Expanded Marriage Rites Pose No Threat

Perhaps it’s time for a little love and a little levity.

[This piece appeared in the Philadelphia Daily News on Monday, June 16th.  Click here to go to the original post.]

On May 15, the California Supreme Court struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage in the most strongly worded gay-rights decision to date.

The court invalidated nearly all discrimination based on sexual orientation. The 30-day waiting period is over. Starting tomorrow, California joins Massachusetts in permitting adults to marry the person of their choice, even if that person is the same gender.

Cultural conservatives are quick to point out that most Americans condemn gay marriage. I’m not so sure.

The fact that all of the candidates for president of the United States endorse civil unions for gay couples proves that the cultural mores of the nation may be changing. We’re already walking down the separate-but-not-quite-equal road. Eventually this will collapse under the weight of justice and equality. Gays, like interracial couples before them, will get their wedding cake.

Cultural conservatives are also quick to bring up the “slippery slope” argument. If gays can marry, soon the perverts, polygamists and pushers of all kinds of odd unions will be knocking at the door.

None of these groups, however, has a track record of living together, staying together and raising children that can match that of gays and lesbians.

Studies show that children benefit from having two loving parents, regardless of gender. I’ve taught the children of same-sex parents, and the children appear to be doing just fine.

The third and perhaps most forcible argument against gay marriage is the moral one, often rooted in passages from the Bible, like Paul’s letters to the Corinthians. Paul appears to argue that every man should have a wife and every woman should have a husband, even though he would prefer that everyone remain unmarried, like him. Paul is mute on the subject of homosexuality.

The moral argument for or against gay rights is often forged during adolescence and young adulthood.

For instance, as I was running out the door to my first job as a teenager, my mother called me back inside: “Your father and I want you to know that you’re going to meet a waiter at that restaurant who’s been working there for 20 years. Some people may say bad things about him because he’s gay, but there’s nothing wrong with him. Besides, he makes the best cappuccino in town.”

Years later, in college, I served as a resident adviser of a dormitory. My senior year I was called into the dean’s office to talk about one of my residents, who had just attempted suicide. The dean went on to explain how the boy had recently announced his homosexuality to his deeply homophobic parents. They told him not to come home (or expect tuition) unless he agreed to undergo therapy with an alternative-lifestyle intolerant therapist. The young man agreed.

But the therapy didn’t work. Later that summer he hanged himself from a rafter in the basement of his childhood home.

Would he have hanged himself if his parents had spoken kindly of even one gay couple?

A few months after graduation, I took a teaching job at a local public school where I was paired with a master teacher. Her lessons were inspirational, magical at times, and daunting (since I had to follow them with pale versions of my own).

Almost two decades later, I still use some of what I learned from her in my own English classes. Funny, I didn’t find out until recently that she’s been living with the same-sex partner all of her adult life.

Would it have mattered? Would it have mattered either to me or to her students if she were married?

People are clearly not on the same page when it comes to issues of sexual orientation. But we may be nearing a tipping point. I’ve certainly witnessed an erosion in the rock-hard homophobia and bullying that existed when I first starting teaching, 17 years ago.

The thawing effect is starting to reach the highest offices in the land. New York governor David Paterson certainly wasn’t acting “politically” when he directed all state agencies on May 29 to recognize gay marriages legally performed in other states and countries.

Young people and more and more adults may not condone homosexuality, but many are starting to accept the notion that sexual orientation is not a choice¹, that gays and lesbians pose no threat to straight people or to America’s institutions, and that they deserve equal protection under the law.

Perhaps it’s time for a little love and a little levity.

California and Massachusetts, like two couples at opposite ends of the country, are inviting the rest of us to the party, and I can think of only three groups of people who should care about the expanded guest list: gays and lesbians, their friends and families, and divorce lawyers.

Mark Franek is a writing professor in Philadelphia.

¹ This claim is disputed by some people, both gay and straight. Furthermore, some researchers argue that sexual abuse during childhood can cause homosexual behavior.  But most of the gay people I’ve talked to emphatically state that homosexuality/sexual preference is genetic.  This is an example of the kind of nuanced sub-topic you can’t explore fully in a newspaper piece.

 

Going Online, Finding a Voice

Not all the news is bad when it comes to young people and the Internet.

[This piece appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Thursday, May 29th. Click here to go to the original post.]

Pen and paper—for some, they’re a thing of the past.

The Internet is being used at least occasionally by more than 17 million American youths between the ages of 12 and 17, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. That’s a full 85 percent of people in that age bracket. Young people are using mobile phones and computers for all of their communication and information-gathering needs.

The fact that young adults are almost totally in the dark when it comes to traditional forms of ink-and-paper communication appears to be scaring a lot of people (not just newspaper and magazine owners). There is a huge generational gap in people’s attitudes and understandings about the Web.

Most people over 35 feel a bit uncomfortable about the absolute freedom—some might say anarchy—of voices in cyberspace. Those under 35 feel there is more than enough room online for seasoned journalists and rookie writers, including those with no talent.

William Golding¹, author of Lord of the Flies—that story about a group of deserted school-boys who attempt to govern themselves but descend instead into madness and murder—might have been surprised to discover that young people, left largely to their own devices in the cyberworld, have set up fairly stable and responsible patterns of behavior. Perhaps the history books of the next generation will look back on this phenomenon with wonder and awe.

The curious aspect of the Internet is not that cyber misconduct is occurring; it is that cyber misconduct is not occurring more often.

Sure, there will always be high-profile examples of egregious behavior, such as the recent story of the NCAA basketball player who posted an advertisement on Facebook, a social-networking site, offering money in exchange for a decently written college paper. Or the story about the eight Florida teens who recently filmed one another pummeling a classmate with the intent to post the spectacle on YouTube, the video-sharing site. They’re anomalies.

The vast majority of young people who interact with one another online do so in a totally benign fashion. Sure, many of them end up posting material that crosses the line of good taste, but they quickly clean up their act when a level-headed peer or an adult gets involved.

The thing that most of us “geezers” over 35 don’t get is that young people are using a few popular sites on the Web as extensions of their rapidly maturing identities—almost as playgrounds, places where they can try out new voices and personalities without risking ridicule or ostracism. Parents should not be horrified by this scenario.

We did the same thing back in high school every time a person passed around a sign-in book, the kind with all those goofy questions at the top of each page (”What’s your astrological sign?” “Who’s the hottest girl/guy in the school?” “Who’s your favorite/least favorite teacher?”). Many of us enjoyed these unofficial yearbooks because their content was off limits to adults and occasionally titillating.

Same on the Internet.

As students mature, so do their blogs and Web pages. A young woman in a college class I teach recently told me that her MySpace pages now give her “the creeps.” She has abandoned them and gravitated to Facebook, where she keeps track of her new college friends as well as her high school peers who are scattered around the country.

She also uses Facebook to consult with classmates about upcoming courses and professors (she’s especially keen on avoiding lousy teachers), to find cheap textbooks from slightly older peers, and to search for used furniture for her off-campus apartment.

None of these uses of social-networking sites and blogs makes the evening news, but millions of these tiny transactions are happening every day, making the transition from young adult to rookie breadwinner a little easier.

Young people would like the rest of us to chill out and take some advice from the eternally optimistic Buzz Lightyear, that fictional character from Toy Story: “To infinity—and beyond!”

On the Internet, there will always be more things to admire than to despise.² Especially if you know where to point your mouse.

Mark Franek is an adjunct professor of writing at Philadelphia University.

¹This graf was cut by the editor, presumably to save space.

²This claim is debatable, of course. Take the porn industry, which has migrated online to a near-perfect habitat.  Pay websites, open 24-7, do not require much maintenance nor any rent—and they’re available to anyone in the world with an Internet connection and a credit card.  But over the past few years, new sites have popped up that offer a virtual porn-warehouse, mixing pros and amateurs in an endlessly updated stream of “categorized” material.  And get this: It’s all free. (I hesitate to offer a link.)  Now, is this good or bad for the culture? It’s bad for all of the conventional reasons that pornography is bad.  On the other hand, if porn is free, diverse, and readily available, will we reach a saturation point and eventually see less victimization and objectification in the industry and in the culture (from the boardroom to the bedroom to the playground)? Will porn ever “go out of style” or lose its appeal, or will the Internet merely create a “slippery slope” for increasingly more salacious material? Now that’s something I wish someone would write an oped about.

 

Daily News Soccer Article: Update and Concessions

One week ago today the Philadelphia Daily News published my oped about the new Major League Soccer team in Philadelphia/Chester.  I knew the piece would ruffle the feathers of domestic-league supporters; however, I was not prepared for the negative barrage of blogs/comments, including hate-email clogging up my inbox: Round one, two, three.

I’ve had a week to reflect and I’d like to concede several points.

I certainly opened myself up to criticism by admitting that I’ve never been to an MLS game. It was good copy for the newspaper—but certainly left the goal wide open for the opposition. Moreover, my characterization of “most true soccer fans” and what they would “prefer” to do (in my example, watch non-US pro games via cable/satellite) was a snobbish overstatement and not verifiable, since I didn’t interview anyone for this piece. Finally, the whole tone of the article was strident and disrespectful to the thousands of people who are working hard every day to improve MLS and give our youth players domestic heroes and viable professional opportunities without worrying USSF about their international clearance forms.

I readily concede these points. Now, to a few issues that I raised in my piece, but hardly anyone noticed or took seriously.

First, to a criticism of this specific MLS/Chester project. I am not in favor of using taxpayers’ money (beyond a modest amount, say, to improve egress-issues) to defray the costs of professional sports complexes for the simple reason that they (the complexes) would be built anyway (they’d just be scaled down). Furthermore, numerous studies show that such sports-pork projects only modestly improve the local economy, if at all. For the record: I am also not in favor of the massive pork given to the Phillies and Eagles stadium projects, which dwarf the MLS project in dollars. Publicly-funded sports projects mostly benefit the owners and investors at the very top of the food chain, and I’m not a fan of the super rich.

A related issue: People in Chester may be excited about this project (and the MLS/Chester team may be excited about getting the Chester community involved), but I get the sneaky feeling that the vast majority of good jobs created by this team will go to white folk who live elsewhere and the people doing all (or most) of the labor will be people of color.  In other words, the front office and the game-day crew will resemble England vs. Ghana, racially speaking. This may sound like a very cynical argument. Chester certainly needs a “shot in the arm.” Is this the right shot? I realize that these issues are extremely complicated and pundits can dice them however they want.  The investors are certainly taking a huge financial risk, and it can be argued that it is rather noble of them to plop this stadium down along this specific stretch of the Delaware River.

But how come few people want to talk intelligently about the irony and potential negatives of using a massive amount of taxpayer money to finance a project in a community that has no historical ties to soccer and a very uncertain future in terms of benefiting directly from the project?

A friend of mine pointed out that I should’ve focused my oped entirely on these two points, and saved myself a lot of abuse. In my defense, DN readers don’t want these kinds of details in their opeds. They want snarky, provocative prose—like the pinball-scramble that happens in front of goal when the defense can’t clear the ball.

Now, for a criticism of MLS as an enterprise. MLS is a monopoly and no matter how much the performance of players and teams improve the league as a whole is still land-locked—no one moves up, no one moves down. This is a tired argument, I’m sure. I understand that there are justifiable financial reasons for structuring the league in this fashion. (If you want a pro league in the U.S., you’re going to have to live with certain compromises.) Doesn’t mean I have to like it.

For many consecutive summers I played semipro for a team in Iceland and the shifting multi-tiered league tables—the excitement of moving up and the despair of relegation—got in my blood. Moving up meant more sponsors, more money, more fans, better play, and better pitches. Moving down generally meant less of these things, and also the breaking up or straining of friendships as players transferred to other clubs. The tiered system also improved our performance on the pitch and enhanced our love and understanding of the game.

I come at this argument from a player’s perspective, which separates me from the vast majority of Americans who may like soccer played in the multi-table fashion, but come at it from a fan’s perspective (usually from living abroad). I want to see players and teams rewarded—and punished—for their performance on the pitch. MLS just feels artificial, like soccer in a Petri dish.

I have other concerns about MLS, but I’ve probably exhausted whatever reader energy I built up in my concessions. I love soccer and certainly hope MLS flourishes and this team in Chester succeeds, making money for investors and people in the local community. I won’t get season tickets, but I will certainly support this team. I think I said these things in my newspaper oped. The bloggers missed them, playing out of position—just like a growing number of players on my club team with tired legs and tired thinking. Which, by the way, now includes me.

Comments?

 

Gooooooaaaaaal?

[This piece appeared in the Philadelphia Daily News on Wednesday, April 2nd. Click here to go to the original publication.  Note: I did not write the title that appears there.]

My head is still spinning over the new pro soccer/stadium deal in Chester, Pennsylvania.

Announced last month, the deal gives Major League Soccer its 16th team and brings professional men’s soccer back to the Philadelphia area for the first time since 1980, when the Philadelphia Fury folded and moved to Montreal.  The opening-whistle for the rookie MLS franchise is slated for the 2010 season.

The $115 million soccer-specific stadium will anchor an additional $400 million economic development project, including a convention center, ritzy townhouses, and a promenade–all this for a struggling riverfront town that wouldn’t know a soccer ball if it washed ashore.

Before you cry foul, hear me out.  I’m no soccer-hater.  In college I played for a top-ranked division I program.  Post college, I continued to play competitively long after most of my peers settled into more sedentary lives.  I’ve spent thousands of dollars on soccer-related clothing, equipment, and vacations. I love soccer. But I’ve been to exactly zero MLS games since the league debuted 12 years ago.

I have mixed feelings about this new soccer team, and I know I’m not alone among soccer diehards.  First, the negatives.

With all due respect to the “Sons of Ben” (SOB)–the Philly-based fan-group on steroids that successfully pressured business owners, state legislators, and league officials, and helped close this deal by deflecting shots from naysayers–Major League Soccer is just plain boring.

Most true soccer fanatics would rather watch professional soccer matches on TV (via a modestly-priced sports package), choosing from among the world’s best leagues, than buy season tickets to mediocre games in their backyard.

Even if MLS wasn’t dwarfed on TV by better leagues and vastly more talented teams, there is still the almost total blackout of intelligent soccer commentary in all the major media outlets.  When Jon Stewart and Drew Carey talk about pro soccer more often (and more intelligently) than Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon (the ESPN PTI guys), you know your sport is so far down the totem pole that it might as well be in the mud.

Furthermore, the only time the press will cover soccer is when somone is complaining about it (like me).¹

This is not MLS’s fault, of course, but it’s hard to justify $250 million to lure David Beckham to America and a series of expensive soccer-specific stadium deals when the league, as a whole, is still millions of dollars in the red.  Only two teams turned a profit last year, the Los Angeles Galaxy (of Beckham) and FC Dallas.

For Pennsylvania legislators, these facts and figures seemed to have gotten lost in the stadium lights.  The Chester project is being publicly-financed by a drop-kick worth $87 million, even though most studies show that such “sports pork” projects only modestly improve the local economy, if at all.

The 2600 temporary construction jobs and the 800 full-time jobs will be a nice boost to the local economy, to be sure, but I wonder what percentage of the good jobs will go to actual Chester residents?

The stadium complex and the adjacent walks, streets, and businesses will glow like a shiny new soccer ball, but how many fans will linger along the shores of the Delaware River after the stadium lights dim from the 20 or so home games a year?

MLS has long since been doing things its own way, following a profit-sharing business model that may be financially justifiable but is artificial to anyone accustomed to leagues that have hierarchical divisions, where teams can move up or down an entire division (based on their won-lost record at the end of the season). In the MLS, it’s pay-to-play.  The franchise fee is a cool $30 million.

Before I get banned, permanently, from my soccer-friends’ family gatherings, this deal has great potential, even if it is a bit risky.

The Philadelphia and Delaware Valley region has a lot of loyal soccer fans and active players.  The Eastern Pennsylvania Youth Soccer Association boasts over 200,000 members, including players, coaches, and referees.

Each weekend, thousands of children and adults take the field in and around Philadelphia, playing for clubs with decades-old ties to ethnic communities that have seen professional leagues with strange acronyms (NASL, NPSL) come and go.  These clubs have their own bars, banquet halls, youth and adult teams, and mailing lists.

Will the Philadelphia-based team hire a marketing director who knows how to harness the energy and enthusiasm of these diverse constituents in this very independent-minded region?  With only 16 MLS teams in 2010, can the new franchise quickly bring a title to this championship-starved region?

I wish the team well and hope they turn a profit.  Most importantly, I hope they bring joy to soccer fans in the region and inspire young men and women to improve their game.  The as-yet-to-be-named² team seems to have already gotten a few lucky financial breaks. Even though I won’t be buying season tickets, I may take my girlfriend to see David Beckham.  Once.

Mark Franek is an adjunct professor of writing at Philadelphia University. He coached the William Penn Charter School’s varsity boys’ soccer team from 1997-2002.

¹ This sentence was nixed by the editor.

² My kingdom for the “Philadelphia Press.”

Jump to Philadelphia Magazine  interview (if you can call it that).

 

Closing the Income-Gap

 [It cost me $30 to write this piece--$4 to Mr. Starbucks and $26 to the city of Philadelphia for a parking ticket.  One consolation: At least some of the money collected by the Parking Authority goes to fund public education in this city.]

If I didn’t know better, I’d call the remarkable press coverage surrounding the hotly-contested political race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama a red herring. Why? Because this battle is taking place at a time in history when race and gender are not among the most important issues facing the vast majority of Americans.

It can be argued that the most important issue today concerns the widening gap in after-tax income between the rich and the poor and the dramatic accumulation of wealth and power at the very top. Race and gender obviously play important roles in this discussion. But poor people, regardless of race or gender, are in the same rickety boat.

According to data released a little over a month ago by the Congressional Budget Office, from 1979 (earliest figures available) to 2005 (latest figures available) incomes for the top 1% of the population rose a whopping 228%, while incomes for families making an average of $50,200 (the middle fifth of all income-earners) rose only 21%. That’s less than 1% per year over the last 25 years for people who call themselves middle-class.

The top 1% of households also received 70 times¹ as much in average after-tax income as the bottom one-fifth of households—the widest such income gap on record.

 

Not even Barack Obama or John Edwards (before he left the stage) could give this story what journalists call legs. We all want change. But nobody, it seems, wants to talk seriously about money and how to change where it flows.

Education, of course, has long been considered the great equalizer. And it is, sort of.

Education and income are highly correlated. Since the sixties, America has made a concerted effort to get more people into college and to graduate them, and for many years the U.S. Department of Education posted steady gains. Last year, however, the Department released data that seriously call our progress into question.

By age 24, 75% of young people who grew up in wealthy families have earned at least a bachelor’s degree. In contrast, by age 24 only 9% of students who grew up in low-income families earn a bachelor’s degree. This means that over 90% of low-income students just stop going to class.

Consider this: Many low-income students never even apply to college.

As a first-year writing teacher at a private university in Philadelphia, I see first-hand the difficulties students face. Last semester I taught a young woman who is the first person in her family to go to college. She posted a respectable academic record in high school even though her high school did not prepare her well for the rigors of college.

I can only imagine how foreign and imposing the campus environment looks from her perspective.

Another student, who graduated from an excellent high school and received an unmitigated ‘A’ in my class last semester, has to work long hours at the dining hall to defray the cost of tuition, room and board, and the miscellaneous fees that accrue in college. (The average total cost of a public 4-year institution is $13,589 a year, but that jumps to an average of $32,307 a year for a private one.)

Even after years of saving and investing, most parents can’t pay the full tuition and expenses at the nation’s colleges and universities. The cost is often passed to their children in the form of debt. Even with a modest 5% interest-rate and a 15-year repayment plan, a student who borrows $50,000 will have to pay $395 a month well into his or her thirties, for a grand total of $71,170. Enough to give anyone grey hair.

Even for students who arrive on campus well-prepared, willing to work hard, and blissfully unaware of tuition costs, college is no cakewalk. Roommate issues and dorm-life—the weird, the wired, and the wireless—can cause significant challenges, now that both genders are sharing many of the same facilities. Lesson for students: Get into a healthy rhythm, act responsibly, and never lose sight of graduation and the importance of getting that diploma.

Lesson for politicians and lawmakers: Improve public education and increase federal grants and loans, especially for low-income students. The public education system in this country is in dire need of more money and new talent (not more tests).

Lesson for parents: Don’t let your child drop out. Recently, I asked my first-year college students what their parents would say if they tried to throw in the towel. From an in-class writing response:

“If I decided to quit college, my mom would be right on top of it, trying to convince me otherwise. My dad would feel bad, too, being a college dropout himself, but he would stick with my mom. He always tells me how when he hires people, he doesn’t even bother looking at people without a degree.”

Mark Franek is an adjunct professor of writing at Philadelphia University.

¹ Criminal, even in a free-market economy.

 

Closing the Great College Divide

[This piece appeared on Tuesday, Feb. 26th, in the Philadelphia Inquirer.  Click here to go to the original publication.]

For 10 years, I have taught English and writing instruction to high-school students and 1st year college students at private institutions in Philadelphia. There are very few truisms in education, but I have one to share that most teachers and administrators rarely talk about because it’s so darn depressing.

Rich kids do significantly better in school than schoolchildren who are poor.

There are always exceptions. Teach long enough and you’ll be blown away by that poor kid who outperforms her richer and better prepared peers. Likewise, you’ll be frustrated by that rich kid who has all the advantages in the world but who can’t (or won’t) knock a noun against a verb to save his academic life.

But by and large, the truism holds: More family money generally means higher expectations, better teachers, and more academic success all around. I wish it weren’t so.

Last year the Department of Education and the Education Trust, a nonprofit, independent think-tank, reported that 75% of young people who grew up in high-income families earn at least a bachelor’s degree by age 24. In contrast, only 9% of students who grew up in low-income families earn a bachelor’s degree in that time. 

This means that over 90% of low-income students just stop going to class, resigning themselves indefinitely to non-graduate status. The loss of earning potential over the course of their lives should not be underestimated. Surely they will suffer. So will their children.

Some private colleges and universities with huge endowments have begun to offer 100% free tuition to low-income students. This is laudable.

But Harvard and company can pick from the nation’s crop of the best-and-brightest each year.

What about the vast majority of poor students in this country who went to sub-par schools and amassed mediocre academic records?

There are no easy solutions for helping poor people climb up and out of poverty. No Child Left Behind calls for a quality teacher and a quality learning environment for all children, but without lots of money, applied intelligently and consistently over lots of time, how is this goal anything more than empty rhetoric?

The government continues to give grants and low-interest loans to students who figure out how to apply for them, but the money is not keeping up with the cost of tuition. The average total charges (tuition, fees, and room and board) of a 4-year public institution is $13,589 a year, but that jumps to an average of $32,307 a year for a private one.

Remember, these are averages.

As a first-year writing teacher at a private university in Philadelphia, I see first-hand the difficulties some students face.

Last semester I taught a young woman who is the first person in her family to go to college. The university has given her an opportunity. But we shouldn’t stop there. We need to get her engaged in campus life, emphasize the quality of her undergraduate-teaching experience, and monitor her progress closely.

Many low-income students lack the academic skills and social competencies that their better-educated peers take for granted. Many low-income students also lack the economic confidence that comes with never having to worry about money, from big-ticket items (such as tuition) to the unexpected smaller bills that accumulate in college.

College textbooks, for instance, can easily cost over a hundred dollars per semester (rarely are these charges included in tuition). Low-income students often experience the shock of these bills only a few days or hours before their first college class.

Furthermore, professors who begin class assuming that all students own a computer and know how to post to a classroom blog only make low-income students feel more alienated and unable to compete with their peers.

Even for students who arrive on campus well-prepared, willing to work hard, and blissfully unaware of tuition costs, college is no cakewalk.

The social scene can alternate quickly between distracting and empowering, with distracting often winning the day. The weekly class schedule can appear deceptively free and open ended. Finally, roommate issues and dorm-life can cause significant challenges, now that both genders are sharing many of the same facilities.

Most parents–even those with undergraduate degrees–would not recognize or understand how to navigate through the contemporary college environment. But the lesson should be the same for all children: Don’t quit.

It takes a village to raise a child, the proverb goes. In America, the village is made up of parents, teachers, administrators, and politicians. It’s a rude analogy, but at least this much we can agree on: Higher education really is the great equalizer, but not enough low-income students matriculate in college, much less graduate. The persistence of poverty and the widening income gap should be given our undivided attention.

Mark Franek is an adjunct professor of writing at Philadelphia University.

Public service adverts to increase graduation rates:

___________________________________________________

In college, he was no Einstein.

____________________________________________________

Education equals Money times your Children’s gratitude, squared.

 

Who Needs Writers?

[This piece appeared in the Baltimore Sun on Tuesday, Jan. 29th.  Click here to go to the original publication.]

I see dead people¹, and it’s the striking writers in Los Angeles and New York City.

The contentious relationship is thawing between the striking writers, represented by the Writers Guild of America, and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (read: Big Studios). Last week the guild dropped its demand to expand its membership to include reality and animation writers. The word is still out how much of a bump they will receive for their downloadable work.

It’s a good time to assess the industry—at least how most of us perceive it on our TV menu guide.

Before the writers’ strike, which began Nov. 5, only about half of the most-watched prime-time programs were scripted shows employing writers represented by the guild. The other half were animated and reality shows, including game shows, employing writers and “story-shapers” not under the guild’s jurisdiction.

It’s no secret that American Idol has topped all shows in ratings over the past several years except for the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards. This may help explain why the moguls were not eager to address the guild’s main concerns, which centered on expanding the guild’s jurisdiction over reality and animation writers and increasing members’ take on residual content on the Internet.

You see, moguls don’t need happy writers. In fact, where we’re headed, they may not need writers at all. Anything goes in this burgeoning “reality” paradigm; anything, that is, except for the carefully crafted story and a little generosity at the top of the food chain.

It’s said that there are no new story lines, and the current one certainly has a familiar ring. That’s because this is how the vast majority of writers have always been treated in Hollywood.²

Remember F. Scott Fitzgerald? He died obscure and broke in Hollywood in 1940³, after failing to make the transition from a novelist to a screenwriter. But his bio was written much earlier. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald offers a warning to all would-be artists with this description of one of literature’s best-known femme fatales: “Her voice is full of money.”

Back in ninth grade, I begged my parents to send me to writers’ camp over the summer. They sent me to computer camp instead. In college, when I changed my major from engineering to English, my father threatened to cut off tuition. When I wrote my first op-ed, my father scoffed; he didn’t make it past the first paragraph.

Don’t get me wrong. My father appreciated good writing; he just didn’t think there was any money or long-term happiness in it. And, I have to admit it: Like most parents, if my child showed any signs of wanting to become a writer, I’d try to steer him or her in another direction.

Parental discouragement aside, there are also editors and agents, who make bouncers seem like Bambi on Ambien. Fact is, it’s nearly impossible to make a steady wage as an entertainment writer or a novelist. Some dead authors succeed, if they secured a good contract pre-mortem. For the past 20 years, The Great Gatsby has been a perennial best-seller.

So, again: Who needs writers? Well, we all do—unless Jackass 3 (currently in production) is your cup of tea. The first two installments made $164 million at the box office. All that with no script and no discernible plot.

For so many writers, it’s the story of their lives.⁴

Byline: Mark Franek is an adjunct professor of writing at Philadelphia University.

¹ Recall M. Night Shyamalan’s Sixth Sense, which he wrote and directed.

² Originally this graf included a reference to the gimp in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, which was intended to underscore how writers are treated in Hollywood. My editor nixed it.  Gimped again.

³ Fitzgerald’s revival didn’t begin in earnest until the sixties.

⁴ I didn’t write this line; my editor did.  Here’s how I wanted it to end: Yippie ki-yay!

(For the record—and for the writers: The screenplay for Die Hard was written by Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza, and the screenplay and movie were based on a novel by Roderick Thorp.)

 

Techno-savvy Teachers Lead Penn Charter

[This piece appeared in Penn Charter Magazine, winter 2008. It was a contracted piece. The final version was cut to meet space-constraints.  This is the uncut version.]

Even as powerful new communications tools engulfed our culture during the last century, most readers over thirty-five weathered the storms of adolescence in remarkably low-tech school settings. For instance, most readers of this magazine probably can’t remember the names of movies watched during school hours, but do remember the times when the strip of film jammed or snapped entirely–flip-flip-flip!

Parents and grandparents also remember how families were once teased by the false promises of radio and television advocates who touted their technologies as the next great tool to revolutionize schools. But for many years–for decades really–it was school as usual.

Not today. Walk the hallways of Penn Charter and you’d be surprised and delighted to see how teachers and students are using new gadgets and new technologies to expand their horizons and communicate more effectively, not only with each other, but with ever-expanding audiences as they advance through the school’s divisions. To quote a recent General Motors advertisement: “This is not your daddy’s caddy.” No where is this excitement and innovation more apparent than in the blogging activity of students, teachers, and Penn Charter’s technology team.

Blogging to Learn

Starting in Lower School, students learn that a blog is an abbreviated word for a “weblog,” which is a website that offers information that can be easily updated by users of all ages, talents, and abilities. People who update blogs by adding information to them are called “bloggers.” Writers write, singers sing, and bloggers blog.

In Lower School, teachers have created a classroom blog that serves mostly as a message board for students and parents. In 5th grade, teachers Malcolm Ford and Steve Wade are experimenting with a blog where students post their science homework and lab results. The goals include teaching young students Internet-safety rules as they begin to explore how to access and post information to the school’s intranet, a safe area available only to members of the class, or to parents who have the password.

In Middle School, students are given more freedom to post and manage shared digital content, just so long as they mind the school’s mantra that all behaviors online should be “safe, legal, and effective.” Middle school English teacher Tom Kim has created both classroom blogs and individual student blogs for his 7th and 8th grade students.

In a recent project, Kim divided his class into small groups and asked each to choose a different novel to read. As the narratives in the novels unfolded, each group managed its own blog where students maintained discussions about what they were reading and learning. The blogs became virtual literature-circle groups.

“Blogs change the way I teach,” Kim explains. “In the classroom, I control most of the conversation, even if I try to get out of the way. But online, young people can engage with one another and really learn from one another. Blogs encourage genuine conversations among young people.”

The online conversations that Kim is talking about are not written in the instant-text-message language that most adults find dangerously close to gibberish. Instead, students are encouraged to listen carefully to one another and to post comments in standard-written English, even if the language is not as formal as what might be required in a graded essay.

In the comment field of the blog, students get to see–down to the level of syntax and punctuation–how others are constructing answers or adding to the knowledge of the class. In this way, they begin to appreciate how all learning, at its best, is really a group project, making good on the educator’s mantra that authentic learning is collaborative.

Sometimes the most powerful “voices” online come from the least likely student–that shy girl who hides behind her bangs or the boy in the back row who rarely talks. Online, these students sometimes become the “experts” and eventually gain skills and confidence that spill over into the classroom in the form of a more confident self. These kinds of triumphant transformations happen often at Penn Charter.

“Sometimes a student who finds himself or herself drowned out in regular classroom discussions finds he or she can have a voice through blogging,” Kim offers. “Blogging gives my Middle School students the chance to work out their thoughts about a subject on their own time and articulate them as carefully as they choose to. The informal nature of the medium takes the pressure off of having to write perfectly formed sentences while still allowing a viable soapbox to speak from.”

Michael Moulton, Director of Technology, concurs: “We sometimes think that the quiet student doesn’t have much on his or her mind. . . . I’ll never forget how one boy who had never willingly spoken in class wrote expressively on our site [a classroom blog set aside for students in the 10th grade Quakerism Principles and Practices class] about several of the big ideas we were covering. We came to understand and appreciate him through his on-line participation, and I watched as he then participated more openly in the classroom and on service trips. He was waiting to be known.”

Who says technology breeds alienation, poor social skills, or poor grammar? Stick your head in the school’s computer lab during any lunch period and witness a bustling hive of activity and collaboration–nouns and verbs flying across the room, zeroes and ones flying around the Internet. Young people are using technology to redefine themselves and stake their place in a digital world.  This is a place where wireless communication, digital data, and creative thinking will be paramount, at least for people who want to thrive in the global marketplace of the 21st century.

Blogging to Communicate with the World

In the hands of engaged and knowledgeable teachers, technology transforms the school not into Hogwarts School for up-and-coming Wizards, but a place where students hone their skills for what New York Times columnist and author Thomas Friedman calls a “flat world”–a globalized, always-connected network of markets.  In this world, our students will have to compete for good jobs not just with their peers from Episcopal and Germantown Academy, but with “faceless” students from Hong Kong and Bangladesh.

How do schools prepare young people for such a world?

The multiplication tables must still be memorized, but students today need creative, higher-order thinking projects, which require them to find, re-present, and even create information–often digital information–for wider and wider audiences. The Internet can be one of the teacher’s best aids in this endeavor.

When students know that anyone in the world with an Internet connection can read what they have written, created, or posted on a blog, it is remarkable how quickly their thinking improves, not to mention the final product.

In Lower School, students are just putting on their training wheels in terms of accessing and navigating blogs, which are very safe online environments. In Middle school, they get several chances to take a spin around the block–that is, students are publishing and managing content on classroom blogs, and occasionally receive feedback from the teacher or from an outside expert.

In Upper School, they are finally given the keys to the car and are encouraged to take the technology for a real spin around the far reaches of the neighborhood, which may include the global neighborhood. It takes a lot of technological know-how and administrative support to manage the complexities of these ever-expanding online worlds.

Penn Charter’s technology department works with teachers in all three divisions and sees its role as a faculty advocate, employing a Quakerly approach that recognizes that not all teachers have (or need) blogs, that not all PC blogs are alike, and that when a teacher–or a teacher and a group of motivated students–comes up with a pedagogical idea and a technological challenge, it forces a convergence.

The technology department’s goal is to support and manage the convergence, which often requires careful planning and continuing collaboration with teachers and students. “Putting web publishing tools into the hands of teachers who are passionate about their subject matter yields projects that motivate students to do their best,” offers Michael Moulton.

“From my vantage point, I get to watch English classes where students linger afterward and go beyond assignment-basics for their newly expanded audience. I get to see students coming back to a favorite piece they wrote for a class a year ago to have it read and posted just right. The individual pieces of work get a new relevancy [online]. The cumulative set of work in their blog portfolio begins to represent the range of their academic ability.”

In Upper School, 9th graders in the first semester are encouraged to post their work as a digitial portfolio on a part of the school’s blogging network. As students make their way through Upper school, they are encouraged to add content to their sites, which include projects that they have created in and out of school, like artwork, photography, podcasts, and videos.

One student commented that her blog is like a MySpace site dressed up and ready for its first job interview. (See seniors Todd Cooke and Jordyn Shaffer’s blogs.) These sites showcase students’ academic work to the world. They also capture their personalities and passions.

“My blog has enabled me to show relatives my writing pieces this year with just a click of a button,” said senior Jordyn Shaffer. “There is a dual purpose here: students are more engaged while [we] simultaneously learn how to operate tools that we may have to master in the future.”

College counselors and English teachers are starting to refer to these sites in their college recommendations, and several teachers have heard back from college admissions officers and professors about the quality and uniqueness of the work. Penn Charter teachers are leading the way in utilizing communications technology to supercharge pedagogy.

For example, they are using blogs in all sorts of contexts, not only as extensions of classroom conversations or presentation “studios” for student work, but also as a way to bring people, from novice to expert, into the conversation. Lower and Upper School students are working together to investigate Quaker testimonies on a cross-divisional blog created by history teacher Lee Payton. These teenagers and grade-schoolers are blogging about how Quaker values are present in their lives.

For teachers, the possibilities are endless.

Want to have a conversation with an author, a professor, a critic, or a journalist? Want to utilize the “oral histories” or expertise of classmates’ families, relatives, and friends? Want to talk to someone in Boston or Baghdad about something that is going on under their boots or in their brains? No need for a special in-school assembly or a literal classroom visit–just an e-mail invitation and a hypertext link to the classroom blog. To quote Shakespeare: “All the world’s a stage.” On the Internet, anyone “can contribute a verse.”

Transformations

The classroom is no longer a pedagogical black box. The powerful features of the Internet are even starting to enrich conversations in real time. When ex-Seinfeld star Michael Richards and radio shock-jock Don Imus slip up and utter foolish comments in public (which are now easily recorded and shared around the Web), the following day there are teachers around the country ready to pounce.

Imagine a Penn Charter English teacher leading a discussion on race relations in the context of Ralph Ellison’s classic novel Invisible Man. Imagine the same teacher in a room with an Internet connection and an interactive SmartBoard, like all Penn Charter classrooms. There is nothing like the Internet and a video-sharing site, such as YouTube, to make difficult issues visible and immediately relevant for students.

The Internet also brings “old” texts to life in new ways. For example, during discussions last year on F. S. Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, this author took his class to the computer lab and sent his students on an Internet-scavenger hunt. Twenty minutes later they were all watching video clips on the classroom SmartBoard of Model T Fords bumping across dusty roads, a couple engaged in a dance called the Charleston, and a ruddy modern-day man giving a tour of a speakeasy that he had uncovered in his basement.

Teachers in the foreign language department are using YouTube to locate advertisements and music videos in the target language, thereby fostering language acquisition. Michelle Emery, a French teacher working in concert with teachers in Canada and France, has even lead her students to produce a video (in French) about Penn Charter. The goal is to post it on YouTube, which gives new meaning to the concept of a penpal (a video-web-pal?).

Another foreign language teacher, Eric Jimenez, asks his students to use their cell phone to call a toll-free number and record podcasts in Spanish. The podcasts are then uploaded to a podcasting site, which serves as a digital library of his students’ progress in mastering another language.

Technology has altered the landscape of school and has changed how students and teachers think about and perform their work. Director of Educational Technology Michael Moulton and Vicki Miles, director of Lower School technology at Penn Charter, call what they have witnessed over the past decade as “positively transformative.”

Where will we be five or ten years from now as technology continues to transform and redefine the nature and possibilities of school? Techno-savvy teachers and students will be the T-rexes of the digital age.  And, this time around, it won’t be an Ice Age or a Mega-meteor that will lead to their extinction.

The key to survival in the coming age will be quick adaptation and perpetual innovation, two values our school community has embraced. These days you’d be hard-pressed to find a piece of chalk in a Penn Charter classroom. Everything–or nearly everything–has gone digital.

According to senior Matt Domenick, most students love to watch movie clips on YouTube and use new technologies, like blogs and interactive media, “instead of the primitive listening” often done in his parents’ high school classes.

“I would rather use the new technology,” offers Matt. “Wouldn’t you?”

Mark Franek was the upper school dean of students for seven years. He is now an adjunct professor of writing at Philadelphia University.

 

Racial Divide of the Noose

[This oped appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Monday, December 3rd.  Click here to go to the original publication.  For the record: This piece originally included 2 names in the byline; however, the newspaper editor would not run a 1st-person commentary with a dual byline.  Hence, Eddie's name and affiliation gets burried in the body of the piece, I retain the solo headshot in the newspaper version, and we both split dinner from the proceeds.  I could not have written this piece without his words and advice.]

 Some people may recall the final game of the 2006 World Cup soccer tournament when superstar Zinedine Zidane, a Frenchman, head-butted an Italian defender in the chest in response to an alleged discriminatory remark. I was apoplectic with shock.

I couldn’t understand it. In extra-time, with the score tied, arguably the best player in the world at that time had just been ejected from the game because of his violent reaction to mere words. The Italians went on to win the game.

My friend, Eddie Mensah, however — from his favorite position on my couch — empathized, “I don’t condone it, but I understand it.

Mensah, program director of Steppingstone Scholars, Inc., a non-profit that provides educational opportunities for urban youth, is black. Here’s what I think he meant: There are some things that white people will never understand. I will never truly understand the symbolic weight certain words and symbols carry for people of color, which includes the recent proliferation of nooses — including one last month at Friends Central School in Philadelphia — since the Jena Six case in Louisiana.

Fifty seven incidents of hangman’s nooses have been reported to authorities so far this year, according to the Web site DiversityInc.com. The proliferation of nooses — hate or hoax — is not confined to the deep South, either. There are just as many reports above the Mason-Dixon Line.

Since graduating from college, Mensah and I have taught and coached young people every day of our professional lives. Here’s what we’ve learned about race relations, born from the bonds of friendship and shared by many of our fellow educators around the city

* When a noose is hung up, many black people feel a sense of anger, disappointment, and mistrust in a place deep in the soul that they believe no white person could ever understand. This does not mean that black people don’t want white people to try to understand.

* Children watch and analyze how the adults in their lives treat people who are different than them — waiters, valets, cleaners, the disabled, people of different races, people who don’t speak “proper” English, gays and lesbians — the list is long, but our children’s memories are even longer.

* Parents who conduct or condone Imus-esque comments (mild and seemingly harmless) and Michael Richards-esque outbursts (vitriolic and hateful) are likely to raise insensitive children.

* The opposite is equally true, perhaps even more so. Parents who repeatedly and openly confront racism and discrimination are likely to raise sensitive, resilient, and open-minded children.

* Honest conversations with children often reveal them to be a lot more mature than we expect. Sometimes parents are the real problem. Thankfully, children aren’t obligated or required to become like their parents.

I know one girl (white) who took a black boy to her senior prom, and to this day she does not know that during the picture-taking ceremony the film compartment of her mother’s camera was deliberately left empty. Racism still exists in lots of places—sometimes under our very own noses. [Note: The editor cut this paragraph from the paper version.]

Kids care about history. Teachers and parents have to help children see the connections between past experiences and their immediate lives, and it usually starts with conversations about historical facts. The noose is just the most recent example. The noose has a very nasty history. How many children of all colors learn about it?

Kids respect parents and school administrators who are unequivocal about what is acceptable and unacceptable. The challenge for adults is in figuring out when the message needs to be openly debated, and when the message needs to be non-negotiable and authoritatively delivered. What would happen if a noose appeared at your child’s school? What kind of conversation would you have with your child?

Black children who face racism and discrimination appreciate support and outrage from white teachers and students as well as from black teachers and students. Finally, whites learn more about race relation from befriending blacks than they do from reading books about race-relations. But reading good books helps.

Education really is a group project. Nooses, left unchecked, may not result in lynchings along Main Street, but it’s the hangman’s mentality that must be fought through proper parenting, good education, and genuine dialogue. Even one of these dimensions, experienced in the absence of the others, may be enough to untie the knot that exists in the mind of the racist or in the heart of the ignorant prankster.

Mark Franek is an adjunct professor of writing at Philadelphia University.

 

Meeting for Worship, Schoolchildren, and You

[This piece originally appeared in Penn Charter's internal document for faculty and staff called P.C.P.D. (Penn Charter Professional Development) in September 2007, vol. 15, no. 1.  The ideas expressed below stem from my experiences in meeting for worship over the past ten years.  This piece appeared one month after my last Penn Charter paycheck arrived in the mail.]

For the past 3 years I have systematically studied the lived experiences of schoolchildren in meeting for worship at Penn Charter. What impact, if any, did weekly meetings have on the students’ perceptions of their intellectual, social, emotional, and spiritual lives? As you can probably guess, I did not pursue this endeavor for fun, but as the main requirement for a doctoral degree at a local university. (A copy of my dissertation is located in the Gummere Library, but you will need at least a full hour and a strong cup of coffee to digest it.)

Since Penn Charter has a new head of school and a new dean of students, I thought it might be helpful if I used this space to consider the purpose of meeting for worship and what your role in it might be, assuming that you accept that meeting for worship is a moral enterprise and central to the life of the school.

First, a few caveats: The ink on my last Penn Charter paycheck is dry. I am not a Quaker, nor am I a convinced one. And, most importantly, I am not an expert on meeting for worship. Still, I hope you will find something in this commentary that will resonate with you.

Meeting As Metaphor

Howard Brinton, a celebrated Quaker scholar and philosopher, often compared meeting for worship to a budding flower: “Worship is an art in which some attain proficiency quickly and others slowly. In either case the success of the meeting is largely dependent on the quality of life which has preceded it. The flower blossoms only after the bud has slowly matured.”

Allow me to extend Brinton’s image to a full-blown metaphor (with apologies to the English department). Meeting for worship must be tended to carefully, like a garden, for benign neglect will not result in glorious bloom. Likewise, too much tinkering will stunt the meeting’s natural growth. Weeds must be eradicated—but carefully. I know some students who have been “mentored” after meeting for sharing an awkward or inappropriate message, and have never risen in meeting to speak again.

Sometimes what looks like a weed is not a weed but the beginnings of a beautiful flower. Mind the garden in all its diversity and feed its talent. Be optimistic about its individual and communal growth. The individual needs the group in order to grow and appreciate its growth. But the group also needs the individual, because the individual is often the source—or the conduit—of the Light/truth.

Balance is best, but sometimes risks must be taken. There are times when someone (the head of school, a teacher, a child) needs to nudge the group away from darkness and self-absorption and back towards the light. Paul Lacey calls this process “growing into goodness” in his book by the same name. A powerful, well-timed vocal message—like the wisdom of the group that arises from a meeting for business—is like a garden in full bloom. You will know it when you see (hear) it.

Perhaps it’s time for a story to put this metaphor to the test.

A few years ago the administration decided to remove all the seat cushions from our meeting room benches and have them cleaned. That week, during meeting for worship, the bare benches became the sole topic of the students’ petulant vocal ministry. Several students that I interviewed for my dissertation recalled Dr. Ball’s brusque reaction that occurred right at the close of meeting. The students didn’t like his response—even though, years later, they still remembered it.

Over the years Earl has used many tools to re-center or inspire the group. On this particular morning he used the rake. But he could have just as easily used the hose: “What might the missing seat-cushion-commentary this morning really mean?—for I have often witnessed members of this community act in kind and considerate ways.”

Earl almost never used the pick-axe or the shovel. (What would a meeting or a school resemble if the axe were used too often by adults in any context?)

That’s the thing about meeting for worship. Anyone can be a gardener. Some people are called by their inner voice, some are charged by outside authorities, still others stumble into their roles, unaware that they wield (or have always wielded) powerful tools. The great gardeners take their cue from living things. They know that the goal is long-term, positive moral growth. They can appreciate the power of a good story, and know that sometimes the best story is silence.

Meeting for Worship and You

There is no manual for how heads of schools and teachers should lead—or follow—in meeting for worship. (You won’t find this info in your contract or in your Faculty Handbook.) Interestingly, meeting for worship, at its best, is like a great class.

A great class is often marked by the absence of a sole teacher (we’ve all had them before): The teacher quietly recedes into the background—but not so far that he or she can’t redirect or re-focus the discussion. It helps if the burden of leading (and following) during meeting does not fall too often or too squarely on the shoulders of the head of school or on a few teachers, although I suspect that many good Quaker schools rely heavily on a few adults.

Ideally Quaker schools ought to cultivate good gardeners, both young and old. One way Penn Charter fosters this goal is with its Religious Life Committee, which takes the pulse of the meeting and periodically makes recommendations to the administration.

Any good Quaker school—if I can talk about the school as an entity—that takes its meeting for worship seriously knows that meeting rests on the hard work and good will of smaller groups, which ultimately rest on the faith of individuals. There is a secular component to all of this. At its core, meeting for worship is just good pedagogy and good citizenship training. Students learn a lot in and from meeting for worship, even though they often don’t fully understand and appreciate these lessons and testimonies until they no longer have meeting in their schedule. Trust the process.

Of course, meeting for worship also has a sacred side. At its core, meeting rests on the spiritual belief that there is something out there (or inside a person or a group of people) that is greater than the individual or the sum of individuals, and—here’s the real kicker—it can be experienced each week.

So, gather your tools and use them wisely.  A Quaker school’s meeting for worship is always a group project. Dr. Ford may not need your help in this particular context, but your help will make the meeting more valuable and worthwhile for everyone.

Mark Franek was the Upper School dean of students from 1999–2007.