An interesting comment that comes up often when debating the issues surrounding undocumented aliens (or "illegal immigrants," if you prefer) is something to the effect of "they broke the law" or "these criminals." A lot of the time it's used in defense of plans that require them to "wait in line" for citizenship or legal residency behind their countrymen (or women) who "played by the rules" or "did it the right way."
I'm disappointed that this comment is usually left unchallenged. Here's what I would say if that came up in a debate I was having:
"Interesting that you seem to put so much weight on them having broken the law. Let me ask you: have you ever driven faster than the posted speed limit? Have you ever crossed the street in the middle of the block or against the red? Have you ever failed to come to a complete stop at a stop sign? You broke the law. You are a criminal. Do I have the right to demand that you be deported from this country? If you get caught, sure, there needs to be a penalty, but a penalty that is proportional to the damage or danger your behavior posed to the public. The mere fact that a law was broken is not sufficient reason to defend deportation.
"That's all assuming that the law is just. I don't think it is. In the 1850's, it was illegal for a slave to cross the "border" between a slave state and a free state without permission. That slave couldn't claim to be free just because they'd made it to a place where slavery was illegal. The fugitive slave law said that that person would be returned to a state of slavery if they were caught pursuing a better life north of the border. Anyone who helped them escape knowingly was also considered a criminal, even though slavery was illegal in their state.
"Does this law sound familiar? We're trying to pass those laws now! Would you label a fugitive slave a "criminal" and do everything in your power to return them to slavery? Would you insist that they "wait in line" behind the other slaves who were "doing it the right way" and "following the rules" by pursuing the option that some masters held out to their slaves of allowing them to "buy" their own freedom by taking on extra work over the course of decades... only to leave their families and children behind because they were still property? Would you lambast those citizens of the free states who hired former slaves and provided housing for them as "part of the problem"? I hope that in this day and age, the answer to these rhetorical questions is obvious.
"Do you understand that the desperation that drives people to leave behind family and community and risk their lives to travel hundreds and thousands of miles and be treated like a fugitive is the same kind of desperation that drove slaves to flee to the freedom of the north? Do you understand that it is not the lowlife criminals of these poverty-stricken nations that try to make it to the USA, but the most motivated, disciplined, hard-working and inspired citizens?"
I doubt I'd actually be able to make that argument without being shouted down, but it's what I'd want to say. If a law is immoral, then persons of conscience have a moral obligation to fight against it and defy it. The laws that try to drive hard-working immigrants from our nation by treating them worse than we treat our pets and livestock are immoral, and I applaud those immigrants who put their lives on the line and endure the brand of "criminal" to work for a better life for their family. We need more citizens with this relentless drive to wrest a living from their own sweat, blood and tears.
- "A lousy hundred bucks? Is that all my blood and sweat is worth?"
Showing posts with label morality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label morality. Show all posts
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Friday, October 06, 2006
Pro Life?
I've just been thinking about this for a while... I thought it might be worth writing down my thoughts.
"Pro Life" is a politically charged slogan that has been aligned with a single issue in the last 30 years: abortion. It has been a polarizing issue, and one of a few issues that spring to mind when people answer the poll question "how important are 'moral' issues to you in deciding who (or what) to vote for?". The wording seems to make it obvious on which side of the debate Christians (or any person of conscience) should lie: who would say "yes" to the question "Are you 'Pro Death'?".
So, if you had asked me a year ago if I was "Pro Life," I would have said "yes," and I would have meant exactly what you thought I meant. I would have meant that I am opposed to abortion in the same way that I am opposed to murder: I believe that just because a person is still living inside of its mother's womb doesn't mean that its mother gets to decide whether or not it should die.
In the past year, however, I've heard a few things that have challenged that definition as being too narrow. First of all, I read Jim Wallis's book God's Politics over the summer. He says that Christian's need to be "Consistently Pro-Life" and not limit our passion for survival to the unborn. I also heard a powerful sermon from my pastor in which she talked about "Pro-Life" needing to inform our opinions not only of whether or not children or born, but the quality of life they experience after that event.
So, am I "Pro Life"? Yes. But it doesn't just mean I'm opposed to abortion being a legal option in this country.
Because I am "Pro Life," I think that we have a responsibility to defend the innocent Fur, Zaghawa and Massaleit people of Darfur from genocide at least as vigorously as we are defending the people of Iraq from a violent insurgency.
Because I am "Pro Life," I think that the worst act one person can commit against another person is taking their life, and we as a society must guard our own humanity by relegating those guilty of such crimes to a life of imprisonment without parole instead of making ourselves just like them by murdering them in righteous indignation.
Because I am "Pro Life," I think that we have a responsibility to provide millions of poor and dying widows and orphans in Africa with the food, water and medication they need to survive the ravages of extreme poverty and AIDS... a responsibility that should usurp our responsibility to the billion dollar portfolios of American pharmaceutical companies.
Because I am "Pro Life," I think that we have a responsibility to children and mothers in poor neighborhoods to insist that they be able to walk to a grocery store with as much selection and prices as low as the supermakets in suburban neighborhoods, and they should be able to walk there without exhausting themselves or passing a dozen liquor stores on the way.
Because I am "Pro Life," I think that we have a responsibility to make choices when we shop and when we vote that allow both farmers in Central and South America and peasant children in Southeast Asia to receive a living wage for the back-breaking labor that they do from dawn to dusk, seven days a week, from childhood until they are too old to stand... a responsibility that trumps our desire to save a few bucks, or wear the same shoes as Michael Jordan, or have our favorite coffee every morning.
Because I am "Pro Life," I think that we have a responsibility to a child born (not aborted) into a culture and cycle of poverty to adequately fund and reform public education so that their zip code doesn't determine whether they end up in college, jail, or Iraq.
Because I am "Pro Life," I think that we have a responsibility to exhaust every diplomatic strategy possible (and maybe even compromise on our own preferences for the sake of peace) before launching pre-emptive strikes against countries that might possibly be able to attack us at some indeterminate point in the future assuming our intelligence is not faulty.
Because I am "Pro Life," I think that we should be upset when the CEO and board of directors of an American company smugly award themselves multi-million dollar bonuses for the money they've made for their company... money they've made by "cutting costs" with waves of layoffs that take away the livelihoods of American workers and the pensions of retired workers, and "outsourcing" by creating a factory just across the Rio Grande where they pay pennies on the dollar to people so desperate for food that they'll work for slave wages.
And yes, because I am "Pro Life," I think that we should work to save the lives of as many unborn children as we can. If we are called as Christians to stand up for the defenseless and weak against the strong and the powerful, who is more defenseless than a child still dependent on its mother's body for every necessity of life? I don't believe, however, that making it against the law will accomplish this goal by itself. If abortion is murder, and murder is illegal, than reversing Roe v. Wade should make abortion as rare as murder is... and murder in our country is not nearly rare enough. I dare say that there may be a few "Pro Life" people out there that would be satisfied if abortion was still prevalent, but confined to the same neighborhoods in which murder is so prevalent in our country today, but I am not one of them.
The irony is that this is one point on which leading Republicans and Democrats agree: both parties want there to be less abortions performed than are being performed currently. The problem is that one side is committed to making it illegal as the only path that they're willing to pursue, and the other side is committed to keeping it legal no matter what. The debate has been trapped in this one question which our experience has shown will not in and of itself put an end to abortion... it will just give us a new label ("criminal") to put on the doctors and mothers who continue to pursue this option.
Will the number of abortions go down if it is made illegal? Maybe. Probably. I hope so. And if even a handful of lives are saved, then I think this is a path worth pursuing. But it shouldn't be the only path we pursue. If the war on drugs has taught us nothing else, it's that simply making something illegal doesn't make the problem go away... it may actually end up creating horrible violence both home and abroad as well as defining a steady source of income for organized crime, cartels, gangs, and street thugs. I'm not saying that these exact outcomes will be the results of making abortion illegal again... the point is that I don't know (and neither does anyone else) exactly what other issues might arise as a result of addressing abortion only by making those who seek it into criminals.
So what should we do? I think that if we truly believe that the unborn are people, then we should continue to work to make abortion illegal, since we define it as murder. Just because people still get killed in drive-by shootings doesn't mean that it should be legal. But it should mean that our work is not done once it is illegal. Let's also work to make this a world and a nation in which less people want to have abortions: where a poor mother knows that her child will be able to eat enough healthy food and have alternatives to gangs and be able to get into and afford a four-year university. Where children born in poor countries are more likely to die of old age than malnutrition or AIDS before they're old enough to go to school. Where a woman doesn't have to give up her career (and a vital source of income for a growing family) when she has a child because childcare is affordable (and even provided by her employer because of government subsidies and tax breaks), and health insurance plans cover children without charging exorbitant premiums or co-payments. And we need to use our resources to create places and communities where those women who are desperate and without resources can find hope and a family that they lost when they found out they were pregnant (check this out to see an example of what I'm talking about).
We can be Pro Life without being Pro-Death-Penalty, Pro-Big-Business, Pro-Military-Imperialism, or Anti-Capital-Gains/Inheritance-Taxes-On-The-Super-Rich. I would actually argue that we must be. Let's not feel defeated if the number of abortions actually comes down before it's illegal because of bi-partisan efforts to make "Pro-Life" apply to post-natal life as well as pre-natal life. Let's rejoice for those few lives saved and work and pray for more and more each day.
- "Ye know, the church says wearin' one o' them's a sin, darlin'." "So's this. Darlin'."
"Pro Life" is a politically charged slogan that has been aligned with a single issue in the last 30 years: abortion. It has been a polarizing issue, and one of a few issues that spring to mind when people answer the poll question "how important are 'moral' issues to you in deciding who (or what) to vote for?". The wording seems to make it obvious on which side of the debate Christians (or any person of conscience) should lie: who would say "yes" to the question "Are you 'Pro Death'?".
So, if you had asked me a year ago if I was "Pro Life," I would have said "yes," and I would have meant exactly what you thought I meant. I would have meant that I am opposed to abortion in the same way that I am opposed to murder: I believe that just because a person is still living inside of its mother's womb doesn't mean that its mother gets to decide whether or not it should die.
In the past year, however, I've heard a few things that have challenged that definition as being too narrow. First of all, I read Jim Wallis's book God's Politics over the summer. He says that Christian's need to be "Consistently Pro-Life" and not limit our passion for survival to the unborn. I also heard a powerful sermon from my pastor in which she talked about "Pro-Life" needing to inform our opinions not only of whether or not children or born, but the quality of life they experience after that event.
So, am I "Pro Life"? Yes. But it doesn't just mean I'm opposed to abortion being a legal option in this country.
Because I am "Pro Life," I think that we have a responsibility to defend the innocent Fur, Zaghawa and Massaleit people of Darfur from genocide at least as vigorously as we are defending the people of Iraq from a violent insurgency.
Because I am "Pro Life," I think that the worst act one person can commit against another person is taking their life, and we as a society must guard our own humanity by relegating those guilty of such crimes to a life of imprisonment without parole instead of making ourselves just like them by murdering them in righteous indignation.
Because I am "Pro Life," I think that we have a responsibility to provide millions of poor and dying widows and orphans in Africa with the food, water and medication they need to survive the ravages of extreme poverty and AIDS... a responsibility that should usurp our responsibility to the billion dollar portfolios of American pharmaceutical companies.
Because I am "Pro Life," I think that we have a responsibility to children and mothers in poor neighborhoods to insist that they be able to walk to a grocery store with as much selection and prices as low as the supermakets in suburban neighborhoods, and they should be able to walk there without exhausting themselves or passing a dozen liquor stores on the way.
Because I am "Pro Life," I think that we have a responsibility to make choices when we shop and when we vote that allow both farmers in Central and South America and peasant children in Southeast Asia to receive a living wage for the back-breaking labor that they do from dawn to dusk, seven days a week, from childhood until they are too old to stand... a responsibility that trumps our desire to save a few bucks, or wear the same shoes as Michael Jordan, or have our favorite coffee every morning.
Because I am "Pro Life," I think that we have a responsibility to a child born (not aborted) into a culture and cycle of poverty to adequately fund and reform public education so that their zip code doesn't determine whether they end up in college, jail, or Iraq.
Because I am "Pro Life," I think that we have a responsibility to exhaust every diplomatic strategy possible (and maybe even compromise on our own preferences for the sake of peace) before launching pre-emptive strikes against countries that might possibly be able to attack us at some indeterminate point in the future assuming our intelligence is not faulty.
Because I am "Pro Life," I think that we should be upset when the CEO and board of directors of an American company smugly award themselves multi-million dollar bonuses for the money they've made for their company... money they've made by "cutting costs" with waves of layoffs that take away the livelihoods of American workers and the pensions of retired workers, and "outsourcing" by creating a factory just across the Rio Grande where they pay pennies on the dollar to people so desperate for food that they'll work for slave wages.
And yes, because I am "Pro Life," I think that we should work to save the lives of as many unborn children as we can. If we are called as Christians to stand up for the defenseless and weak against the strong and the powerful, who is more defenseless than a child still dependent on its mother's body for every necessity of life? I don't believe, however, that making it against the law will accomplish this goal by itself. If abortion is murder, and murder is illegal, than reversing Roe v. Wade should make abortion as rare as murder is... and murder in our country is not nearly rare enough. I dare say that there may be a few "Pro Life" people out there that would be satisfied if abortion was still prevalent, but confined to the same neighborhoods in which murder is so prevalent in our country today, but I am not one of them.
The irony is that this is one point on which leading Republicans and Democrats agree: both parties want there to be less abortions performed than are being performed currently. The problem is that one side is committed to making it illegal as the only path that they're willing to pursue, and the other side is committed to keeping it legal no matter what. The debate has been trapped in this one question which our experience has shown will not in and of itself put an end to abortion... it will just give us a new label ("criminal") to put on the doctors and mothers who continue to pursue this option.
Will the number of abortions go down if it is made illegal? Maybe. Probably. I hope so. And if even a handful of lives are saved, then I think this is a path worth pursuing. But it shouldn't be the only path we pursue. If the war on drugs has taught us nothing else, it's that simply making something illegal doesn't make the problem go away... it may actually end up creating horrible violence both home and abroad as well as defining a steady source of income for organized crime, cartels, gangs, and street thugs. I'm not saying that these exact outcomes will be the results of making abortion illegal again... the point is that I don't know (and neither does anyone else) exactly what other issues might arise as a result of addressing abortion only by making those who seek it into criminals.
So what should we do? I think that if we truly believe that the unborn are people, then we should continue to work to make abortion illegal, since we define it as murder. Just because people still get killed in drive-by shootings doesn't mean that it should be legal. But it should mean that our work is not done once it is illegal. Let's also work to make this a world and a nation in which less people want to have abortions: where a poor mother knows that her child will be able to eat enough healthy food and have alternatives to gangs and be able to get into and afford a four-year university. Where children born in poor countries are more likely to die of old age than malnutrition or AIDS before they're old enough to go to school. Where a woman doesn't have to give up her career (and a vital source of income for a growing family) when she has a child because childcare is affordable (and even provided by her employer because of government subsidies and tax breaks), and health insurance plans cover children without charging exorbitant premiums or co-payments. And we need to use our resources to create places and communities where those women who are desperate and without resources can find hope and a family that they lost when they found out they were pregnant (check this out to see an example of what I'm talking about).
We can be Pro Life without being Pro-Death-Penalty, Pro-Big-Business, Pro-Military-Imperialism, or Anti-Capital-Gains/Inheritance-Taxes-On-The-Super-Rich. I would actually argue that we must be. Let's not feel defeated if the number of abortions actually comes down before it's illegal because of bi-partisan efforts to make "Pro-Life" apply to post-natal life as well as pre-natal life. Let's rejoice for those few lives saved and work and pray for more and more each day.
- "Ye know, the church says wearin' one o' them's a sin, darlin'." "So's this. Darlin'."
Monday, April 18, 2005
legal + profitable = moral?
On my way to work today, I was listening to Morning Edition on NPR and I heard a story about an oil boom in the Russian island of Sakhalin. Apparently, foreign oil companies (primarily American) have come in and made a fortune... but the locals are not profiting a bit, and they're starting to get a little bit upset.
One of the guys they interviewed for the story was a veteran of the Alaskan oil boom and had represented his company there. In Alaska, the people who live there were paid for the right to drill on the land, and received rather substantial royalty checks every month. Needless to say, they thought that the oil company being there was a good thing. This guy is contrasting that to the situation in Russia, where the system is corrupt and the government contacts, mafia enforcers and local "bosses" are reaping all of the profit, while the locals are getting nothing.
What really caught my attention was that the American guy said something like "that's just the way it is in Russia, and if you want to do business here, you have to go along with it."
If that's the way it is, and you know it's not right, why in the world would you want to do business there?
Do I really have to answer that?
The American religion of consumerism/capitalism has made it a "sin" to pass up an opportunity to make a profit. Heck, it's even illegal. Time and time again, I've heard CEO's, financial analysts, stockbrokers, and news commentators state that a company has a "legal responsibility to its stockholders" to make as much profit as they possibly can. That refrain is constantly used as justification for pursuing the most predatory and morally questionable practices... as long as they're not specifically illegal.
So, under this system, a company would be acting unethically if it passed up an opportunity to make scads of cash by partnering with a corrupt, oppressive system if their only qualms were moral. As long as there's no law preventing them, they HAVE to pursue the opportunity.
I first started thinking about this a couple of years ago, when I heard another NPR story about the impact that the "war on tobacco" is having on tobacco farmers in the US. One tobacco farmer who was interviewed said that in his view, the state (I don't remember which one he was from) should use some of the money they got from the tobacco companies as a legal settlement to subsidize his TOBACCO FARMING, since the settlement has made it harder for the big tobacco companies to pay him as much for his product. This guy was totally serious. He saw no problem with claiming that some of the money the states were awarded BECAUSE TOBACCO HARMS AND KILLS PEOPLE should rightfully go to him so that he can afford to continue GROWING TOBACCO.
I thought that this guy actually exemplified the sort of new moral compass that defines American economics and business. The reason this guy started growing tobacco was because it was profitable. The question of whether he SHOULD grow a crop that didn't contribute nutritionally to anyone, but rather served only to sicken and kill them was not part of the equation. The closest this guy came to considering this choice from a moral standpoint was to ask himself "is it against the law for me to grow tobacco?" The choice was not whether he should use his resources as a farmer to produce a product that contributed to people's health and well-being or to their illness and death; the choice was which crop that he is legally allowed to grow will net him the most profit.
In American business circles, to say "I haven't done anything wrong," actually means "I haven't done anything illegal." Partly to blame is our mania to use legislation as our exclusive weapon against predatory or oppressive practices. Remember the old saying, "you can't legislate morality"? Well, it's right. All the laws in the world won't make people moral. The most we can hope for from laws is that they limit the amount of harm the powerful can inflict on the vulnerable.
So what can we do about it? Pass even more laws? I would caution us against continuing down that road. By no means should we abandon legislation which is designed to protect the vulnerable, but neither should we assume that passing those laws is all that is necessary to establish justice. A person or group of business-people must want to pursue practices that put the considerations of the needy above those of themselves and their (mostly wealthy) stockholders. A power and authority higher than human laws is needed to accomplish that. An authority that considers the vulnerable before the powerful, who raises the valleys and lowers the hills, who brings calamity upon the wealthy and hope to the poor.
Don't worry, it's coming. Until then, all we can do is decide to accept or reject the morality of profit for ourselves, and to live accordingly. To join ourselves to a people who live by a different hope and under a Truth so large that it obliterates the lies that define our broken world.
Sounds simple, huh? It is. It's also so difficult that it's impossible to do ourselves, and impossible to do alone.
So don't do it yourself. And don't do it alone.
- "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
One of the guys they interviewed for the story was a veteran of the Alaskan oil boom and had represented his company there. In Alaska, the people who live there were paid for the right to drill on the land, and received rather substantial royalty checks every month. Needless to say, they thought that the oil company being there was a good thing. This guy is contrasting that to the situation in Russia, where the system is corrupt and the government contacts, mafia enforcers and local "bosses" are reaping all of the profit, while the locals are getting nothing.
What really caught my attention was that the American guy said something like "that's just the way it is in Russia, and if you want to do business here, you have to go along with it."
If that's the way it is, and you know it's not right, why in the world would you want to do business there?
Do I really have to answer that?
The American religion of consumerism/capitalism has made it a "sin" to pass up an opportunity to make a profit. Heck, it's even illegal. Time and time again, I've heard CEO's, financial analysts, stockbrokers, and news commentators state that a company has a "legal responsibility to its stockholders" to make as much profit as they possibly can. That refrain is constantly used as justification for pursuing the most predatory and morally questionable practices... as long as they're not specifically illegal.
So, under this system, a company would be acting unethically if it passed up an opportunity to make scads of cash by partnering with a corrupt, oppressive system if their only qualms were moral. As long as there's no law preventing them, they HAVE to pursue the opportunity.
I first started thinking about this a couple of years ago, when I heard another NPR story about the impact that the "war on tobacco" is having on tobacco farmers in the US. One tobacco farmer who was interviewed said that in his view, the state (I don't remember which one he was from) should use some of the money they got from the tobacco companies as a legal settlement to subsidize his TOBACCO FARMING, since the settlement has made it harder for the big tobacco companies to pay him as much for his product. This guy was totally serious. He saw no problem with claiming that some of the money the states were awarded BECAUSE TOBACCO HARMS AND KILLS PEOPLE should rightfully go to him so that he can afford to continue GROWING TOBACCO.
I thought that this guy actually exemplified the sort of new moral compass that defines American economics and business. The reason this guy started growing tobacco was because it was profitable. The question of whether he SHOULD grow a crop that didn't contribute nutritionally to anyone, but rather served only to sicken and kill them was not part of the equation. The closest this guy came to considering this choice from a moral standpoint was to ask himself "is it against the law for me to grow tobacco?" The choice was not whether he should use his resources as a farmer to produce a product that contributed to people's health and well-being or to their illness and death; the choice was which crop that he is legally allowed to grow will net him the most profit.
In American business circles, to say "I haven't done anything wrong," actually means "I haven't done anything illegal." Partly to blame is our mania to use legislation as our exclusive weapon against predatory or oppressive practices. Remember the old saying, "you can't legislate morality"? Well, it's right. All the laws in the world won't make people moral. The most we can hope for from laws is that they limit the amount of harm the powerful can inflict on the vulnerable.
So what can we do about it? Pass even more laws? I would caution us against continuing down that road. By no means should we abandon legislation which is designed to protect the vulnerable, but neither should we assume that passing those laws is all that is necessary to establish justice. A person or group of business-people must want to pursue practices that put the considerations of the needy above those of themselves and their (mostly wealthy) stockholders. A power and authority higher than human laws is needed to accomplish that. An authority that considers the vulnerable before the powerful, who raises the valleys and lowers the hills, who brings calamity upon the wealthy and hope to the poor.
Don't worry, it's coming. Until then, all we can do is decide to accept or reject the morality of profit for ourselves, and to live accordingly. To join ourselves to a people who live by a different hope and under a Truth so large that it obliterates the lies that define our broken world.
Sounds simple, huh? It is. It's also so difficult that it's impossible to do ourselves, and impossible to do alone.
So don't do it yourself. And don't do it alone.
- "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
Monday, March 21, 2005
WWJB?
Craig Wong is the Executive Director of GUM, Inc. It's a non-profit started by our church, and it runs the tutoring program I volunteer for as well as the summer youth internship program which sets neighborhood youth up with paid internships in local businesses. I was a job coach for that program last summer.
Anyway, Craig went to a conference somewhere sometime last year (I know, I know, I can't remember the specifics) and came back with a pin that read "WWJB?" Being who he is, he waited until somebody asked him what it meant. "Who Would Jesus Bomb?" was his reply, and I can tell you that many an interesting conversation was sparked by this twist on what's become a tired cliche (I don't know how to do accents in this program. If you do, please let me know! Then I can write in Spanish!).
So, the next time you're sitting around and discussing politics with a group of Christians, try throwing that question out. You're sure to get some kind of response!
-"Yes, but the... whole point of the doomsday machine... is lost... if you keep it a secret!"
Anyway, Craig went to a conference somewhere sometime last year (I know, I know, I can't remember the specifics) and came back with a pin that read "WWJB?" Being who he is, he waited until somebody asked him what it meant. "Who Would Jesus Bomb?" was his reply, and I can tell you that many an interesting conversation was sparked by this twist on what's become a tired cliche (I don't know how to do accents in this program. If you do, please let me know! Then I can write in Spanish!).
So, the next time you're sitting around and discussing politics with a group of Christians, try throwing that question out. You're sure to get some kind of response!
-"Yes, but the... whole point of the doomsday machine... is lost... if you keep it a secret!"
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
I mean, how much do teachers DESERVE to get paid, anyway?
Arnold is backing a plan to link teacher's pay to "merit." I think this is an excellent idea. I mean, as a teacher myself, I would love to actually be paid a salary commensurate to the importance of the work that I do, as well as the time, training, and effort that I put into it.
As I said, this is an excellent idea. Far too excellent to be limited to teachers. I think that everyone should be paid an amount that their performance merits. I think that CEO's of major corporations in particular should be paid according to some sort of merit based rubric.
I mean, did you know that Carly Fiorina (outgoing CEO of Hewlett Packard) stands to make 42 MILLION DOLLARS... for being fired? This is not salary money, by which I mean money she receives as compensation for work performed. This is money she's getting for STOPPING working for HP! This woman is making more money than the entire faculty of my school will make in 15 years... for NOT working! And why is she being asked to stop working for HP? Do you think that it's because her performance has generated more money for the company than expected? Is this outrageous compensation merited on the basis of the amount of money her performance generated for the stockholders from whose pockets this money will come (not to mention the employees whose employment and salaries actually are directly affected by the performance of the company, and for whom those 42 million could have contributed to benefits or bonuses)? If it were, do you think she'd be fired?
Anyway, that whole paragraph was an extended aside. What I really want to write about is "merit pay" for teachers. There are two reasons I can think of to institute such a system. First of all, it could be intended as an incentive. If we link pay to merit, teachers will be encouraged to get off of their backsides and actually start doing their jobs. I don't think I need to explain to you why teachers find this attitude to be insulting, demeaning, unfair, inaccurate, misinformed, ignorant, and several other adjectives, too. I think, however, that this view is fundamentally flawed for another reason. Please bear with me as I set this up.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in 2003 (the numbers for 2004 aren't out yet), the average hourly wage for educators in non-supervisory positions was $15.64. Only two other categories were lower: Leisure/Hospitatlity (i.e. the people who put those mints on your pillow in hotels and clean rock-star excretions off the curtains) and Retail sales (i.e. the high school students at the GAP who are apparently in the middle of growth spurts rendering their shirts too short to cover their navels, and the elderly people who shoudn't have to work anymore but since Social Security isn't enough to pay the bills they've been fortunate enough to have their otherwise miserable lives filled with joy due to their job at Walmart, at lease according to the commercials). Who makes more than teachers? Well, manufacturing is slightly higher, with financial services, natural resources and mining, professional and business services and wholesale marketing making more than $17/hour on average. Construction is at almost $19/hour on average: that's over 20% more than educators. At the top of the list, Information services and Transportation and Utilities workers average over $20/hour.
So, what's the point of all these statistics? I just want to make the case that whatever motivates people to become teachers, it's probably not the money. Most people who come to education from other professions are not former hotel workers or Old Navy lifers. The level of education required to be a teacher (Bachelor's degree plus 1.5-3 years of postgraduate education) is a lot higher than most entry level positions. Your rank-and-file teacher does not see salary as a financial incentive to do their job and do it well. Rather, their salary allows them to pursue teaching by giving them enough money to live on so they don't have to get another job. The reasons they want to teach are not financial, but the salary is necessary for teaching to be a viable option.
That attitude has allowed market forces to keep the salary of a teacher low, below that of a construction worker or electrician. As long as the salary offered a teacher is enough to support themselves and their families in a modest fashion, the kinds of people who become teachers will continue to work. Labor disputes in education are the polar opposite of labor disputes in professional sports. Teachers protest when the amount of money they are paid are insufficient to support their families and will drive them into other lines of work just to make ends meet, or when starting salaries are insufficient to allow prospective teachers to pay off debts (remember, they need to take a year or more off of work to get their teaching credential (which costs money), take a lot of tests (all of which also cost money) and do their unpaid student teaching!) and survive the first few years at the bottom of the pay scale. How many pro athletes are going to leave sports for another profession that will pay them better? How many athletes worry that there aren't enough youngsters out there who want to join their ranks, and that the quality of the games will be hurt because prospective athletes are opting for a more lucrative jobs like driving a bus?
So, treating a teacher's salary as an incentive misses the mark, because the forces that motivate teachers are not financial. Rather than an incentive, it becomes a threat to their livelihood. It is not threatening their lavish lifestyle, it is threatening their ability to feed, clothe, and house themselves and their children. It becomes an incentive not to do a better job, but to do a different job -- preferably one where you aren't required to spend your days with your head on a wooden block under a masked man holding a big axe.
Remember that I said there were two reasons I could think of to institue a merit based pay system for teachers? The second reason (and, in my opinion, more likely) is that it's a way to save money. I really doubt that the proposals that come out will entail adding a bunch of money to the state budget for teacher's salaries. What will happen is that the same amount of money (or less, when adjusted for inflation) will be allocated, and redistributed to teachers on the basis of merit. Therefore, some teachers will get a pay cut, and a few might actually get a little more money. Of course, it will cost money to pay for the new bureaucracy that such a program would entail, and that money will probably come out of the pool, too, leaving less for teacher salaries. The beauty is, if an individual teacher's salary doesn't keep up with inflation, it's easy to say that it has to do with their merit, not with a lack of funding for teacher's salary in the budget. With an arbitrary scale to base salary on, it's hard to keep track of the big picture.
For all the talk in political circles of children being our greatest natural resource and leaving no child behind, the numbers tell a different story. CEOs like Carly and other super-wealthy Americans are getting huge chunks of the budget in the form of tax cuts (did I mention that half of Carly's 42 million is in the form of stock options, the dividends of which are taxed at a much lower rate as per W's tax plan? Convenient, no?), while children and their schools get less and less. I wonder if teacher's asked to resign because of low "merit" are going to get tax breaks, stock options, or any sort of severance package at all. I doubt it.
Later, I'll write about what the heck they mean by "merit" when it comes to teacher performance. It ain't pretty, I'll tell you that right now.
- "Yep, that'll do it."
As I said, this is an excellent idea. Far too excellent to be limited to teachers. I think that everyone should be paid an amount that their performance merits. I think that CEO's of major corporations in particular should be paid according to some sort of merit based rubric.
I mean, did you know that Carly Fiorina (outgoing CEO of Hewlett Packard) stands to make 42 MILLION DOLLARS... for being fired? This is not salary money, by which I mean money she receives as compensation for work performed. This is money she's getting for STOPPING working for HP! This woman is making more money than the entire faculty of my school will make in 15 years... for NOT working! And why is she being asked to stop working for HP? Do you think that it's because her performance has generated more money for the company than expected? Is this outrageous compensation merited on the basis of the amount of money her performance generated for the stockholders from whose pockets this money will come (not to mention the employees whose employment and salaries actually are directly affected by the performance of the company, and for whom those 42 million could have contributed to benefits or bonuses)? If it were, do you think she'd be fired?
Anyway, that whole paragraph was an extended aside. What I really want to write about is "merit pay" for teachers. There are two reasons I can think of to institute such a system. First of all, it could be intended as an incentive. If we link pay to merit, teachers will be encouraged to get off of their backsides and actually start doing their jobs. I don't think I need to explain to you why teachers find this attitude to be insulting, demeaning, unfair, inaccurate, misinformed, ignorant, and several other adjectives, too. I think, however, that this view is fundamentally flawed for another reason. Please bear with me as I set this up.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in 2003 (the numbers for 2004 aren't out yet), the average hourly wage for educators in non-supervisory positions was $15.64. Only two other categories were lower: Leisure/Hospitatlity (i.e. the people who put those mints on your pillow in hotels and clean rock-star excretions off the curtains) and Retail sales (i.e. the high school students at the GAP who are apparently in the middle of growth spurts rendering their shirts too short to cover their navels, and the elderly people who shoudn't have to work anymore but since Social Security isn't enough to pay the bills they've been fortunate enough to have their otherwise miserable lives filled with joy due to their job at Walmart, at lease according to the commercials). Who makes more than teachers? Well, manufacturing is slightly higher, with financial services, natural resources and mining, professional and business services and wholesale marketing making more than $17/hour on average. Construction is at almost $19/hour on average: that's over 20% more than educators. At the top of the list, Information services and Transportation and Utilities workers average over $20/hour.
So, what's the point of all these statistics? I just want to make the case that whatever motivates people to become teachers, it's probably not the money. Most people who come to education from other professions are not former hotel workers or Old Navy lifers. The level of education required to be a teacher (Bachelor's degree plus 1.5-3 years of postgraduate education) is a lot higher than most entry level positions. Your rank-and-file teacher does not see salary as a financial incentive to do their job and do it well. Rather, their salary allows them to pursue teaching by giving them enough money to live on so they don't have to get another job. The reasons they want to teach are not financial, but the salary is necessary for teaching to be a viable option.
That attitude has allowed market forces to keep the salary of a teacher low, below that of a construction worker or electrician. As long as the salary offered a teacher is enough to support themselves and their families in a modest fashion, the kinds of people who become teachers will continue to work. Labor disputes in education are the polar opposite of labor disputes in professional sports. Teachers protest when the amount of money they are paid are insufficient to support their families and will drive them into other lines of work just to make ends meet, or when starting salaries are insufficient to allow prospective teachers to pay off debts (remember, they need to take a year or more off of work to get their teaching credential (which costs money), take a lot of tests (all of which also cost money) and do their unpaid student teaching!) and survive the first few years at the bottom of the pay scale. How many pro athletes are going to leave sports for another profession that will pay them better? How many athletes worry that there aren't enough youngsters out there who want to join their ranks, and that the quality of the games will be hurt because prospective athletes are opting for a more lucrative jobs like driving a bus?
So, treating a teacher's salary as an incentive misses the mark, because the forces that motivate teachers are not financial. Rather than an incentive, it becomes a threat to their livelihood. It is not threatening their lavish lifestyle, it is threatening their ability to feed, clothe, and house themselves and their children. It becomes an incentive not to do a better job, but to do a different job -- preferably one where you aren't required to spend your days with your head on a wooden block under a masked man holding a big axe.
Remember that I said there were two reasons I could think of to institue a merit based pay system for teachers? The second reason (and, in my opinion, more likely) is that it's a way to save money. I really doubt that the proposals that come out will entail adding a bunch of money to the state budget for teacher's salaries. What will happen is that the same amount of money (or less, when adjusted for inflation) will be allocated, and redistributed to teachers on the basis of merit. Therefore, some teachers will get a pay cut, and a few might actually get a little more money. Of course, it will cost money to pay for the new bureaucracy that such a program would entail, and that money will probably come out of the pool, too, leaving less for teacher salaries. The beauty is, if an individual teacher's salary doesn't keep up with inflation, it's easy to say that it has to do with their merit, not with a lack of funding for teacher's salary in the budget. With an arbitrary scale to base salary on, it's hard to keep track of the big picture.
For all the talk in political circles of children being our greatest natural resource and leaving no child behind, the numbers tell a different story. CEOs like Carly and other super-wealthy Americans are getting huge chunks of the budget in the form of tax cuts (did I mention that half of Carly's 42 million is in the form of stock options, the dividends of which are taxed at a much lower rate as per W's tax plan? Convenient, no?), while children and their schools get less and less. I wonder if teacher's asked to resign because of low "merit" are going to get tax breaks, stock options, or any sort of severance package at all. I doubt it.
Later, I'll write about what the heck they mean by "merit" when it comes to teacher performance. It ain't pretty, I'll tell you that right now.
- "Yep, that'll do it."
Thursday, January 27, 2005
bitter irony
You've probably heard or read about the man who caused a huge train accident in LA when he parked his SUV on the tracks.
Apparently, he intended to commit suicide by letting the train hit him in his vehicle. At the last moment, however, he changed his mind and exited the vehicle. When the train hit the empty vehicle, it derailed and headed straight for an oncoming train going in the other direction, hit that train, and finally crashed into an empty, "parked" freight train.
The man has been charged with 10 counts of murder for deaths sustained in the crash, and the D.A. has included "special circumstances" in the charges which makes him eligible for the death penalty.
This case is certainly tragic, and I do not in any way want to say that the horrific results of this man's thoughtless, self-centered, and inhuman act do not merit the harshest penalties that society hands out in these cases. I also do not want to use this case as a place to debate the death penalty... well, not really.
I do want to take this example and use it as an opportunity to discuss the idea of "justice" in our society, and to hold it up against what the word "justice" actually means.
In our society, we have courts and a legal system that are designed to deliver justice. In some cases, justice involves compensation to an injured party for damages sustained. By and large, this compensation takes a monetary form, even if the original damages were not monetary in nature. "Justice" is done when the perpetrator renders back to their victim a sum of money equal in value to the amount of harm that they caused.
Obviously, we're going to run into problems when the damages were not monetary in nature. If I stole $5,000 from you, it would be just if you returned $5,000 to me (plus interest, I suppose, to make it neater). But what if it was not money that was lost, but a limb, or a life, or an opportunity, time, or trust? Can the courts mandate a return to the victim of the 3 years with their children they lost because of false imprisonment, or the ability to cheerfuly give to a charity without fear of it being a swindle, or the lost moments of holding an infant daughter because of the loss of a limb, or her life lost because of an industrial accident, or his life lost because of pollutants poisoning the groundwater, or the life of a child lost because of a drunk driver? We award vast sums of money, because ultimately, that is the limit of what our justice system can do. We don't have the ability to execute real justice and return the irreplacable items, time, experiences or people who have been lost, so we just keep piling on the money, blinding ourselves to our impotence to right wrongs in any sort of meaningful way.
In other cases, we seek "justice" by punishing those who have done wrong in other ways: by taking away their liberty in jail or in subtler ways (e.g. restricting their freedom of employment, voting, travel, etc.), or by even taking their lives, in the most severe cases.
In these cases, I think that reasonable people can hold the opinion that some people actually deserve to lose their lives because of the intense evil of their actions, and that to end their lives is an act of "justice," by which I mean rendering unto someone the appropriate consequence which their actions merit. The trouble is, that's only half of justice. The other half would render back to their victims their lives or innocence, or expunge their past from pain and awful memories. Isn't this what they deserve? Alas, it is not in our power to do these things.
What results is a justice system that is lopsided. In seeking to restore the balance of justice and put things back to the way they ought to be, we find that the only way we can try to balance the scales is to heap death and imprisonment onto one side of the scales, since we are unable to remove it from the other. In the final analysis, we cannot erase the scars of evil, but we can spread it's gruesome consequences back onto the perpetrators.
I'm not saying that this is wrong, and we should never do anything. I'm saying that it's the best we can do, and we should always be mournful and dissatisfied with human efforts. And I think we should be more humble, too. It's in our nature to want to... actually, to need to do something, anything to pursue justice when we see things that are so obviously not the way they're supposed to be. We need to realize that our best efforts are not enough, and often, our best efforts just make things worse.
There's a great moment in the Lord of the Rings (the book, not the movie... okay it's in the movie, too, but it was in the book first!) Where Frodo tells Gandalf that he thinks that Gollum deserves to die. Gandalf replies that he's probably right... but there are also many that die who deserve life. "Can you give it to them? Do not be so swift to hand out pain and death, Master Frodo."
The "Bitter Irony" I reference in my header is that this man in LA decided to park his car on the railroad tracks because he wanted to end his life. Even though he changed his mind at the last minute, wounds on his wrists and chest indicate that this was not his only failed attempt, and will likely not be his last. Ironically, the most "justice" we can mete out as society is to do for this man what he desired to do but found himself unable to do, that is, to end his life, while doing nothing to restore the lives of his victims. This is the uppermost limit of human justice. Don't you long for something more?
- "He says that he also is a king, and he also will not listen to what you say."
Apparently, he intended to commit suicide by letting the train hit him in his vehicle. At the last moment, however, he changed his mind and exited the vehicle. When the train hit the empty vehicle, it derailed and headed straight for an oncoming train going in the other direction, hit that train, and finally crashed into an empty, "parked" freight train.
The man has been charged with 10 counts of murder for deaths sustained in the crash, and the D.A. has included "special circumstances" in the charges which makes him eligible for the death penalty.
This case is certainly tragic, and I do not in any way want to say that the horrific results of this man's thoughtless, self-centered, and inhuman act do not merit the harshest penalties that society hands out in these cases. I also do not want to use this case as a place to debate the death penalty... well, not really.
I do want to take this example and use it as an opportunity to discuss the idea of "justice" in our society, and to hold it up against what the word "justice" actually means.
In our society, we have courts and a legal system that are designed to deliver justice. In some cases, justice involves compensation to an injured party for damages sustained. By and large, this compensation takes a monetary form, even if the original damages were not monetary in nature. "Justice" is done when the perpetrator renders back to their victim a sum of money equal in value to the amount of harm that they caused.
Obviously, we're going to run into problems when the damages were not monetary in nature. If I stole $5,000 from you, it would be just if you returned $5,000 to me (plus interest, I suppose, to make it neater). But what if it was not money that was lost, but a limb, or a life, or an opportunity, time, or trust? Can the courts mandate a return to the victim of the 3 years with their children they lost because of false imprisonment, or the ability to cheerfuly give to a charity without fear of it being a swindle, or the lost moments of holding an infant daughter because of the loss of a limb, or her life lost because of an industrial accident, or his life lost because of pollutants poisoning the groundwater, or the life of a child lost because of a drunk driver? We award vast sums of money, because ultimately, that is the limit of what our justice system can do. We don't have the ability to execute real justice and return the irreplacable items, time, experiences or people who have been lost, so we just keep piling on the money, blinding ourselves to our impotence to right wrongs in any sort of meaningful way.
In other cases, we seek "justice" by punishing those who have done wrong in other ways: by taking away their liberty in jail or in subtler ways (e.g. restricting their freedom of employment, voting, travel, etc.), or by even taking their lives, in the most severe cases.
In these cases, I think that reasonable people can hold the opinion that some people actually deserve to lose their lives because of the intense evil of their actions, and that to end their lives is an act of "justice," by which I mean rendering unto someone the appropriate consequence which their actions merit. The trouble is, that's only half of justice. The other half would render back to their victims their lives or innocence, or expunge their past from pain and awful memories. Isn't this what they deserve? Alas, it is not in our power to do these things.
What results is a justice system that is lopsided. In seeking to restore the balance of justice and put things back to the way they ought to be, we find that the only way we can try to balance the scales is to heap death and imprisonment onto one side of the scales, since we are unable to remove it from the other. In the final analysis, we cannot erase the scars of evil, but we can spread it's gruesome consequences back onto the perpetrators.
I'm not saying that this is wrong, and we should never do anything. I'm saying that it's the best we can do, and we should always be mournful and dissatisfied with human efforts. And I think we should be more humble, too. It's in our nature to want to... actually, to need to do something, anything to pursue justice when we see things that are so obviously not the way they're supposed to be. We need to realize that our best efforts are not enough, and often, our best efforts just make things worse.
There's a great moment in the Lord of the Rings (the book, not the movie... okay it's in the movie, too, but it was in the book first!) Where Frodo tells Gandalf that he thinks that Gollum deserves to die. Gandalf replies that he's probably right... but there are also many that die who deserve life. "Can you give it to them? Do not be so swift to hand out pain and death, Master Frodo."
The "Bitter Irony" I reference in my header is that this man in LA decided to park his car on the railroad tracks because he wanted to end his life. Even though he changed his mind at the last minute, wounds on his wrists and chest indicate that this was not his only failed attempt, and will likely not be his last. Ironically, the most "justice" we can mete out as society is to do for this man what he desired to do but found himself unable to do, that is, to end his life, while doing nothing to restore the lives of his victims. This is the uppermost limit of human justice. Don't you long for something more?
- "He says that he also is a king, and he also will not listen to what you say."
Friday, January 21, 2005
"You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists."
Okay, I hope that I don't need to tell you who I'm quoting.
Anyway, when I heard this, I wanted to yell in exasperation. Now, I have a blog, so here I go!
The faulty logic in this statement presupposes an issue in which there are only two possible positions. Two forces against which only one form of resistance is possible. I thought of a couple of examples to illustrate the absurdity of this frame of mind.
First off, let's visit the schoolyard. We've all been in a situation where two of our friends are fighting... usually over something stupid. Anyway, you always end up in the situation where one of them tries to force you to "choose sides." This is incredibly demeaning to both parties. It reduces a complex person and rich relationships to a single issue. You are asked to consider a person who is your friend to be nothing more than "the enemy of _________," and to filter all aspects of your relationship with them through this very narrow issue. It strips them of their identity as an individual, and discounts all of the history and common experiences that make up a real friendship. When you're in that situation, don't you want to say, "I'm not going to choose sides: you're both my friends, and you need to work this out between yourselves."
So, what am I saying? People should be friends with the US and with the terrorists? No... let me give you another example that illustrates my point better.
WWII. Hitler attacks Russia, breaking his promise to Stalin. Can you imagine Stalin saying, "If you're not with us, you're with Hitler"? Can you imagine a reasonable person completely detesting Hitler and his agenda, and wanting nothing more than to overthrow his leadership, defeat his armed forces, and liberate those under his oppression... but not being huge fans of Joe Stalin, either?
I mean, Stalin was not a good guy. But we had to defeat Hitler, so we went along with him, and sowed the seeds of the cold war and set the stage for repressive regimes and the loss of human rights for millions of people for decades to come.
That old philosophy of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" has gotten us into trouble again and again: in Latin America, in the Middle East, in the cold war and continuing in those regions today, etc.
So, what do we do? Do we wave our flag because we're afraid to be accussed of "providing aid and comfort to the enemy"? Do we vote for W because he's the only force for good in a world of pure evil?
Guess what? I'm not going to give you an answer. I just want to let you know that it's okay for you to ask the question!
- "Be excellent to each other... and party on, dudes!"
Anyway, when I heard this, I wanted to yell in exasperation. Now, I have a blog, so here I go!
The faulty logic in this statement presupposes an issue in which there are only two possible positions. Two forces against which only one form of resistance is possible. I thought of a couple of examples to illustrate the absurdity of this frame of mind.
First off, let's visit the schoolyard. We've all been in a situation where two of our friends are fighting... usually over something stupid. Anyway, you always end up in the situation where one of them tries to force you to "choose sides." This is incredibly demeaning to both parties. It reduces a complex person and rich relationships to a single issue. You are asked to consider a person who is your friend to be nothing more than "the enemy of _________," and to filter all aspects of your relationship with them through this very narrow issue. It strips them of their identity as an individual, and discounts all of the history and common experiences that make up a real friendship. When you're in that situation, don't you want to say, "I'm not going to choose sides: you're both my friends, and you need to work this out between yourselves."
So, what am I saying? People should be friends with the US and with the terrorists? No... let me give you another example that illustrates my point better.
WWII. Hitler attacks Russia, breaking his promise to Stalin. Can you imagine Stalin saying, "If you're not with us, you're with Hitler"? Can you imagine a reasonable person completely detesting Hitler and his agenda, and wanting nothing more than to overthrow his leadership, defeat his armed forces, and liberate those under his oppression... but not being huge fans of Joe Stalin, either?
I mean, Stalin was not a good guy. But we had to defeat Hitler, so we went along with him, and sowed the seeds of the cold war and set the stage for repressive regimes and the loss of human rights for millions of people for decades to come.
That old philosophy of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" has gotten us into trouble again and again: in Latin America, in the Middle East, in the cold war and continuing in those regions today, etc.
So, what do we do? Do we wave our flag because we're afraid to be accussed of "providing aid and comfort to the enemy"? Do we vote for W because he's the only force for good in a world of pure evil?
Guess what? I'm not going to give you an answer. I just want to let you know that it's okay for you to ask the question!
- "Be excellent to each other... and party on, dudes!"
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