Federal budget

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Metaphors, Money, and Speech

Perhaps the dialogue across the pages of the New York Times on Tuesday, April 12 was accidental, but it was fascinating, just the same. On one side David Brooks reminded us of the importance of metaphor as our lens for seeing reality. On the other side the lead  editorial warned us that the Supreme Court may change the metaphor of money enabling speech in political campaigns to money being the equivalent of speech and therefore deserving the same protection as speech. Both articles suggest we ought to watch what we say and be wary of what we hear.

Commenting on the research of linguists, such as James Geary ( I Is an Other) and George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Brooks reminded us to be alert to the metaphors we use:

It’s to be aware of how imprecise our most important thinking is. It’s to be aware of the constant need to question metaphors with data–to separate the living from the dead ones, and the authentic metaphors that seek to illuminate the world form the tinny advertising and political metaphors that seek to manipulate it.

In the context of the upcoming budget debate these words could not be more timely. Just as poignantly, they address the debate about the financing of political campaigns and whether the right to uninhibited spending is protected by the First Amendment. The legal question must be complex ( or why would the Supreme Court be so sharply divided?), but the ethical question seems pretty stark to me.

“Money talks.” This seems to be the Supreme Court’s metaphorical view of campaign funding. I have never heard this expression used without some rueful implication that money has more influence than words.  No one says, “Money  should talk” or “We should pay attention to money more than speech.”   It is regrettable that “money talks,” and that valuable social programs are being slashed because of deficits, not because of their value to society. Perhaps it is reasonable to pay attention to funding, but it is not preferable.

So when a legislative or judicial body has the opportunity to curb the realities of funding, to curtail the power of money, it should ethically seize that responsibility.  The law should not maintain, but improve the status quo.  The law should not empower the powerful, but protect the weak.  The ethical responsibility of lawmakers and law mediators is clear.

Consider the regulation of speech. What if we allowed those with access to the press and publication to use language to slander and malign a person’s reputation? Those with the sharpest pens and most demented imaginations could wreak havoc on people they disliked. Instead the law curbs language which unfairly scars our reputations.  This is a fair restriction on speech. No matter how abundant your store of adjectives, you can not freely unleash them on your enemies in publications.

You can come pretty close to libel in a political campaign,  but if you have good lawyers and media consultants you can avoid overstepping the law.  With a substantial campaign fund you can disseminate half-truths to a wide audience. Hence, ” Money talks.” This is not an inescapable reality, but a sad commentary.

Turning money into a form of speech is a travesty of the First Amendment. A strict constructionist should be appalled by the ruling of the Supreme Court, which allows us to use money freely to consolidate power within the ample limits of free speech.

Given the power of language, however, we might be most concerned with the metaphors we use and interpret. If the Supreme Court can conflate money with speech, what other exaggerations might be unloosed on the voting public? How much will these metaphors determine what programs get cut in the coming months or which President is elected in the coming years? That is not a subject for the law, but for, you, gentle, but critical readers. Let the reader and consumer of media beware!

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The Mustard Tree

The kingdom of heaven  is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches. (Matt 13:31-32)

The notion of productivity is hard to define in education. Should schools be measured by the number of graduates, by the advanced degrees of their teachers, by the scores achieved by students on standardized tests, by independent observations of accrediting agencies?  None of this really captures the productivity of schools.

But the National Writing Project, a federally funded professional development network, has a simple formula for productivity. Invest in the professional growth of individual teachers with an aptitude for leadership and then support their growth and dissemination of effective teaching practices in local schools. The investment begins every summer with a 4-week institute for the development of writing teachers and continues with the graduates (called “teacher consultants”) developing their skills as writers, consultants, and teacher researchers both as an organic group and as coaches and workshop providers in local schools. The investment is $25 million, a mustard seed in the enormous dissemination of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Currently there are 7,000 active teacher consultants disseminating the mustard seed of “effective practices in the teaching of writing” in the schools they serve and in other local districts. These consultants of the National Writing Project reach 120,000 other teachers in a given year and teach 1.4 million students.  This is the definition of productivity: 7,000 teachers reach 17 times their number through professional exchanges and reach 200 times their number in students.

Is the instruction any good? The Local Sites Research Initiative has made eight studies of the writing of students in Writing Project classrooms with the following aggregate results:

The results, taken across sites and across years, indicate a consistent pattern favoring the NWP. For every measured attribute in every site, the improvement of students taught by NWP-participating teachers exceeded that of students whose teachers were not participants. Moreover in 36 of the 70 contrasts (51%) the differences between NWP participants’ students and the comparison students were statistically significant” (LSRI 3)

By every measure, the seeds of the National Writing Project’s investment in teacher leaders have been super-producers, and the production has consistently grown from its modest beginnings in 1974 in Berkeley, California to a 200-site network today.  This is the nation’s longest enduring professional network, a network that has leveraged federal support for the past twenty years to yield this gratifying fruit.

In the weeks that follow, the funding of the National Writing Project, a pittance at $25 million dollars, will be in jeopardy as Congress swings its reckless budget axe.   It is easy to overlook the brilliant success of the tiny mustard tree, overshadowed by the immense orchard of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Not every seed out of that orchard has been productive.

When the axe swings in the neighborhood of the professional development of teacher leaders, let it pause before the mustard tree of the National Writing Project.  That tree is home to teachers, students, and even their families (through the grafted programs of family literacy), and it is one of the great over-producers in American education.