24 Hours Later

When I was twelve, my father and I rode past a police barricade in downtown Pittsburgh where a National Guardsman in riot gear stood watch. There had been race riots in Watts and Newark. There had been riots and a horrible racially motivated murder in York. Unrest was seething just a few miles from the safe, white suburban community in which we lived. It was 1969, MLK’s assassination and Malcolm X’s assassination were still fresh and raw in my mind and I asked my father if there would be a race war in this country. He said he wasn’t sure, but he felt optimistic that cooler heads would eventually prevail.

Shortly thereafter, we, the Weisses, broke bread with an African American family, I guarantee you, a first for my Italian/Russian extended family. What made the dinner even more interesting was that our host, Regis Debonis, was my father’s boss at Mercy hospital where he’d worked for over a decade. The Debonis family lived in a better house than we did. A new car was parked in their garage, while my father drove a battered clunker of a station wagon that was older than I was. Their kids wore new clothes. We wore hand-me-downs. In some families, this would and could have been the source of jealousy and enmity but for my family, this was what my educator sibs call a “teachable moment.” My father, as we drove home from that extraordinary, but entirely ordinary evening, argued that if white and black American families could just sit down to dinner as we’d just done, that most of our misunderstandings would go away.

These two events in 1969 dramatically “bookended” my understanding of race in America. How far apart we thought we were. How close we actually are. I am extremely grateful that my parents provided the direct personal experience to belie all of the stereotypes and bigotry I grew up with in my extended family. I think it was and is the rare experience, to grow up white in America and not confront racism in your own family—extended or otherwise. It was always a moral dilemma for me. Do you try to shout down your 85 year old Uncle Joe, headed to Purgatory for a long sit for the years of Sundays he dishonored my mother’s table with his steady invective spew? How do you confront your cousins, who you love and were raised with and tell them everything they think they know about race relations is wrong? In my urban Fairmount neighborhood, we’re close to families who tell of years of confrontations they had with “blacks” and how those confrontations confirmed the worst of everything their own parents taught them. In the last two years, we’ve had three muggings on my street, all black on white. How do you explain to people that you care about, that despite years of “the evidence of the street,” that you will never be suspicious or raise your children to be suspicious of somebody just because of their skin color. They look at you and say, “See, you are just being naive” and there’s some truth to it.

While I always clung to my father’s sense of reasonableness I also grew more cynical, as it seemed clear that the transcendent Civil Rights Movement leaders had been martyred only to be replaced by the lesser angels of victimhood and divisiveness who confirmed intolerant people’s worst assumptions about race, work ethic, diversity, intelligence and entitlement. People on both sides of the divide could then say knowingly, “See, nothing really changes.” I must confess that I had no reason to expect that a standard bearer of more enlightened race relations would ever rise again to articulate a message to the world that my immediate family had already internalized. The best that I could hope for was to stand on my own lessons and pass them to my children. So I’ve always felt a measure of pride, that we chose to live in a city where we are just one more “minority” in a multi-cultural pot of minorities, that my boys go to school with children of different and mixed races, that they bring friends of all races into our home, that we’ve been governed by three African American mayors and that in one important way, we’ve personally evolved beyond the experiences of the previous generation. My sons don’t see “color” in the same way that I did. They see racial prejudice, if they think about it at all, as a historical artifact and not something they’ve had to live with and confront.

What happened to our nation last night will teach the world what I learned as a boy of twelve. Families at dinner tables will be compelled by the evidence of their own eyes, to have new conversations and come to new conclusions. Centuries of “learned behavior” will be gradually unlearned and replaced by new beliefs. I have always held that America is the world’s greatest laboratory of change. Like the lessons of tolerance that my family learned, we’ve had scant evidence and scant reason to be optimistic about “the experiment” since the 60’s, but a mere 40+ years later, Barack has burst on to the world stage and has blazed trails, not of racial entitlement, but of human entitlement. He had plenty of opportunities at many turns during this campaign, to play “the race card” and chose not to. I doubt he ever will. Thanks to him, the concept of a “race card” became outdated last night and will pass in less than a generation into historical artifact.

John McCain called Barack, “MY PRESIDENT.” That is perhaps the first maverick thing that I’ve heard him say of late that I completely endorse. For decades, I have not been able to say those words with any sense of pride of ownership. Rather, I was more inclined to endorse Michelle Obama’s view of not always being proud of our country. If anything; I’d thought she’d understated the case. I have been telling Bennett, apologizing really, that my generation which had started with such starry-eyed idealism had capitulated so utterly. That is was going to be up to him and his generation to get pissed and pick up the mantle of activism that we’d dropped.

Kate, Char, K I thought of your beautiful mixed race daughters, your multinational sons and our multi-ethnic sons last night when my president ”used his words” to envisioned a world a hundred years from now. I held my breath. I got chills down my spine and dewy eyed for he’d conjured something that hadn’t existed the night before.

People have criticized Barack for being a man of words, but as leaders, parents and citizens, we use our words as evidence of ideas, intent and deeds that extend the thread of optimism, tentatively, one person, one family, at a time. In my life, optimism has been more often been based on a contrarian act of faith than evidence of durable human progress. But it really happened and it happened here and it happened last night. And I own a piece of it!

Today I am proud beyond measure to be an American and a citizen of the world. The generational compact of a better world passable to the children has never seemed more real. Barring cryogenic preservation, even the youngest of my fellow Boomers will not see the America of the 22nd Century, but we have set its stage so that Barack’s children and our children will. The idealism of the young is a precious and wonderful thing, to be protected and nurtured, but I’d argue that the reawakened idealism of the middle-aged is even more precious, for it is rare and most difficult to rekindle.

So cool.

rmw

---

From: Charlotte
Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2008 11:20 AM
To: 'Donohue, Kate'
Subject: RE: Obama

This is a very touching and heartfelt piece, Kate! I am taking the opportunity to forward it to some of my friends and family……….thank you for sharing it!

I will never forget the camaraderie and sense of hope for the USA that I experienced working for weeks at the phone banks in the Obama HQ in Philly! Aside from being elated and I feel so sentimental that last night the greatness of the US of A was eventually demonstrated to the World after 8 years of ‘living in the dark ages’! As you say Kate, many young people will proceed through their lives with their idealism intact and I pray their will not be reason for this to cease! The look in many people’s eyes at Grant Park last night made me feel they were focused on a Messiah and at times I felt he was! Yes, I do believe Obama is intelligent and thoughtful enough to choose wise advisors to help him begin to solve some of our problems and ,as he himself mentioned, he will not be able to do so in 4 years, maybe not even 8 but I am convinced he will serve us and the nation to the best of his ability in a selfless and wise way!

FYI – Kenya declared a day of holiday in order to hold feasts to celebrate the victory of their ‘favourite son’! I was so tearful that neither his father, mother or grandmother could be on that stage with him and Michelle’s family last night!

Many warm thoughts to you all,

Char

---

From: Donohue, Kate
Sent: 05 November 2008 10:04
To: Donohue, Kate
Subject: Obama

Bevan was a flying pig for Halloween and I think that maybe this is the year that pigs really can fly -- last week the Phillies won the World Series and yesterday the United States elected its first African American President.

I volunteered as a poll watcher at a polling location in N Philly near Temple Univ yesterday. I saw so many young people voting for the first time, so excited, so hopeful. They cannot fully appreciate how remarkable this election was, and perhaps that is a good thing. These young people will go forward in life with their idealism intact, convinced that their vote counts and that nothing is impossible. This is just what our nation needs right now.

I shared a hug and misty eyes with a woman as she left the voting booth saying she never thought she would see the day… I witnessed a very frail gentleman arrive just before the polls closed (assisted by a young Obama campaign volunteer). He had been released from the hospital Monday, but wanted so much to vote. Truly it was an historic election.

While it feels like victory, the battle has just begun. President Obama will need all the prayers that we can send, and all the support that we can provide, to govern this country. Let’s hope that he has the wisdom, and that we have the courage, to resolve some of our problems…

k

Economic View--Dem's Better Bet for Economy

Even if:

• You don’t believe that the Bush administration deliberately lied and then thoroughly screwed the pooch in Iraq from the start.
• You don’t believe that there’s been an 8 year run up of graft and corruption as the administration guts the federal bureaucracy and turns public works into private profit for its donors.
• You’re a Halliburton stock owner.
• You don’t feel the election should be a referendum on the worst presidency in our nation’s history.
• You like the rightwing social engineering and loss of privacy rights over the past 8 years.
• You don’t mind that science takes a back seat to politics in Republican policymaking.
• You don’t mind the Supreme Court being stacked with social conservatives.
• You don’t mind that our allies think we’ve become a nation of isolationist, jingoistic, trigger happy, bible thumping, hypocritical Joe Sixpacks.
• You don’t feel the current economic downturn is a direct result of failed national and international economic policies and misplaced tax incentives.
• You don’t feel oil company profits are obscene and based on an international cabal that pollutes the planet and stymies home-grown innovation and alternative sources of energy.
• You think offshore drilling won’t ever threaten the delicate ecosystem of our coastline and will bring back the era of $1/gallon gasoline.
• You think “the war on terror” as defined by Bush is more important than redirecting those trillions into our crumbling infrastructure.
• You're gullible enough to consider Mrs. Palin as a worthy member of the sisterhood of traveling pantsuits.
• You don’t believe social conservatives consistently preach moral, ethical and social standards they or their families don’t live up to.
• You think the gogo Governor of the reindeer state would make a better second in command or commander in chief than the scrapper from Scranton. So much for experience being the deciding factor.
• You think John McCain (who is older than the gipper was) will stay awake, alive and healthy as a horse for the next 4 years.
• Unlike the US Constitution, you feel military service and/or being a POW is a prerequisite and defacto ticket to the White House.
• You make less than $5,000,000 and own less than 7 houses.
• But most of all, even if you’re in the 95th income Percentile, (>$180,000).

The numbers don’t lie.

It is OUR economy and it can't take another 8 years of "stupid." Just think of your wallet too. It will love you more if you vote Dem in Novem. So, ignore my rant with impunity, but ignore this NY Times business post at your own peril, then go vote against the trickle down economic theories that have been about as effective as Soviet communism. America will thank you.

Walking Man 1

I'm a writer, which immediately qualifies me as the most sedentary of schleppers. Six years ago my lack of mobility, love of food and thickening waistline earned me a diagnosis of diabetes, the American Lifestyle Disease. Having two adult onset diabetic parents with failing health and a grandmother who died of the disease, I could hardly claim ignorance about the longterm consequences of the disease. I took a contrarian view. I took my diagnosis as a wakeup call and thus my goal with the help of a good doc, was to create gradual, sustainable and significant change in those aspects of my lifestyle that were and are risk factors. Serious walking began simply as an attempt to fold daily errands, stress reduction and vigorous exercise into my otherwise deskbound day. My Walkable City, Philadelphia, rewarded my efforts and spread its bounty before me.

The recent buzz about urban walkability ratings has jump-started this blogline, which up to now has existed only in my head (and feet). I haven’t figured out how to walk and write at the same time, but I’ve come close.

Nearly every day at 5:00, my eight year old son and I step out our front door and cross two busy streets. We’re off to collect Mom who works at the University of PA, Presbyterian Hospital 2.5 miles from our house. The boy and I both have our MP3 players plugged in and are enjoying our own private soundtracks. Mine has about 2000 songs. I don’t know if I’ll be listening to Leonard Cohen, Arvo Paart or Deep Purple. The random surprise of shuffle selection is the joy of it. Perhaps it fits that I also find the jangling hustle bustle of the city soothing. I’ve plugged in my musician-quality Shure E-4c earbuds, which when properly inserted in the ear canal, immediately knock out about 70% of the ambient noise while allowing me to enjoy the full tonal range of my music without cranking it.

Some folks think I’m irresponsible or shutting myself off from the world, but I’ll tell you it’s bliss. A bus rumbles by and I do hear it, but at quarter strength. Somewhere, a wailing fire engine closes in but I feel none of the instinctual panic you experience in your chest as the decibels build to a throbbing scream in your head. I live in the city. I don’t need any more noise. I have a choice about what goes in my ears, soundwise. It’s incredibly liberating. But this splendid aural isolation comes at a modest cost of increased visual acuity. “Look both ways before you cross the street. Then look again.” Mom said it and well into my second half century, these are good words to live by. The boy and I hold hands and communicate with gestures and hand signals. His stride is two steps to my one, but his pace is flowing and easy, a sort of skipping run. He enjoys this as much as I do. We fall quickly into a rhythm. I shift hands with him, to keep him on “the inside,” my body shielding his from oncoming traffic of any sort.

I share my own, more cautionary version of Mom’s bromide with both my boys. “Assume the people flying past you in their cars are psychos or idiots and can lose control of their cars in a split second. Pay attention and live.” A tad dramatic perhaps, but a little paranoia is healthy when it comes to navigating urban byways.

At this point, if I were just walking for pleasure, I'd have all kinds of choices. I’m on one of dozens of access points to the world's largest urban park. I can travel north or south along the Schuylkill River, a well-used recreational waterscape, where Ben Franklin himself picnicked and frolicked with his lady admirers. I could follow the river away from or directly into the leftbank heart of the city. Or I can climb the hill behind the Art Museum which winds through a Victorian walker's garden with its gazebo and trails, running back up to the museum which occupies the site of the Philadelphia Waterworks, the nation's first urban waterworks, the architectural and scientific marvel and travel destination of the 18th century. Heading west, I then cross the Spring Garden Street bridge, with its commanding northward view of the river, the museum and the waterworks, all which when seen by sunset, recall the colors of Sienna. The southward view is dominated by my favorite view of the Philadelphia skyline.

This may be a bit of hometown hubris, but frankly I'm surprised that Philadelphia ranks lower than New York and San Fran. in walkability. Maybe I and the study's authors have different definitions of walkability. I've been telling people for years that this is the most walkable city in the country and I stand by it. I've visited and walked them all, with the exception of Portland. The reasons for my preference are myriad. First of all, walking for me is a 20-30 mile per week activity. I average about 5 miles per hour. Try maintaining that pace in NYC and not slowing, dodging or colliding with other pedestrians. Hey you, I’m walkin’ here!

Don’t get me wrong. I love New York, love walking in it, eating in it, doing business or just having fun in it. New York is many bigger and better things, but more walkable than Philadelphia, it is not. To me, it boils down to modulation. New York’s skyline is so straight up and down, so constricted that even the parks and open spaces feel hemmed in. Not so here. Here the skyline offers, well, sky, room to breathe. Here a building can be appreciated, in context, like Cesar Pelli’s changeable magnificent Cira Center which maintains a dynamic ever-shifting dialogue with earth and sky. In New York it would be compressed into the same space with a dozen other buildings, all just as magnificent perhaps, but battling each other for eye-space, lost to their own scale. Here Cira and I have room to breath, to interact. So I greet it every day. It talks back to me. I feel we have a relationship.

Like many walkable urban neighborhoods, there are dozens of charming restaurants and shops less than mile from my doorstep. But here, Billy Penn’s rigorous, revolutionary gridwork of streets means that even the first time (walking) visitor stands little chance of getting lost. Several dramatic diagonal avenues, former farmer’s market pikes, radiate into or out of the city, (depending on your perspective), the most notable of these is the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, which in a few years, will, I predict, come to resemble Barcelona’s Las Ramblas in scale, grandeur and pedestrian amenities. Though its lights aren’t the most pedestrian-friendly, the BFP makes City Hall an easy 20 minute destination from my home in Fairmount. Philadelphia’s terrain is neither completely flat like Chi town’s, yet not so demanding that one needs bionic calves to handle the ascensions and declensions of say San Fran.

Not that my calves can’t handle the Golden City, thank you, it’s just that again, maintaining a sustainable pace is critical to my definition of walkability and walking as exercise. So is the aesthetic experience of it, the sense of variable, visual modulation, the confluence of greenery, open sky, open ground, dramatic vistas, urban structures and urban cultural amenities. In addition, Philadelphia has what few other of America's most walkable cities have and that is arguably the most extensive historical pedigree in the country, little gems of which constantly reveal themselves with little effort on the part of the observant walker. I imagine a future which I long for, but will probably never see, of walking these fair streets and byways, unperturbed by the infernal combustion machines that dominate the roads—for now.

Don’t get me wrong. I have a late model Toyota Avalon that I love and maintain like some guys pamper their sportier rides. I’ve put all of 10,000 miles on a year on it. I have already, by lifestyle and preference, reduced my “carbon footprint.” My only problem is when I have to suck in some of yours.

On the Spring Garden Street Bridge, we hold our breath to inhale a bit less of the blue gray sulfurous spew coming from a particularly noxious SUV with a failing transmission. Will the vehicle even make its destination? Do I know something that the driver doesn’t?

Perhaps not, but I do have a theory. It came to me on the Spring Garden Street Bridge while watching drivers jockeying to make the turn onto the Expressway down ramp. I’ve come to believe that learning to drive a car was the first step to the emotional distancing that allowed Air force pilots to carpet bomb entire villages in Vietnam, then blithely suck down cold beers in Saigon officers’ clubs an hour later. Conversely keeping feet on the street keeps you connected in ways too intimate for some people to handle. The more machine you put between yourself and your own transport, the more distanced you are. The boy and I stand with a commanding view of the Schuylkill Expressway, watching the spasmodic progress of what I call the red snake and its opposing cousin, the white snake. It’s hard to imagine all the individuals in all those cars as singular entities rather than just segments of the snakes.

Imagine all this, without cars, I tell my son. He’s heard it before. The power and the clarity of the idea make us pause. Perhaps it’s just the fumes. I heard today that GM’s quarterly earning statement had plunged. Corporate spokespeople said and I quote, they were “caught offguard by declining sales and Americans’ efforts to conserve fuel by buying smaller and fewer vehicles.” Caught offguard???? It must be a real talent to say something like that and not look incredibly stupid doing so. Then again, I guess if you manufacture Hummers, there’s lot about sustainable transportation choices that will catch you offguard. It’s just like the 70’s, just 30 years later.

BTW, I've been off diabetes meds for over a year and have managed my disease into remission by diet and exercise alone. I've lost 60 pounds and all the aches and pains that I used to get in my knees and legs are gone. I have, in my own opinion at least, America's most walkable city to thank. Sign me, the Philadelphia Walking Man

Think Different

My son’s recent acceptance at the premiere creative and performance arts high school in Philadelphia inspired this look back down the path that brought us here. This is our story, but I don’t think it’s entirely unique by any means. For good or not, the world is a lot more complex than when we were kids and just went to the reliable neighborhood primary school and high school. For the better part of B’s academic career we paid 5 figure tuitions and battled with a hidebound administration (in his old school) that didn’t have a clue as to how to handle kids like B who are challenged by traditional academics. For years, they ratcheted up a case for warehousing our talented son in even more expensive suburban “special needs schools” that would have taxed our already strained budget and meant hours of grinding commute time each day. It wasn’t just a matter of finances and lifestyle. There were and are deeper principles at stake, namely, what rights we as consumers of the “educational product” are entitled to.

Three main federal laws apply to public schools. These are the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504), and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), passed in 1990. Though the public schools are the most strained and underfunded of all public institutions, they are required to educate every kid to the standards of the state. They may not be able to get the funds they need for more than basic programs, but they are mandated to take on all comers unless they pose a hazard to the school and even then, they are required to accommodate as best they can.

What legal protections exist for private school students? The answer is virtually none. Unless they accept federal funds, private schools are kinda like the Boy Scouts. You have the right to pay the tuition. They have carte blanche to discriminate or select as they see fit. You have the right to suck it up and move on if they feel your kid isn’t a “good fit.”

For 5 years, we were told that B’s “differences” put him in “academic jeopardy” and made him incompatible with the school he was enrolled in. They implied that we were less than intelligent or responsible parents if we didn’t understand this. The other argument, the most specious in my opinion, was that with their 15/1 student teacher ratio, learning specialists, state-of-the-art libraries, media labs and rich endowment, that this poor beleaguered institution wasn’t “set up” to meet the educational demands of special needs kids. That it wouldn’t be fair to the other children. When I tell this to public school educators, they roll their eyes and laugh derisively. Still, most private school parents when confronted with the case against their child’s continued inclusion swallow their disappointment, take the hint and pull their kids out. Who can blame them? But we didn’t do this. Why? Because we understand our son and we saw the flipside far better than they did.

The flipside was that B loved his school. He was fortunate to be mentored by a handful of inspired teachers (mostly in the arts) who “got him” and we credit these creative educators for their independent role in his success. From his perspective, his experience was far more positive than negative. He worked very hard, learned a lot, had fun, had a flawless behavior record and maintained an overall 3.0 GPA. He and we cherished the close society of his friends, most of whom he’s known since kindergarten.

We count as one of our greatest successes that we were able to mitigate the pressure so that he was largely unaware of it. He never knew that his former academic advisor, a horrid little witch of a teacher who stood over him in her own words “for ten minutes, timing him with a stopwatch while he fumbled to open his locker” was making a value judgment against him. He never knew about the stunningly arrogant music teacher who wrote that B “lacked the mental ability” to focus on his course. He never met the abrasive “school psychologist” whose opinions the administrators leaned so heavily on, though she was in fact was unqualified to evaluate him because she was only a sociologist by credential. Even so, judging from her age and backward attitudes, it’s likely that said educational credentials were gained some time before the Sputnik launch. From my discussions with other parents, it became clear that her sole raison d’être at the school was to weed out the “different ones.” For four years, we sat across the table from this hatchet woman until I put my foot down and refused any meeting that she attended. We got so much more done without her.

Believe you me, I came to those meetings with much more than parental emotions in tow. I presented research results on the efficacy of mainstreaming mildly learning challenged kids. I developed an individualized education plan with help and ideas from educator siblings and friends. Kara and I read and worked at times on a daily basis with the teachers we knew we could count on to track B’s progress and challenges. We also spent several European vacations worth of funds on private tutors, private evaluators and private testing because the private school “psychologist” convinced us that we wouldn’t find adequate resources in the public sector.

Yet every year, for four years, it was as if the private school had purged our son’s details from their institutional memory banks. Every year, we started afresh at an end-of-first term meeting in which B’s academic challenges were detailed with dire predictions about his ability to make the grade and manage emotionally. Always reactive – never proactive. Every year, we’d all buckle down, engage the accommodations and B’s grades would rise across the board. Several times every year, I’d do a reality check and ask him if he was happy with his school. Every year he said he loved it and was willing to do the work to stay there. With that his mother and I vowed he could go there as long as he wanted. And that is the reason, more than any other that we dug our heels in. In the process, we learned new definitions for perseverance, academic success and hard work. These are lessons they don’t teach you in school, lessons learned from our own son.

We worked tirelessly within the system. We challenged, lobbied and cajoled the people on the other end of the table. We tested B privately when they said we needed to. We visited the special needs schools we knew we couldn’t afford. We paid for expensive tutoring. But we were prepared to go further, much, much further. By this, I mean the following. I reasoned that if the private school in using public school bussing was in fact accepting federal aid directly or indirectly, that one or more of the federal or state mandated inclusiveness statutes might apply to them. I was one phone call away from testing that assumption and discovering if we could turn this tiny bit of leverage into a court case to test our rights. I guess we’re all fortunate that it never got that far.

The turning point came in late 2006, 7th grade, when I sat in the middle school director’s office and she told me that she had “no vested interest in helping B enroll in any other high school than their own.” This was the very same administrator who in this and many prior meetings had told us that B was not ideally suited to her school. I told her that I was grateful for her candor (chillingly Catch 22 though it was). That night Kara and I went into emergency session. The open enrollment period for out of neighborhood public schools had lapsed three months prior, but through an incredible stroke of luck or vigilance, I learned that our neighborhood association was holding a “Schools Night.” So, on that raw, rain-soaked December night, we buttonholed a Philadelphia School District official who listened sympathetically to (a much abbreviated version of) our tale and committed to working with us. I don’t know what strings she pulled if any, but through her ministrations, we were able to enroll B in the highly-sought-after William Meredith School, where for the first time, school administrators worked in concert with us, rather than at odds. Words hardly express what a revelation and relief it has been, but I can tell you that our experience this school year has turned all the private school “experts’” stereotypes about the public sector on their ear.

For many years, we’d been asked why we chose this uphill path for so long, rather than accept the recommendations of “the experts.” The answer was simple. The experts, in this case were wrong and short-sighted. If a child is an artist/scholar, musician/scholar, athlete/scholar, entrepreneur/scholar or a computer whiz/scholar or is gifted or challenged in any way that diverges from the scholastic norm, then chances are that the experts just don’t get them. Advocating for your child and charting the right course is then left to entirely to parents and guardians who have to make difficult, incredibly important decisions, with little guidance from the traditional academic community. I think they expect you to fail. In fact, I think they rely on it. I look forward to the day when the academic communities in private and in public schools learn to truly embrace inclusiveness and scholastic diversity. In B’s old private school, which touts its diversity, it became clear that they really meant inclusiveness and diversity in a very specific, narrow range. We found it curious that this diversity never included a single blind, deaf or physically disabled kid. Some day, some family with a fire in its collective belly is going to take on a private school in a court of law and challenge and prevail on just these issues.

It makes you wonder why private schools, while selling their inclusiveness, apply it with such aggressive selectivity. Perhaps that too is a marketing decision, as if word got out that a mainstream private school truly caters to special needs they might be inundated with applications from less “desirable” applicants. Is it overly cynical to suggest that the marketing image of inclusiveness trumps the reality of inclusiveness?

We’ve also learned that different sectors have vastly different understandings of what it means to be “special needs.” This year, Kara and I have seen a stark contrast between what “special needs” means in private schools versus public schools. If the Philadelphia Inquirer is to believed, In the public schools sadly, “special needs” is often synonymous with disruption and discipline problems. It seems unlikely that B, if he’d been enrolled in a public school from the start, would have ever been flagged for his mild but real special learning needs. In private schools, special needs means everybody who does not fit within their narrow beam. Both are failed models.

My take is that ALL OF US, all learners have “special needs.” If you take that statement to its logical conclusion, it means up-ending the cookie cutter approach to education and truly addressing the special needs of every individual, whatever their abilities and talents. You only have to look at U.S. science, math and literacy test comparisons with other advanced cultures to see that the traditional American model is failing even the traditional scholars. The failure is wide and systemic, a failure in particular, of our baby boomer generation, who may have started out “thinking different” but quickly lapsed into familiar rubrics perhaps because we are distracted by the political exigencies of four decades of fruitless, arrogant petroleum cowboy diplomacy. I’m waiting for a politician, a presidential candidate to point this out and then detail the vision for overhauling both our education infrastructure and our roads and bridges. Republican, Democrat or Independent, that’s the person who will get my zealous support. I’m not holding my breath. I’ve not seen any of the current field with the courage, honesty or zealotry to tackle these, the truly most important infrastructure issues we face as we pass on our legacy to the next generation.

From my perspective in the adult e-learning business, I sense that an educational revolution is at hand. There are technology and training solutions coming down the pike that will make fundamental differences. Communications tools are coming to the forefront that are creating economically viable, scalable, customized lifelong education for everybody who needs it. Embracing “universal special needs” will drive a true revolution in education. But first, I think it will involve an overhaul in the base premise, in leadership, in thinking, in educational modeling. God, I hope it happens soon. Two hundred years ago, a teenager like B would have left a traditional academic environment and been engaged as an apprentice by a master artist or craftsman. It’s clear that something was lost when our culture shifted from the apprentice/mentor model to the industrial age model of education where centuries later, we’re still stuck. Perhaps five years from now, parents and students will have more choices, more information and more flexible and creative solutions from the academic world. By that point, the Weiss family will be embroiled in the next great challenge of engaging a higher education system that seems to have largely distanced itself from its legacy commitment to the learning needs of the middle class.

Plenty of parents and students face issues similar to ours. Our story has a happy ending so far. At the end of a lot of hard work, independent research and tireless advocacy, our talented artist/scholar will receive the academic training and creative mentoring that he merits. Looking back on our experiences, we can find no regrets, no false steps or do-overs. Well, maybe we could have saved several thousand bucks, had we learned sooner to recognize and distrust the most patently self-serving advice we were given. Ours is the luck born of hard work. If there is a single lesson to be distilled from our experience, it’s that when it comes to education, “challenging authority” and “thinking different” aren’t just shopworn boomer bromides, but life skills that we and our children will need to succeed in a world that no longer regards us as the last word. How can America regain its academic pre-eminence? Engaging a concept like universal special needs might just be the answer.