When Barack Obama talks about an America as it should be, I’m guessing the best of all possible countries he imagines would look awfully similar to the ideal America just about every registered Democrat would dream up. Picture this: a wind-powered public school classroom of 19 multiracial 8-year-olds reading above grade level and answering the questions of their engaging, inspirational teacher before going home to a cancer-free (or in remission) parent or parents who have to work only eight hours a day in a country at war solely with the people who make war on us, where maybe Exxon Mobil can settle for, oh, $8 billion in quarterly profits instead of $11 billion, and the federal government’s point man for Biblical natural disasters is someone who knows more about emergency management than how to put on a horse show. Is that really too much to ask? Can we do that?
Those words are from the penutimate paragraph of an opinion piece in yesterday's New York Times. Please continue below the fold to explain why I am writing about this now. And I promise, I will be writing about more than the column.
Some of you may recognize the words - after all, I posted a comment about the piece quoting those same words, in the Midday Open Thread yesterday. They are from a piece by author Sarah Jane Vowell, entitled, as it this diary, Bringing Pell Grants to My Eyes. She begins by quoting back to us words from Carolyn Kennedy's speech introducing her uncle Sen. Ted Kennedy one week ago today:
"If your child is getting an early boost in life through Head Start or attending a better school or can go to college because a Pell Grant has made it more affordable, Teddy is your senator, too."
Vowell, watching on C-Span, tells us that she began to cry as if she were watching the last ten minutes of Brokeback Mountain.
From there she explains the difference her Pell Grant made: it allowed her to work only 30 hours a week instead of 40 while completing her education at Montana State, graduating magna cum laude, about which she snarks that it
is Latin for "worst girlfriend in town."
Vowell is now two decades out, having paid off her loans, and repaid in the taxes on her income many times the investment we made in her through that Pell Grant. That's right - that we made in her, because it is our taxes that fund such opportunities for those who might not otherwise benefit from a college education they could not afford, even with loans and jobs.
The next paragraph in Vowell's speech sets a marker, and is worth quoting completely:
But I would like to point out that my perfectly ordinary education, received in public schools and a land grant university, is not merely the foundation on which I make a living. My education made my life. In a sometimes ugly world, my schooling opened a trap door to a bottomless pit of beauty — to Walt Whitman and Louis Armstrong and Frank Lloyd Wright, to the old movies and old masters that have been my constant companions in my unalienable pursuit of happiness.
As a teacher, a major portion of my approach is that my purpose is precisely to empower my students, that is, to enable them to see more broadly and deeply, to understand the difference they can make. My main course is government, through which I hope my student learn the fragility of our social contract which persists only because of the willingness of ordinary people to participate, and to think beyond their own immediate needs. But I also occasionally teach Social Issues and Comparative Religion, and I have taught both US and World History. Regardless of my official curriculum, I also find occasion to bring in poetry and music, art and architecture, science and technology, even in a government course. For example, what does it say about our understanding of government that so much of our official architecture was neo-Classical? Or if we look at the famous words of Barbara Jordan at the Judiciary Committee hearings to impeach Richard Nixon, where she goes from pointing out that the words "We, the People" did not include her (a Balck and a female) when they were written but that now , as she is about to sit as an inquisitor on the actions of the President
through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in "We, the people."
is it not appropriate to remind ourselves of the poetic words of Langston Hughes to Let America Be America Again wherein despite the experience he and others, black and white, have had of being denied, not included, he can proclaim:
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!
Vowell writes as a partisan Democrat, a fact of which she is proud. She covers the sweep of the convention, and more, reminding us that the first bill Barack Obama proposed upon his entrance to the Senate was a sweeping expansion of Pell Grants. It is worth reminding ourselves that these grants are intended for those of families whose income is almost certainly too low to assist them in attending college. The law allows that income to be in the mid 50s, but the vast majority of those receiving such loans have family income in the 20,000 range or less. During this administration we have seen Federal educational aid cut by over 12 billion dollars, and loan programs tilted in favor of for profit entities (why are we not surprised) meaning more of the loan funding goes for profits and administration than it does in paying for actual education being received.
And as for Pell Grants, while the Congress has authorized payments of up to $5,800 through 2011, consider the actual levels being offered
Academic year amount
2003-04 4,050
2004-05 4,050
2005-06 4,050
2006-07 4,050
2007-08 4,310
2008-09 4.731
currently the maximum will increase to only 5,400 in 2012.
Remember what Vowell tells us about how far the small amount of a Pell Grant can go, in her case, 10 hours less per week working, thus able to devote that time to study. As a teacher I see many of our students who must work "part-time" while in high school to help families with basic expenses, or to have any hope at accumulating money for post-secondary education. I put the term in quotes because while Maryland law in theory limits the hours they can work during the school year, I have students I know are working 30 or more hours per week while carrying a full academic load. Having attended night school both briefly as an undergraduate, and while doing doctoral studies in education (where I carried 3 doctoral courses while teaching 6 classe3s) I know how draining that can be, and how both work and academics can suffer.
I have been critical of some of Obama's educational rhetoric. But he is absolutely right that we should be expanding the educational opportunity for our young people. Grants and subsidized loans should be part of it, and it may be appropriate to ask for some service in return. But Pell Grants traditional ask for nothing, and yet, as Vowell points out, we are more than repaid for our investment in young people in the higher taxes they will pay after they complete their education.
Let me quote Vowell again:
I am a registered Democrat. That first night’s convention speech by Senator Kennedy about his life’s work reminded me what being a Democrat means. I have spent the last eight years so disgusted with the incompetent yahoos of the executive branch that I had forgotten that I believe in one of the core principles of the Democratic Party — that government can be a useful, meaningful and worthwhile force for good in this republic instead of just an embarrassing, torturing, Book of Revelation starter kit.
government can be a useful, meaningful and worthwhile force for good
This is a key part of what it means to be a Democrat, and it is a key difference between the current national candidates. It is the contrast between a McCain whose idea of an ownership society means, as Obama rightly pointed out, that we are to a large degree on our own, and a government which considers itself responsible for raising up the least of our citizens, not limiting many to a lesser role economically and culturally and politically. It is an approach that believes in the words spoken by Hubert Humphrey at the dedication of a Federal building named in his honor, words I have quoted before but which are also applicable here:
The moral test of government is how it treats those who
are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.
There is more of value in Vowell's piece. And there are more examples I could cite of how her words connect with a larger picture. Vowell writes as a proud Democrat who understands what is at stake in this election. And her words should remind us that to get distracted by side issues on Sarah Palin are beside the point: this election is about the vision and direction of this country, not the personalities of the people on the two tickets. Obama and Biden speak to a vision of including all Americans and lifting them up, not of dividing by theology, race, gender, or sexual orientation. It is a vision that seeks to use government to help those who need it, and requires of all of us that we share in a common commitment to one another, despite any differences others may seek to use to divide us.
Pell Grants are a useful metaphor, and a clear example of the difference government assistance can make in the lives of individuals, and thus for the America of which we all are a part.
So let me close as does Vowell, with her final affirmation:
As Senator Obama, the plainspoken former editor of The Harvard Law Review would answer, yes, we can. As the recipient of a partly federally subsidized, fancy wallet-size diploma from Montana State, I prefer to put it this way: Indubitably, we shall.
Peace.