Anna Deveare Smith is one of my favorite American artists (and not just because she was on The West Wing.) She is a gifted actress, author and playwright, but even more importantly, her "documentary theater" style of writing and performing displays a respect for the diversity of voice and opinion that makes up the American mosaic. (See her TEDTalk which is a piece from her show "On the Road: A Search for American Character for an example.)
So it should come as no surprise that she has the ability to capture the range of the debate on health care in this country in an OpEd piece in today’s New York Times. Here is her introduction:
Over the last few years, in preparation for a new play, I interviewed doctors, patients and healers about the human body, its resilience and its vulnerability. Although our conversations were not primarily about the health care debate, they do reveal many of the feelings and thoughts of the people in the audience President Obama will address tonight.
The unruliness that now animates the conversation stems from our passions, hopes and discomforts — about life, death, who should (or should not) take care of us and whom we should take care of. The president’s audience has a million and one perspectives, some of them clumping together like blood platelets under one political roof or another. The following excerpts (not all of which are in my play) reflect the range of views.
At a time when civility and rational discourse seem to be at an all-time low, her ability to listen so intently and bring across the myriad voices of the debate without irony and without judgment is so important. We all can learn from her ability to listen for the humanity in our voices.
Today, President Obama nominated a very experienced center-left jurist for the Supreme Court. The nominee is a Hispanic woman. If confirmed, she will be the first Justice of Hispanic descent to serve on the Supreme Court.
Today, the Supreme Court of California ruled that Proposition 8 — the ballot initiative that outlaws gay marriage — was legal under the California Constitution.
Today when White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked about President Obama’s reaction to the California decision, he responded with a very politic non-answer:
He didn’t. And as a result, he missed an opportunity to speak about real change. He missed a chance to speak out for policy change that affects millions of Americans. Instead, he leaves himself open to criticism — from the left and the right — that his pick of Judge Sotomayor is (from the right) tokenism and (from the left) empty symbolism.
A year ago, I went to my friend Jason’s wedding in San Francisco. I was able to return the favor he paid me nine years ago by standing with him as he married the love of his life. For Jason and Kevin, it meant that the state could claim that their love was any less meaningful, valuable or powerful as the love another couple may share. It was a wonderful day, and as his friend, it meant the world to me that he was able to have that day.
Several months ago, I stood with my friend Steve as he had to bury his husband after a horrible accident. We spoke at the wake, and he talked about how much harder it would have been if he had to fight to be allowed to make funeral arrangements, deal with his husband’s finances, etc… At his lowest, most difficult moment, his marriage meant that his grief, as overwhelming as it was, was not compounded by the anger and frustration of not being married in the eyes of the law.
During the campaign, time and time again, President Obama appealed our ideals of what our country could be. He spoke of equality and equity. He appealed the progressive ideals of young and old across the nation. Today, while on the one hand, he made an historic nomination to the Supreme Court, he betrayed those same ideals by staying silent when his voice was dearly needed.
I hope Judge Sotomayor is confirmed. I hope that she is more than a center-left jurist. I hope she does pass judgement with compassion and empathy. And I hope that she serves as a living symbol that our government is of all the people and for all the people. But on a day when a judicial body in this country dashed the hopes of millions in California (and millions more across the nation,) President Obama could have — and should have — made plain and powerful the link between the need for jurists like Judge Sotomayor on the Supreme Court bench and the need for the courts to overturn unjust laws like Proposition Eight. That’s what we needed today. That kind of leadership was the change I could believe in. Anything else, is sadly, to quote Vice-President Biden, more of the same.
That was one of John Wooden’s credos — Be quick, but don’t hurry.
It seems to me that Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, a former former Harvard basketball player, would do well to remember. Sec. Duncan was quoted heavily in an April 17th editorial in the Chicago Tribune that suggested that unless Illinois quickly changes to his ideas on education reform, they will get none of the $5 Billion "Race to the Top" Department of Education money.
I question those folks who would say that there is one way to fix education — or that we know what we need to know. I worry a great deal that in our hurry to change education, we are pushing "reforms" through that may not do what we want them. And I worry about a Secretary of Education who would use language such as this:
"Illinois has a chance to either stay at a very mediocre level, or fundamentally break through and start to reward excellence and start to create innovation and incent innovation," Duncan said. "And I would strongly urge the state, and I would urge you to help encourage the state, to think very, very differently about what they do. And if Illinois commits to that there’s a chance of putting in tremendous, tremendous resources the likes of which this state has never seen.
"But if things don’t change in a very meaningful way, Illinois won’t be among those eight or 10 or 15 states" that receive a share of the $5 billion.
One, what is the data that suggests all of Illinois is at a mediocre level? Two, the innovations that Duncan proposes — according to the rest of the article — are more charter schools and merit pay based on test scores. The recent RAND study that included Philadelphia charter schools suggests that we still have a lot to learn about the efficacy of charter schools. That’s not to say they shouldn’t be funded, but rather that we shouldn’t only look at the latest educational fads as the path to improvement.
And that’s happening a lot lately. It’s easy to forget, but NCLB is only eight years old. We have seen an almost complete upheaval of public education in those eight years. We are racing toward… what? What is the specific vision of those who would reauthorize NCLB, who would push for merit pay, who would push for both more charter schools and more standardized curriculum for the public schools?
There is no question that we must continue to work to fix our schools. There’s no question that there is work to do. But let us be deliberate and thoughtful about the way we do it. Let us dial down the rhetoric and recognize the hard work and successes that so many educators — and so many schools — have achieved. Let us make choices (and spend money) in ways that help students as best we can, as opposed to changing as much as we can as fast as we can, just to say we did something.
In other words, let us be quick… but let us never hurry.