Monday, October 27, 2003
A perfect time and place to be a dad
By Rusell King
One thing they never warn you about when they're preparing you for parenthood (meager as that preparation generally is) is the asking of the great unanswerable questions. From 2 to 10, kids excel at this. When my son Danny was 6 years old, he was a champ.
Can we touch the moon? Do birds fly there? His little brain raced ahead, exploring and wondering a thousand new possibilities suggested by each of my stumbling answers.
Later, we'd learn from his teachers that Danny is artistically gifted, so he sees things in ways the rest of us do not, and we'd learn from his pediatrician that he has an IQ that makes him bored by the slowness of our average brains. But when he was 6, all I knew was that he was asking me the great unanswerable questions.
How high is the sky? Why can't I drink from the lake? How can something I can't see make me sick? How far down can you go? How small can things be?
At first, I was shamed and frustrated by my stupidity. Children so young usually see their parents as godlike-all-knowing and infallible-and I didn't like having my feet of clay exposed so soon. Quickly, though, I learned to wonder with him, and I looked forward to his next zinger.
At 6, he didn't want technical answers, even with his IQ. They wouldn't mean anything to him, and they'd bore him if they did. Just thinking of the questions seemed to please something in his little artist's soul, but I'm blessed with neither artistic talent nor a high IQ, so the technical answers comfort me.
How high is the sky? I'm sure they've developed new technologies that give more precise measurements, but at the time I looked it up, our universe was about 15 billion light years "big", give or take a few city blocks (a "light year" being almost 5.9 trillion miles). Each year, it gets 11.75 trillion miles bigger.
Unless you limit it to the Earth's bubble of atmosphere, which Danny does not, the sky is way, way up there.
How little can things be? Again, allowing for the advances in physics since I was in school, I went with the electron as my basic particle. In relation to the Earth, it's about the same as the Earth is in relation to the universe as a whole.
It seems that "up" and "down" are about the same distance, and our planet is in the middle. Danny appreciated the symmetry of it all.
I once read that our ability to understand things also puts us right in the middle. It seems that we common folk can grasp things that fall between being 1/1000 of our own height and being 1,000 times our own height. After that, we have to depend on our technology.
I once heard a science guy on public radio put us in another kind of middle: The Earth is as much larger than us as we are larger than the cells that compose our bodies.
Famed astronomer Carl Sagan used to say that if the Earth were much older (in astronomical terms) it might not be inhabitable, or even in existence. If it were much younger, it might not be the right temperature or chemical mix to support life. Either way, we wouldn't be here. In this sense we define the middle, but it's still a middle of sorts.
So it seems that we are, in time and place, smack dab in the middle of everything. That seems like a good thing.
It's just the right time and place for a dad to sit with his son under the stars and answer fantastic questions like "How high is the sky?" It's just the right time and right place for a dad and his son to wonder. It's the perfect time and place to be a dad.
By Rusell King
One thing they never warn you about when they're preparing you for parenthood (meager as that preparation generally is) is the asking of the great unanswerable questions. From 2 to 10, kids excel at this. When my son Danny was 6 years old, he was a champ.
Can we touch the moon? Do birds fly there? His little brain raced ahead, exploring and wondering a thousand new possibilities suggested by each of my stumbling answers.
Later, we'd learn from his teachers that Danny is artistically gifted, so he sees things in ways the rest of us do not, and we'd learn from his pediatrician that he has an IQ that makes him bored by the slowness of our average brains. But when he was 6, all I knew was that he was asking me the great unanswerable questions.
How high is the sky? Why can't I drink from the lake? How can something I can't see make me sick? How far down can you go? How small can things be?
At first, I was shamed and frustrated by my stupidity. Children so young usually see their parents as godlike-all-knowing and infallible-and I didn't like having my feet of clay exposed so soon. Quickly, though, I learned to wonder with him, and I looked forward to his next zinger.
At 6, he didn't want technical answers, even with his IQ. They wouldn't mean anything to him, and they'd bore him if they did. Just thinking of the questions seemed to please something in his little artist's soul, but I'm blessed with neither artistic talent nor a high IQ, so the technical answers comfort me.
How high is the sky? I'm sure they've developed new technologies that give more precise measurements, but at the time I looked it up, our universe was about 15 billion light years "big", give or take a few city blocks (a "light year" being almost 5.9 trillion miles). Each year, it gets 11.75 trillion miles bigger.
Unless you limit it to the Earth's bubble of atmosphere, which Danny does not, the sky is way, way up there.
How little can things be? Again, allowing for the advances in physics since I was in school, I went with the electron as my basic particle. In relation to the Earth, it's about the same as the Earth is in relation to the universe as a whole.
It seems that "up" and "down" are about the same distance, and our planet is in the middle. Danny appreciated the symmetry of it all.
I once read that our ability to understand things also puts us right in the middle. It seems that we common folk can grasp things that fall between being 1/1000 of our own height and being 1,000 times our own height. After that, we have to depend on our technology.
I once heard a science guy on public radio put us in another kind of middle: The Earth is as much larger than us as we are larger than the cells that compose our bodies.
Famed astronomer Carl Sagan used to say that if the Earth were much older (in astronomical terms) it might not be inhabitable, or even in existence. If it were much younger, it might not be the right temperature or chemical mix to support life. Either way, we wouldn't be here. In this sense we define the middle, but it's still a middle of sorts.
So it seems that we are, in time and place, smack dab in the middle of everything. That seems like a good thing.
It's just the right time and place for a dad to sit with his son under the stars and answer fantastic questions like "How high is the sky?" It's just the right time and right place for a dad and his son to wonder. It's the perfect time and place to be a dad.
Monday, October 20, 2003
Rethinking the racial academic gap
By Russell King
"Dad, if I show them how smart I am, they say I'm trying to be white." Those were the words of my teenage son trying to explain why he was failing every class, despite having an IQ well above average.
You’ll note that he did not say he was being cheated, discouraged or oppressed by white teachers or white administrators. You’ll note that he did not say the system was stacked against him or that the system gave unfair advantage to white students. The "them" and "they" referred to his black male peers. My black son is failing because his black peers will deny him both his identity and their friendship if he dares succeed.
We're hearing a lot these days about the poor performance of black children in our schools and how racism, insensitivity and ignorance among white teachers and staff are to blame. I'm not saying these faults don't exist, but as the father of two black and four white children, I am saying there is something more, something we don't talk about because we don't dare.
That great unmentionable "something" is that we, through both our broad American culture and our "African American" subculture, impose on black children an identity that shuns intellectual pursuits. Any child who dares resist that identity, who says "I love to learn," will be brutally rejected. Nothing, not even the most prejudiced teacher, has created a greater barrier to my son's academic achievement than this cultural pressure. This racism, at once rooted in and nurtured by our culture, is institutional racism in its most powerful form.
How dare anyone try to tell my son who he must be, to strip him of his gifts? How dare they try to enslave him in an identity they have created for him? The culture does this to all children, turning boys in tough guys and girls into ornaments, but there is an added twist when the children are black. To gain friendship, to be considered "hip," even to be defined as a black man, my son must hide his brains.
When I brought this problem to the attention of the school principal, social worker and psychologist, they all said "Yeah, we hear that a lot." So the school district is aware of the problem. Why, then, isn't my local school board addressing the problem? Why does the board, instead, hire a $50,000 consultant who describes institutionalized racism as "a system of advantage and privilege--both consciously and unconsciously, in precise and imprecise ways--that promotes white skin, white culture and white consciousness over other experiences."?
There's no doubt that the institutional racism this consultant describes exists; there is also no doubt that the institutional racism my son describes contributes infinitely more to the racial academic achievement gap.
What my son is facing is not new. His great-grandmother was ridiculed by her black peers because she loved literature. His mother was ridiculed by her black peers for earning high grades. Use your brains and you're an Uncle Tom, an Oreo, a traitor selling out to "the Man" and turning your back on "your people."
The roots of the pressure run deep: American slaves came from cultures of learning, discovering and teaching. But the slave owners cut them off from their birth cultures so severely that the slaves--and their children--had no models of black people using their brains to live. They were taught they were merely beasts of burden.
Even after slavery, blacks were denied education and the use of their brains. Generations of black Americans lived in a world where books and learning were willfully withheld from them. Most black Americans naturally saw the non-school life as "our life," and the school life as "the other life." Black children who wanted to study were teased by peers and made to feel unwelcome in their own communities (not to mention violently discouraged by white bigots and institutions).
The problem continues today, as my son tells us. If you're black, using your brains is neither hip nor "black." If you use your brains you're trying to be "white," with the bigoted implication that all things "white" are to be undesirable and to be avoided.
My son will hear this attitude expressed by other black children and adults. He will see and hear this attitude expressed on TV, in movies and in popular music. He'll see and hear it so much that it will seem true to him. He will sense it in the assumptions and nuances of white children and adults. It will seem like everyone believes it.
Perhaps that's why the school board has chosen the route it has. It's much easier to construct it all on a neat system of victims and villains than it is to face reality. It's more politically acceptable, too. But until we face it, our schools will continue to fail in closing the racial gap.
Maybe someday school boards will have the courage to look beyond the politically correct to the real and the effective. My school board could have learned from the work of Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, president of the University of Maryland, who has written books about his research into what helps black children beat the odds. His work goes beyond mere analysis--and beyond the relentlessly negative media images--to show us precisely how young black men and women can succeed despite the roadblocks of racism, the temptations of crime and drugs, and a popular culture that values being "cool" over being educated. Dr. Hrabowski is not alone, but he and others like him remain painfully ignored.
In the meantime, I hope I can convince my children that no one has the right to tell them who they can be based on the color of their skin. Too many people have fought and died for their right to be whoever they want to be regardless of color. Skin color is just skin color: It does not say who they are inside; it does not say what their culture, language or religion is or should be. It does not say what they can be and do. They must decide for themselves. I pray they'll decide to use their brains and be the men and women they choose to be, because that is what will give them healthy, happy lives.
By Russell King
"Dad, if I show them how smart I am, they say I'm trying to be white." Those were the words of my teenage son trying to explain why he was failing every class, despite having an IQ well above average.
You’ll note that he did not say he was being cheated, discouraged or oppressed by white teachers or white administrators. You’ll note that he did not say the system was stacked against him or that the system gave unfair advantage to white students. The "them" and "they" referred to his black male peers. My black son is failing because his black peers will deny him both his identity and their friendship if he dares succeed.
We're hearing a lot these days about the poor performance of black children in our schools and how racism, insensitivity and ignorance among white teachers and staff are to blame. I'm not saying these faults don't exist, but as the father of two black and four white children, I am saying there is something more, something we don't talk about because we don't dare.
That great unmentionable "something" is that we, through both our broad American culture and our "African American" subculture, impose on black children an identity that shuns intellectual pursuits. Any child who dares resist that identity, who says "I love to learn," will be brutally rejected. Nothing, not even the most prejudiced teacher, has created a greater barrier to my son's academic achievement than this cultural pressure. This racism, at once rooted in and nurtured by our culture, is institutional racism in its most powerful form.
How dare anyone try to tell my son who he must be, to strip him of his gifts? How dare they try to enslave him in an identity they have created for him? The culture does this to all children, turning boys in tough guys and girls into ornaments, but there is an added twist when the children are black. To gain friendship, to be considered "hip," even to be defined as a black man, my son must hide his brains.
When I brought this problem to the attention of the school principal, social worker and psychologist, they all said "Yeah, we hear that a lot." So the school district is aware of the problem. Why, then, isn't my local school board addressing the problem? Why does the board, instead, hire a $50,000 consultant who describes institutionalized racism as "a system of advantage and privilege--both consciously and unconsciously, in precise and imprecise ways--that promotes white skin, white culture and white consciousness over other experiences."?
There's no doubt that the institutional racism this consultant describes exists; there is also no doubt that the institutional racism my son describes contributes infinitely more to the racial academic achievement gap.
What my son is facing is not new. His great-grandmother was ridiculed by her black peers because she loved literature. His mother was ridiculed by her black peers for earning high grades. Use your brains and you're an Uncle Tom, an Oreo, a traitor selling out to "the Man" and turning your back on "your people."
The roots of the pressure run deep: American slaves came from cultures of learning, discovering and teaching. But the slave owners cut them off from their birth cultures so severely that the slaves--and their children--had no models of black people using their brains to live. They were taught they were merely beasts of burden.
Even after slavery, blacks were denied education and the use of their brains. Generations of black Americans lived in a world where books and learning were willfully withheld from them. Most black Americans naturally saw the non-school life as "our life," and the school life as "the other life." Black children who wanted to study were teased by peers and made to feel unwelcome in their own communities (not to mention violently discouraged by white bigots and institutions).
The problem continues today, as my son tells us. If you're black, using your brains is neither hip nor "black." If you use your brains you're trying to be "white," with the bigoted implication that all things "white" are to be undesirable and to be avoided.
My son will hear this attitude expressed by other black children and adults. He will see and hear this attitude expressed on TV, in movies and in popular music. He'll see and hear it so much that it will seem true to him. He will sense it in the assumptions and nuances of white children and adults. It will seem like everyone believes it.
Perhaps that's why the school board has chosen the route it has. It's much easier to construct it all on a neat system of victims and villains than it is to face reality. It's more politically acceptable, too. But until we face it, our schools will continue to fail in closing the racial gap.
Maybe someday school boards will have the courage to look beyond the politically correct to the real and the effective. My school board could have learned from the work of Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, president of the University of Maryland, who has written books about his research into what helps black children beat the odds. His work goes beyond mere analysis--and beyond the relentlessly negative media images--to show us precisely how young black men and women can succeed despite the roadblocks of racism, the temptations of crime and drugs, and a popular culture that values being "cool" over being educated. Dr. Hrabowski is not alone, but he and others like him remain painfully ignored.
In the meantime, I hope I can convince my children that no one has the right to tell them who they can be based on the color of their skin. Too many people have fought and died for their right to be whoever they want to be regardless of color. Skin color is just skin color: It does not say who they are inside; it does not say what their culture, language or religion is or should be. It does not say what they can be and do. They must decide for themselves. I pray they'll decide to use their brains and be the men and women they choose to be, because that is what will give them healthy, happy lives.
Sunday, October 05, 2003
Rearing gentlemen in the 21st century
By Russell King
At the risk of sounding like some narrow-minded ultra right-winger on a bad TV talk show, I'll tell you that rearing three sons in this culture scares me. I'm trying to rear them as gentlemen, but the culture is pulling them the other way.
Here's an example. When the famous basketball coach, Bobby Knight, was fired for giving a student an ill-mannered lecture on good manners after the student addressed him so informally as to offend him, he was widely praised as a "great disciplinarian" and "molder of men." That's frightening. Knight spent 30 years publicly displaying his bad manners and lack of discipline (frequently unable to control his own emotions, mouth or hands).
As the father of future men, I hope such "molders" stay far away. I prefer my children learn that the only discipline worth having is self discipline and that the point of good manners is not to honor you, but to honor others.
Of course, Knight isn't the one. A president breaks his marriage vows and then lies about it to the nation. Business leaders pass off narcissism as leadership and "how" we live as "why" we live. Athletes disgrace themselves by acts ranging from taunting opponents to threatening to eat their children, from brawling over a ball game to lying to police in a murder investigation, and we reward them with multimillion-dollar contracts and superstar status. Our best known men of the cloth spend more time with their hands out, or clenched in fists, than they do with their hands folded in prayer. Professional entertainers saturate our culture with the vulgar, vain and violent, and we not only shower them with cash, we put them on pedestals (perhaps even elect them to high office).
An even more highly placed example popped up after the crash of Chinese and American military planes early in George W, Bush's presidency. In any moment of conflict, a gentleman looks to resolve the conflict as quickly and quietly as possible, while preserving as much of the other party's dignity as possible. That's usually best accomplished with a sincere apology, even when you don't feel you've done anything wrong. Men of strength and character do not fear apologies. They know there is neither humility nor weakness in such a sacrifice.
That, at least, is what I'm trying to teach my children.
The president, however, undermined my lesson with an international version of the "he touched me first!" squabbles that go on in the back seat on long car trips.
You may als recall that when this president was a candidate, he insulted a man with a vulgarity and then refused to apologize for the offense. His aversion to apology reveals him to be a man of weak character, yet we elected him leader of the free world. What are my sons supposed to make of that?
I was just happy that none of my kids heard the vice president call the return of the spy plane a matter of national pride. How small, how crude. My pride in America, the pride I hope to inspire in my children, is built firmly on the values we treasure, the ideals to which we aspire and the sacrifices we have made to reach them. I've witnessed children whose injured pride will not be healed until the return is made of, say, a pilfered Pokemon card, but grownups are supposed to live a little higher.
By virtue of their powerful positions, of their exposure on television and radio, and of the wealth we give them, these politicians, athletes, entertainers and captains of industry are role models. Kids look at them and get the message: "If you want to be valued, if you want the good life, act like this." Trouble is, they act like bums. And with such role models, such pictures of "success," how is a plain old dad--lacking power, prosperity and publicity-- supposed to tip the scales in favor of his boys becoming honorable men?
I wish I knew.
By Russell King
At the risk of sounding like some narrow-minded ultra right-winger on a bad TV talk show, I'll tell you that rearing three sons in this culture scares me. I'm trying to rear them as gentlemen, but the culture is pulling them the other way.
Here's an example. When the famous basketball coach, Bobby Knight, was fired for giving a student an ill-mannered lecture on good manners after the student addressed him so informally as to offend him, he was widely praised as a "great disciplinarian" and "molder of men." That's frightening. Knight spent 30 years publicly displaying his bad manners and lack of discipline (frequently unable to control his own emotions, mouth or hands).
As the father of future men, I hope such "molders" stay far away. I prefer my children learn that the only discipline worth having is self discipline and that the point of good manners is not to honor you, but to honor others.
Of course, Knight isn't the one. A president breaks his marriage vows and then lies about it to the nation. Business leaders pass off narcissism as leadership and "how" we live as "why" we live. Athletes disgrace themselves by acts ranging from taunting opponents to threatening to eat their children, from brawling over a ball game to lying to police in a murder investigation, and we reward them with multimillion-dollar contracts and superstar status. Our best known men of the cloth spend more time with their hands out, or clenched in fists, than they do with their hands folded in prayer. Professional entertainers saturate our culture with the vulgar, vain and violent, and we not only shower them with cash, we put them on pedestals (perhaps even elect them to high office).
An even more highly placed example popped up after the crash of Chinese and American military planes early in George W, Bush's presidency. In any moment of conflict, a gentleman looks to resolve the conflict as quickly and quietly as possible, while preserving as much of the other party's dignity as possible. That's usually best accomplished with a sincere apology, even when you don't feel you've done anything wrong. Men of strength and character do not fear apologies. They know there is neither humility nor weakness in such a sacrifice.
That, at least, is what I'm trying to teach my children.
The president, however, undermined my lesson with an international version of the "he touched me first!" squabbles that go on in the back seat on long car trips.
You may als recall that when this president was a candidate, he insulted a man with a vulgarity and then refused to apologize for the offense. His aversion to apology reveals him to be a man of weak character, yet we elected him leader of the free world. What are my sons supposed to make of that?
I was just happy that none of my kids heard the vice president call the return of the spy plane a matter of national pride. How small, how crude. My pride in America, the pride I hope to inspire in my children, is built firmly on the values we treasure, the ideals to which we aspire and the sacrifices we have made to reach them. I've witnessed children whose injured pride will not be healed until the return is made of, say, a pilfered Pokemon card, but grownups are supposed to live a little higher.
By virtue of their powerful positions, of their exposure on television and radio, and of the wealth we give them, these politicians, athletes, entertainers and captains of industry are role models. Kids look at them and get the message: "If you want to be valued, if you want the good life, act like this." Trouble is, they act like bums. And with such role models, such pictures of "success," how is a plain old dad--lacking power, prosperity and publicity-- supposed to tip the scales in favor of his boys becoming honorable men?
I wish I knew.
