My working definition of “adultism” is…

The disrespect and discrimination against young people (simply because they are not adults) that exists beyond the legitimate responsibility of adults – parents, teachers and others – to provide guidance and a developmentally appropriate environment for young people to mature to adulthood. The abuse of adult privilege beyond what is legitimate adult stewardship of youth.

The applicable definition of the word “stewardship” in Wiktionary is…

The act of caring for or improving with time.

And in Wikipedia…

Stewardship is an ethic that embodies responsible planning and management of resources. The concept of stewardship has been applied in diverse realms, including with respect to environment, economics, health, property, information, and religion, and is linked to the concept of sustainability. Historically, stewardship was the responsibility given to household servants to bring food and drinks to a castle dining hall. The term was then expanded to indicate a household employee’s responsibility for managing household or domestic affairs. Stewardship later became the responsibility for taking care of passengers’ domestic needs on a ship, train and airplane, or managing the service provided to diners in a restaurant. The term continues to be used in these specific ways, but it is also used in a more general way to refer to a responsibility to take care of something belonging to someone else.

My own current working definition, as I see the concept applied to adult interaction with young people, is…

Facilitating a person’s development by creating an enriched environment, including keeping them safe until they can adequately fend for themselves.

So what does this look like in the real world? My first reaction is that I know it when I see it. But I think it is a useful and interesting exercise to try to call out some examples. So here is a list of ten random examples that came to me, framed in terms of parenting (but broadly applicable to teachers and other adult-youth mentors as well). I’m going to first call out an instance of what I would consider legitimate adult stewardship of youth (particularly of younger youth) and then a related behavior that I would say crosses the line into adultism.

1. Stewardship: Making the effort to live in a safe neighborhood by a park so my kids (8 and 10) can go out and play on their own and walk or ride their bike to neighborhood friends’ houses or local stores and libraries. Adultism: Requiring my kids to clear everything they do with me and exercising veto power over which friends they can see based on my own projection of who my kids are and therefore what sort of person they should be playing with.

2. Stewardship: Buying basic “imagination” toys like blocks, human figures, vehicles, Tinker Toys and other construction toys that I know from observing my kids that they love to play with. Then creating a space in the house where my kids can play to their hearts content with these toys. Adultism: Conditioning all toy purchases to my kids getting good grades in school or successfully executing what I have defined as good behavior.

3. Stewardship: Having only healthy food in the house and no “junk food”. Adultism: Requiring my kids eat healthy food (and maybe a dessert as a reward for eating ones meal) but then eat a fair amount of junk food myself in front of them.

4. Stewardship: Letting my kids watch the TV shows they want, except for those with graphic violence or adult sexual themes, but taking the time to explain the reason for those prohibitions and encouraging rather than discouraging dialogue with the kids on these rules. Then to help them develop their media savvy, noting the shows they watch, and particularly any commercials, to point out my take on persuasion tactics and underlying values conveyed or implied. Adultism: Exercising complete control over everything they watch and explaining that control only by such statements as “because it is inappropriate” or “because I say so”, without further explanation or without accepting further questions or discussion.

5. Stewardship: Putting plastic safety plugs in all the power outlets so my very young kids do not accidentally electrocute themselves, and generally removing breakable objects from low tables and shelves that they can reach. Adultism: Leaving these plugs and breakable objects within my very young kids’ reach and then constantly chiding them not to touch them and even punishing them when they do.

6. Stewardship: Not letting my kids use knives and other dangerous kitchen utensils until they have been taught how to use them and demonstrate a sufficient level of mastery to be safe. But then offering that teaching as soon as they show interest. Adultism: Teaching my kids to use kitchen knives but constantly badgering them with repeated instruction (beyond what you would do with an adult you have taught) even after they have demonstrated their ability to be safe.

7. Stewardship: Giving my kids opportunities to go to libraries, museums, galleries, movies, concerts, sporting events, based on my perception of their interest and as feasible, but respecting their right to say no. Adultism: Taking my kids to venues that I feel they should go to even after they indicate from previous visits that they are not interested, and even chiding them for their lack of that interest.

8. Stewardship: Being available as much as feasible to drive my kids to friends houses and other locations they want to go to but cannot get to on their own. Adultism: Maintaining tight control over who my kids visit and places they go beyond concerns for their safety. Dismissing their requests that don’t fit neatly into my ideal schedule without discussion or compromise.

9. Stewardship: Making sure my kids demonstrate an ability to swim before letting them play or swim in the deep end of a pool on their own. Adultism: Making an arbitrary judgment that a kid is “too young” without actually observing their ability.

10. Stewardship: Facilitating a group of young people (like Scouts, a youth group associated with a religious denomination, or something less formal) to follow a predetermined agenda based on the conventional expectations for the group. Adultism: Not seeking the consent or at the very least advice of the young people in the group in regards to the group’s agenda. Continuing to control every aspect of the group even when the young people indicate that they can exercise some or all of that control themselves.

Reviewing the above list, I acknowledge there are some gray areas here. My point is not to preach but to pose some examples that I hope will clarify my conception of both “stewardship” versus adultism.

As always I am interested in your thoughts, and I acknowledge that I am still formulating specifics on this dichotomy in my own thinking. I put my thoughts forward for the purpose of facilitating a continuing thoughtful discussion on this very important subject.

Teachers are quite capable of serving in a number of productive capacities outside of their individual classrooms and their individual schools.

My mom, who was a very capable volunteer political activist (with a Bachelors in Sociology, but also not a professional educator), always used to say that, “Teachers should run the schools”. Where she came to that insight, I really don’t know, but as a kid I used to think, “Yeah mom, whatever”. Now as an adult, and parent to two now young-adult kids who struggled in their public schools, her insight keeps coming back to me as I watch the increasing standardization and top-down control of those public schools.

The first school I ever encountered that was run by the teachers was Highland Hall, a private Waldorf school that our son Eric’s mom and I checked out when we were exploring options for Eric beyond the conventional public schools. We did not end up enrolling him, but I was struck by the school’s governance model, which had the school’s teachers running the school as a committee, without a principal, hiring additional administrative staff as needed.

I had not previously encountered this sort of governance model for a school, and for me it recalled my mom’s words, and begged the question why more schools were not run this way. If teachers are truly highly-trained professional service providers like doctors and lawyers, shouldn’t they be running their schools like doctors run their medical groups and lawyers run their law firms?

My take on U.S. history, and why public school teachers are generally not in that governance position, is that school teachers have mostly been women. The American public school system developed in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th leveraging a pool of talented and highly educated women as school teachers, because other professions – including doctor, lawyer and college professor – were generally not open to them. Public costs were kept down by hiring professional level talent at lower than professional compensation. And given that the talent pool was women (who could not even vote for President until the 1920s) a male-dominated society was not comfortable with granting them the autonomy and self-governance of male professionals. Instead, mostly male principals and district administrators, tasked with managing those teachers, were granted that sort of real professional salary and status.

But with the revived feminist movement in the 1960s and 1970s, and a societal realignment that followed, most other professions opened up for women. Though teaching today is still a majority female profession, it includes many men as well, and given much greater gender equality, there is no longer any (even bad) excuse for teachers not to be considered full-blown professionals like doctors and lawyers, and run the establishments where they practice their profession.

My mom’s words were evoked again earlier this year when I read a piece in Ed Week about the public school in Detroit that was in the process of being taken over by the teachers. In the intro to her piece, “Teacher-Led School Trend Takes DPS”, Marion Herbert writes…

Detroit is the next city to throw away the administrative reins and open the doors for an all-teacher-led school. Serving pre-K through eighth grade and roughly 450 students, the Palmer Park Preparatory Academy (P3A) will open in Detroit Public Schools this fall— sans principal —replacing the Barbara Jordan Elementary School, which closed in spring 2010 to become a turnaround school after being identified as low performing.

The school’s own website, still under construction (as I write this) for its fall 2011 opening, says…

We are the first teacher-led school in the state of Michigan, joining a network of teacher-led schools across the country. Our philosophy is rooted in the belief that teachers are most successful in an educational environment that is child-centered and teacher-driven… Where teachers lead, students succeed.

To be candid, I’m a big advocate for learner-driven education, but moving down the education “food chain” from administrator-driven to teacher-driven schools is a big step forward in my opinion. Its a step forward towards my vision of students participating fully in the governance of an institution where they spend much of their lives. It at least gives students direct access every day to real school decision-makers and vice-versa.

Regarding that “food chain”, Herbert quotes Ann Crowley, one of the teachers in the group that took over the school…

By weeding out the middleman, Crowley believes it will become easier to educate the learners. “Bypassing another level of hierarchy in making decisions about the learning needs of children allows for more immediate action to transpire,” says Crowley.

Toward that goal of “weeding out the middleman”, I support my friend Lynn Stoddard’s effort to push for the transformation of the U.S. Department of Education from its current “new sheriff in town” role (in line with No Child Left Behind). Writes Lynn…

Change the U.S. Department of Education from a dictator of school policy to that of a research, advisory and resource organization.

See his petition effort.

I actually would take this effort one big step further, and urge the states to transform their governance role in education as well, from “dictator” to “resource”. Keep pushing the real direction of education down the “food chain” toward the student as the ideal nexus.

Finally, Herbert indicates that the 3PA teachers were inspired by Steve Barr’s Green Dot charter school group…

Palmer Park Preparatory Academy P3A was in part inspired by the Green Dot movement, a network of unionized charter schools in Los Angeles, founded in 2000, that encourages more autonomy and accountability for its teachers.

I hope using the chartering process to facilitate this teacher takeover does not sour some progressives on this big step toward more egalitarian school governance and acknowledging teachers as true professionals. I appreciate their concerns that, particularly in “red” states where conservatives wield the political majority, that the whole “charter school movement” has been used as a cudgel to bash unionized teachers. This along with challenging the whole concept of “the people’s schools” in an effort to “corporatize” education. But I think this is a case of not throwing the “baby” (professionalizing teachers and democratizing schools) out with the “bath water” (the education-industrial complex).

Mr Trump… With all due respect to you as a fellow American citizen with our shared right to free speech, please think about the consequences of your words and actions and how they impact our shared society. If you are really in the race for President in 2012, please do your homework, read your history, and show some respect for the process!

Allen has concluded that our urge to protect teenagers from real life – because we don’t think they’re ready yet – has tragically backfired. By insulating them from adult-like work, adult social relationships, and adult consequences, we have only delayed their development. We have made it harder for them to grow up. Maybe even made it impossible to grow up on time.

Their conclusion is consistent with my own experience interacting with or hearing about a fairly large circle of older youth and young adults. Those among the larger group who have spent 13 or even 17 straight years in school tend to have an obvious lack of real-world experience and the maturity and sophistication that goes with that experience.

What the Allens’ have found in their work is that for many of these young people school has generally been a long ordeal of practicing for real life in an artificial institutional environment, an experience that may have given them degrees and other credentials and a broad skill set, but may also have hindered or even stunted their growth in other ways including maturity.

If you spend any time with the parents of teenagers or the adults who work with teenagers (particularly in schools) you are exposed to the conventional wisdom that teens have limited capabilities due to their “raging hormones” or their incomplete brain development. These factors explain their erratic at times irresponsible or at times listless behavior. Says Allen…

Most parents will tell you that this idea of the immature teen brain is one of the few notions that truly provides them comfort. They feel like it gets them off the hook – that it’s biological, not a fault of parenting.

The Allens acknowledge that these biological developmental factors exist and may affect behavior, but their research shows that environmental factors appear to be more significant…

Without real consequences and real rewards, teens never learn to distinguish between good risks they should take and bad risks they shouldn’t. “We park kids on the sidelines, thinking their brains will develop if we just wait, let time pass, as if all they need is more prep courses, lessons, and enrichment courses. They need real stress and challenges.”

Our unexamined conventional assumptions about what constitutes an appropriate developmental environment for teens may be doing a great disservice to millions of them.

The “sidelines” where most kids get “parked” are their schools, where there is generally a one-size-fits-all approach to education, and quoting Allen…

There’s no recognition, in the structure of school, that these are very different people with different capabilities… We place kids in schools together with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of other kids typically from similar economic and cultural backgrounds. We group them all within a year or so of one another in age… We ask them all to take almost the exact same courses and do the exact same work and be graded relative to one another. We give them only a handful of ways in which they can meaningfully demonstrate their competencies. And then we’re surprised they have some difficulty establishing a sense of their own individuality.

Article author Po Bronson’s take…

Strapped to desks for 13+ years, school becomes both incredibly monotonous, artificial, and cookie-cutter…

Bronson makes the point that if we were forced as adults to into such a regimen of endless practice in an artificial environment…

Even if we enjoyed the activity of our job, intrinsically, it would rapidly lose depth and relevance. It’d lose purpose. We’d become bored, lethargic, and disengaged… In other words, we’d turn into teenagers.

Supposed intrinsic teen behavior may well be instead a reaction to an inappropriate environment, one that lacks sufficient developmental oxygen. Teens may be acting out and indulging in excessive risk-taking because there is so little real or thrilling in their day to day experience. This is an important perspective for all parents and other adults that work with teens to think twice about.

Beyond that, the Allens’ work gives support to those of us who are involved in or otherwise support alternative approaches to education as part of trying to provide a “portfolio” of more learner-directed education options to our youth and their families. This is particularly true for parents like my partner Sally and I, who let our kids opt out of formal education altogether in their teen years. We went instead with our kids’ natural inclination towards completely self-directed learning in a real-life context and let them unschool instead of go to high school. In their case, that self-direction has involved not going to college either (though many other homeschooled and even unschooled kids do choose to go to college and generally do very well).

To let our kids opt out of high school was pretty freaky for us as parents. It felt at best like a calculated risk at the time we made those decisions (particularly for our daughter, who though mostly bored in her public school environment could perform well at least in terms of grades). In each of their cases, after pulling them out of school, it took a couple of years before we saw the upside in terms of their growing maturity level and sense that they were developing the agency to live their own lives and direct their own development. Certainly having access to the Internet, thoughtful adults and a big community of peers through our Unitarian-Universalist denomination all contributed significantly to giving them an environment where they could take on various projects and have other real-life experiences with real consequences, both positive and negative. (For details on some of those projects, see my pieces TBD).

The Allens saw similar experiences tracking the teens who were free to do what they wanted instead of the programmed activities, in school and after that adults would typically arrange for them…

They found a way to do something meaningful in real life, interacting with adults, outside the realm of the high school artificial bubble, and outside the hovering control of their parents. For some, it was volunteering at organizations that really needed their help – where they felt they were making a real contribution. For others it was tutoring younger kids. For others, exploring a passion without regard to its value to their college application. Or it could be a job (not a McJob) where they interacted with adults. A little went a long way.

Hopefully by reading about the Allens’ work in Newsweek, thousands of other parents who are considering these unorthodox alternatives to traditional “schooling”, will have more information and support for taking the plunge outside the conventional educational “box”. (Recent estimates I have seen say that perhaps two percent of US kids are now homeschooling and the percentage continues to grow.) Others whose kids are already focused on more informal learning in the real world should find support in this as well.

So given all my context, I read George Lakoff’s blog piece, “What Conservatives Really Want” where he says…

Conservatives believe in individual responsibility alone, not social responsibility. They don’t think government should help its citizens. That is, they don’t think citizens should help each other.

I don’t think that is necessarily true. It certainly is consistent with many conservatives’ discomfort with welfare and unemployment insurance and their efforts to privatize Social Security. But conservatives like William Bennett and Rod Paige have championed a very state-standardized education system to build an education citizenry and workforce. Maybe more accurate to say that conservatives believe in the primacy of individual responsibility over social responsibility.

I have actually found myself comfortable with some of the more libertarian Republican positions on education, that challenge the state’s right to dictate what you will learn, where, when, how and from whom. Though some of these conservatives challenge state educational control for religious reasons and mine are more secular, still at times they are my strange bedfellows. The whole “Race to the Top” approach to education from Obama and many other progressive Democrats leaves me cold. Education in my thinking is not a contest with winners and losers but a gradual progression from unknowing to knowledge.

Lakoff goes on to say…

The way to understand the conservative moral system is to consider a strict father family. The father is The Decider, the ultimate moral authority in the family. His authority must not be challenged. His job is to protect the family, to support the family (by winning competitions in the marketplace), and to teach his kids right from wrong by disciplining them physically when they do wrong.

The metaphor of the strict father figure is just what Eisler’s conception of patriarchy is all about, real authority being exercised by an authority figure (not collectively by the group) and having the aspect of “tough love”, coercion, and implied or at times actual violence. God, in this patriarchal context is the biggest and strictest daddy of them all.

It seems to me that conservatives are more comfortable in a context where there are clearly delineated authority figures and clearly delineated good and evil generally. In this context there are obvious winners who choose the good path and losers who don’t. The latter are particularly important as a cautionary tale to encourage good people to continue to be good. Most conservatives seem to buy the Calvinist line that humans are deeply flawed and therefor ever vulnerable to temptation unless we are vigilant in our discipline. Says Lakoff…

Only with such discipline will they be able to prosper. And what of people who are not prosperous? They don’t have discipline, and without discipline they cannot be moral, so they deserve their poverty. The good people are hence the prosperous people. Helping others takes away their discipline, and hence makes them both unable to prosper on their own and function morally.

This whole idea of winners and losers, “us and them”, I am very uncomfortable with. I feel a connection with all my fellow human beings. I am pulling for all of them and hope that they are pulling for me in return. We are all evolving from some starting point.

My take is that people who are conservatives think that for our civilization to survive that a set of traditional institutions and values need to be maintained, including a proper respect for the authority of ones “superiors”, on and up the hierarchical pyramid often including respect for a deity at the top of that hierarchy. They are uncomfortable with transforming those institutions to more egalitarian ones, where they feel “natural” authority is no longer respected.

For example, people I encounter who are opposed to same-sex marriage are generally concerned that allowing it will undermine a key traditional institution that they see as part of a matrix of institutions that maintain the “natural” hierarchy and keep civilization from unraveling. I appreciate their concern though I don’t share it.

I acknowledge their feelings though I maintain my confidence and conviction that it will just take time for more people who have this concern to move beyond their discomfort with homosexuality (their homophobia), as perhaps more and more of them have family members, friends, or friends of friends who come out as gay or lesbian. We are clearly moving in that direction, toward a more universal recognition of this as a human rights issue.

We are evolving as individuals and as a society. Things that seem wrong in one generation seem more right in the next. For example, I’m a strong believer in youth rights, particularly in the context of school. In my generation I am in the minority on this (am “wrong” by conventional wisdom), but I believe that perhaps by the time my kids are my age, there will be more understanding and comfort with that youth rights argument and it will seem more legitimate as a civil rights issue.

You may not agree… but hopefully we will continue to dialog and to paraphrase George Harrison’s song lyrics, evolution will go on “within and without you”.

Beating the dead horse of false equivalence between radical extremists on the far right and the center-right Democratic party, which constitutes the far-left of allowed US political discourse. Both sides are guilty of something, but not in the way the diarist thinks.

The commenters analysis of the US political spectrum may in fact be right on (as it were), and the Fox commentators may be correct as well when they say that the United States is in reality a center-right country. Looking back at our Founding Fathers (Wikipedia lists the key seven as Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton) you could argue that Jefferson was the most progressive of the bunch, yet he owned slaves, was a strong supporter of states rights and perhaps closest of the seven to a modern day libertarian.

Regardless of the positioning of the US legislative mainstream on the left-right spectrum, my point is that I believe there are principled arguments on all sides of the political debate: conservative and progressive (and possibly a third liberty-based position). And if we want to continue to promote effective egalitarian governance in the US, people in each camp would be well served to acknowledge (while disagreeing with) the principled arguments made by the other camp(s).

I will acknowledge that even most of my progressive family and friends are quickly uncomfortable having any sort of conversation with a very conservative person about those prickly religious and political issues, let alone be forced to watch an hour of Hannity, Beck or O’Reilly on Fox News. Maybe I’m naïve, but I relish such discussions and as a “news junkie” even give Fox as much of my eyeball time as CNN and MSNBC.

But I am happy to report that my kids (who are both on the left of that linear spectrum) seem pretty comfortable listening to and acknowledging the positions of people on the right of the political dialog. For a while my daughter was a regular viewer of Pat Robertson’s “700 Club”, though she probably disagreed with virtually every position they put forward. My son, though an avowed atheist (and calls himself a “pragmatic idealist”, socially very progressive while fiscally moderate), seems perfectly comfortable in a political or religious discussion with anyone of any ideological stripe.

Getting back to the whole governance thing, I think it is crucial to being an effective participant in decision making in an egalitarian governing body to be very cognizant of the most principled and effective arguments of the other side. To in fact be able to make them as well as your peers on the other side can. Disrespect of someone with a very different position may energize some of your fellow believers, but does not generally play well with those key votes on the fence or even winning a favorable compromise with a person in another camp.

I think many people don’t appreciate this because they have not had the experience participating in governing bodies and coming to consensus with people with a very different take on things. This is where I think our public education system misses the boat by minimizing or even completely ignoring any meaningful role for students in the governance of their schools. What a different electorate we might have and different crop of legislators elected, if American kids regularly practiced the tools of egalitarian governance in the institutions where they spend much of their youth.

Imagine a US Congress where the majority and minority leaders could characterize each other’s ideological position in a positive light, while respectfully disagreeing. What a profoundly different dynamic that would be!

From my reading of recent US political history, the legislator and later president who exemplified this approach with Lyndon Johnson, generally as comfortable with and respectful of his opponents as his allies. To get a sense of LBJ in action, read Michael Beschloss’ great books Taking Charge and Reaching for Glory, with extensive transcripts from LBJ’s political and legislative phone conversations.

But today it seems the most admired, videoed, and quoted politicos are generally those that artfully dis the other side in a pithy sound bite. Obama seems to be mostly an exception to this, and I admire him the more for it. And I believe this propensity, though it does not always lather up the progressive “base”, will serve him well in governing in the next two years and winning reelection in 2012.

Bottom line, its all about applying the Golden Rule, the real one, not that cynical contemporary “corollary” that “he who has the gold makes the rules”. Or as Gandhi said, “be the change you seek”.

Washington (CNN) — Top Democrats are dismissing Republicans’ plans to ram a repeal of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul through the House of Representatives in the opening days of the new Congress, portraying the move as little more than a hollow nod to the GOP’s conservative base.

From my thinking, this kind of framing of the situation is all about power politics rather than egalitarian governance, and also all about a spectator sport with victors and vanquished rather than a meeting of the minds between peers towards compromise and solutions. Everything seems to be done in terms of jockeying for more Congressional seats for your team in the next election and towards the big prize of winning the Presidency for the next four years. Compromise is for wusses, and it might turn off your partisan supporters and give a shred of an advantage to the other side.

Given that I am biased as a lifelong progressive and voting Democrat, I feel like the Congressional Republicans made a political calculation after Obama won the 2008 election that if they opposed everything his administration tried to do (even compromises that reflected their ideas) that they would be better positioned for the 2010 election and to defeat him in 2012. It seems that part of that calculation was trying at every turn to accuse Obama of being a “socialist” (certainly that was the main Fox News talking point), particularly in his attempt to resolve the financial crisis, save General Motors, and pump money into the moribund US economy. That seemed disingenuous since I don’t think Bush or even McCain (if elected) would have done anything that much differently. It seemed like a simple calculation that they could make that label stick with and motivate their conservative base to action, the better to win the next contests in two and four years.

That said, progressives and their MSNBC spokespeople had previously seemed to do their best to paint a fascist face on the Bush/Cheney administration, given the unique challenges of the World Trade Center bombing in 2001 and subsequent terror campaigns. I think I was guilty of that at times myself, and looking back now see it as going against the Golden Rule and sewing negative seeds only to reap them when the pendulum swung the other direction.

It seems to have become the standard national legislative/political script for both sides. As soon as the other side grabs the majority, immediately start trashing them including questioning their intentions. “Preemptive war” of sorts.

Pragmatically, if you are going to have an effective governing body, you don’t start the meeting by accusing the other side of being disingenuous. An effective egalitarian governance process depends on establishing shared values and goals, even if there is strong disagreement on how to get their. I think there is actually a fair amount of agreement between Democrats and Republicans in Washington, at least on values and goals, but that is trumped by the political fear that the first side that “flinches” (compromises) will lose the ardor of their base.

In contrast to the highly inaccurate accusations of being hyper-partisan, President Obama sounded like the lone egalitarian statesman in the mix…

“I think that there’s going to be politics, that’s what happens in Washington,” Obama told reporters aboard Air Force One after wrapping up his Hawaiian vacation late Monday night. The Republicans “are going to play to their base for a certain period of time. But I’m pretty confident that they’re going to recognize that our job is to govern and make sure that we are delivering jobs for the American people.”

Obama here is guilty of putting himself in his adversaries’ shoes and acknowledging their position, a hallmark of facilitating effective egalitarian governance. Contrast Obama’s statement with the clips in the story from Congressional Democrats.

Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, addressing reporters at a news conference with other House Democratic leaders Tuesday, called the GOP move “disingenuous” and “nothing but political theater”… “It is a Kabuki dance,” she said. “The fact of the matter is we’re not going to repeal health care. It is not going to happen.”

DeLauro could not be accused of trying to acknowledge any good intentions in her opposition. And even more so her caucus leader…

Outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, cited projections from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office noting that the Democrats’ overhaul will lower the federal deficit over the long term. As a result, she argued, a GOP-led health care reform repeal would “do very serious violence to the national debt” — undermining a central Republican pledge.

Pelosi’s preemptive strike is to say the other side will “do very serious violence”, and not just “lead to a significant increase” in the national debt. More extreme framing!

Why can’t we even acknowledge that the people on the other side of an issue can be genuine and principled in their opposition, even if we think they have it wrong? Do our opponents need to always be vilified in order to increase support for our position?

The GOP caucus number two (at least through his spokesperson) can’t be accused of putting himself in his opponents shoes either…

“Obamacare is a job killer for businesses small and large, and the top priority for House Republicans is going to be to cut spending and grow the economy and jobs,” said Brad Dayspring, spokesman for incoming House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Virginia… “Further, Obamacare failed to lower costs as the president promised that it would, and does not allow people to keep the care they currently have if they like it.”

That last quote could be written off as clueless for someone that did not understand implementation of major new public policy, but coming from GOP leader Cantor’s office it seems patently disingenuous. The provisions of health care reform have barely begun to be implemented. Its like accusing FDR of not winning World War II yet… in say October 1942, when American forces have barely begun to engage the Axis. This seems like a calculated effort to mislead people.

It also looks like all the Republican hyper-partisans are carefully disciplined to call the health care reform legislation “Obamacare”, trying to take full political advantage of a compromise bill that made neither set of partisans very happy, focused on the 2012 election rather than governance in the meantime. (It might more accurately be called “Baucus-Grassleycare”, since that would reflect the two people whose ideas are prominent in the provisions, but that would not help with the pre-2012 artillery barrage.)

Well I could go on and on, but back to the point. The reality here is that almost everyone (except Obama it seems) is framing the legislative crafting of health care reform as a winner-take-all contest between two angry combatants both claiming principle on their side and lack of the same on the other. That’s apparently what attracts eyeballs and sells ads on cable news.

But I think that the ethical base of our egalitarian republic takes a hit with each salvo from either side, and more and more politically unsophisticated US citizens may be drawn to a Tea Party type stance of “a pox on both your houses”, and that the best government is an emasculated one.

Said the shepherd boy to the mighty king,
“Do you know what I know?
In your palace warm, mighty king,
Do you know what I know?
A Child, a Child shivers in the cold–
Let us bring him silver and gold,
Let us bring him silver and gold.”

It brought up memories of my mom (she died in 2006) who had a great love for everything that had to do with Christmas, and particularly the figure of Santa Claus and what he symbolized in terms of celebrating and honoring children. She believed in God (unlike me) but was not much for organized religion. Given that, she still enjoyed even the Christian celebration of the birth of the baby Jesus, and the bestowing on him of great gifts, seeing it as a metaphor for how all people should greet and treat our children with an abundance of love.

I am recalling my mom this morning and all the unique currents that made her her, including her zealous advocacy for honoring and even listening to children. Her mantra was “Bright kids will tell you what they need”, but I don’t recall her ever meeting a kid who she didn’t think was “bright”. I still thank her every day for that wonderful gift that was her parenting style, that gave me the liberty to chart my own course but with all the loving and thoughtful support, and enriched environment, that I could want.

Anyway… back to the song. I looked it up on the Internet and found a site called “Christmas World” with the lyrics, prefaced by a brief introduction…

‘Do You Hear What I Hear?’ is a popular Christmas carol. Its lyrics are simple and its catchy tune makes it a favorite among adults and kids alike. It uses imagery from the nativity scene and describes how everyone and even the forces of Nature rejoiced at the birth of Jesus Christ.

I had to smile but shake my head when I read that intro. If you look at the lyrics of the song there is no explicit reference to Jesus, just the implicit biblical context of the star, shepherds, kings and gifts. When my mom and I sang that song nearly half a century ago, I quickly picked up her “spin”… let’s celebrate every child that’s born!

Ours was a truly egalitarian framing that all children come into this world with that spark of the divine that could just possibly “bring us goodness and light”. Rather than the hierarchical/patriarchal framing (suggested by the “Christmas World” site intro) of the one special “Child” (with a capital “C”) who, unlike the rest of the muggle newborns, will enlighten us.

And further, it was not lost on me this morning that the poor shepherd boy in the song (probably a slave in that day and age) has the temerity to address the “mighty” king and speak truth to power. This child (with no business speaking without being spoken to any adult let alone a king) reminding that powerful patriarch that instead of sitting warm, smug and unknowing in his palace, he should be honoring the birth of a human child, following the Golden Rule, showering that child with gifts that it may grow up and return the blessing and then some.

In the mythology of the song at least, the monarch “gets it”, goes back to his palace to dispatch all his heralds…

Said the king to the people everywhere,
“Listen to what I say!
Pray for peace, people, everywhere,
Listen to what I say!
The Child, the Child sleeping in the night
He will bring us goodness and light,
He will bring us goodness and light.”

Framing the song thus this morning I had to grin. There’s hope for us humans!

I know I’m done with rewards. I have come to find the whole concept demeaning and rude and so 20th Century. Behavior modification, extrinsic motivation, gold stars, contests, “races to the top”, it all seems to no longer be useful in the evolution of our species. I think we are finally ready to let motivation be intrinsic and allow everyone to be who they really are and not what the rest of us want them to be instead.

If you read any of the pieces about my own childhood, I was raised by very unorthodox parents including a mom who believed that “kids will tell you what they need.” So she and my dad somehow never got caught up in the whole rewards and punishments thing. They just gave me a lot of love and encouragement, noted what I spent my time doing and listened to my thoughts so they could provide me with the best possible enriched environment for me to grow up in.

That included what I have come to call “imagination toys” (Tinker Toys, plastic figures and dinosaurs, Lincoln Logs, various boxes I could turn into boats and submarines, etc.) and an unfinished slab basement where I could set them up and create my imaginary worlds. It also included them finding places to live always next to parks where I could go and play with the neighborhood kids.

I was never punished or rewarded in my entire youth. My parents had no agenda for me other than enjoying my own internally directed development, so they had no need to reward me for doing things I would not have done otherwise.

Unfortunately when my partner Sally and I became parents we got caught up in the whole rewards and “tough love” thing when our kids were young, trying particularly to encourage our son Eric to go to school, do his homework, and get to bed (early enough to be rested for school the next morning) when he did not want to. At the recommendation of an educational therapist, we had devised and implemented a whole system of stickers and rewards for earning a certain amount of them.

But from the beginning it did not go well. Once we shared with Eric the whole system, he was smart enough to quickly see this is just a veiled form of punishment, which his mom and I claimed we were not into.

So despite offering various types of rewards (that Eric was happy to take a pass on), I was dragging Eric out of bed every day in middle school, having him take Adderall (based on an ADD diagnosis and a doctor’s advice), and leaving him crying on the curb by his school, we finally threw in the towel. We faced the fact that (though it might be working okay for some other kids we knew) a school completely directed by adults using standardized curriculum was just not a healthy learning environment for him, and my partner and I decided to pull him out and let him stay home.

Eric was 13 and now he is 25 and a successful young adult and a wonderful “mensch” of a person. Since we pulled him out of school and stopped pestering him to do school assignments, we have never had to or even had the inkling of rewarding or punishing him. It was a complete and profound paradigm shift which I probably can’t do justice to with mere words.

After about a year in this new paradigm their was a profound shift in him, which I did not fully understand until he talked about it nine years later. When I first started doing my blog two year ago, I thought to interview Eric (age 22 at the time), record our conversation and publish elements of the transcript as a blog piece. About his last year of school in eighth grade, Eric said…

I felt like it was very difficult for me to be myself, or express the things I wanted to do or didn’t want to do, like put up with the whole school situation or homework assignments that I was having a really hard time with, and ultimately I think I used [lying] as a tool to cope with that and try to relieve some of that burden.

I think Eric was responding to all the behavior modification techniques (of rewards at home plus grades and punishments at school) being practiced to manipulate him by developing his own techniques of manipulation, including being disingenuous, in response. When I interviewed him, Eric talked about his experience in a Unitarian-Universalist high school youth camp where the youth basically ran everything themselves and interacted with each other genuinely, and the adults were not there to try and run things or otherwise do any behavior mod…

I had been so wrapped up in all the lies, and that with other people I knew I would be judged if I revealed to them or withdrew from these positions, you know, but here there would be no judgment. I could just be myself, and I chose and decided to do that. Fortunately it was a comfortable environment where I felt very comfortable being able to do that, but I just decided that this is not something that I wanted to be part of my life anymore. Not only was it no longer advantageous for me, but I really felt bad about it, like I felt it was a hindrance and I wanted genuine relationships with people. I wanted to have the trust that people held in me be well founded. I didn’t want to lie and manipulate. I didn’t want that anymore, and here was an opportunity where I could stop.

I think the same liberation he felt at camp he eventually felt at home once we (his parents) stopped trying to direct his life and manipulate his behavior. After enough time in this new paradigm he felt the transformation…

So today I have really make it a priority in my life to be a person of character, at least the way I view myself. I want to be someone I can be proud of. I want to be someone I want to be, and right now I am. In dealing with others, I place a very high priority on dealing fairly and honestly. I’m very open about trust and trust issues.

Along the way as a parent, when I finally faced it honestly, “rewards” was just a euphemism for behavior modification, that is trying to get someone to do something they would not otherwise do based on their own sense of ethics and purpose. The conventional thinking as I understand it is that if you can manipulate someone into doing good behavior they will feel the intrinsic rewards and then you can withdraw the manipulation. Certainly it can be a well-intentioned effort and even work at times (at least to some degree), or else people wouldn’t keep trying or recommending that others do so.

This by the way, is one of those areas that separates my evolving left-libertarianism from conventional liberals and progressives, many of whom are perfectly comfortable applying rewards and other techniques of behavior modification on people in general but particularly kids, for the cause of encouraging ethical and humanistic behavior.

But I am now convinced that it is a slippery slope once you start to try and manipulate people with rewards. The honesty of a truly respectful relationship can begin to be challenged by the conceit of the manipulation. The person being rewarded has got to think at some level, “If you truly love who I am inside, why are you asking me to not be true to my own compass?” And then perhaps they start making the necessary adjustments to try to protect that unique being that they are inside from your judgmental gaze.

I think my own kids (and I before them) are success stories in eschewing the use of rewards (and punishments). Said my son Eric in our “interview”…

And overall, it’s kind of the Golden Rule when it comes down to it. I look at how I want people to interact with me, to treat me, and to have relationships with me. I feel if I am reasonably to expect those things, I need to live that and I need to be that, and interact with people in that way. I feel that I am a lot healthier of a person for it, and I have these wonderful real relationships with people, and I don’t need to lie. I’m confident enough in who I am, what I do, and the choices I make that I can just be that and live that.

The Golden Rule, rather than the perhaps more conventionally practiced, “he who has the gold makes the rules.”