A painful development to watch

I've been somewhat ambivalent about what the U.S. should do in Syria. For some reason, this morning's news coverage in the Washington Post is tempting to wake me from my ambivalent stupor . . .

This paragraph, in particular, from a June 14 article woke me up.

Then, this paragraph disheartened me.

And this infographic angered me.

How patently irresponsible the great powers have been! Confusion, fear, hesitation, lack of political will, self-interest . . . it has all led to the persistence of a conflict the kills more and more. No great power wants to risk their own people's lives, but they're willing to let this ugly, messy conflict persist.

What can we do with all this stuff

A somewhat long-winded column in the Washington Post made an interesting point: "Unfortunately, “data-driven” has become a conversation-ender, rather than a conversation-framer." The revolutions in computing and the internet have made it possible for us to aggregate and save massive volumes of data, more (perhaps) than we can really comprehend. That data can make us arrogant. After all, data can point out with statistical precision what is going on. Data can offer predictive powers to target advertisements to audiences most likely to act on those messages. 

But doesn't "margin of error" come up as an indispensable concept in interpreting data? 

I am concerned at the monolithic arrogance that comes with data. That columnist is right: often big data is an end to a conversation rather than a contribution to one. 

A long, slow turn

I'm being reminded of something that I notice with kids. Namely, how difficult it can be to turn around some entrenched patterns of behavior. For instance, students will come to me saying they feel lost in a course. I give them advice on how to turn that around. They undertake steps to do just that. But the grades don't change right away. Perhaps it's because there is residual work that gets graded after they've started the turn. Perhaps it's because there's some lost comprehension from before the turn. Regardless, it's dispiriting for many kids to feel like they've changed what they needed to change, but the results seem to be lagging.

I can't help but think of how long it takes for a mighty warship to turn

The 2012-13 school year didn't see me do my best job balancing life as a father with life as a professional, and I look forward to summer and 2013-14 as a chance to adjust. But it's been a dispiriting week, as I see some residual drag from a few weeks in which I wasn't there to nudge my son as much as I should. Humbling.

Even more humbling: How much of a hero I am in his eyes, and the eyes of my little girl. We're our own worst critics. I see faults, warts, blown calls, and rookie mistakes. They see a tower.

Thankful

After my fourth year of teaching I had the chance to move on to a new building as a teacher leader. Instantly I was able to shed my image as "a kid" (which I really was in my first building . . . most of my colleagues were the same age as my parents) and become a "gray hair." It was a fluke. Usually 26-year-olds don't get such positions. But someone had confidence in me, and I had the courage to jump.

- - -

I'm thankful that my year of teaching is over in two weeks. This has been a challenging year for finding balance between work and home. I look forward to better handling that next year. I think I'll look back at 2012-13 as a year of growing up: for my wife and I professionally and for my son first-graderly. My daughter had the easiest year, and I'm thankful for her disposition as the rest of the family underwent growing pains.

- - -

I'm thankful for my cat. I don't quite know why he is so insistent that I sit in the position that I sit, but it seems to make me happy.

My History B.A.

Their accursed paywall might prevent you from reading it, but The Wall Street Journal has had some interesting an infuriating pieces about unemployment rates for graduates holding humanities degrees. Read it here, if you are able.

So, I have a history degree. Two actually, a B.A. earned at Gettysburg College and an M.A. earned at Villanova. I'm very proud of them both. I also cringe when I hear of pundits talk of technical degrees as the be-all and end-all of education. WSJ's coverage about unemployment rates amongst my kind prompts me to think of what skills I have as a result of my academic history training. I can distill the most important skills to these:

• The inclination to triangulate evidence - I rarely act on just one bit of supporting information. I need three or more substantiations before I truly believe something. Perhaps this explains my resistance to simple Google searches and Wikipedia. It might also explain why I cycle through my news sources daily, hesitant to rely on any one. 
• The inclination to credit where I found something - which might annoy those I'm with. I cannot just pass on someone else's ideas as my own, and I habitually say "according to" when I share ideas I came across (or even jokes I've heard). 
• Humility in asserting historical truth - Historians act with the knowledge that we'll never be absolutely certain that something happened the way we think it did. It's impossible to recreate and capture every detail of an important event or trend. And we author historical works that will someday be challenged by others. 
• Oh, and can I write (though my blog posts might not be the best evidence of this).

Those of us who have earned liberal arts degrees in the humanities learned a discipline, internalizing its lessons and methods. That discipline frames what we do, whether what that is is directly related to the title of our B.A. or not. 

Ironically, I will next year be teaching courses that aren't historical at all. I'll be a teacher of civics and education, subject areas I've largely taught myself. The discipline I learned as a historian informs my ability to do that. 

When I say farewell to my students at the end of their 12th grade year, I urge them to find a degree program that they love and build expertise in it. Expertise, evinced by sophisticated scholarship and a good GPA, will always have a market value, which skills (necessities in economic life) might not always have. 

The practical skills of which so much is made now come and go. I'm right now typing on a program that with a computer that not too long ago would have been something only the highly trained could use. Who is to say that the computer programming and financial aptitude touted so much today won't become part of the standard k-12 curriculum someday in the future. 

What I say now for history is applicable to so many other fields: in learning the discipline of history, I came into touch the with thoughts, dreams, and demons of people long gone. That gives me a grounding and a proclivity to think that informs what I do, and what I can offer to my employer and my community. We call fields of studies like mine humanities for a reason, because it does connect those of us venturing into the future with what in the past has made us what we are. 

Brief news update

I've stopped subscriptions to two services that had long been part of my life. Here's how it's going:

• The Philadelphia Inquirer. Don't miss it. I'm now getting used to Twitter for following the news I used to get from there. Verdict: How did I live without Twitter? 
• Satellite Radio. Don't miss it. Replaced with Google's music service. Verdict: Google has a ridiculously good product. 

Next victim of the Johnson household austerity project: It doesn't look good Verizon.

There are lots of Trojan Horses

Two recent pieces of opinion with which I disagree gives me a chance to think:

First, Charles M. Blow's op-ed in today's New York Times. 

Second, a position put forth by Demos on the future of old-age pensions (what an ugly term . . . I'm channeling the terminology The Economist likes to use). 

It was one line in Blow's piece that jostled loose my thinking: "Republicans who said their position on economic issues was conservative — the Republican Trojan Horse for a retrograde social agenda." 

Increasingly, I notice that the political commentary I read likes to point to some grand agenda on the part of other side. George Will certainly does this in his right-of-center commentary at the Washington Post. By instinct I usually chuckle when someone like Will ("Aha") points to someone pursuing some sort of liberal end-game and I fume when someone like Blow talks of a conservative agenda, retrograde or otherwise. 

I'm now starting to think beyond those initial reactions. 

Both sides are point out something that is essentially true, and the more commentary I read, the more it prompts me to think about the essence of most debates on the economy and the security of people in it. 

Cost is a concern of anyone in economic life. And I speak of cost in very broad terms. Who will foot the bill for, well, life? Who will foot the bill for retirement? Who will foot the bill for health care? Who will foot the bill for education? Who will foot the bill for roads and highways? Who will foot the bill for revitalizing the disappointing downtown of my town? The things in life that are worthwhile have costs that are real and have to be paid by someone or something. 

And so we debate. Should cost and risk be borne by government and taxpayers or by firms and wealthy interests? Should cost and risk be borne by individuals or by the collective society? And when we decide it should be borne by society, which part of society should bear it? Each position has its drawbacks and benefits. 

For some reason, in these issues I think about a relatively narrow instance of a meat processing plant nearby (stick with me for a moment). Some time ago, a court ruled that workers had to be paid by their employer for the approximately 30 minutes it takes to don the protective gear they need to do their job. It was an interesting tale in employer vs. employee responsibility. It's the law (and good policy) to wear things that protect life and limb in a dangerous trade. Who pays for the time to don that gear? Is it on the clock or not? Who bears the cost: the firm or the individual? 

In response to Blow and Will, I might say that it's fine if the other side is pursuing a deeper agenda about who bears the cost and risk. It's helpful for us to think about what that side would ultimately prefer as the way for Americans to live, work, earn, and learn. Maybe slippery slopes lead to realities that aren't as frightening as columnists lead us to believe. Maybe we should be humble about the agendas which we abhor or to which we adhere. 

As for Demos . . . I don't know what I think about a government-run retirement Plan B. I see the merits of it. I also see potential for cronyism and for moral hazard. I was glad to have heard one of that plan's authors on Fresh Air a few weeks back. His chief criticism of 401(k) plans was that saver bore the whole risk for their retirement funding. I'm glad I didn't just react and turn him off . . . I'm glad I heard his principled indignation against that reality, not because I ultimately believed with him, but because I could walk away from it and think, "You know, he has a point."