At
10:38 this morning, I got an e-message from a mildly progressive group that
sends me regular (requested) e-mails on political and economic issues. The
subject line: Reality Check on Health Care Lies. At 11:01 a.m. this morning I
got a message from one of the women in my virtual book group. Subject line:
Information on the Obama Death Plan.

Now--I
like the women in this book group. I share lots of personal information with
them--my feelings on literary themes, love and life. I respect them. And I can
only assume that the woman who sent the "death plan" forward
(which--to make matters worse--came from her shady-pants congressman) has
strong feelings on retaining her health care. I respect those too.  

While
I was staring at the flat-out falsehoods and phony bogeymen on my screen, and
wondering how much money Big Pharma and Big Insurance are ponying up to
preserve their dominance in perpetuity, another book club member took a deep
breath and hit "reply to all." Hey, she said. This is too important!
We have to get health care right--and we're not going to do it unless a little
civility and rationality can be injected into the discussion.

By
12:01, Book Club Member #2 had been both warmly supported and excoriated
(sample: You obviously live in the
Twilight Zone, you freak), and the hostilities had enlarged to include a
rundown of the negative impact of Equal Rights Amendment  on school sports (yeah--I know--it never
actually passed--but when you're on a roll, why stop for the facts...). 

So--whom
do you trust?

For
me, that's the critical question on all of the issues alive and bubbling in the
Home of the Free. I have little faith in political parties--either of them, at
the moment--although individual political figures do inspire me to trust. As do
some education thinkers, non-profits, writers, scholars, friends.

At
12:47, I got a link to this blog, wherein the Eduflack wonders what happened to
raging dissent in education policy world. He dismisses certain parties who are speaking now  as chronic whiners (including dissatisfied
Chicago Public Schools parent groups)--and suggests that
people had better start pushing back against favored policy initiatives or they
"will have little ground to stand on
if they want to play 'I told you so' a year or two from now."

None
of this--attack now or lose your right to attack later?--strikes me as
productive talk, the kind of dialogue that might lead us to making better
decisions about education.

At
1:05 p.m., while eating my lunch, I noticed that Heather Wolpert-Gawron had
posted a new blog. Heather is a person whose viewpoints I do trust--not just
because she's a teacher (there are lots of untrustworthy teachers)--but because
she's smart and knows whereof she speaks, when it comes to schools and kids. A
quick clip from Heather's musings (prodded by an article in which Arne Duncan
says it's likely that the swine flu will impact school attendance and wouldn't
it be great if teachers would use this health crisis to inject innovative technology
into their instruction):

But once
again, schools are being put to the task of solving a problem that the other
elements have a hand in creating and solving. After all, families with no
healthcare and no childcare options continuously send their sick children to
school. And the government has never devoted enough funds to develop
deep-seated educational technology in our schools. Yet here we are, a la NCLB,
with a missive and no guidance or enough resources.

The
funny part about Arne Duncan's message? He trusts that teachers will try to do
the right thing for kids, come the great swine flu epidemic.

 It's 4:30, and I'm weary of reading angry e-mail.
I'm wondering whether a country where rugged individualism is celebrated above
other values--where "get them before they get you" is our modus
operandi--can ever elevate mutual benefits to the community over "me and
mine first." Another funny thing: trust in schools absolutely raises
student achievement.  You know where they
did the critical research? Chicago.

“In schools characterized by high relational trust,
educators were more likely to experiment with new practices and work together
with parents and colleagues to advance improvements. As a result, these schools
were also more likely to demonstrate marked gains in student learning. In
contrast, schools with weak trust relations saw virtually no improvement in
their reading or mathematics scores."                   Anthony Bryk &
Barbara Schneider

Image: seenyaRita, Flickr Creative Commons