Business Matters

A few months ago I was reading an article in the The Atlantic titled, Infectious Exuberance. The article is about the factors that led to the meltdown in the housing market. What caught my attention was the way the author spoke about mood. As a student of cultures, I see the strong dynamic that mood plays for whatever culture I may be a member of. It could be the community where I live, the church I attend or the company where I work.

Robert Shiller, pointed out that the underlying factor that is always present in similar situations of a boom is contagious optimism. When we had the Internet bubble bust in 2001, we could track the contagious optimism that guided the decisions of investors who felt that the market was going to continue to rise indefinitely. This same enthusiasm was at play when we felt that housing prices that had been rising rapidly in many areas would continue to do so.

When history is considered, it would show us that in a world of capitalism there has always been rise and fall. This rise and fall is predictable and absolute. So what is it that keeps us from seeing the inevitable when we are in what Shiller calls a bubble? He points out that these bubble are social phenomena. Going further, I feel they are a collective mindset that has a simple story attached to it, “you can get rich without creating anything of value yourself.”

This mindset is so intoxicating that you can only see a reality that supports the mindset. Those that are not infected by the mindset see the world much differently. The know about expansion and contraction and watch diligently for the inevitable change. I mention this to you because this same phenomena of bubbles can be at play in every aspect of our lives.

Now we are on the other side of the economic bubble, the bust part. It isn’t really much different than the boom. In the bust phase, we believe things will continue to get worse. This pessimism continues and, just like the boom phase, it’s a self fulfilling prophecy until it runs out of steam. Then the next boom cycle will begin.

There are some who say we are in such a down swing that the next up cycle won’t happen for six or seven years. I don’t know. What I do know is that we are in a time of adjustment. This boom thinking has run its course. This time around there are different characteristics than in previous busts. For example, for the most part everyone is affected no matter where they live. We have build a very interdependent social and economic system. In past bust cycles, the impact was felt in multiple places, but not everywhere. This is why it is difficult to predict when something will change to move out of the bust cycle and what the change will look like.

What happened to make things seem so bad?

Some continuing comment on the state of the financial markets around the world. For the most part, the markets haveoperated in a fairly orderly manner for most of our lifetimes. There is a small group of business leaders in conjunction with government policy makers who have kept the current system in place. Those that have been master of this system have felt in complete control and have reaped vast wealth.

Something changed. I am uncertain when this change happened. This change is a disruption of the normal operating rules. I will elaborate at a future time about what is the cause of these changes and the fallout that is rapidly occurring due to the change.

What we can see as an outward sign of the disruption of the normal flow of things is the lack of a creditable approach to restoring confidence of investors in the value of companies in all sectors of the economic system. Normally, I wouldn’t write about this type of thing in this BLOG, but the impact is so far reaching that I am writing about it everywhere. There are many who have been heralding this change. I have not taken them as seriously as I could have because most of their writing is fear based. I don’t find that useful. I did forget however, that I can gain value from listening to a fearful conversation if I look to the factors that created the fear rather than be caught up in the emotion.

Yesterday as part of the preparation for next week’s radio program on the real truth of the $700B bailout, I was talking with a journalist who was a former Assistant Secretary of Treasury in the Reagan administration. This person is very clear about the factors that are causing the current crisis. One of the things that I took away from the conversation is that the people who created the chaotic system we are trying to change were creators of the system.

As Albert Einstein was to have said, “A problem can’t be solved by the same consciousness that created it”. This situation can’t be solved by those who created it. They are digging deeper and deeper holes that generations to come will be saddled with. The prosperity we have experienced for several generations is crumbling.

What to do? That is a question that is consuming my whole attention. For the walk from here will be much different than the journey so far. I will share with you what I feel are reasonable steps for anyone who chooses to take charge of their situation rather than be at the effect of others choices.

Waldorf Education and Social Renewal - a guest posting

I first met Gary when our family lived (briefly) in Harlemville, NY about 9 years ago, and subsequently subscribed to the magazine which he co-edited, The Threefold Review (the Institute for Social Renewal has a few articles from the magazine, which is no longer published, up on their website). I always appreciated Gary’s clarity and in particular his clearly articulated position that government should not rightfully be in the business of providing education and that Waldorf education is best served by steering clear of the State.

Gary has dedicated himself to exploring the apparent conundrum of having Waldorf education be both indepedent of the State and accessible to all. This was an important part of what Gary had to say during this weekend. Towards the end of the weekend Gary pointed to Educational Tax Credits as a practical step toward this goal. He is personally involved with the campaign in New York State to create such a possibility (seewww.teachnys.org). The picture to the right shows Gary with Patrice Maynard of AWSNA - the Association of Waldorf Schools of N. America. (This is taken from a report about the tax credit campaign in the latest issue of the Institute for Social Renewal’s e-mail newsletter: subscribe here).

So, Gary’s essential thesis was that Waldorf education originated in and cannot be separated from “social renewal”. He talked about the founding of the first Waldorf school in Stuttgart, Germany in 1919 for the children of the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory workers and developed a discussion of Rudolf Steiner’s views of social renewal and his conceptualization of the threefold nature of human society, whereby a healthy balance is found between the economic life (keyword: fraternity, brother/sisterhood), the political/legal life (keyword: equality) and the ’spiritual-cultural’ sphere (keyword: freedom). Following Steiner, Gary firmly placed education in the spiritual-cultural sphere (along with art, science and religion) and described the need forall education to be free from the control of both economic forces (primarily big business) and political forces (the State) - not just Waldorf education.

Gary described a positive role for the State in ensuring the right of all children to an education but he feels that we badly need to unhook that concept from the idea of the Stateproviding education through government schools. Similarly businesses have a part to play in funding education but only in the context of educators (in the classroom) having the authority to decide what the children they are working with need.

I thought that Gary was really inspiring when he described Steiner’s view of Waldorf education (or, really, any true education) as constantly evolving, depending upon the changing needs and nature, not of the government or business, but of children. Steiner essentially said that if one is teaching exactly the same way one taught even five years ago one is not meeting the real human beings in front of one. This is why state-mandated curricula and standards are a nonsense.

Robert Karp, who had come all the way from Milwaukee, suggested that modern children’s paramount need might be an education that has a therapeutic nature and that this side of Waldorf education may need to be further developed and emphasized.

There were a couple of us Waldorf homeschoolers present at the workshop. Laurel pointed out that homeschooling very much stands in the stream of education independent of state control, though I expressed concern that ‘virtual academies’ and ‘home-based’ public school initiatives represented a dangerous blurring of the line between homeschooling and state-controlled education. (This is why Christopherus Homeschool Resources signed the ‘We Stand for Homeschooling’ resolution a couple of years ago.)

Gary described a situation - the latest step being No Child Left Behind - of increasingly centralized and big business-driven public education. While Gary chose during this weekend not to address the issue of Waldorf Charter schools and ‘Waldorf methods’ public education, it was clear that he feels this is not the time to compromise on the ideal of education free from political control.

Gary also had interesting things to say about the governance of Waldorf schools in relation to threefolding. He feels that most of the serious problems in the Waldorf schools in the US are issues of the middle, ‘rights’ sphere (justice, fairness and how things are done) rather than problems of pedagogy or funding. However, he did say that the struggle to adequately fund Waldorf schools is a big strain as well.

I was left with questions around ’social renewal’ in the 21st century. Although basic social inequality still exists as it did in 1919 it is now generally accepted that all children deserve an education worthy of a human being (even if one considers that public education doesn’t provide that), which was one of Steiner’s foundational principles in creating the Waldorf school (as was the co-education of boys and girls which is now also the general rule). Perhaps we can say that in all areas of social life we need creative, free-thinking and compassionate individuals and that Waldorf is precisely working to that end in the education of young people.

I was also left wondering how his model of intersecting spheres within a Waldorf school related to our high school in Viroqua, the Youth Initiative High School, with its much greater level of student participation in governance than in other Waldorf schools.

NCLB: Bad Education Policy for 21st Century Education - a guest posting

I’ve taught for 38 years and more than 20 as a teacher of teachers in Illinois, Virginia, and Tennessee. In addition, my three sisters teach in the public schools in Virginia. I have seen the results of the No Child Left Behind Act and I believe this legislation is seriously flawed as a means of improving our public schools. I believe that NCLB should be allowed to expire without reauthorization and replaced with educational initiatives more likely to improve both education and the economy.

First, NCLB, like the invasion of Iraq, was enacted on false premises. In the case of NCLB, the corporate voices behind the 1983 report A Nation at Risk alleged that our public schools had failed the country, but this report has since been examined and found to be seriously flawed. Unlike many school systems of other “developed” countries, we in the U.S. eschew early tracking and attempt to educate all our students in comprehensive high schools. So here we are as the world’s only “superpower” with the most envied higher education institutions in the world that are supplied with students by a supposedly failed system of K-12 public education.

The fundamental problem of NCLB is its failure to address, or even ask, the basic questions about the proper aims of education and how public schools should serve a democratic society. In his book, The Schools our Children Deserve, Alfie Kohn points out that the “tougher standards” movement with its preoccupation with performance “often undermines interest in learning, quality of learning, and a desire to be challenged.” In terms of standards and tests the assumption of NCLB is that “one size fits all” yet Kohn documents how NCLB gets motivation wrong, pedagogy wrong, evaluation wrong, and school reform wrong. In the RAND Corporation report Large-Scale Testing, authors Stephen Klein and Laura Hamilton write that “none of the large-scale national achievement tests currently in use can be employed to monitor individual student progress or to evaluate the effectiveness of particular schools, districts, or educational programs.” Technically, the tests are flawed as they invoke a fallible single standard and a single measure, a practice specifically condemned by the Standards on Educational and Psychological Testing. Despite this, such data are used to make very consequential decisions, such as whether or not schools meet the “adequate yearly progress” (AYP) requirement of the Act. What is rarely mentioned is that the most significant variables affecting student scores on these tests are not the curriculum or the teachers’ pedagogies but rather, the parents’ level of education and social/economic status (Popham, 2001).

The problem is not about having standards per se, but with having standards imposed entirely from without and from the top-down — impersonal standards and rigid benchmarks that turn students into objects and disrupt the vital connections between teachers and students and between students and their work. Anyone who has been a student of a good teacher knows that high standards existed in their classroom. However, Virginia’s Standards of Learning (SOL) framework (2003), for example, prescribes far too much content at each grade level to be addressed appropriately by classroom teachers, with the consequence of a de-skilling of the teachers by removing their decision-making responsibility and consigning them to roles as technicians rather than supporting their professionalism as enacters of curriculum. The SOLs fragment and attempt to deal separately with concepts, approaches, skills, and understandings that should be dealt with in an integrated fashion. Recent studies provide evidence that NCLB has resulted in a narrowing of the curriculum, and at a time when we should be promoting a diversity of curricula to match student needs and local school situations. In fact, the current régime of standards and high-stakes testing undermines the power of local communities to choose their own policies and programs and decide what is important and this simply frustrates and inhibits good teachers. Many teachers end up teaching only what they know is going to be tested. The current régime not only marginalizes many at-risk students and fails to recognize their unique curricular needs, resulting in high drop-out rates, but also fails to serve students at the gifted end, requiring them to be on the same page as the majority of their peers. Students are being pushed out of school with high drop out rates in are largest cities. Curriculum innovation and experimentation is constrained and school experiences are severely limited by the unintended consequences of targeting school curriculum toward high-stakes assessments. Yet we know that there are multiple ways for students to demonstrate intelligence and achievement.

What has been missing from the debate about NLB, according to Gerald Bracey, is any evidence that it has really produced meaningful higher achievement (as opposed to higher test scores). Standards and testing, with very rare exceptions, are not improving those public schools that fail to make AYP under the law, which, of course, are the schools most likely to be located in inner cities and rural areas. Overall, both our inner-city and our more remote rural schools have more of the things that decrease school quality and less of the things that enrich it: more teachers who are uncertified in the subjects they teach; more crowded classes; less money for payrolls, training, and for materials and facilities. In short, we have never adequately invested in the people, programs or equipment necessary to improve our urban and rural schools while yet requiring them to meet NCLB criteria. And, of course, NCLB is an unfunded mandate.

Furthermore, teachers, like my sisters, who are on the front lines of this issue, hold a low opinion of NCLB and very few believe its ultimate goal is even possible. We will never really improve our schools until we invest in highly qualified and well-prepared teachers, programs that are supported by research, curriculum materials that don’t spoon-feed the content and are up-to-date, and appropriate facilities and equipment for instruction. In short, NCLB contributes little of anything positive to the improvement of education while high-stakes testing narrows the curriculum, depresses teacher and administrator morale, increases stress on everybody, and results in a high turn-over rate of teachers and administrators.

For accountability, NCLB requires that report cards to be issued for each school, however, NCLB report cards only contain test scores. According to Nichols and Berliner a more accurate measure of the effectiveness of a school would include information about the number of students per classroom, the number of books per student, the number of books per student in the school library, the square footage of space per student, the number and type of professional development opportunities given to teachers, daily preparation time for teachers, teacher ability to make educational decisions, the number and type researched-based strategies utilized, the number and type of student products and performances unrelated to test scores or grades used to describe learning, and “the number and type of educational books, academic journal articles, and educational research read by law-makers, school board members, administrators, governors, commissioners of education, presidents, and other decision-makers.” With this background as context, standardized test scores might be included as one of many criteria used to describe a school’s overall functioning.

We should replace NCLB with more opportunities for early-childhood education and we should offer teachers incentives to take advanced degrees and other rigorous coursework. Teachers should learn about new strategies and technologies for their classroom practice as well as curriculum and community resources. Further, teachers should be given time to try out new strategies and technologies and develop their expertise without being threatened by NCLB sanctions. They should learn to create classrooms that are multigenerational learning communities. Finally, we must provide an array of alternate routes to success for students, and that includes a revival of vocational education. These initiatives would do much to bolster K-12 public education in our country, and would do much more than even a well-funded NCLB could do to enhance our economy.

Kohn A. (1999). The schools our children deserve: Moving beyond traditional classrooms and “tougher standards”. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Klein, S.P. & Hamilton, L.S. (1999). Large-scale testing: Current practices and new directions. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation.

Nichols, S.L. & Berliner, D.C. (2007). Collateral damage: How high stakes testing corrupts America’s schools. Cambridge: Harvard Education Press.

Small is Beautiful and Productive - a guest posting

By Jules Dervaes, www.PathtoFreedom.com
Julesdervaestrowel-Copyright 2007 Chris Kelly

I wanted acreage. Millions more like me desired the same. I dreamed of an idyllic country home where I could get away from it all. Yeah, and everyone else with the same hope would be joining in the migration to grab what land there was available. I needed space in which to satisfy my latent Bonanza longing. But, I’d probably croak on the spot for lack of the needed skills and, more importantly, for the dearth of experience needed to deal with all kinds of new, rural situations. Problems, that is.

But, I didn’t want to wait; I couldn’t wait. Waiting was dangerous. The doomsday clock for the world’s food supply would only keep on ticking as I watched, sitting on the sidelines. And, there was the palpable fear that, no matter how minor, any postponement would be the start of the strict, systematic cadence of caution. (”Now, let’s be reasonable.”… “There’s no need to do anything drastic.”… “Why do you have to be different?”… “Don’t be such an alarmist!”)
And, just like that, such a hopeful moment, pregnant with so many wild, hot and uninhibited possibilities, would vanish. My old ‘friend’ practicality would have once more prevailed as it had done many times before on these forbidding occasions, in order to keep me in line. Oh, but don’t you know, one can come to the end of one’s rope. So, after having goose stepped for so long in this maddening cultural parade, I chose this instant, this cause, to exchange my marching boots for some gardening ones.

Rather than waste precious time thinking about where we would like to be–sitting on 5, 10, 20 or more acres in the country–we would make a go of it with what we had. But, there were always nagging doubts at every turn. We needed more vegetables. “There is no room here!” We needed more fruit. “There is no room here for trees!” We needed animals. “Surely, there isn’t room here for them, too!” The doubts would keep playing their dirge; the question was: Would I dance to their tune?

Being small was going to be one big challenge. Was it ‘un-American’? Our appetites tend toward supersizing. It certainly would feel peculiar to be satisfied with less. I can get enviously green over large green spaces. So, how could I happily accept this pathetic, downsized acreage? It would come down to this: Could we make–by hook or by crook–one city lot in the hand worth five such lots “in the bush”? And, down the gauntlet was thrown!

Thinking small has made all the difference in the world. Everything is so tight, which makes for one heck of a busy, stressful situation but one that is, nonetheless, truly rewarding–physically, emotionally and spiritually. A very special bonus is being able to derive a small income from our 1/5th acre city lot. So, today, by working all the angles and leaving no stone unturned, I am beginning to feel just now a small but real sense of independence.

Why can’t we all become independent as our farmer-forefathers were before us? The freedom they tasted came from making a living the old-fashioned way; they had to earn it from the soil. The sweat of their daily physical toil brought forth the pure sweetness of another day of standing on your own. It was all in the knock-down, drag-out struggle to get a life.
Independent is as independent does. So, hit the path!

Good news for you!!!!

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being. - Mohandas Ghandi

I’ve got good news for you. I know I sound like some sort of salesman. In a way I am. I am letting you know of a new feature on our website. Beginning this week, we will expand our Business Matters Blog to include writings from many of our program’s guests. During the week after a program airs, you can find postings in the guest’s own voice that will I believe will broaden your understanding of the topical area of the program and more importantly inspire you into action.

We also invite your participation. You can comment on any blog entry and share your feedback and insights with everyone. You can also offer a posting of your own. Simple submit it to feedback@businessmatters.net. We will get right back to you about placing your post on the site.

New Home, New Website, New Direction

Hello to all those who listen to our program. Thank you for allowing us to be of service to you. Today marks our first broadcast on WLUW in Chicago. We also have a new website, we welcome your comments on useful you find it.

From the inception of Business Matters, our purpose has been to serve two roles.

The first is to bring you new perspectives that provoke. We are committed to bring important issues that have an impact on the quality of life we can experience. Through the stories of our guests, we aim to offer you insights that will have you say, “Hey I like to be an agent for change” So that’s goal one..

The other goal we have is activation. Its not enough to know you want things to be different. It requires each of us to bring ourselves into action. Action that is an example of the change we desire.

This weeks program is a perfect example of our ambition. This is a program about bringing vitality back to our local communiites.

We start the program with Celine Rich. Celine is a co-founder of the Post Carbon Institute. They have been activist for creating local activation that is a direct response to the crisis of fossil fuel depletion and climate change. Celine with several collaborators crystalized the concept of “Relocalization” They defined this phenomena as bringing back to our local communities self-sufficiency in food and energy production and the development of prosperous local economies. Our interview with Celine will help you understand what’s driving this trend and how it could be brought into your local community.

Our second interview is with Michael Shuman. Michael has also been on the beat of relocalization for over 10 years. In 1998, he wrote “Going Local: Creating Self-Reliant Communities in a Global Age” , Since then, Michael has been an advocate for reclaiming our local economies and shifting the political power from being the exclusive domain of big business to being shared with small, local businesses. Michael has served as the catalyst for the Business Alliance for Local Living and Economies.

Finally, we talk to Jules Dervaes. Jules and his 3 adult children are true practioners of relocalization. They have developed on 1/10 an acre near downtown Pasadena, Ca a sustainable micro-farm that produces 6000 pounds of food per year. This is something that all the “experts” say is impossible. They sell part of the produce to local restaurants. They also have a number of home-based businesses that support them. You can find out a lot more at their website Path to Freedom.

Finally, we extend an invitation to you. First we invite you to see how you can become involved in even a small way in being a catalyst for bringing back to our local communities (even in downtown Chicago) food and energy production. Also what can you do to support our local merchants who keep their profits right in your town.

If you have any stories you want to share, please leave them hear or drop us a line - we would love to hear from you.

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Living in a Bubble