Thomas Friedman’s recent NYT column about public education, “How About Better Parents,” cites the conclusions of recent studies that the quality of parental involvement is a key factor in a child’s academic success. Hardly big news, Friedman’s said in his conclusion:  “To be sure, there is no substitute for a good teacher. There is nothing more valuable than great classroom instruction. But let’s stop putting the whole burden on teachers. We also need better parents. Better parents can make every teacher more effective.”

It would be nice to have better parents in our society, but, the big question that Friedman does not address is: What are the public policies that will help parents and our educational system to be better?

Many comments responding to Friedman’s article point out that parents who are struggling financially  — parents in poverty — have huge challenges. Some teachers wrote comments about students who come to school hungry. One reader wrote, “What about the millions of kids whose parents are addicted to drugs and alcohol, who are suffering mental illness, and who cannot feed their children?” Some comments said Friedman was blaming the victim.

We have a system of public education, spending $10,000, or more, on each student, each year, yet, showing miserable results: big percentages of students never graduating from high school, and many of those graduating unprepared to function as productive and responsible citizens in a democracy.

It’s fair to say, “Isn’t it awful that there are so many awful parents.” It’s fair to say, “Education has huge problems with no easy solutions.” But it seems unconscionable to conclude, “As a society we can do nothing.”  It seems unreasonable to argue, “We are doing the best we can. Our system cannot be improved.”

A question needs to be framed in such a way that a solution to the question is possible. Friedman reveals the constricted space of how conventional thinking currently frames the discussion when he writes, “There is nothing more valuable than great classroom instruction.” That phrase deserves to be reread, several times. If a “teacher” is defined as as disseminator of curriculum and “education” is defined in terms of classroom instruction, then, to bring more success to the system, there are only narrow solutions possible.

Debating how to get better classroom instruction, or how to get more parental support for current school practices, in the big picture, amounts to arguing over how to best arrange the deck chairs on the Titantic. We need a bigger POV:  What is the purpose of the $150,000, or more, spent on a K-12 education, and how should this resource best be spent?

Bad parents and poverty are huge problems. Friedman’s article should remind us, for public education, what is needed is an in-depth investigation of the total system. We need to arrive at wise public policies.  What is needed is a focus on the big picture, beginning with defining the purpose / aim of the system.

See:

• If The Aim Of Public Education Is To Provide Opportunity — How Should $150,000 Per Student Be Spent?, By Mike Bock, on November 22nd, 2010.

John, Robert, and Ted Kennedy

Max Holland, expert historian of the JFK assassination, in 1994 published a scholarly work, “Making Sense of the Assassination,” that makes the case that Lee Harvey Oswald’s motivation to murder John Kennedy was revenge,  a direct response to the Kennedy administration’s many attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro.

Holland writes the CIA made eight separate assassination attempts on Castro’s life, and that Robert Kennedy zealously pushed for those attempts. He says Oswald’s motive to respond to these assassination attempts was overlooked by the Warren Commission because neither the CIA nor Robert Kennedy cooperated to give the commission full information. Holland quotes one staff member of the Warren Commission, Burt Griffin, as saying, “The fact that we could not come up with a motive for Oswald was a great weakness in the report.”

In September, 1963, Holland reports, Castro responded to the attempts on his life in statements given in a widely reported AP interview. He said, “United States leaders should think that if they are aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders they themselves will not be safe.” At that time, Oswald was keenly aware of everything reported from Cuba. He was living in New Orleans wearing a “Hands Off Cuba” placard and distributing “Fair Play for Cuba” leaflets. In response to Castro’s interview, writes Holland,

“Oswald developed a new impulse–he had to get to Cuba immediately, to help defend a revolution that seemed in imminent danger again. He arranged to send his family back to Dallas, and on September 25th, left for Mexico City and the Cuban embassy there.

Lee Harvey Oswald was in New Orleans passing out "Fair Play For Cuba" leaflets when Fidel Castro gave his interview warning U.S. leaders against, "aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders."

“Oswald presented himself as a ‘friend of Cuba,’ but justifiably suspicious of all North Americans, the Cuban consul refused to issue him a visa. Oswald returned to Dallas nearly penniless and embittered at not being recognized for who he truly was. After two weeks of job-hunting a friend of Marina’s got him a job at the Texas School Book Depository as an order filler. By now, Dallas newspapers were reporting almost daily about the impending visit of President Kennedy to Texas, though details about the itinerary were still sketchy. The opportunity to subject Kennedy to the same dangers plaguing Castro was slowly forming itself.”

“The fact is,” Holland writes, “that Oswald had no accomplices and there was no conspiracy. No information that has come to light since 1964 reasonably allows for any other conclusion. If the word ‘conspiracy’ must be uttered in the same breath as ‘Kennedy assassination,’ the only one that existed was the conspiracy to kill Castro and then keep that effort secret after November 22nd.”

Holland writes,

“Absent a confession, and denied CIA information that shed light on Oswald’s motives, the Commission staff decided that it could not ascribe to Oswald “any one motive or group of motives.” The Report gave ample details about Oswald’s political activities but in a detached, clinical manner.” …

Chief Justice Warren personally wrote Robert Kennedy on 11 June 1964, informing him of the Commission’s progress and asking Kennedy if he was “aware of any additional information relating to the assassination” of his brother “which has not been sent to the Commission.” In particular, Warren emphasized the importance of any information bearing on the question of a domestic or foreign conspiracy.

When Kennedy responded he was no more forthcoming than the CIA. All the information in the possession of the Justice Department (emphasis added) has been sent to the Commission, Kennedy wrote, which was a restrictive interpretation of Warren’s request and inaccurate anyway, since Kennedy knew the FBI was aware of some of the assassination plots. RFK went on to say that he had “no suggestions to make at this time regarding any additional investigation which should be undertaken by the Commission prior to the publication of its report . . . .”

Kennedy’s outward mien during these months comports with what might be expected of a man tortured by knowledge he, almost alone, carried. William Manchester reports that many of the Kennedy clan were crushed by the assassination but then righted themselves after the funeral. But during the spring of 1964, a “brooding Celtic agony . . . darken[ed] Kennedy’s life.” He was nonfunctional for hours at a time and to those closest to him seemed almost in physical pain. What genuinely sent him reeling? The “tragedy without reason” of his brother’s death,” as RFK’s biographer, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. later put it? Or was the death, topped by the shattering realization that somehow, the Kennedys’ fixation on Castro had inadvertently motivated a political psychopath? During these black months Robert Kennedy exhibited a great interest in the work of Greek tragedians, underlining one passage from Aeschylus: “All arrogance will reap a harvest rich in tears. God calls men to a heavy reckoning for overweening pride.” …

If the CIA is to be blamed for effectively lying by omission, then surely Robert Kennedy deserves similar censure for not divulging everything he knew to the Warren Commission. By withholding information that went to Oswald’s motive, Robert Kennedy helped prepare the stage for later revelations that condemned the Warren Report to disbelief.

Given all this dissembling, how should the Commission’s 888-page report be remembered? Can the omissions be put into perspective, and the Warren Commission given its due? As Gerald Posner makes exhaustively clear, the fact is that Oswald had no accomplices and there was no conspiracy. No information that has come to light since 1964 reasonably allows for any other conclusion. If the word “conspiracy” must be uttered in the same breath as “Kennedy assassination,” the only one that existed was the conspiracy to kill Castro and then keep that effort secret after November 22nd.    …

Watergate created a climate of investigation that finally touched theretofore sacrosanct security agencies. Eventually, press revelations forced Congress to launch its first genuine investigations of the FBI and CIA. Twelve years after the Warren Report, first the Rockefeller Commission and then Senator Frank Church’s Select Committee revealed the extent of anti-Castro covert operations, including the assassination plots, and the no less damning fact that the FBI and CIA had lied by omission to the Commission. The impact of these revelations is hard to overestimate. The notion that the CIA had dissembled in the midst of a national trauma was incomprehensible to Americans not schooled in the niceties of compartmentalization and the “need to know.” If the government could lie to itself in this situation–let alone to the public–then anything seemed possible. Healthy skepticism became corrosive cynicism and a milestone in Americans’ disbelief passed by, almost unnoticed. Now the burden of proof shifted decisively and unfairly from critics to defenders of the official story.  …

Kennedy’s pursuit of the cold war led him to embrace policies initiated under Eisenhower, including the extreme instrument of assassination, and Castro was pursued with demented vigor. Presidential decisions provoked actions, and actions led to consequences, not all anticipated and intended. Castro didn’t ask for a champion, but he came unexpectedly in the person of Lee Oswald, a bent personality consumed with ambition and political insight into how the cold war was being waged against Cuba. To Oswald, fair play ultimately meant subjecting Kennedy to the same dangers plaguing Castro.

After Dallas the Cold War defined the exigency for withholding relevant information from the Warren Commission, creating a near-mortal wound to its credibility when Frank Church finally revealed that one arm of government had deceived another.

David Gergen says the failure of the super committee to make a deficit reduction plan, “represents a reckless, irresponsible gamble…. It’s difficult to remember a Congress that has put the nation so much at risk in the service of ideology and to hold onto office. Partisans on both sides are grievously failing the country.”

Gergen has worked for four presidents. He is a professor of public service and director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.  His CNN commentary today asks, “Have they gone nuts in Washington?”. Excerpts from the article:

• Republicans complain that federal spending under President Obama has gone up dramatically and cuts should come there before any new taxes. Democrats say that the rich have increased their wealth much more rapidly than the other 99% of Americans, while their taxes have gone down, so that the first order of business is to raise taxes on them.
• Such contentious disagreements have characterized our politics since the dawn of the republic, and in almost all crises of the past, political leaders have worked out compromises. …Our “leaders” of today, however, have tossed aside the wisdom of the Founders.
• (President Obama) has been exercising the most passive leadership imaginable. Nor have the Republican candidates for president been any more engaged. Why are their campaigns so focused only on 2013 and so detached from a crisis that continues to deepen in D.C. right now?
• Sorry, our noble leaders tell us, we have to focus now on election 2012. What was it that Louis XV used to say? “Après moi, le déluge”?