According to my wife, the news about the 60th anniversary of the creation of Israel is sparse. Where a report exists, the accounts lean toward celebration. Here in Jordan, where many people still wait for the day when they can go back to a house that was stolen from them long ago, this anniversary is as much to celebrate as Columbus Day is to Native Americans.
Since I first began traveling to Jordan to research the effects of educational interventions here, I have had my eyes opened to the bias in the American media about the Israeli-Palestinian (or should I say, Palestinian-Israeli?) conflict.
It seems to me that our undying, uncritical relationship with Israel, which refuses to tie funding to human rights policy (like it does with any other country who receives our largesse) runs the great likelihood of undermining the very security that the United States wishes for Israel.
I insert here some quotes from newspapers in Jordan, with the aim of letting people see an alternate perspective. Good example: When asked why many Palestinians refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist, a common response is to turn the criticism on its head. The regular treatment of the Palestinians like dogs is a refusal to allow them to exist. The Jewish people have been in this area for less time than the Palestinians (read your Bible! The Jews stormed into the land and claimed divine authority to kill every man, woman, child and animal that they saw. The reason given for the conquest of the Jewish people was that they did not carry out the extermination of the people who were in the land first completely and without mercy.), and when they have been there, it has been a contentious relationship. Hear in these articles both a sorrow that their people are treated so poorly and without sympathy, and a true desire to just live in peace and raise their families.
This from Amnesty International's report released a few months ago:
"Israel has plunged the Palestinians into unprecedented levels of poverty and despair through 40 years of occupation, yet failed to ensure its own security...The Israeli barriers [which have been built on Arab lands] defy the International Court of Justice and separates Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank...Palestinians are also restricted by more than 500 checkpoints and blockades as well as a network of roads reserved solely for settlers and linking settlements with Israel proper. These policies are aimed at benefiting continuously expanding but unlawful Israeli settlements while causing the virtual collapse of the Palestinian economy...Israeli actions have resulted in widespread human rights abuses and have also failed to bring security to the Israeli and Palestinian civilian population." The report called on Israel to lift the blockades and other restrictions on Palestinians and ensure its actions target specific security threats rather than punish entire communities. Finally, it urged the Jewish state to stop building the barrier inside the West Bank, remove the parts it has already built there, gradually scrap all its settlements, and end its policy of demolishing Palestinian homes, declaring this set of policies to be a "modern-day apartheid."
How many Americans have heard this report?
Here's more to think about:
This morning, over breakfast, I read an article in the Jordanian Times, describing a recent expose from Britain about a 1976 rescue of passengers of a hijacked Air France flight at Entebbe, Uganda. Turns out the hijacking was rigged. It was Israelis dressed up as Palestinians, making demands. When the Israeli military showed up on the scene and "rescued" the passengers, it was seen as another reason for supporting Israelis over Palestinians.
I quote: "What was the objective of the Israeli role in the hijack? According to Colvin (then first secretary at the British embassy in Paris), the operation was designed to undermine the Palestine Liberation Organization's standing in France and to prevent what Israel saw as a growing rapprochement between the PLO and the Americans."
The article goes on to describe other incidents which were later exposed as Israeli plots to make the Palestinian cause look bad. Then, of course, the Jordanian opinion I have heard so frequently here, which in the US is never stated, because it would be viewed as anti-Semitism:
"While it could not be proved that Israeli operatives played a direct role in the September 11 murderous suicide hijackings that resulted in the death of nearly 3,000 people in the US, strong evidence has emerged that Mossad (The Israeli secret service) had penetrated the group which carried out the attacks and provided vital assistance to facilitate the operation. That should explain why the US air defence failed to respond immediately to the hijackings and the entire anti-hijack operational network of the US failed to mobilise itself and take countermeasures...
"The exposure of the Israeli role in the 1976 hijack should serve as a reminder to all those who harbour hopes of a just and fair peace between the Arab world and Jewish state of how tough and deceitful it could get when it is pressed to accept the minimum conditions for peace; there would be dramatic and stunning incidents designed to divert world attention and to strengthen Israeli negotiating positions...
"The Arabs face the challenging mission of being able to outguess and outwit the Israelis at every stage, and this is no easy task."
This opinion reminds me of the liberation front in El Salvador, when I went there. They claimed that the Salvadoran army, with funding from the US government, would routinely pose as Liberation Army personnel and attack its own people, in order to make the case for continued funding and support from world leaders.
Perhaps this is just what people who are fighting for their lives say? I don't know, but it sure is an interesting perspective, and one that I hear over and over and over.
Pass it on to anyone you think might be interested in hearing another side.
Listen, I'm not an anti-Semite, and I think that Israel has a right to be there. But so do the people who were there in 1947. And everyone has a right to speak out against their oppression. Clearly, if you start watching the disproportionate response from Israel to Palestinian, followed by the blame of the Palestinian side as "terrorist," you will see how frustrating it must be for what will soon be a not-so-silent majority. Not to mention how infuriating it must be to be called an anti-Semite, when you are yourself a Semite!
In the words of a writer of a recent editorial here, "The Jews did not survive extermination only to entrench themselves behind walls of their own making. They survived in order to resolve what for too long has looked like an insoluble conundrum: legitimising Jewish statehood in the eyes of those who consider themselves its victims."
When I speak with Palestinians here, they are angry, but they are also ready. Ready to stay alive, and coexist, if only the other side would stop looking at them out of the corner of their eye, with all the rationality of a paranoid schizophrenic. Israel "must ultimately free itself from the albatross around its neck and relinquish the occupied territories." The cushion of the West Bank and Gaza is not working, is it?
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Friday, May 9, 2008
Educational Success is about $$ - Part 2: Increasing Student Achievement and Parent Involvement in Poor Schools
In a capitalist system, everyone worries and thinks about money. Poor people especially. But the worries are compounded and compressed. Will I have enough for good food? Will I have enough to pay the rent? Will I have enough Will I have enough Will I have enough?
Then, the perennial worries about safety. My wife taught at a charter school in North Philly, and says that many of her students really didn't believe that they would be alive too long after they were 18.
So now, two things to discuss here: 1) If you are a parent in this situation, what do you do? 2) If you are student, what do you prioritize?
As a psychology student, I learned about Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. In a nutshell, Maslow posited that there were different needs that humans had, arranged in a hierarchy of importance. When you hit the level of need that is not being met, all the needs above it are ignored, in favor of the need that is missing. The first thing people have to have is a comfort with their physiological needs: food, water, shelter and clothing. Next, a person needs to feel safe in their home and in their society. The needs that follow are love, esteem, meaning and purpose, and then self-actualization.
Maslow stated: "We should never have the desire to compose music or create mathematical systems, or to adorn our homes, or to be well dressed if our stomachs were empty most of the time, or if we were continually dying of thirst, or if we were continually threatened by an always impending catastrophe, or if every one hated us."
So here you are, living in a shitty neighborhood where you don't feel safe, wondering whether you'll be able keep your head above water. Are you thinking about the PTA meeting? Does it cross your mind to ask your child about your homework? These concerns are above the more basic level of survival on which some people must focus.
Let's switch to a student who thinks that his life is destined to an early grave, or an early prison. Are you focused on getting good grades, studying hard, thinking about how your course selection will look to a College Review Board? We couldn't expect any of us to do so, in the same situation. Maslow believed that all humans were very much alike. Our strategies for dealing with the satisfaction of our needs may differ, but that we have certain needs that preoccupy us until they are satisfied, this cannot be doubted.
Humans have before anything else the need for water and food in order to survive. That's why the physiological needs are the strongest of all the needs. When a person is hungry the area of consciousness is filled with the desire to eat and all the other needs step into the background and in a way become non-existent. What happens when there is always food on the table? A person has the "room" to think about satisfying the need for security. If the world isn't secure, the needs above security do not exist.
I hear well-fed, secure people in loving relationships, who are pursuing endeavors that make them happy, complain about bad parenting, and a lack of long-term thinking on the part of poorer students. If Maslow is right, put these people in North Philly, making a few hundred dollars a month, and see where their focus is. (Of course, these people have grown up with the social capital and understanding of where and how to find resources outside North Philly, so... probably not a good experiment. Nonetheless, raising this parenthetical issue solidifies my point.)
What's to be done? Knowing that an education has the strong potential to life a child out of poverty, how do we get students and parents in poverty to care more?
Here are my premises:
Then, the perennial worries about safety. My wife taught at a charter school in North Philly, and says that many of her students really didn't believe that they would be alive too long after they were 18.
So now, two things to discuss here: 1) If you are a parent in this situation, what do you do? 2) If you are student, what do you prioritize?
As a psychology student, I learned about Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. In a nutshell, Maslow posited that there were different needs that humans had, arranged in a hierarchy of importance. When you hit the level of need that is not being met, all the needs above it are ignored, in favor of the need that is missing. The first thing people have to have is a comfort with their physiological needs: food, water, shelter and clothing. Next, a person needs to feel safe in their home and in their society. The needs that follow are love, esteem, meaning and purpose, and then self-actualization.
Maslow stated: "We should never have the desire to compose music or create mathematical systems, or to adorn our homes, or to be well dressed if our stomachs were empty most of the time, or if we were continually dying of thirst, or if we were continually threatened by an always impending catastrophe, or if every one hated us."
So here you are, living in a shitty neighborhood where you don't feel safe, wondering whether you'll be able keep your head above water. Are you thinking about the PTA meeting? Does it cross your mind to ask your child about your homework? These concerns are above the more basic level of survival on which some people must focus.
Let's switch to a student who thinks that his life is destined to an early grave, or an early prison. Are you focused on getting good grades, studying hard, thinking about how your course selection will look to a College Review Board? We couldn't expect any of us to do so, in the same situation. Maslow believed that all humans were very much alike. Our strategies for dealing with the satisfaction of our needs may differ, but that we have certain needs that preoccupy us until they are satisfied, this cannot be doubted.
Humans have before anything else the need for water and food in order to survive. That's why the physiological needs are the strongest of all the needs. When a person is hungry the area of consciousness is filled with the desire to eat and all the other needs step into the background and in a way become non-existent. What happens when there is always food on the table? A person has the "room" to think about satisfying the need for security. If the world isn't secure, the needs above security do not exist.
I hear well-fed, secure people in loving relationships, who are pursuing endeavors that make them happy, complain about bad parenting, and a lack of long-term thinking on the part of poorer students. If Maslow is right, put these people in North Philly, making a few hundred dollars a month, and see where their focus is. (Of course, these people have grown up with the social capital and understanding of where and how to find resources outside North Philly, so... probably not a good experiment. Nonetheless, raising this parenthetical issue solidifies my point.)
What's to be done? Knowing that an education has the strong potential to life a child out of poverty, how do we get students and parents in poverty to care more?
Here are my premises:
- Everyone in a capitalist system worries about money;
- If you are worried about satisfying lower level needs, your worries about money will be more concrete than abstract; and so consequently
- Prioritizing education is unrealistic, if what we want is for people to sacrifice now for the longer-term benefits of college degrees and high test scores. Too long-term. Removed from the pressures of current reality. If we want students and their parents to prioritize education, we cannot do so with potential rewards that are too far in the future.
I have two suggestions for how to tie capitalist yearnings to the satisfaction of the lower level needs to which the poor must attend. Both of them are probably too radical for US culture, the first more than the second. One or the other, or both, will work.
First suggestion: Provide a safety net for people, such that worries about food, water, clothing and shelter will be met for all, as a basic human right. Regardless of whether you fuck away your life on drugs and never do a goddam thing. If everyone had enough to eat, and a roof over their head that they knew wouldn't be taken away, poorer communities themselves could turn their attention to safety, and crime would be reduced internally. As it is, crime in poor communities is a symptom of the indignity of poverty.
A colleague of mine at the Philadelphia School District, on noting the rather meager results of the programs we were evaluating, felt persuaded that you could get rid of the programs, and spend the same money on giving people food and housing, and you'd get the same results. Maslow, I think, would concur.
Second suggestion: Condense the amount of time between behavior and reward. Give people money for educational involvement. I can hear the detractors saying that it's not fair for parents to get paid to come to school meetings, or for students to get paid for doing well in school, while they do it without getting paid. My argument is that the only thing that will motivate someone (parent or child) who is worried about satisfying his/her basic needs is something tangible that has a direct effect on alleviating that worry.
Wouldn't we be an even greater society if we could have the compassion to simultaneously provide some help to someone who was hungry, or thirsty, or homeless AND give them the longer-term strength that an education would provide? It doesn't have to be one or the other. Both/and is so much better than either/or, isn't it?
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Educational Success is About $$: Improving Teacher Quality in Poor Schools
I'm new to blogging, and am just learning the power of its flexibility. I suppose one way to make an impact is to write about things I know. A later entry (although it would be more appropriate today, since it is the day of al Nakba) will discuss the 60th "anniversary" of the state of Israel, and why it is as much to celebrate for Arab peoples as Columbus Day is to Native Americans.
For today, I wish to post some thoughts I have about educational quality in the United States, particularly as it relates to the poor, and how the infusion of capitalistic features could make a difference. Let us first say that these ideas are not ideas I would propose internationally. However, love it or hate it, America's primary deity is the dollar, and so much of the disparity in educational quality and outcomes is related to how our behaviors represent true worship of our god.
There are three elements of our educational system that can be explained as resulting from our lack of consistency in applying the power of our capitalist worldview to all of our citizens. By extension, these undesirable symptoms of this lack of total application can be ameliorated by making the assumption that people who grow up under the influence of this religion (we can call it a $pirituality, if you wish) will make decisions in line with this upbringing. Each day, I will discuss one of these three threads, and make my argument that a focus on money, and understanding that people want more of it, can be used to improve education in the United States.
1) Teacher quality: It's no secret that teacher quality in poor schools is "poorer" than in more affluent schools. One reason for this has to do with the policy of using the seniority system for filling teaching positions. In Philadelphia, where I worked for 4 1/2 years, teachers with the most years of teaching get first pick of all the vacancies. It's not 100% true that experienced teachers are better at their jobs than new recruits, but it is a truism. You can imagine the combination of safety concerns and race/class attitudes that make it harder to fill schools in impoverished areas. So, by the time the newer teachers get their turn, guess which schools are the only ones left on the list?
Another terrible policy that Philadelphia has (and many other urban districts. See the reports on the funding gap by EdTrust here: http://www2.edtrust.org/EdTrust/Product+Catalog/main.htm#ff) is a budgetary practice that has got to go. Schools are given an amount of money for teaching staff. The way this line item is calculated is to take the number of students in the school, and divide it by a predetermined student:teacher ratio (for example, we want our schools to have 1 teacher for every 25 students).
Now here's the problem: Instead of then calculating an amount of money that the school can spend, perhaps by multiplying the number of allotted teachers by the average salary in the District, schools are just given an allotment of teachers. This means that, if you are a school in the best neighborhood in Philadelphia, and consequently, all the teachers that sign up for your school are the most senior teachers (which means they are the most highly paid. Salaries are set by your degree and years of experience), then your budget for teachers will be extremely high.
If you are in the worst neighborhood, and all of your teachers are rookies, your teacher budget will be extremely low. Both schools have the same number of teachers, but the amount of money that the more affluent school spends on its teachers can be much, much higher than the money spent on teachers in the poorest school.
Here's an example: In 2006, when I did a study of the funding gap in Philadelphia, I found that the average number of years of experience in the poorest schools was about 9, compared to 16 years of experience in the most affluent schools. Using actual teacher salaries, I determined that the schools in the lowest quartile of poverty for the District, paid teachers an average base salary of $61,905.45. By contrast, schools in the highest quartile of poverty paid teachers an average base salary of $53,234.12. This is a difference of $8,671.33 per teacher! For an average school with 30 teachers, this represents $260,139.90 in teacher salaries every year. What does this mean for students? If a low income high school student has 6 teachers per day, she is taught by teachers paid a combined $52,027.98 less per year than her counterparts in a wealthier high school in the District. From the time this low-income students enters high school until she graduates, our District spends $208,111.92 less on her teachers than on the teachers serving wealthier students over the same period of time, If this student attended the highest-poverty schools from kindergarten through graduation, the District will have spent a combined total of $676,363.74 less on all her teachers than on the K-12 teachers serving the city’s most affluent public school students.
How does this happen? It is actually quite simple. When teachers with more experience migrate to lower poverty schools, they take their higher salaries with them. The result of this system is a massive transfer of funds from our less-advantaged to our most-advantaged schools. The use of salary cost averaging hides this “reverse Robin Hood effect” from the public eye.
According to one team of economists, “Estimates of teacher performance suggest that having five years of good teachers in a row could overcome the average seventh-grade mathematics achievement gap between lower-income kids and those from higher-income families.” Considering the powerful relationship between educational attainment and future earnings, it is understandable to conclude that educational equity is “the civil rights issue of our time.” We must, if only for ethical reasons, address these inequities immediately.
First suggestion: Pay teachers more money to work in the schools in need of the most help.
Second suggestion: Allot an amount of money - NOT a number of teachers - for each school. Principals I have spoken to said that they would prefer some say in the teachers that work with them. Further, that they would choose a mix of newer and more experienced teachers in their faculty. Changing the budgetary practice would force school administrators to counterbalance more experienced teachers (who cost more) with lower teacher: student ratios (by hiring less expensive teachers).
For today, I wish to post some thoughts I have about educational quality in the United States, particularly as it relates to the poor, and how the infusion of capitalistic features could make a difference. Let us first say that these ideas are not ideas I would propose internationally. However, love it or hate it, America's primary deity is the dollar, and so much of the disparity in educational quality and outcomes is related to how our behaviors represent true worship of our god.
There are three elements of our educational system that can be explained as resulting from our lack of consistency in applying the power of our capitalist worldview to all of our citizens. By extension, these undesirable symptoms of this lack of total application can be ameliorated by making the assumption that people who grow up under the influence of this religion (we can call it a $pirituality, if you wish) will make decisions in line with this upbringing. Each day, I will discuss one of these three threads, and make my argument that a focus on money, and understanding that people want more of it, can be used to improve education in the United States.
1) Teacher quality: It's no secret that teacher quality in poor schools is "poorer" than in more affluent schools. One reason for this has to do with the policy of using the seniority system for filling teaching positions. In Philadelphia, where I worked for 4 1/2 years, teachers with the most years of teaching get first pick of all the vacancies. It's not 100% true that experienced teachers are better at their jobs than new recruits, but it is a truism. You can imagine the combination of safety concerns and race/class attitudes that make it harder to fill schools in impoverished areas. So, by the time the newer teachers get their turn, guess which schools are the only ones left on the list?
Another terrible policy that Philadelphia has (and many other urban districts. See the reports on the funding gap by EdTrust here: http://www2.edtrust.org/EdTrust/Product+Catalog/main.htm#ff) is a budgetary practice that has got to go. Schools are given an amount of money for teaching staff. The way this line item is calculated is to take the number of students in the school, and divide it by a predetermined student:teacher ratio (for example, we want our schools to have 1 teacher for every 25 students).
Now here's the problem: Instead of then calculating an amount of money that the school can spend, perhaps by multiplying the number of allotted teachers by the average salary in the District, schools are just given an allotment of teachers. This means that, if you are a school in the best neighborhood in Philadelphia, and consequently, all the teachers that sign up for your school are the most senior teachers (which means they are the most highly paid. Salaries are set by your degree and years of experience), then your budget for teachers will be extremely high.
If you are in the worst neighborhood, and all of your teachers are rookies, your teacher budget will be extremely low. Both schools have the same number of teachers, but the amount of money that the more affluent school spends on its teachers can be much, much higher than the money spent on teachers in the poorest school.
Here's an example: In 2006, when I did a study of the funding gap in Philadelphia, I found that the average number of years of experience in the poorest schools was about 9, compared to 16 years of experience in the most affluent schools. Using actual teacher salaries, I determined that the schools in the lowest quartile of poverty for the District, paid teachers an average base salary of $61,905.45. By contrast, schools in the highest quartile of poverty paid teachers an average base salary of $53,234.12. This is a difference of $8,671.33 per teacher! For an average school with 30 teachers, this represents $260,139.90 in teacher salaries every year. What does this mean for students? If a low income high school student has 6 teachers per day, she is taught by teachers paid a combined $52,027.98 less per year than her counterparts in a wealthier high school in the District. From the time this low-income students enters high school until she graduates, our District spends $208,111.92 less on her teachers than on the teachers serving wealthier students over the same period of time, If this student attended the highest-poverty schools from kindergarten through graduation, the District will have spent a combined total of $676,363.74 less on all her teachers than on the K-12 teachers serving the city’s most affluent public school students.
How does this happen? It is actually quite simple. When teachers with more experience migrate to lower poverty schools, they take their higher salaries with them. The result of this system is a massive transfer of funds from our less-advantaged to our most-advantaged schools. The use of salary cost averaging hides this “reverse Robin Hood effect” from the public eye.
According to one team of economists, “Estimates of teacher performance suggest that having five years of good teachers in a row could overcome the average seventh-grade mathematics achievement gap between lower-income kids and those from higher-income families.” Considering the powerful relationship between educational attainment and future earnings, it is understandable to conclude that educational equity is “the civil rights issue of our time.” We must, if only for ethical reasons, address these inequities immediately.
First suggestion: Pay teachers more money to work in the schools in need of the most help.
Second suggestion: Allot an amount of money - NOT a number of teachers - for each school. Principals I have spoken to said that they would prefer some say in the teachers that work with them. Further, that they would choose a mix of newer and more experienced teachers in their faculty. Changing the budgetary practice would force school administrators to counterbalance more experienced teachers (who cost more) with lower teacher: student ratios (by hiring less expensive teachers).
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Introduction
Fellow travellers!
My name is John D Rich, Jr. I have been searching for years to satisfy this pining in me to live my life in a way that honors the most loving parts of our shared humanity.
Born into a working class family. Father got laid off from his job, and went into a severe depression that never lifted. Family sunk into poverty. Section 8 housing, food stamps, etc. Boo-hoo for me!
Luckily, I am pretty smart, and was able to become somewhat successful by using my brain. On top of this, my mother was always very complimentary and supportive, and so I believed I could do anything if I put my mind to it.
From early on, I was a compassionate person - easily brought to tears over another's pain. I grew into someone who wanted to help others not be in pain any more. Did I want to save my own parents? Erikson, in his book about Gandhi, says that people who have Messiah complexes grow up feeling superior to their parents. This feeling I share.
It has been a lifelong conflict, this simultaneous desire to be humble, and this belief that I was more than most other people. I have tried to channel my instincts into activity that would help others lift up from sorry circumstances.
In late adolescence, I experienced my calling for the first time. It was a calling to dedicate my life to help the poor. I grew up with a mother that took me to church, and so it was natural for me to interpret this calling with Christian lenses. I pursued ordination with a fervor. I became a minister with the United Methodist Church, wanting to use the pulpit and the stories of Jesus to compel people to social and political action. My problems were twofold: 1) People in the churches where I served were more interested in having me preach the "good news," give the sacraments, visit sick people in the hospital. 2) My messages to people were too angry and judgmental. I felt so much the need to serve the poor, and most other people were not so compelled. I couldn't understand.
So, the church was not a good fit for me. Toward the end of my career, I wanted out. Then, I got an opportunity to work with the homeless in Wilmington DE. I was excited to have an audience who would hear this message of liberation and be filled with power to exceed their own limitations (economic or personal or political). But there was so much emphasis on otherworldly rewards, and a lot of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings where people whose poverty led to self-destruction were required to admit their helplessness, and shown the error of their ways.
I was slowly realizing that I wasn't really all that Christian. I didn't believe in an afterlife - or, if I did, I didn't believe it should have any place in a moral philosophy. And I didn't think people should be taught about their individual sins. My work in the church ended. It had to. Where would I go now?
Well, I needed money. A person with a degree in Divinity doesn't have a lot of non-church options. I took a job selling sunrooms. I hated it hated it hated it. Had to leave.
I decided that I would go back to school, eventually having opportunities open up for me in Educational Psychology. The Ph.D. offered me a chance to work for the School District of Philadelphia. Now, here's a job serving the poor! I found out soon, however, that the life of an idealist in a political organization is full of as much frustration and disappointment as a religious one. I can't honestly say my 4 years working there did any good for anyone. I don't know - perhaps I just want to make a bigger splash than one person can make. Perhaps I did a lot of good, but I didn't see it.
Regardless, I left, took another job doing research for a year, until I got an opportunity to do research and statistical analysis for an educational program in Jordan. I love it. The mechanics of the work is very enjoyable, and I feel like I am helping to strengthen a program that will make a difference in students' lives.
I am writing this from an office in Amman. I feel like I am doing good work. I am also doing some work locally to help the homeless in the US. However, I just feel that I have been called to do something much bigger, that I am on the cusp of it. I have a fantastic wife who will follow my call, because she feels it, too. I am ready for God to direct me, expose me to the event or series of events that open up my understanding and vision to the specific contribution I have been sent here to make.
A new friend of mine encouraged me to start a blog. He says I have an interesting "backstory." I don't know if it's interesting or not. I write this blog for two reasons: 1) Writing it all down will help me express my thoughts in a way that could provide answers. I submit myself to my deep-down wisdom, and expect things to pour out that I wouldn't have thought to myself consciously;
2) I have spent a lot of time talking with people about their own dreams. I love to talk to people about what they would do with their time if they didn't need to make money. Almost invariably, people want to be doing something other than what they are doing! So, here I am, taking the great risk of saying I want to do something great for the world, not knowing if I ever will, potentially setting myself up for one major midlife crisis. I know there are others who wish they were doing something else, something more. My own unfolding struggle to do great things might inspire others to think deeply about this one life they have to live? Or, my eventual discovery of my reason for being here, and this hole in my heart that wants to be filled with meaning, could provide an example of how the struggle is a guide, not an obstacle.
Wish me well, pilgrims!
My name is John D Rich, Jr. I have been searching for years to satisfy this pining in me to live my life in a way that honors the most loving parts of our shared humanity.
Born into a working class family. Father got laid off from his job, and went into a severe depression that never lifted. Family sunk into poverty. Section 8 housing, food stamps, etc. Boo-hoo for me!
Luckily, I am pretty smart, and was able to become somewhat successful by using my brain. On top of this, my mother was always very complimentary and supportive, and so I believed I could do anything if I put my mind to it.
From early on, I was a compassionate person - easily brought to tears over another's pain. I grew into someone who wanted to help others not be in pain any more. Did I want to save my own parents? Erikson, in his book about Gandhi, says that people who have Messiah complexes grow up feeling superior to their parents. This feeling I share.
It has been a lifelong conflict, this simultaneous desire to be humble, and this belief that I was more
In late adolescence, I experienced my calling for the first time. It was a calling to dedicate my life to help the poor. I grew up with a mother that took me to church, and so it was natural for me to interpret this calling with Christian lenses. I pursued ordination with a fervor. I became a minister with the United Methodist Church, wanting to use the pulpit and the stories of Jesus to compel people to social and political action. My problems were twofold: 1) People in the churches where I served were more interested in having me preach the "good news," give the sacraments, visit sick people in the hospital. 2) My messages to people were too angry and judgmental. I felt so much the need to serve the poor, and most other people were not so compelled. I couldn't understand.
So, the church was not a good fit for me. Toward the end of my career, I wanted out. Then, I got an opportunity to work with the homeless in Wilmington DE. I was excited to have an audience who would hear this message of liberation and be filled with power to exceed their own limitations (economic or personal or political). But there was so much emphasis on otherworldly rewards, and a lot of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings where people whose poverty led to self-destruction were required to admit their helplessness, and shown the error of their ways.
I was slowly realizing that I wasn't really all that Christian. I didn't believe in an afterlife - or, if I did, I didn't believe it should have any place in a moral philosophy. And I didn't think people should be taught about their individual sins. My work in the church ended. It had to. Where would I go now?
Well, I needed money. A person with a degree in Divinity doesn't have a lot of non-church options. I took a job selling sunrooms. I hated it hated it hated it. Had to leave.
I decided that I would go back to school, eventually having opportunities open up for me in Educational Psychology. The Ph.D. offered me a chance to work for the School District of Philadelphia. Now, here's a job serving the poor! I found out soon, however, that the life of an idealist in a political organization is full of as much frustration and disappointment as a religious one. I can't honestly say my 4 years working there did any good for anyone. I don't know - perhaps I just want to make a bigger splash than one person can make. Perhaps I did a lot of good, but I didn't see it.
Regardless, I left, took another job doing research for a year, until I got an opportunity to do research and statistical analysis for an educational program in Jordan. I love it. The mechanics of the work is very enjoyable, and I feel like I am helping to strengthen a program that will make a difference in students' lives.
I am writing this from an office in Amman. I feel like I am doing good work. I am also doing some work locally to help the homeless in the US. However, I just feel that I have been called to do something much bigger, that I am on the cusp of it. I have a fantastic wife who will follow my call, because she feels it, too. I am ready for God to direct me, expose me to the event or series of events that open up my understanding and vision to the specific contribution I have been sent here to make.
A new friend of mine encouraged me to start a blog. He says I have an interesting "backstory." I don't know if it's interesting or not. I write this blog for two reasons: 1) Writing it all down will help me express my thoughts in a way that could provide answers. I submit myself to my deep-down wisdom, and expect things to pour out that I wouldn't have thought to myself consciously;
2) I have spent a lot of time talking with people about their own dreams. I love to talk to people about what they would do with their time if they didn't need to make money. Almost invariably, people want to be doing something other than what they are doing! So, here I am, taking the great risk of saying I want to do something great for the world, not knowing if I ever will, potentially setting myself up for one major midlife crisis. I know there are others who wish they were doing something else, something more. My own unfolding struggle to do great things might inspire others to think deeply about this one life they have to live? Or, my eventual discovery of my reason for being here, and this hole in my heart that wants to be filled with meaning, could provide an example of how the struggle is a guide, not an obstacle.
Wish me well, pilgrims!
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