52 Mondays: Dot-to-Dot, Ways by Which Poverty Affects Literacy

"I did start reading quite young but I was always read to by my parents, who are both actors. Bedtime stories from when I was about two/three to when I was about 15. In fact they didn't stop until I eventually kind of kicked them out of my bedroom." ~Samuel West

Last week, I offered here a bulleted list of ways in which economics and public health are tied to education. I'd call the three an unholy triad, but I'm fairly certain that label's already been bestowed elsewhere. To paraphrase myself, several bullets began with words similar to the following:

Poor kids are less likely than their middle class and wealthy peers to [fill in the blank].

The blank could be educational (and often was last week), or it could be health-related, which in turn is related to some educational outcome. (Once more, I encourage everyone to read the work of economist James Heckman on poverty, education, and resiliency factors.) I drew broad strokes relationships, because I wanted to create an idea, a framework around and within which we could begin to ¹ shade our understanding of how these constructs operated conjointly. The goal, of course, is to put as many known pieces of this puzzle on the table in as ordered a fashion as possible so that eventually the empirical work can be done to create a solid path analysis that is complete¹.

If last week was macro, then this week I want to follow that discussion with a micro-inspection of one area we laid out. To begin, previously on wrighterly:

1. Children who are economically disadvantaged underperform academically compared to their non-economically disadvantaged peers.


2. Children raised in single parent homes underperform academically compared to their peers in two-parent homes (opposite sex and same-sex).


3. Children who are economically disadvantaged are more likely to come from single parent homes than their non-economically disadvantaged peers.

Before we get too deep into our micro-view here, I think it's important to define what exactly we're looking at above. Points one and two are both academic performance outcomes with different predictors. In #1, academic performance is predicted to be lower for poor kids than for middle class or wealthy kids, and in #2, academic performance is predicted to be lower for kids in single parent homes than for kids in two-parent homes. Point three is a little bit different. If taken in isolation (i.e., if I hadn't given #s 1 & 2), it would appear to be a simple outcome with being a poor kid predicted by whether one comes from a single-parent home versus a two-parent home, single-parent homes predicting a greater likelihood of being poor. However, #3 actually serves to explain part of the relationship between #1 and #2. Thus, it is both a predictor and an outcome in that it also helps to predict some of the poor academic performance of economically disadvantaged kids.

The takeaway message is that these are complex relationships even at the 30,000 foot level. The ties binding economics, public health, and education that I outlined last week were truly only the broad strokes, and these relationships represent those that researchers have studied individually without a tremendous effort - Heckman notwithstanding - to formulate a testable path model to package them all together. Within each individual relationship exist multiple elements explaining some portion of the broader element. I'd like to start with one of these.

About three and a half years ago when Daughter No. 3 was just a week or so shy of her fifth birthday, I posted a review of the children's book Good Night, Good Knight here on wrighterly. The review included the following video of Daughter No. 3 and me reading the book aloud. I recall two or three takes being necessary due to the giggle factor and someone sneezing near the very end, but we edited that out. Early on, Daughter No. 2 can be seen crawling through the frame in the background, but oh well, nothing homegrown is perfect, not even daughters nor videos containing daughters. This one remains a favorite of mine.



Stories and the sharing of them have always been a tradition in our home. We write them, read them, orate them, and take great pleasure in the discovery of the words of others. Since the earliest days of Daughter No. 1 lo these many years ago and exhortations for just one more time, Mommy for the classic Goodnight, Moon, I have read to my children long past the age when many children's parents cease the bedtime story because their children have become capable of reading to themselves. I confess a particular fondness for (good) children's and YA fiction, and often one of my daughters and I have shared a book or a series by trading off who reads a chapter aloud so that we can both enjoy the story. Words, stories, and the molding of the former into the latter simply are part of our DNA... but we are an unusual story.

My children have never been financially fortunate. At times and not a few of them, they've been downright financially unfortunate as friends and family alike can attest but graciously do not. The reasons for our economic difficulties are varied and as unique to our family situation as others are to them. No one's story is the same. My children, however, haven't followed the general relationship trends already noted between economics and academic performance. Some of Heckman's non-cognitive factors certainly come into play, but there's a critical relationship between poverty and academic performance at work here that's even more crucial and relevant to the discussion.

Researchers have long known that poor kids have far lower literacy rates than kids from middle class or wealthy families. They enter school in Kindergarten with lower literacy rates than their better off peers, and they have great difficulty closing the literacy gap. (This knowledge is the driving force behind Head Start programs, Early Head Start programs, and many others.) If kids can't catch up in the first year or two of school, absolutely everything the educational system is designed to provide for them is doomed to catastrophic failure. There are many reasons why poor kids suffer this deficit, and at risk of violating my own rule¹ of making sure we have all the ingredients for our soup, I'm going to give you just a few examples.

• Parents of poor kids often can't read or have rudimentary literacy skills at best.


• If a parent can't read or can't read well, s/he isn't can't/isn't likely to read to a toddler or pre-schooler at bedtime or any other time prior to the child entering school.


• Being read to as a very young child is critical to the formation of early literacy skills and creates a readiness for school-based learning.


• Parents of poor kids who can read may not be in a position to do so because they aren't working 8-5 office jobs. They're not at home at bedtime. They aren't available to read to their children, because they're working shift work that keeps them out of the home at night, or they're working two+ jobs that keep them away from home at night. There isn't a lack of ability or willingness to read to their children, but there is a lack of opportunity. The net result is the same.


• Parents of poor kids aren't connected with the communities in which they live, the social networks of experienced and knowledgeable outreach coordinators who can pass along the educational information to help support critical early literacy development in their children. If they are connected, these networks often focus on crisis intervention and "just in time" literature. That is, parents of poor kids may receive information on Shaken Baby Syndrome, substance abuse treatment, governmental assistance programs, and childhood vaccination schedules. They are unlikely to receive information on the importance of reading to children or public library children's reading hours.

My kids have never been financially fortunate. Even today when my salary is good and I can do many of the things for them I may not have been able to in the past, I still struggle with student loan debt from college and paying for Daughter No. 2's braces. We look more like a "normal" American family if there is a definition of such. Where my daughters found their fortune was in the twin facts that my own education afforded me the knowledge of how critical their early literacy was to their development and I never had to be away from them during the times when kids need to be read to. I struggled with money but not with the full trappings of poverty.

There may be no panacea for poverty in America. Not today. There may be no ability for any given one of us to lift every one of America's poor kids to a better standard of living. Heckman suggests we don't even need to. What we do need to do is manage to touch every child with words, with the visual representation of them, with the wonder of stories on pages. Head Start is a start, but it isn't nearly enough. If we understand the fundamental truth that early literacy may in fact be a key determinant in most of the economic and academic relationships not directly related to public health, then our interventions should be focused on taking literacy to the streets and not expecting the streets to come to us.

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¹If we want to fully understand any phenomenon, it is critical to correctly specify the statistical model we build. "Correct specification" entails including all factors known to affect the outcome(s) we're studying. If we believe something might influence our outcome but leave that something out for any reason, however well-intentioned, then we're mucking with the statistics and with the data. Predictor variables only predict as well as the model is built. Consider building a model to predict rain and not including humidity levels in that model. Things might start to behave very strangely indeed. Last week, I did create just the broad outline of a path model. It did not include every known variable (such as mother's level of education, which is incredibly important to academic performance). Beginning this week, we'll start to fill in those gaps.

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52 Mondays is my 2013 project here on wrighterly. You can read about it at wrighterly.com as well. Each Monday, I'll post a different essay on some topic related to PK-20 education in America. The purpose is to raise the level of dialog on these issues if only among the modest audience I currently enjoy.

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Lean In: A (sort of) Book Review

"Yet the world has a way of reminding women that they are women, 

and girls that they are girls." ~Sheryl Sandberg

I've been waiting several weeks to write this review of Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg. Waiting on myself to finish it between work, the home shift, and writing my own stuff to which I gave precedence until the first draft was finished. Some two months later, here we are.

First, a confession. From the outset, I girded myself, prepared to dislike Lean In. Not the concept; that wasn't it. Unlike Sandberg's early aversion to the stereotypical "bra burning, man hating" version of the word, I've never had difficulty proclaiming my feminism to whomever would listen. This didn't necessarily entail pinning a scarlet F to my chest. Often, my feminism made itself known in my active support for women and their needs. Thus, when I heard her interview on NPR's Morning Edition, I did two contradictory things. I felt myself lean away from her soft, non-threatening version of feminism, and I ordered the book that very day. Even before Lean In arrived in my perfectly suburban mailbox, I wrote the title and Sandberg's name on two sticky notes and gave them to two of my (male) staff members with the same comment for each. "You should order this for your wife. Today." I am nothing if not an untidy bundle of contradictions. My only regret on finishing the book is that I didn't do the same for my two (male) staff who don't have wives and/or aren't seeing people at the moment. And my lone female employee? I should pony up and buy her copy myself.

I haven't joined Lean In on Facebook. In another confession, I don't use Facebook very often. I do have a Facebook page, and once upon a time, I used it relatively often. The combination of having a daughter in college with whom I'm friends on Facebook (I'm not sure I recommend that for any parent) and a need to back away from so much public exposure of my private life led to a hiatus a couple of years ago. I'm toying with returning. So please don't burn me in effigy yet; there's no personal affront meant to Sandberg at all. Neither she nor the company has done anything wrong. (I have followed @leanin on Twitter if that counts.) I only mention this, because I haven't shared my own Lean In story on Facebook, but I will share it here as I work through my thoughts on the book. They are complex, as are the stories of the women who've chosen to lean in... and those who have chosen not to do so.

I know I'm not alone in what I'm going to say. I know this, because Sandberg discusses in Lean In multiple speaking engagements on "women in work" and related issues and how, after speaking, she hears from women worldwide that she's spoken to their lives and their hearts. Again, I am not alone in what I'm going to say. As I read Lean In, I found myself nodding at so many places and thinking she's telling my story. And she was. The tragedy of Lean In was that Sandberg told my story in all the wrong places, the places where I had chosen to lean away from the table (or not sit there at all, as happened a few days ago despite a male colleague entreating me to sit at the table and beside him), places where I felt pressured to make a choice I shouldn't have had to make... places where I had been subverted either by accidental bias or intentional malice, where my partner had not been a partner, where my own inner voice had damned (and dammed) my potential (like that recent choice). Perhaps worst of all, Sandberg wrote of the double standards within which we women operate that help to perpetuate our second class status. So, while I nodded and appreciated her ability to speak to me, I also lamented that she spoke to me so well.

Lean In is a must read for all men and women who want to advance economic and social equality for the sexes in a just, humane, and uplifting way.

I wondered for a good while as I read if I even had a lean in story to tell. I realized I did. Then I realized I had more than one and stories about more than just myself. Perhaps the most salient for me was the day I interviewed for the job I now hold, Director of Institutional Research, Effectiveness, and Reaffirmation for a community college that boasts 15,000+ students pursuing academic credentials and another 25,000+ pursuing job certifications and lifelong learning opportunities. I had a lot riding on the interview. The position was, in some regards, a long way from where I'd started on the career jungle gym Sandberg describes. I had also been out of work for twenty-one months and needed to land a job. At the same time, I wasn't willing to take just any job. I wanted something that appropriately matched my education and experience to the needs of the organization and would stretch my skills enough that I could learn new things on the job. I wanted to bring the best of myself to the college while also finding opportunities for my own growth.

After facing a lengthy interview process complete with about a dozen folks on the committee (including two vice presidents, an associate vice president, two people who would report directly to me, and sundry other people from around the college), I concluded my presentation and Q&A session. The interview broke, and I spent a couple of minutes one-on-one with the VP to whom I would report if I got the job. As I shook her hand to say goodbye, she explained that they still had a few other candidates to interview, they hoped to make a decision in the next couple of weeks, etc. I smiled, told her how much I respected the organization and how easy the fit between the position and my skills seemed, and said, "Please forgive me for saying so, but I hope the other candidates fall flat." I had never done anything like that before in an interview, but the VP, who is now the president at a sister college, burst out laughing and told me she hoped they did, too. A week later she offered me the job on a Friday, and even though she wanted me to start work the following Monday, I was able to successfully negotiate a later starting date as we had to relocate and I had to cope with school enrollments and after school care for my elementary aged children.

This story represents one moment in my life, or one sequence rather. Although I possessed an education and the requisite training to score highly in the selection and interview process, I needed to lean in to stick the landing. Sandberg discusses many such moments for herself and others. One of the aspects I appreciate most about Lean In is Sandberg's candor, which could not have been easy in some moments. I imagine that many of them caused her no small amount of pain to admit. Hurtful comments, damning press, self-doubt, and fear. This humility renders what is, in many ways, a call to arms also a very human story. If an editor, a beta reader, a friend said to her along the way, "Oh, really Sheryl, you shouldn't say that," then I'm glad she didn't listen. Not only do her personal anecdotes make Lean In real, they also temper the economics geek's numbers hand. I sense Sandberg and I have this in common, the desire to hide our emotional selves behind the research, and for this book, for women's issues in general, the data are clear and compelling. It's a simple matter to let them speak for us and shield our personal pain by doing so. For myself, I often give in to the temptation and lose the reader in the process. Sandberg doesn't. Lean In, while generously peppered with hard data in all the right places, never becomes pedantic, always retains its one-on-one conversational appeal. Kudos. I am impressed.

Although Sandberg focuses on the inequities that continue to plague women in the workplace, particularly women in middle and upper management in American companies, I do want to praise her for also addressing inequalities in both perceptions and realities for women who stay home and for men who do, too. This pleased me an inordinate amount, for my lovely, well educated sister regularly leans in… and is a woman who "works inside the home," as Sandberg describes it.

From my own perspective, my sister, too, knows how to sit at the table. I do not think we came by this trait genetically, for we are as different as beer and wine. (I'm the beer, she's the wine.) Both of our parents contributed to our ability to do the things for which Sandberg advocates: sit at the table, lean in, speak out. Our dad, the very epitome of American salesmanship, imbued our entire upbringings with the people skills necessary for connection and engagement, while our mother taught us that the concept of "girl" = "barrier" existed only in the minds of the unenlightened. We were lucky. I was lucky to do the first two years of my doctoral program at North Carolina State University during the years my sister did her final two years of undergrad; this was a bonding time for us. We got to know one another as women and as thinkers apart from family. A year later, she married her husband, to whom she is still married. He is a career naval officer, and they have two boys I don't get to see nearly enough.

My beautiful, intelligent, highly motivated sister now lives in Japan and works inside the home. This is her choice, certainly made easier by my brother-in-law's career choices but not necessitated by them. At the same time, she is the District Membership Chair for the Japan District of Boy Scouts of America. The district includes mainland Japan and Okinawa. She also instructs elementary aged children in yoga most days during the week at a Department of Defense school. For neither of these things does she earn a paycheck, but she does build her organizational skills (and network), management skills, skills in mentoring, budget, flexibility... There is almost no aspect of high level management (with the Boy Scouts) and no aspect of leadership and leadership development in which she is not investing in herself while she's doing the work she feels is most critical at this stage in her life, mothering. My sister is my hero.

Moments, chapters even, of Lean In flew by when Sandberg approached hero status for me, too. Slowly, I unpacked my predispositions toward disliking this book. The data I already knew. The anecdotes warmed me, and Sandberg's humility and grace infected me. (I'm pretty sure that was by design, but almost everything we do is. Spontaneity is nearly dead in the twenty-first century.) Two points bothered me, however, and I think both warrant a brief discussion.

In the first instance, Lean In's Chapter Three, "Success and Likeability" presents a wealth of research and personal stories regarding the perception of women in the workplace. If you've heard of Sandberg and Lean In, then you've heard about the interaction between sex and likeability in the workplace, the phenomenon that when men are successful, they are perceived as more likeable while the reverse is true for women. Aggressive is the term Sandberg cites most frequently as associated with successful women. Ouch. (I know this one up close and personal.) My point of contention with the chapter isn't the research. It isn't Sandberg's anecdotal evidence. I don’t like that Sandberg advocates we advocate for ourselves "with a smile." Sandberg willingly admits her own hope that one day the bias against successful women that leads to the inverse relationship between likeability and success in the workplace will reduce this necessity, but she advocates for the necessity nonetheless. I disagree. I believe that, so long as we perpetuate the "necessity," it will remain one. Further, the advice to advocate with a smile is almost at odds with Sandberg's later opining that she feels everyone in the workplace would benefit from "being nicer." Now that is a sentiment with which I wholeheartedly agree; I only wish Chapter Three had been framed within this context.

My second issue with Lean In is more global. I want to begin with a caveat. I listened to Sandberg as I read this book. I leaned in to her and listened with both ears and an open mind. And I believed in what she said (exception above excluded). Thus, I believe in Sandberg's personal mission and the values that her parents instilled in her, particularly the value of helping others. This is, perhaps, the reason I wish Lean In spoke to all women and not just those in positions of leadership or in the position to one day be in a position of leadership. While some of the data contained within the covers of this book do speak to lower class and the struggling, squeezed lower middle class women in our world, the narrative of Lean In does not. These women do not have many, if any, opportunities to sit at the table, to lean in, to speak out. I understand that this book cannot be all things to all people. No book can. At the same time, Lean In seeks to give voice to those who silence themselves and to admonish society for its silencing of them. Sandberg speaks of women who work inside the home and of those who work outside the home. I do believe a chapter could have been provided to those who work inside the homes of those who work outside the home, of those whose work for non-humane wages perpetuates the perceptions that women should not sit at the table but lay it in readiness for their men. So long as we relegate these women to off-page status, to footnotes and by-the-way mentions, we are not making real progress.

Melinda Gates is quoted as saying, "All lives have an equal value." I believe that. Sandberg encouraged readers in Chapter Six of Lean In to find and speak their truth. I believe that, too. If the truth is that the world's perspective on women is unequal and that women perpetuate the biases against themselves, then we must speak to and for each of us, lifting the potential of all of us as we do.

Read Lean In. Be inspired as Faulkner said not to be better than your fellows but to be better than yourself as you close the cover on the final page. Then make the world better for women everywhere. Your daughters (and sons) will thank you.

52 Mondays: Connecting the Dots between Poverty, Education, and Public Health (I)

"America is the best half-educated country in the world." ~Nicholas M. Butler

My daughters and I spent the past several days in Washington, D.C., where No. 1 tortured me with the idea that she would be graduating from the University of South Carolina in two semesters in order to teach in a school district "like Compton or inner city Chicago" and No. 3 likewise tortured me by saying she wanted to be buried at Arlington and wanted "to be honored when I die." Laudable sentiments, both, but I'm pretty sure I have a weak heart. At least No. 2 is a fairly run-of-the-mill feminist and budding artist; I needn't fear I've done everything wrong.

D.C. was good for us, collectively and as individuals. While we each were able to see things important to us (e.g., Dorothy's ruby slippers, No.3; the National Museum for Women in the Arts, No. 2; Nationals Stadium, No. 1), we also had moments of profound grief (e.g., 9/11-Pentagon Memorial, Arlington) and awe (e.g., the Charters of Freedom, the Library of Congress) that touched us all. Washington's like that. If you go and leave unaffected, there's just something un-American about you. Although the National Archives, currently sporting a 1297 copy of the Magna Carta no less, and the Library of Congress were the highlights of the city for me this time, Arlington was the spot where I felt the weight of my nation's love affair with sorrow. This was a trip for history lessons and for feeling who we were.

We did more than see the sights. Taking the metro quite literally everywhere we didn't walk, we encountered our share of homeless individuals, those panhandling, and one troubling young man who waited until a late night metro car was packed with travelers before beginning a story of living on military disability and appreciating any dollar anyone would spare. Unlike seeing people with signs on the side of the road at home (hard enough), none of us in that rail car had anywhere to go. The cynical me wondered if that's why he chose the venue; the cynical me wondered how he afforded the pass.

These unplanned-for portions of our city tour made an eloquent and very personal backdrop for No. 1's discussion of her plans for a Compton-like assignment post-graduation. There are very real and very important reasons why she chose urban schooling as the focus for her life's work. There are very real and very personal reasons (for children and families of urban environments) why we must continue to learn, to teach, and to talk about the relationships between poverty, education, and the future of America if America is to have one that keeps her center stage in world power. I promised we would connect the dots, and we shall.

Many of these issues I've raised before. Many seem only tangentially related to one another or to education. There is not, so far as I have been able to dig and unearth in the peer reviewed literature, a formal path analysis that is comprehensive and includes all of these components. What I'd like to do is comprise a bullet list here, follow that up with known research (if any), and then continue to circle back to this discussion as I can in order to elaborate on it. There is no way to provide a true path without conducting empirical research, and there are two problems thus far with which I've come up regarding that. First, educational researchers aren't trained in these methods. Second, social researchers trained in these methods aren't doing this sort of educational research. 

We have to close some gaps.

Onward then to our list.

• Children


• Children who are economically disadvantaged underperform academically compared to their non-economically disadvantaged peers.


• Children who are economically disadvantaged have poorer health compared to their non-economically disadvantaged peers.


• Children who are in poorer health underperform academically compared to their peers who are in better health.


• Children raised in single parent homes underperform academically compared to their peers in two-parent homes (opposite sex and same-sex).


• Children who are economically disadvantaged are more likely to come from single parent homes than their non-economically disadvantaged peers.


• Children raised in homes with mental illness and/or substance abuse issues tend to underperform compared to their peers who are raised in homes without mental illness or substance abuse issues.


• Children who are economically disadvantaged are more likely to come from homes with mental illness and/or substance abuse issues than their non-economically disadvantaged peers.


• Children who are not economically disadvantaged are more likely to graduate from high school and, of those who graduate, are more likely to be college ready compared to their economically disadvantaged peers.

NOTE: The above does not take into account rates of violence experienced and/or witnessed by students in urban school districts, which should be included in any ultimate model, but which are also probably beyond the scope of this essay.


• Teachers/Schools
  
  • Economically disadvantaged schools are more likely to be urban than to be rural and to be rural than to be suburban, making the most likely school of economic disadvantage an urban school.
  
  
  • Urban schools underperform academically compared to rural schools, which underperform academically compared to suburban schools, making urban schools the lowest performing schools academically.
  
  
  • Urban schools tend to have the highest concentrations of African-American and other minority students compared to rural schools, with suburban schools having the highest concentration of white students.
  
  
  • Suburban schools tend to be more highly funded (i.e., have a higher tax base) than rural schools, which often (but not always) have a higher tax base than urban schools.
  
  
  • Teachers in urban schools have higher attrition rates than teachers in either rural or urban schools.
  
  
  • Teachers in urban schools have higher absenteeism rates than teachers in either rural or urban schools.
  
  
  • Teachers in urban schools often have lower years of experience than teachers in either rural or urban schools.


With no more than the above with which to begin, we should face no great challenge other than perhaps securing the necessary funding to begin the process of building an appropriate path model. Correctly understanding the entire picture between poverty, health, and education is the only path toward correctly anchoring and adjusting our own failed assumptions about primary and secondary education in America. I've got my pencil. Let's get down to work.



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References to date:

¹Are High-Quality Schools Enough to Increase Achievement Among the Poor? Evidence from the Harlem Children's Zone
²Reading, Writing, and Toxics: Children's Health, Academic Performance, and Environmental Justice in Los Angeles
³Parenting Practices Among Low-income Parents/Guardians of Academically Successful Fifth Grade African American Children
⁴Interactive Effects of Delayed Bedtime and Family-Associated Factors on Depression in Elementary School Children
⁵The Intersection of Home Study Assessments and Child Specific Recruitment: The Performance of Home Studies in Practice
⁶A Call for Change: The Social and Educational Factors Contributing to the Outcomes of Black Males in Urban Schools
⁷Accountability and Flexibility in Public Schools: Evidence from Boston's Charters And Pilots
⁸From Resegregation to Reintegration
Trends in the Racial/Ethnic Segregation of Metropolitan Public Schools, 1993–2009
⁹Teacher Career Paths, Teach Quality, and Persistence in the Classrooms: Are Schools Keeping Their Best?

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52 Mondays is my 2013 project here on wrighterly. You can read about it at wrighterly.com as well. Each Monday, I'll post a different essay on some topic related to PK-20 education in America. The purpose is to raise the level of dialog on these issues if only among the modest audience I currently enjoy.

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52 Mondays: One Step on the Path to Free College, but Are We Brave Enough to Even Look at the Map?

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." ~Nelson Mandela

Today, Bob Samuels is one of my heroes. He's done what very few others have, which is to say he's advocated for free college (for everyone), put forth compelling reasons why we should fund higher education, and finally demonstrated just how it can be done while saving state government and the feds money. 

Since educating today's young Americans is the legacy I'd like to leave this earth, since understanding we are in the midst of a culture shift from the top-down (have you not heard the K-12 college-ready push from President Obama? and do you understand the enormous change in thinking this will need to produce at every level?), we do need to focus on just how we're going to educate all of these young people without going both financially and morally bankrupt in the process. I've begun discussing here on wrighterly to need to find a way to make higher education free in America, and I believe we can. Last week, I sent you, gentle reader, to the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education's websitewhere four papers awaited your reading. One was an introduction to the idea of free college, and three were working papers on how we might get to free college. I told you I had a favorite. I said I wouldn't bias you. Bob Samuels is my hero.

Not that there isn't a problem with Samuels' paper, but if I can walk away from any academic anything with only one problem… well, we all know what a critic I am (which might help to explain the my other difficulties). Samuels draws much of the support for both his numbers and his conversion of them into how we, as a governmental entity (or set of if we're inclusive of state governments), might fund higher education from the big business of Title IV loan debts distributed by the feds and resting on the shoulders of students. As one example, my college is a $90M/year Title IV school. That is, students at my school qualify for however much they qualify, but the federal government disburses ninety million dollars in Title IV loan aid to the College, and we pass that along to students in the form of tuition and fee payments (that we really keep and students never touch), money for books and supplies (that they can access directly at our bookstore, how kind of us), and then at the end of the day in refund checks or direct deposits to their bank accounts for any overages they're due. In other words, we're a $90M bank every year. This, I think, is the Achilles' heel in Samuels' argument, and damn it, we've all got one somewhere. 

The feds, too, view Title IV loans as big business. 

I'll come back to this in a minute, but I have to derail myself first. Something's eating at me that I just have to toss out into the void. I've been getting back to my Con Law roots lately in some reading. I've got no idea why except that this issue of free college has become a real thorn in my side. I suppose it's the thing I'll work on until I die. A cause. A mission. A futile spitting into the wind of the American dream. This is my American dream, and there'll be a blog post to tell you why eventually, but since it's tied to my life, I won't tell you today. What I will do is quote you Article IX.9 of the North Carolina Constitution, which says the following:

The General Assembly shall provide that the benefits of The University of North Carolina and other public institutions of higher education, as far as practicable, be extended to the people of the State free of expense.

Huh. Betcha didn't know that or if you did, you'd forgotten. "Free of expense." Okay, I'm doing that snippet thing with which journalists piss off politicians. "As far as practicable." I left that out, because the word practicable always annoyed me. That's fine though. Did the General Assembly, when it voted on the state constitution, understand that they would be the ones rendering "it" unpracticable? (Ha! See there, MS Word doesn't recognize "unpracticable." I knew it wouldn't.) If you return to the CFHE website and read the introductory paper, you'll note what I've said on wrighterly before; state appropriations to higher education are the driving force behind tuition increases. Colleges and universities do not raise tuitions in a vacuum, and general assemblies must approve those increases. As far as it's practicable. The GA needs to know what it can do with its practicability, which includes actually rendering "it" practicable to keep the benefits of those institutions free.

Which brings us full circle back to Samuels and his Achilles' heel. I believe the schools would adjust to loss of Title IV loan funds, for they would still receive Title IV something funds. They would still disburse those funds (under Samuels' utopian model). The business of financial aid would continue intra-institutionally as it has done for a couple of decades now. What would change is the business of financial aid at the federal level. With no loans disbursed, at the very minimum, loan servicing will be streamlined and, eventually, discontinued as old loans are paid off, waived, written off, etc. It's akin to the "let's go to a flat tax" conundrum… what do you do with all the IRS employees who lose their jobs? And then there's the interest. Samuels is spot on with the remark that the feds lose the loss of defaulted loans in his model. Good for them, right? Absolutely. However, no one to the best of my knowledge (and I really haven't looked that hard) has offered a public cost-benefit analysis on loan default rates v. the interest on those loans the federal government recoups each year. Of course, we know on some level that those loans earn interest, but news focuses on default rates. A good number of folks are paying those loans. With interest. So, are the feds in the red or the black? I don't know, but I'd like to. If they aren't losing money, my money's on Samuels' model getting shut down before it gets out of the garage, and I have to say… I love this plan. 

I love it, because it draws on existing models and conserves resourses. I love it, because it's simple, parsimonious. All of the ideas I've entertained require so many post-its on my walls even I lose my train of thought. I just can't think my way around the big business end of Samuel's plan. How do we replace the money the feds lose on the loans? Give me that, and I can get this out of the gate. I know I can.

What's that? I didn't tell you his plan? You didn't read the homework.

Oh, here's his blog by the way. Go. Read. Enjoy.

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 52 Mondays is my 2013 project here on wrighterly. You can read about it at wrighterly.com as well. Each Monday, I'll post a different essay on some topic related to PK-20 education in America. The purpose is to raise the level of dialog on these issues if only among the modest audience I currently enjoy.

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Is this all?

"The problem lay buried, unspoken for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban housewife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night, she was afraid to ask even to herself the silent question: 'Is this all?'"

Betty Friedan

52 Mondays: The Fruit Punch of Comparing Apples to Oranges in Higher Ed

"It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics." ~George Bernard Shaw

I said it. Just there, above this line. "It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics." Shaw makes for good quotes; it's true. Daughter No. 2 has pilfered a t-shirt of mine with another, "All great truths begin as blasphemies." Well, if Shaw spoke the truth there, then I shall begin today with blasphemy against the principal data source I myself use for many of the statistics I quote here on wrighterly during the 52 Mondays project. Note, this is not to say I don't believe the veracity of either statement. I do. The numbers tell the story, and without them, all nuance is lost. Further, there can be no progress without readiness to annihilate that which once governed our thinking. As a good friend and, I hope, mentor said to me just yesterday, "Perhaps it's time for a little revolt." Yes, perhaps. That or blasphemy.

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES; i.e., IPEDS) does, indeed, provide many, many numbers on which I rely to tell the story of higher education in America when I dip my quill and set its tip here. I like to use IPEDS data, as do many of my peers, for two reasons. First, it is the most comprehensive national database of education statistics in the country. All schools that receive federal funding are required to report certain figures to NCES. The second reason I like using IPEDS data is that schools are required to do so adhering to very specific definitions. For example, when we report our student: faculty ratio, we include part-time faculty, and each part-time faculty member is equal to 2/3 of one full-time faculty member in the formula we use to calculate that ratio. So it is for each school reporting. Thus, IPEDS data are standardized. This means that, when I pull down a dataset for analysis for an essay here or a paper I may submit for peer reviewed publication, I can be sure that, to the degree each school followed the federal definitions, I am comparing apples to apples. When I'm dealing with 7000+ schools, that's a comforting assurance. 

Comprehensivess and standardization aside, many schools complain about the IPEDS definitions. (I believe I've touched on this before.) To be perfectly honest, I don't have a problem with the definitions so long as we all know what they are, the media know what they are, people consuming the media know what they are… Wow. Okay. There's an awful lot of assuming going on. Let me give you another example. I keep circling back to higher ed graduation rates (and not without reason, gentle reader). Just two weeks ago, I blasted a webpage for lamenting the 50% graduation rate of low income students pursuing bachelor's degrees when the national graduation rate of all bachelor's students is 48%. I said I thought low income students were doing pretty well. I also said that I thought the graduation rate, in general, was abysmal. So, let's take a look at what that rate means, one of the oft lamented definitions in the IPEDS compendium.

When anyone cites an IPEDS graduation rate, they refer to a specific subset of students. The only students a college or university can claim in its graduation rate are as follows:

• Fall entering students in a given year (i.e., they cannot enter the college in the spring term or the summer term of that academic year)



• First time in college students (i.e., they can never have attended any other college or university anywhere at any time)



• Full-time students (i.e., they cannot be carrying less than 12 credit hours of classes)



• Degree-seeking students (i.e., they cannot be enrolled in the college or university solely for the purpose of taking courses for credit but must be on record as pursing X degree)

So, let's put this all together. At my college, for instance, we may have 7000 students enter in any given year (out of the roughly 15,000 who attend in any given year). Of those 7000, perhaps 4000 are new to the college but perhaps only 3000 have never attended any college before and are beginning in the fall term. Okay. Those are the start of the cohort. Now, we whittle those down to the ones who are enrolled full-time and then pare away the ones who aren't on record as seeking a degree. Perhaps we end up with 2100 who will be included in the students we track from that entering fall term, that cohort of students, to determine our graduation rate for said cohort.

It is, undeniably, a limiting definition no matter how much we like its standardization for research purposes.

Now, I will admit that some aspects of the definition don't bother me at all. I don't think schools should include in their graduation rates students who, for example, walk in the door needing two classes to graduate. Another college or university has done the heavy lifting for that student. So, perhaps first time in college is a meaningful restriction. Is full-time status? I'm not sure. Part-time students should take longer to graduate and, thus, pull down the graduation rate, but do they? Graduation rates are so low that this may be arguable. Degree-seeking? I'm not sure about that either. To the best of my knowledge, no one's running the numbers. However, I do understand the Fed's reason for eliminating non-degree-seekers. Those students aren't eligible for Title IV financial aid and, thus, don't need to be in the cohort. The difficulty is that the media and the general public don't readily understand the distinction, the definition.

I have a different problem with the definition.

Graduation rates have become such a focus of the federal administration, particularly this administration, that they are now commonly discussed in the national media. Parents pay attention to school graduation rates when they help their high school juniors and seniors make college and university selections. The number now matters in a way that perhaps it hasn't before. (Please be reminded that I don't object to the way in which it is measured for the purpose it was intended, only to its more casual use as IPEDS has picked up popularity.) Again, the number has taken on increasing significance. With this, I believe strongly that we have equated institutional success (i.e., the IPEDS graduation rate) with student success (i.e., the national graduation rate).

That is, we currently report via IPEDS the percentage of first time in college, full-time, degree-seeking students from a given cohort who graduate within X period of time (usually 100% time, 150% time, and 200% time). What we don't know is how many students who enter any college or university in a given fall graduate from any college or university (including those who transfer from one to another) within those same periods of time. For instance, if Jane Smith graduates from high school and begins her college career at her local community college, attending for one year to take some general education core classes to save money for her family, and then transfers to her state university in the capital city and graduates in an additional three years, would we consider her a successful graduate? I would. I suspect Jane would, and so would Jane's family. However, she is not a graduate of either the community college or the state university under the IPEDS definition. Thus, she is not counted anywhere that can be measured for the purposes of graduation rates. Here's another one. Consider John Abbott, who begins his university career at the state university that he attends for three years. Near the end of his third year, one of his parents is laid off from work, and to save money, John returns home to live and transfers to his local branch campus. It takes John another two years to complete his degree, but he does finish, taking a total of five years. Again, John is not counted in either school's IPEDS graduation rate.

I stipulate that we have zero idea on the national level exactly what our college and university graduation rates are and that the 48% I quoted two weeks ago is a gross under-representation of what our students actually accomplish each year. We have forgotten student success in favor of institutional success, believing that the latter equates with the former. It does not.

Does IPEDS need to revise its definitions? Many college and university presidents and IR folks like myself say yes. I actually say no. I like the definitions and believe we need pure cohort data to continue comparing apples to apples. What I would like is an expanded database, though that calls for more work for offices like mine and the people who staff them. I'd like better ability to track students when they leave one school and go to another. The National Clearinghouse gives us some ability to do this but not nearly enough. I'd like to see IPEDS implement a measure, muddy though it may be, of pure student success when we speak of graduation rates. I believe in measuring institutional success but only as a means to an end, the student's success. If we don't know that we're arriving at that eventually, nothing else matters. Right now, we really don't know, although I suspect we're doing a lot better than we think.

Now, if we can only do that and make it free, too, I think we'd be back on the right track (at least for higher ed). Speaking of, here's your homework for next week: Campaign for the Future of Higher Education, four working papers on funding higher education. I have a favorite, but I won't bias you.

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 52 Mondays is my 2013 project here on wrighterly. You can read about it at wrighterly.com as well. Each Monday, I'll post a different essay on some topic related to PK-20 education in America. The purpose is to raise the level of dialog on these issues if only among the modest audience I currently enjoy. 

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Langue Dangereuse

"A word after a word after a word is power." ~Margaret Atwood

Several days ago, I posted an essay on the language of feminism. The construction of my thoughts for the essay took me quite a bit longer than I'd anticipated when I started out, and when I finished, I found myself as uncertain about a piece as I'd ever been in my life. Like many writers, I'm accustomed to being rather fond of something and then devastated when it's ripped apart on critique. (Slowly I learn the truism that what I love in my own language does not alway equal the finest craftsmanship.) Thus, when I finished "Strange Bedfellows" and I felt this little knot of uncertainty in my belly, I didn't quite know what to do. A few people (think the overlap of feminists and writers in my life on a Venn diagram) read the essay, gave it two-thumbs-up, and told me to be prepared for a wave of feminist backlash. I posted the essay and moved on. Only I didn't. Move on, that is.

In the introduction to "Strange Bedfellows," I comment on a conversation, a dialog between Daughter No. 2 and myself the day I finished the essay. Riding in the car between the orthodontist (she's not quite 13) and school to drop her off, I fretted over the essay, and our engagement ran something along the following lines:

Me: I want to talk to you about something.

No. 2: [suspicious] Okay...

Me: So, you know how, when you're talking to someone about, maybe arguing with them, about something like gay marriage, and mostly you're just trading differences of opinion...then maybe you say something, and it's just the something that really pisses the other person off, and the conversation just stops. It's just over.

No. 2: Of course. What about it?

Me: I'm interested in your thoughts about why that happens.

No. 2: Why what happens? Why I make people mad with my opinions, or why the conversation stops?

Me: Yeah, that. The second one. Let me tell you why. [explains bookslut.com's post on policing the language of feminism, why I wrote the essay, etc.] Why do you think there are some things you just cannot say when you're talking about controversial topics?

No. 2: Because language is dangerous.

Me: Stop. Don't say anything else. Stay with that. Why is language dangerous?

No. 2: [laughs] Because we're cowards. [heavy emphasis on the last word]

Me: I don't understand, or I think I do, but go on.

No. 2: We can't say what we really think, because we might offend somebody else.

Me: And it's important not to do that?

No. 2: Well, duh. Also, it's all just stupid. The language is stupid and people are stupid.

Me: I thought the language was dangerous.

No. 2: Okay, maybe I said that wrong. It's not the language that's dangerous but... look. I know what I'm saying. Feminists all want women to have certain rights, which is very dangerous to the people who don't want them to have those rights. Right?

Me: Right.

No. 2: That's all I mean by dangerous, and that's why I say it's stupid. Everyone's holding so tight to their own positions that there's no room for anyone else's.

Me: [as the school came into view] I think we're going to talk more about this later.

No. 2: I don't know why. It's not that complicated.

Now, I find myself in a very Eriksonian state of mind about this whole affair. To be honest, the generation of something, anything, has weighed on me for a while, but as an early 40-something, this is to be expected. Since Jessa Crispin's post on bookslut, since the writing of "Strange Bedfellows," since the conversation with No. 2, I find myself drawn over and over again to the original concept of how we police ourselves (and others) on the internet when we talk about controversial topics. I'm going to stay with feminism, because that's where my heart lies. Truly, it could be anything, and it often is.

Because language is dangerous, No. 2 said.

I think she's right. More than that, I think the "rightness" of her response began years ago, and we find ourselves now reaping the rewards of what we used to call with a slight roll of the eyes being "politically correct." We no longer roll our eyes when we use the term; we're afraid to.

As a little girl, I learned somewhere (Kindergarten? a babysitter? in memetic fashion from a friend or a friend's older sibling?) how to sit Indian Style. Anyone remember Indian style? Here. To help, I've included a photo:



Somewhere around the same age in her own life, Daughter No. 1 also learned to sit Indian style. Sadly, Daughter No. 2 never did. Nor No. 3. They have nothing wrong with their legs, nothing wrong with their hips or their backs. I do recall a day, though not its precise date, when No. 2 related a Kindergarten story at home that included the words, "...and we sat down criss-cross-applesauce..." 

I interrupted the child, something I try very hard not to do unless the speaker has irritated me beyond staying silent. She had. I'm pretty sure I said, "What the hell, [Daughter No. 2]?"

She would have repeated herself, at which point so would I. We do a lot of this in our house, repeating ourselves and understanding the quasi-comedic nature of the doing so. If it relieves the sting of my irritation with them or theirs with me, then the dance is worth its cheesy tune. On this day, I recall her laughter. I recall mine and shaking my head as I let go the absurdity.

Criss-cross-applesauce. 

What the hell? When did Indian Style become offensive and to whom if I may ask? Native Americans? Because Indian Style is as much or more Asian as it is Native American. Further, if we label (i.e., describe) a seating position as regional or aboriginal, how can that possibly be offensive? Finally, what the fuck does "criss-cross-applesauce" even mean? Please, someone, answer those questions for me, because I've moved on to yelling at No. 3 about this.

Analogy here. I have a dear, dear friend who lives in Chapel Hill. We met online several years ago through a mutual friend when she (the friend in Chapel Hill) and her family were relocating to NC from Hawaii. I was here; she was moving, yada yada. So, a couple years ago, we met for dinner at her (now) favorite Indian restaurant in downtown granola town. I ordered my favorite Indian dish - Palak Paneer. My exchange with the male waiter went something like this:

Waiter: And how would you like that prepared?

Me: Hot please.

Waiter: Would you like that hot or Indian hot?

He did not ask me if I wanted my Palak Paneer criss-cross-applesauce-hot! Indian hot. It's a thing. So is the sitting with one's legs crossed so that the feet are tucked beneath the thighs. Above the thighs? Lotus position. One foot under and one foot over? Half-lotus. Both also Indian Styles.

I'm not here to talk about politically correct speech. Not really. Maybe a little.

Sometimes, the hardest lessons to learn ourselves are those we preach to others.

Jessa Crispin asked specifically about the policing of feminist language on the internet, why we disallow terms such as "rape culture" and "equality" in our speech [and how that affects the dialog in which we engage on feminist issues]. In my original response, I belabored the difficulties inherent in the topics of persuasion, cognitive dissonance, and evolution. I thought I addressed her point. I didn't. Even within my own desire to confront this issue, I fell prey to Daughter No. 2's spot on comment and its implication.

Language is dangerous [and we can't risk alienating our allies with our use of controversial words].

Throughout the intervening couple of weeks, my thoughts have returned over and over again to this idea, and if only one thing has become clear to me since then, it is this: When we, as advocates, abdicate our right to speak dangerously, then language that has the power to progress us as a society becomes the domain of militants and terrorists.

Think about it. Think about when we hear the term "militant" used in relation to advocacy. It doesn't happen when we compromise but when we speak of hard truths and draw sharp lines dividing what is from what should be. It happens when we threaten a social order that oppresses, condemns, and denies. Once upon a time, I chose my words with care so that I could avoid the label "militant;" today, I wonder how long the label would survive if more of us used dangerous language. Why should militants and terrorists hold a monopoly on the truth?

A year or so ago, a young woman was sexually assaulted in Columbia, SC, the city where Daughter No. 1 attends university. The attack occurred after midnight, and No. 1 said to me after it happened, "She should have known not to be walking downtown alone after midnight." We did not enjoy a pleasant conversation that evening, my firstborn and I. For several minutes, I yelled (and probably cursed) at her for speech that blamed the victim. I told her that her language was the very sort of speech that justified rape and the continued oppression of women. I didn't relent; nor did she. I still believe what I said to her, but I'm tempering my position just a little. Let me explain.

While I do not believe any rape, any sexual assault, any suppression, oppression, denigration of women as a general rule is acceptable, No. 1 had a point. Before I find myself lambasted for blaming a victim I do not blame, I want to clarify my position and why I have shifted ever so slightly in it. I read an article on The Lesbian Mafia's website regarding the Steubenville rape case (three adolescent male assailants, one adolescent female victim). In the article, the author walks the same line No. 1 walked with me. In retrospect, I'm glad No. 1 didn't back down. Following is an excerpt; the whole article can be found at the link above:

Most of the complaints we’ve seen on-line are about the judge mentioning alcohol and people pointing out that the girl put herself in a position to be raped by drinking. There’s a fine line between blaming a girl and pointing shit out for a good reason, so little girls KNOW they ARE prey. We do think girls and women should be aware that they are prey and will make themselves EASIER prey by being drunk and stoned. This is not a bad thing to say. Not all men are rapists, not all women who get raped are drunk and high but being around men and boys when you’re all fucked up will increase your chances of being raped. We know some people will take this the wrong way and of course there is NO question that men and boys who are rapists are responsible for these crimes but we don’t have a problem with anyone taking the opportunity to point out that drinking and doing drugs puts women and girls at a higher risk of sexual assault and rape. Anyone who knows us for more than five minutes KNOWS we get it. If WE passed laws we’d give all involved the chair. But we think it’s a good time to also say that being drunk and high around ANY group of males makes you easier prey. It doesn’t matter if you know the guys and went to 1st grade with them.

There is a line. Saying it in a way that puts responsibility on the girl for being the victim of rape is sick and wrong. End of sentence. But what better time to say that lots of lil girls get fucked up at parties and how dangerous that is? They think they are safe and among friends. They aren’t.

I get it now, too.

It should be possible to discuss both a woman's increased vulnerability due to her poor choice(s) and not believe that she deserved to be raped. It should be, but it isn't. This may be tantamount to the reverse of "rape culture" as disallowed terminology, but the effect is the same. Words exist that we do not speak; conversations beg to be had that we dare not have... all at the cost of conciliation among those we call allies. We cannot even preach to the choir anymore for fear of losing the congregation.

In my loosely related series I've dubbed 52 Mondays, I relentlessly lament the catastrophic state of American education. I even dare to speak with words bordering on the dangerous from time to time. As I write this, I wonder how much of our abdication of hard truths has come as a direct result of the dumbing down of America, how much we can't say any longer because there are so few left who can understand. To fully illustrate, I have to cop to the fact that I have many issues about which I care deeply, but only two, perhaps three, I would say reach my personal level of need-to-advacate-for. In no particular order, these include women's issues (broadly), domestic violence, and American education/public health. When I listen to arguments about issues like abortion or gay marriage, I know where I stand, but I can appreciate (most of) the opposition's arguments. Aristotle is quoted as having said, "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." I like to think that, so long as the argument is educated, I can appreciate its merits even when I don't accept it. What I fail - utterly fail - to comprehend are the people who do not argue opinion but rather fact. I will never understand those who argue in the face of the numbers. 

For instance, when the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that worldwide between 15% and 71% of all women will be the victims of domestic and/or sexual violence at the hands of an intimate partner sometime during their lives, I wonder how the United States Congress could fail to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act in 2011. How could we possibly take a piece of heavily bi-partisan legislation that has enjoyed more than a decade of support in both chambers of the Congress and suddenly declare it unworthy because it protects more women than it used to from what the world's leading health commission aptly calls a pandemic? This I fail to understand. This I find unenlightened and, frankly, stupid given that, in a 2005 report, WHO reported the closest estimate of intimate partner violence against to women to be 25% annually. This represents more girls and women than are affected by breast cancer and all other cancers each year.

One-in-four.

Have you ever had a group of girls over for a sleepover? Gone out for drinks or dinner for girls night? Sat in a conference room with a lot of women? Count them the next time any of these things happens in your world. One-in-four. Consider what that means. Ask yourself how we can possibly allow ourselves to be policed into political correctness - not even politeness, for when was the last time you were actually rude in your advocacy? - by our own allies in the war against women... and make no mistake, we are fighting a war against women. We don't need an opposition; we create it ourselves when we worry so much about offending one another that we forget to offend those with whom we disagree.

(Now, I'm fired up and at risk of really derailing myself.)

I began this little jaunt with my favorite quote from Margaret Atwood, author and feminist extraordinaire: A word after a word after a word is power. We should throw away fewer of our words, think more about the ones we choose, and then select only those that raise our rhetoric to heights we haven't yet imagined. Dangerous? Hell, yes. Absolutely. We should not walk the razor's edge with our speech regarding those things we have to drive into the 21st century's watershed moments; we must push them to the bleeding edge and then be the salve on the wounds left in the wake of change. We must not eschew change for the sake of safety, discomfort for the sake of friends who are but fair-weather at best if our own best efforts to raise the level of discourse on critical issues offend their sensibilities. I'd rather have a well-matched foe than an ill-informed friend any day of the week.

Why is this so difficult? Have we really succumbed to an age of such political correctness that our left-leaning, well meaning PC attitudes of the 80s have become a tool for our opposition and a sharp one at that? I know people out theredo speak with clarity and with bravery on these issues. People do use dangerous language even today. But do we hear them? More importantly, do we emulate them? Or have we become mute in our fear of alienation? Over the years, I have attempted in my meager way to point them out, to laud them when they've raised a valiant sword against the opposition. A few that come immediately to mind are the following:

Amanda Palmer's brutally beautiful remake of "What's the Use of Wond'rin'?"


and:

• Avon's Speak Out Campaign video spotlighting survivors of domestic violence


• Andrea Savage's (writer/director) Republicans, Get In My Vagina


• The White House's 1 is 2 Many spotlight on domestic and dating violence

Ah, but I am a hypocrite. I do not practice what I preach (or in this case what I praise, which is an altogether different thing). Four years ago, I began a transcontinental research project investigating self and others' perceptions of the experience of intimate partner violence. My research partner and I amassed a treasure trove of quantitative and narrative data. I wrote a solid book proposal. Yet, we have done nothing with the work. Nada. I even let the domain name for the project expire. Why? I could say that no one cares about domestic violence, although I don't believe that'sprecisely true (near enough). What I think is more true in this instance is that we didn't quite have the courage of our convictions. My partner thought perhaps we should shift the focus, make it softer, less threatening (read: less dangerous). She's probably right. She already had a book contract for one non-fiction work of a psychological nature. We probably could have gotten another. I let the project languish, not ready to be soft on the issue but not ready to speak dangerously either.

I have a further confession to make. 

Six years ago, I ended a thirteen-year, altogether - (if only you could see the hesitation over my keyboard now, the minutes dragging by as I still consider whether or not to use the words I advocate) - abusive relationship. The process, long and painful, of divorcing my ex-husband proved more fraught with danger than even the language we refuse to speak. I did speak of it - the process, the terror, the undoing and redoing of my life - in a sudden memoir I penned during the ordeal. It's been read, the book, by a small handful of people. I haven't tried hard to publish it, a query or two, letters only with no sample material. Agents are clear, as are publishers: No abuse memoirs. We really don't care about women and their stories, and the industry is complicit in this apathy. But so am I; one of its most ardent supporters is also one if its most silent. This blog bears the purple ribbon of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, but I don't blog about it, campaign for it, lobby my governmental representatives on behalf of better legislation. At the beginning of my separation and for a long while following, I convinced myself this was because I couldn't risk angering my ex-husband else I also risked losing custody of my children (he was a wily one, my ex). I did anger my mother, my sister, Daughter No. 1... for my silence, my be the better person, rise above stance. I wasn't the better person. I was only silent, and what I lost due to my silence far outweighed anything I might have gained including a career I loved and for which I still mourn.

We do this, convince ourselves that we must police our speech and that of others... to not offend, to build bridges between and among, to serve some nebulous purpose even we cannot define. While we're busy not offending, not speaking our truths, not forcing confrontation on issues vital to women and, thus, vital to the world, we lose ground. Inch by inch makes a mile, but this is as true of regression as it is of progression. For every opportunity to speak that we allow to pass in polite concession, we lose an inch. It's just possible I've reached the limit of my tolerance with these losses over the past two weeks of rumination. It's just possible I've decided this period of generativity I've entered will best be characterized as my years spent speaking dangerously. I hope so. 

Revered social reformer William Lloyd Garrison said, "I will be as harsh as truth, and uncompromising as justice... I am in earnest, I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard." 

I will be heard. 

Will you join me?