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Letter to President Obama

judith — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:42:47 +0000

Dear President Obama:

There are so many ways in which I am deeply grateful that you are our president. I could write you a long ode with many stanzas of praise. Such an ode would be heartfelt, but also heartfelt is this note that raises my deep concerns about much of the Arne Duncan education policy, a policy you seem to whole-heartedly support.

I write as someone who has been a community artist working in public schools and state prisons for over thirty five years. I know the consequences of the “achievement gap” much more intimately than my heart can bear. I feel no need to defend the “education status quo” (though that label often means “teachers,” and decades of observation have put public school teachers near the top of my list of heroes). I agree with you and Secretary Duncan that the nation needs a sincere, open conversation about how best to educate all of our children.

But some of the terms and assumptions underlying this conversation need more precise definition. It is taken as a given by “school reform” advocates that improved test scores equal better education, but I have seen nothing that proves this assumption. When I read most “school reformers,” I feel that I’m reading the equivalent of reasoning that goes something like: “teacher accountability will be tied to an increase in the number of students who wear purple” or “school improvement will be measured by how many students have good posture.” I see no evidence – on paper or in the real lives of young people I know – that improved test scores equal knowledge, the ability to think critically, or to a greater connection between oneself and the wider world. Whereas I see a great deal of evidence – in these same young people and in the people I know well in prison – that doing more of what hasn’t worked (more focus on testing, a greater reliance on measurement) will lead to even more children who feel separated from the possibilities we want to be theirs.

A primary reason I worked so hard for your election is that you place such a high value on moving beyond rigid positions. You have urged us to look for what we share (as human beings, as citizens); you’ve encouraged us to build policy from this shared ground. But we can’t do that – in education or in any other sphere – unless we have a real conversation about what we mean by words like “education,” “success,” and “equity.”

Prayers for you, your family, and the decisions you have to make on so many crucial matters.

“That Bird Has My Wings”

judith — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 22:41:59 +0000

That Bird Has My Wings: The Autobiography of an Innocent Man on Death Row is Jarvis Jay Masters’ second book, and it comes with endorsements by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Van Jones, author David Sheff, and many others. Although Masters writes of the crimes he’s committed, as well as those he’s innocent of though convicted – and although he writes some about his life on San Quentin’s Death Row – That Bird focuses primarily on Masters’ childhood and coming of age.

Much of what Masters reports is heart breaking: being left to watch over young siblings with no food to feed them, beatings and cruelty of foster care families, being set up to fight for bets by older male relatives, choices he makes against his own best interest. But Masters also describes the love he shared with his sisters, his wonderful first foster parents, the neighbor who silently left food for the children each morning, his caring though drugged mother. When life gave him a chance, Masters was the little boy he was born to be: loving, sweet, curious, responsible.

The story Masters shapes for the first two-thirds of the book lets the reader in very close as the child tries to make sense of his experience, as he learns to protect himself from hurt, and eventually, as he comes to feel most comfortable in institutions. Masters’ telling is honest, well written, deeply (humanly) interesting.

The last third or so of the book is also interesting, honest, and well written, but to me feels tacked on – more like a handful of essays than the continuation of an unfolding story. Perhaps the publisher felt the book needed to include stories from prison itself.

Both Masters and his publisher (HarperOne) seem to want the book to speak out most strongly about the foster care system. An important goal that Masters achieves. But I think the book does even more than this. That Bird shows one life – its huge difficulties and its few gifts – and how a being is shaped by both.

A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison

judith — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:33:06 +0000

R. Dwayne Betts – “a good student from a lower-middle-class family” – carjacked a man, went to prison, and has written a book about the experience. Betts was sixteen when he committed the crime, but tried and convicted as an adult; he served eight years in Virginia prisons. He’s been out for four years now and in that time has earned a BA, founded a book club for young men (YoungMenRead), been an intern at The Atlantic, married and become a father. Betts is now a graduate student at Warren Wilson College. His book of poetry – Shahid Reads His Own Palm – won the Beatrice Hawley Award and will be out from Alice James Books in May 2010.

A Question of Freedom is getting lots of attention (from NPR to HipHopWired), and I’m very glad. Those of us on the outside – the ones making decisions about who we lock up – need every report on prison we can get from those who’ve been there. Betts’ report is that of a very young man – a teen-ager still (“Sixteen years hadn’t even done a good job on my voice,” is the book’s first sentence) – and therefore shines important light on this aspect of contemporary US incarceration practice.

What I appreciate most in A Question of Freedom are the ways Betts attempts to:

1. understand why he was drawn to the uncharacteristic moment that brought him to prison;

2. express the responsibility he feels, especially to his mom;

3. speak out about all the young black men in prison with him, while at the same time working hard for a complex – rather than a simplistic – analysis of this fact;

4. present the varieties of senselessness he encountered in prison;

5. describe the various ways he educated himself (with some, but not much, help from prison programs or staff);

6. claim how literature – reading and writing – shaped the man he became as he walked out of prison.

Betts is no longer a teen-ager, but he is still a very young man. A Question of Freedom is being marketed as the first work of an emerging author, and that description makes sense. The book has the virtue of rawness – conveying as it does the confusion and circuitous thinking experienced by a child locked up with adults – and some beautiful writing. Betts’ telling also bears the (probably inevitable) limitations of a young mind that has not yet developed enough scope or distance to create a coherent whole. No matter the “more” I wish from the book, A Question of Freedom is important and I’m very glad to see it building a large readership.

I Bring What I Love

judith — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:11:07 +0000

I love this new movie about Youssou N’Dour, the amazing Senegalese musician. I love all the concert footage, and also love just looking at the streets of Dakar, the colors, the clothes, the faces, the gestures, the courtyards where households gather, the look on Youssou’s grandmother face, the street art, Youssou leaning to talk with his son at the mosque. I appreciate what I learn about the Sufi Islam of Senegal, about Youssou’s commitment to Africans working together and his “yes we can” message to all especially to youth. And I appreciate learning about these through a subtle approach instead of a talking head lecture.

So it makes me sad to see that most critics don’t also love the movie, but want it to be either a conventional documentary or a concert film. Also makes me said to see that so far it’s playing in so few theaters. I hope a wide audience is somehow able to see this film, and I hope most love it as I do.