Barber Shop

Yesterday at the barber shop, a father was explaining his rationale for pulling his son out of one school system and shopping around for a better system. His son will be a sophomore, scored a 28 on the ACT his freshman year, plays a solid outside linebacker on JV, and wants to become an engineer. His father lost confidence in the school system his son previously attended; he cited a drop in the property values in the district, an increase in minority enrollment, levy failures, and a subsequent decline in test scores and district rating.

The father is looking for a district that can serve as a better platform for gaining admission into competitive universities: a district where his son's class rank will have more weight, a district where the mean ACT score is higher (to improve on that 28), a district where his son might see some varsity playing time, a district that spends more per pupil, a district that passes its levies...which in effect, although unsaid, meant a district in central Ohio with a higher rating and less minorities.

The father is playing the game: a game defined by a historically unconstitutional school funding system, a game he has the social and financial capital to play, a game that is won and lost along lines of class and race, a game the father didn't create, yet a game he will play to win.

It's also a game that historically and in the present only has losers; we all lose by not providing equal opportunities and resources to all of our students, regardless of class and race. But it's also a game that elected and appointed officials have no incentive to change for the constituents that make up their power and campaign finance bases have no problems playing and winning the game.

In the May/June 2008 issue of the Journal of Teacher Education, eight contributors wrote letters to our next president. In Gloria Ladson-Billings' letter, she reframes the national conversation around the racial achievement gap to one of educational debt, shifting the focus from the students and teachers who aren't winning the game (irrespective of social and financial capital) to all of us, as members of a democratic society, who are complicit in sustaining the game and complacent with who the winners and losers are.

Memorial Decals

Lately I've become interested in bumper stickers and car decals during my commute to and from Columbus. As we all have observed, the back of a vehicle can be an interesting piece of real estate for all kinds of political messages, vacation locales, advertisements, sports teams, and well...identity work. In the past few years, I've noticed more personalization of messages on the backs of vehicles. Of particular interest to me are the "In Loving Memory" rear window decals. The decals typically include the name of the deceased and their birth and death dates. I've also noticed that the dates most often span only 1 or 2 decades, indicating that the death may have been untimely. Sometimes the silhouette in the center of the decal is of a child. I find it very interesting that this space on the back of vehicles is used as a memorial to lost loved ones and friends.

I find them interesting because this space, which is often used to mark a relationship with a political ideology (e.g., "Nobody died when Clinton lied"), an affiliation with a place of recreation (e.g., "OBX"), the use of a product (pick an advertisement), and/or support of a sports team (e.g., "I bleed scarlet and gray"), is being used to mark a relationship with an individual, an individual who has passed away.

The first memorial decals that I can remember seeing were military related (e.g., POW/MIA). Then the first decal that memorialized an individual that I noticed was for Dale Sr. (i.e., #3 with wings). Then it seemed to me that this space on the back of vehicles that was appropriated for memorials took a personal turn and the "In Loving Memory" decals started to appear. I'm not suggesting that there is a connection between these types of memorial decals; only that this is what I have observed in central Ohio.

Yesterday, a truck passed me with two of these rear window, memorial decals (both for children) and a bumper sticker centered at the top of the window that read, "My Sons Were Murdered." I let them in my lane.

Bike racing can be beautiful

I was building my new team bike this week and thinking about bike racing. I had recently read an article about the etiquette of improvisation in jazz jam sessions.

The article gave an insider's perspective wherein "everyone pay[s] close attention to the other players and [is] prepared to alter what they are doing in response to tiny cues that suggest a new direction that might be interesting to take...everyone understands that at every moment everyone (or almost everyone) involved in the improvisation is offering suggestions as to what might be done next, in the form of tentative moves, slight variations that go in one way rather than some of the other possible ways...some of these suggestions begin to converge and others, less congruent with the developing direction, fall by the wayside. The players thus develop a collective direction that characteristically...feels larger than any of them, as though it had a life of its own."
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Most criterium racers could offer a similar account. When you are in tune with your teammates' abilities and limitations and can respond accordingly, bike racing can be as beautiful as jazz.

Just a thought as I'll miss not having much time to jam with teammates this season.

"Clearly, we could identify a whole range of kinds of situations, varying between the two poles of those that work on the basis of an etiquette that recognizes and maintains a formal ideology of equality of status and those whose etiquette requires recognition of differentials in the contribution made to the collective effort."

Becker, H.S. (2000). The etiquette of improvisation. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 7(3), 171-176.