451 went to the house, which came up with an imperfect but significantly less evil version of the bill.

7. The senate refused to go with the house version and reloaded it with charters, educational savings accounts and other privatization measures.

8. At that point, education workers and their organizations called for a work stoppage which shut down schools in 54 of 55 counties, the outlier being Putnam.

9. Putnam bus drivers, service workers and many teachers heroically defied their bosses to hold the line, even though they may still face sanctions. All honor to them!

10. After one day of striking, the house refused to concur with the senate version, which seemed to kill the bad bill. There was much rejoicing, but nobody trusted the senate, so the strike continued for another day.

11. By day two of the strike, the deadline for reviving 451 passed. On the evening of day two, a return to work was declared by AFT, WVEA and WVSSPA.

12. All of which is to say, this was a truly historic victory! Of course, we can still expect dirty tricks and bad bills in the remaining days of the session. And we as in education workers and families and their allies need to get in front of this and come up with a real plan to improve education with all WV students...in a way that freezes out privatization, charter schools, vouchers, and educational saving accounts and such.

13. But let's face it, y'all. WV just won another historic and inspiring victory for the labor movement and for kids and for working people. Last year's victory continues to inspire teachers and other workers (keep an eye on Oakland CA for the latest example). May this year's victory inspire more of the same.

The Ominous Omnibus

Christmas tree” is a slang term for a piece of legislation that tries to do too much, as in you hang all kinds of things on it. A perfect example of this is the West Virginia Senate’s mammoth omnibus education bill.

Some people I know have already taken to calling it the “ominous bill,” which may be a better fit.

I wish I thought of that.

The proposed legislation could and should be broken up into any number of separate bills, each to be debated on its merits, which in some cases are nonexistent.

To be fair, some provisions are good, such as raising pay for teachers and school support workers and allowing retirees to convert unused sick days into PEIA coverage.

Other provisions, however, would clearly damage public education and move the state further down the road to privatization. These include charter schools, education savings accounts and other means for draining resources from public schools.

Incredibly, the bill actually raises the student/teacher ratio for elementary classes.

Still other provisions seem designed to punish teachers and school workers for their historic victory through a strike last year which improved conditions for thousands of West Virginia families, inspired similar successful efforts in other states and revitalized the movement of working people. These include provisions that make it more difficult for workers to pay dues to the organizations that represent their interests and punish work stoppages even if superintendents cancel schools.

This is what revenge looks like. It’s also a not-too-subtle warning to the peasants on the dangers of revolt.

West Virginia’s children and families deserve better. All of them.

For starters, we need adequate funding for education that includes infrastructure, personnel, equipment, textbooks and materials, including pay raises for teachers and support workers and sustainable funding for PEIA. We don’t need another round of corporate tax cuts that would make it harder for state and local governments to support schools.

When it comes to school reform, we need to say yes to innovation but no to privatization. Obviously, we need new and better ways to deal with trauma, promote STEM learning and encourage entrepreneurship. However, these steps can be taken through existing mechanisms such as community schools and innovation zones.

Gov. Jim Justice hit the nail on the head when he said, “I just believe that today as we strive to provide a better education for everyone, we don’t really need to cherry pick the privileged until we get our public education system in a really good way.”

We need to lower student/teacher ratios, not increase them."

We need a major effort to address mental health issues for students. These are tough times to come of age in West Virginia. We need mandated ratios of mental health professionals and nurses in schools. We also need a statewide task force to identify needs, gaps, best practices and come up with a plan to address the needs. This isn’t a luxury; it’s a matter of basic safety.

Another positive step would be to strengthen Local School Involvement Councils (LSICs), including the creation of a statewide LSIC advisory committee and the representation of students, mental health professionals and disadvantaged parents on local LSICs. We also need a virtual schools advisory council consisting of teachers, facilitators, administrators, parents and students to promote best practices in online education.

To really seal the deal for a better future, we should support an expansion of after school programs, including a transportation component; enhanced early childhood and in-home family education; and expanding debt-free post-secondary education.

Nelson Mandela said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

The real “school choice” facing West Virginia is one between progress and promise or privatization and punishment.

As the old Appalachian mining song goes, “Which side are you on?”

The empire strikes back

Well, I guess the leadership of the WV senate is out to avenge our teachers and school workers for last year's victory. Yesterday, they unveiled their plan, which includes penalties for work stoppages, messing with union dues, charter schools, and ore. Here's Ryan Quinn from the Gazette on the bill.

Before the bill came out, I wrote out some thoughts for supporters of public education about what a decent approach to education reform might be. Here goes:

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”—Nelson Mandela

Coming of age is never easy—and growing up in West Virginia has always had its challenges. But today children face an array of problems new and old, ranging from the opioid crisis to a changing economy to persistent poverty. 

It’s been calculated that from birth to the time a child reaches 18 years of age, he or she will spend only around 13 percent of time in a school setting, yet school personnel deal with 100 percent of the child’s issues every day.

When it comes to helping kids cope with the present and prepare for the future, West Virginia’s public school teachers and service workers are in the front lines. Our children need a strong system of public education more now than ever.

To protect and strengthen West Virginia’s system of public education, we support the following principles:

Adequate funding for public education, including infrastructure, personnel, equipment, textbooks and materials. We support pay increases for teachers and school support workers, including sustainable funding of the Public Employees Insurance Agency. We oppose tax cut policies that would reduce the ability of state and local governments to support education, such as eliminating the business machinery property tax.

Innovation yes, privatization no. We recognize the need for education experimentation and innovation, such as community schools, new ways to promote STEM and /or entrepreneurship, and more informed approaches to dealing with trauma. We believe these can be achieved through existing mechanisms such as innovation zones and without further legislation.

We oppose diverting public funding to privatization efforts such as charter schools or voucher programs. We agree with Governor Jim Justice, who said “I just believe that today as we strive to provide a better education for everyone, we don’t really need to cherry pick the privileged until we get our public education system in a really good way,” he said.

We support lowering teacher/student ratios to ensure that students receive adequate personal attention from teachers., including a student ratio 1:15 for elementary, 1:18 middle school, and 1:20 high school.

We support efforts to address mental health issues for students, including increasing mental health professionals in schools so that students can be assessed and referred to appropriate treatments as necessary; creating a statewide mental health task force to identify strengths, gaps and best practices and create a strategic plan to address the issues; and train teachers and school support workers to better deal with trauma.

Specifically, we recommend a ratio of 1:250 social 1:250 social workers and counselors and a 1:1000 ratio psychologists as well as complete wraparound services including full time in school-based nurses in every school.

We propose the strengthening of Local School Involvement Councils (LSICs), including the creation of a statewide LSIC advisory committee and the representation of students, mental health professionals and disadvantaged parents on local LSICs.

We support after school expansion providing all schools with funding for after school programs including a transportation component.

We support the creation of a virtual schools advisory council to consist of teachers, classroom facilitators, administrators, parents and students in order to promote best practices in online education.

We support expanding early childhood education, including pre-K and in-home family education. We support universal access to voluntary home visiting programs for expecting parents and families with infants and toddlers.

We support efforts to provide free post-secondary education at the vocational and community college level. As a long-term goal, we propose debt-free higher education at public colleges and universities for all students.

We believe that the strengthening of our public schools is vital for the future of our democracy. In the words of Horace Mann, a pioneer in American education, “Education then beyond all other devices of human origin is the great equalizer of the conditions of men the balance wheel of the social machinery.”

Get ready to defend public education. Again.

Republican leaders in the WV legislature unveiled their legislative priorities for the coming session. Some of these are welcome, such as raising pay for teachers and other public employees, making community college and vocation training more broadly available and improving the Second Chance for  Employment Act.

Others, mostly having to do with public education, fall into the "not so much" category. Included in that are another round of business tax cuts to the tune of $140 million; charter schools, which drain resources from public schools; and "school choice," another word for privatization.

If you want to gear up for the next round, check out this Washington Post story on the drive to privatize education in the US. And  here are some great talking points to use in the weeks ahead.

Here we go again...

Long time gone

It's been several days without a Goat Rope post. I've been on the road a lot lately crisscrossing the state several times to go to citizen advocacy and lobbying trainings. Usually, these are sparsely attended, but for some unknown reason people are turning out by the scores and hundreds. I'm glad--we're going to need all the people power we can get.

Meanwhile, here's the latest Front Porch. Not my best effort, but I was burned out from the road, sick, and uninformed about the topic until the morning we recorded it.

Meanwhile, would someone please tell me when we've hit bottom?

Time to protect public education

This is no time to be a turkey when it comes to our schools. This call to protect public education in  WV was written by my co-worker Lida Shepherd and appeared in today's Sunday Gazette-Mail.

There has been a lot of sad news recently in the Charleston Gazette-Mail about our schools. One example concerns Nicholas County, where Ryan Quinn reports that student enrollment has dropped 26 percent in the last 25 years, resulting in a severe loss in funding.

These cuts come on top of the devastating flood that ripped through the county’s schools last year.

In the shadow of our state’s budget crisis and the $11.1 million budget cut to state school-aid, teachers and administrators are being laid off in alarming numbers, with 73 positions in Kanawha County alone. It doesn’t take a big leap of the imagination to see that this means more people leaving the state to find work elsewhere, and taking their talent (and families) with them.

These ongoing budget woes also means more teachers pulling from their own pocket for school supplies, more students having to raise their own funds for extracurricular activities, bigger classroom sizes, more screen time, shabbier textbooks; and I’m not sure we’ll be seeing many Mandarin Chinese or fine arts classes being added.

For some people, these challenges make things like charter schools, vouchers and privatizing our public education system all the more alluring. Since the election, “education reform” or “educational choice” has gotten a major shot in the arm.

The late economist Milton Friedman would be pleased by this development. He thought the answer to the public education system was the private sector. In effect, this meant that public education was an untapped treasure trove whereby tax dollars can be siphoned out of public coffers and into private ones.

As Naomi Klein argued in her book “The Shock Doctrine,” Friedman and like-minded people were experts at taking advantage of natural or political catastrophes — from Hurricane Katrina to major economic crises — to push an agenda that would never fly in more stable times. She called this “disaster capitalism.”

The sad irony is that part of the reason our schools are suffering so badly now is because we failed to take steps 100 years ago that could have converted our natural resources into a public good. Instead, our coal seams were exploited largely for the private gain of out-of-state interests at the expense of any kind of economic diversification. As Jeff Kessler recently pointed out in an interview on W.Va. Public Broadcasting, “If coal’s been king, it hasn’t taken very good care of its subjects. We’re the poorest state in the nation.”

I fear we are poised to make the same kind of mistake by the weakening and/or privatization of our public education system through vouchers — Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) — charter schools and for-profit K-12 education. These efforts are becoming commonplace, supported by the steady rhetoric of “failed government schools” and “school choice.”

We now have as U.S. Secretary of Education nominee billionaire heiress Betsy DeVos, who never attended or taught at a public school and who has spent millions of her private wealth on campaigns to privatize education systems.

Corporate-backed education “reform” campaigns like the ones DeVos has waged (one to the tune of $5 million in Michigan) have normalized in public discourse what once was the radical idea that we turn the public good of our education system into a source of private profit.

Sometimes, these reforms are touted as “leveling the playing field” in public education so that the quality of education a child can receive is not dependent on his or her zip code; but Henry Levin, professor of economics and education at Columbia University, has found that both in the United States and abroad vouchers result in increased economic and racial stratification.

He also points out that most of our public discourse around what is best for equity and advancements in our educational system is based in ideology instead of evidence.

But what’s new? Calls for the privatization of the public sector are happening in Medicare and the health care system, education and, most recently housing, with HUD secretary nominee Ben Carson vowing to privatize sectors of our public housing system.

In spite of troubling national trends, I’m holding out hope that we don’t sell out the public education of our children in West Virginia. Such a step would go against the best traditions of West Virginia and would violate the spirit and letter of our state constitution, which mandates “the establishment of a thorough and efficient system of free schools.”

Bring back child labor?

I used to think that I should devote my few remaining days on this earth to the noble cause of changing West Virginia's state motto from "Mountaineers Are Always Free," which doesn't really fit anymore, to "You can't make this **** up."

I'm starting to think that may need to be done for the nation instead. We are, after all having pluribus troubles with our unum.

Here's one example, which is particularly ironic or sad for those familiar with labor history. From the earliest days of the republic, a major demand of working people and the labor movement has been for free public education. Another key demand from long ago was the abolition of child labor. So it's just peachy that the Trump administration's pick for education secretary is someone devoted to torpedoing public education though vouchers and privatization. AND she's served on the board of an organization that celebrates the virtue of child labor.

Here's another cheer for child labor from a similar think tank that talks about how exciting mining can be for kids.

The picture above comes from the 1907 Monongah mine disaster, one of many that occurred in West Virginia. The official death toll was over 360, but nobody knows for sure. In the absence of child labor laws, it was customary for some miners to bring their boys to work with them. We'll never know how many children died in the disaster.

I guess some people find that exciting.

Higher education in WV

Recently the Huntington Herald-Dispatch had a good editorial about the role of higher education in the state's economy. Here's how it started:

Whoever is calling the shots at the Capitol in Charleston next year may want to think twice about continuing the recent trend of reducing state aid for West Virginia's higher education institutions. Curtailing support for those institutions could undermine a key economic component of the state at a time when the Mountain State's struggling economy needs all the help it can get.

The point was underscored last week by a study from West Virginia University's Bureau of Business and Economic Research gauging the economic impact of 21 higher education institutions on their respective local economies. The study, sought by the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission, concluded that those universities and colleges contributed about $2.7 billion overall to the state's economy in 2014 either directly or indirectly. While by no means the main economic engine of the state, that number equates to about 3.5 percent of the state's total economy - a significant enough portion that warrants careful handling by the state's policy makers. Altogether, that spending supported about 22,000 jobs either at the institutions or by spinoff economic activity, the study found.

Sadly, higher education continues to be cut in the state budget. Why anyone would do that in the state with the lowest educational attainment rate is beyond my understanding. But then, the Republican candidate for governor wants to increase mandatory minimums for nonviolent drug offenses and build more prisons while others like state senator Craig Blair want to privatize colleges and universities.

I ask again, what could possibly go wrong?

Karma, New England style

The theme at Goat Rope these days is the life and work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was a huge influence in 19th century life and letters in America and beyond. I mean, even Nietzsche liked him.

At the moment, I'm taking a look at his 1838 Harvard Divinity School Address, which was so controversial at the time that he wasn't invited back to that institution for 30 years. In a day or so, posts here will take a look at some of the things he wrote that got him into hot water with even relatively laid back New England Unitarians.

Today, though, the first passage that hit my eye is one that echoes classical Buddhist teachings about karma. Contrary to popular belief, Buddhist views on the subject are pretty subtle. It's not like if you do a good deed you get a Lexis. It's more like if you act nastily, you'll get better and better and being nasty, with all that that entails. And vice versa.  (Emerson, by the way, was an admirer of Indian philosophy and was moved by the limited amount he could read about at the time of Hindu and Buddhist ideas).

Anyhow, here's the passage. I must admit that while Ralph drives me crazy sometimes, I like this one:

The intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul. The laws execute themselves. They are out of time, out of space, and not subject to circumstance. Thus; in the soul of man there is a justice whose retributions are instant and entire. He who does a good deed, is instantly ennobled. He who does a mean deed, is by the action itself contracted. He who puts off impurity, thereby puts on purity. If a man is at heart just, then in so far is he God; the safety of God, the immortality of God, the majesty of God, do enter into that man with justice. If a man dissemble, deceive, he deceives himself, and goes out of acquaintance with his own being. A man in the view of absolute goodness, adores, with total humility. Every step so downward, is a step upward. The man who renounces himself, comes to himself.

Everybody got that?

Note: this post was meant to come out early this morning but there have been internet problem on the farm.

THE DOWNSIDE OF PRIVATIZATION is discussed here.

THE LONG HAUL. Here's a profile of a friend of mine from the Gazette.

THE FUTURE OF UNIONS. Here's a look at the challenges the labor movement is facing and possible ways to deal with it. Suggestion: take a look at the I.W.W.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Tiger mom, revisited

Once upon a time, there was an orphan baby chick. It tried to seek solace from other hens, but only got pecked. As for the father, roosters aren't big on parental responsibility.



This baby obviously needed a mother. We found one, a badly mauled stuffed tiger toy, in our dog's abundant toy box.



The baby thrived. Here's a look at the happy family today.

FOR MASOCHISTS ONLY. Here's a whole slew of recent articles on the BS of Ayn Rand.

IF YOU WANT TO READ ABOUT MORE BAD IDEAS, here's a slew of info on Paul Ryan's budget.

PRIVATIZATION. Here's a look at its dark side.

TROGLORAPTERS, ANYONE? If you need  a cave spider fix, click here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Happy anniversary, Social Security

“We can never insure one-hundred percent of the population against one-hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life. But we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age. This law, too, represents a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means complete. It is a structure intended to lessen the force of possible future depressions. It will act as a protection to future Administrations against the necessity of going deeply into debt to furnish relief to the needy. The law will flatten out the peaks and valleys of deflation and of inflation. It is, in short, a law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide for the united States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt, August 14, 1935

Today I hosted an event celebrating the 77th anniversary of the signing of the Social Security Act at a crowded Carpenter's local union hall in Huntington. Medicare and Medicaid hit their 47th anniversary a couple weeks back on July 30.

Congressman Nick Joe Rahall attended the event. A strong supporter of all three programs, Rahall said

 "... Social Security is a fortress of reliability. It has never missed a payment. Every dollar and benefit has been paid out on time and in full - how many 401-ks can tout that same record? Social security and Medicare are not the cause of our current budgetary woes and they should not be used as a piggy bank for unrelated spending, especially paying for more tax cuts for millionaires."

WV's senior senator Jay Rockefeller was not able to attend but sent a specially made video for the event, saying,

"I am so glad West Virginians from across the state are joining together to celebrate this important day in history. Seventy-seven years ago, on August 14, 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt passed a landmark piece of legislation creating our nation’s Social Security program. It is a program that protects so many West Virginians and has lifted millions of people out of poverty. Social Security was created during the Great Depression, a crucial time in our nation’s history. And, since then, it has provided life-saving benefits to widows, the children of deceased workers, people who are disabled, and the elderly. Social Security has proven to be one of our nation’s most successful programs, serving 451,000 West Virginians – including 41,000 children where one or both parents are deceased, disabled, or retired – and more than 50 million Americans each year. It is something we should all celebrate.”

Today's celebration took on a special significance in light of presidential candidate Mitt Romney's selection of congressman Paul Ryan as running mate. Ryan was an architect of President Bush's failed effort to privatize Social Security and has crafted similar or worse plans for Medicare and Medicaid.

Things are going to  get interesting, alas.

Mushin

Seamus McGoogle spends most of his time in a state of mushin.

Welcome to Cool Japanese Words Week at Goat Rope. Each day looks at a word or concept from the martial arts and/or Zen tradition that may be of interest to people who want to make the world less nasty. You'll also find news and links about current events.

As I mentioned Monday, most of the words have to do with paying attention. Kamae, the subject of Tuesday's post is all about readiness before taking action. Zanshin, see yesterday's post, was about the state of mind on completing an action.

Today's word is mushin, with the mu being like a cow sounds and the shin being what it looks like.

Here's a paradox. Mushin represents the highest mental state, but it literally means "no-mindedness." Far from being stupid, it means responding spontaneously and appropriately to a situation without having to stop and think about it.

As esoteric as it sounds, most of us have probably had this experience at some point. A good basketball player probably doesn't have to think about a lay up--he or she just does it.

In the martial arts, sometimes if you're lucky you do something without thought and then think "that was cool." As the late great Bruce Lee put it,

...when an opportunity occurs, I don't hit. It hits all by itself.

In the context of Japanese swordsmanship, the Zen master Takuan wrote of that state:

The mind must always be in the state of 'flowing,' for when it stops anywhere that means the flow is interrupted and it is this interruption that is injurious to the well-being of the mind. In the case of the swordsman, it means death. When the swordsman stands against his opponent, he is not to think of the opponent, nor of himself, nor of his enemy's sword movements. He just stands there with his sword which, forgetful of all technique, is ready only to follow the dictates of the subconscious. The man has effaced himself as the wielder of the sword. When he strikes, it is not the man but the sword in the hand of the man's subconscious that strikes.

The use of the term flow by Takuan fits in well with modern psychology. The researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote an excellent book some years back titled Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience about just that kind of thing.

People in a state of flow, which can be experienced in lots of ways, are so absorbed in what they're doing that they may lack self-consciousness altogether. I think the slang term being "in the zone" refers to the same kind of thing.

Here's another paradox, in martial arts and other traditional disciplines, the way to get to mushin is through drill, drill, drill. You train so you don't have to think.

People who want to work to make the world a better place can approach mushin by getting so competent at pulling things together that you can do it without having to start from scratch every time. That may involve good alliances, media and communications competency, an understanding of strategy, and ready access to good information.

Mushin is a nice place to be, although you usually only become aware of it after it happens.

STIMULUS DEAL. The House and Senate conference committee reached a tentative deal on a scaled-back recovery package which many economists believe is too small to jolt the economy. It now goes back to each house.

CONTRACTING OUT federal jobs to the private sector leaves one out of five such workers in poverty, according to the latest Economic Policy Institute snapshot.

ONE TO WATCH. The US Supreme Court is set to hear arguments March 3 in a case that will determine the propriety of WV Justice Brent Benjamin hearing cases regarding Massey Energy. Benjamin, a political unknown, was elected in 2004 with the help of millions of dollars from Massey CEO Don Blankenship.

DARWIN AT 200. Here's another look.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A BEGINNING, MIDDLE AND END. SORT OF

The Goat Rope Odyssey cruise continues, along with the usual links and comments about current events. If you like mythology, click on earlier posts.

Aristotle said that every story should have a beginning, a middle and an end. That's true of Homer's Odyssey, although it's not told in a chronological way. It begins near the end, shortly before Odysseus' long-delayed homecoming after 10 years of fighting at Troy and 10 more years of wandering and getting stuck.

Here's a skeletal outline for now:

The goddess Athena asks her father Zeus to give Odysseus a break and help him go home. He's been stuck on the island of the goddess Calypso for seven years. It doesn't sound like a bad gig: sun, sand, surf, and sex with a goddess (most of whom were considered to be hot), yet he cries every day out of homesickness. Zeus agrees to cut him some slack.

The story then cuts to the Old Home Place at Ithaca. Things are bad. Swarms of suitors are swarming around his wife, the faithful Penelope. Most people think her husband is dead and she is under great pressure to marry. The suitors are insolent, bullying his son Telemachus and eating the family out of house and home.

Athena then goes to Ithaca to give Telemachus a boost and suggest a plan of action that gives him something positive to do and gets him out of harm's way for a while. He visits the homes Odysseus's' old comrades Menelaus and Nestor seeking news of his father and gaining a good repute.

We don't get to the main character until book 5, when the god Hermes (see last week) visits the island of Calypso and tells her she needs to let him go and help him on his way. Odysseus sails off with her help but is shipwrecked by the sea god Poseidon, who holds a grudge for Odysseus' blinding of his son Polyphemus the cyclops.

Eventually he makes it to the land of the Phaeacians, where he receives hospitality and eventually reveals himself. It's there that we hear from the man himself the well known stories of the cyclops, Circe, Scylla and Charybdis and the other disasters that befell him on his way home.

(There's a lot of irony in this story. One example is the fact that Odysseus is a totally unreliable narrator who has a great deal of trouble telling the truth. Was he or wasn't he?)

The Phaeacians deliver him safely to Ithaca where after many ruses he and Telemachus open a major can of smackdown on the suitors and he is reunited with Penelope. The carnage is severe but the gods again intervene to make peace.

Next time: greatest hits.

KNOW NOTHINGS. Has ignorance become a badge of honor?

ORWELL AND STRAUSS. A philosophy of fear underlies much of current politics.

LEAVING WAR TO THE PRIVATE SECTOR. Here's a good editorial from the Gazette.

TOUGH QUESTIONS ABOUT QUESTIONINGS. Psychologists are debating whether assisting in military interrogations is a violation of professional ethis.

DOING GOOD AND DOING WELL. Socially responsible investment funds are catching on.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED