Our Year Studying Politics
The next series of posts shares part of our journey while studying politics. It is political, because we studied politics. We are using the eclectic methodology called Project-Based Learning to study politics. Here is an article I wrote, Project-Based Learning: through the Lens of Politics and Activism. This project will not be finished until November, 2016.
The planning for this week began over a year ago. Like many areas of study in a handcrafted education, the pre-planning was thoughtful and intense. The implementation and actual time spent learning, however, is free-flowing. What will happen this week, and what will we learn? I could tell you some of the big, obvious conceptual parts, but the truth is, I don’t know. I don’t want to limit our experience or learning by having preconceived ideas about how it’s going to go.
With a big project like this one, where we have studied politics in the US, it is important not to become too attached to a plan for how it is going to go and what will be learned. Doing that narrows thinking and can lead to missed opportunities. If I were to make the big decisions early on, it would also make the learning journey feel less collaborative for the primary student, in this case Sean. I try hard to keep that from happening, because one of the things I hope happens from this project is that Sean will become passionate about incorporating these profound, intellectual endeavors throughout his life. I believe one way to achieve that is by making him a collaborator in his education. Stanford calls what I am after intellectual vitality, and like Stanford I am looking for Sean to feel comfortable taking academic risks and not to be afraid of failure. There is a free-flowing, unfurling of events applied to our learning journey that feels creative and artistic to me as we open ourselves up to the universe in a very holistic approach.
3:30 a.m: I wake up in time to have coffee. We spent the night with relatives in LA so we could take a non-stop to Philadelphia. I went to bed last night, leaving Sean and Gary, Jim’s brother, who is very conservative, discussing politics. When I hear how literate Sean is about politics, I am blown away! Free-flowing and organic it might be, but at the end of it, this project has led to just what I hoped it would. Sean understands how politics works and doesn’t work. He has formed his own views and opinions. He can have an intelligent, fact-filled discussion about this very important area.
6:20 a.m. Departure: I am not the only person on the plane wearing a Bernie t-shirt. The song that keeps going through my mind is Revolution by the Beatles.
When we got to Philly there was a text from Jim. “Had I heard that WikiLeaks released the information showing the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and Hillary Clinton’s colluded to keep Bernie Sanders’ from getting the nomination?” What a week to be in Philly!
Christina Keller picked us up and drove us to our VRBO. The place is lovely, absolutely lovely! We ate at a wonderful vegan restaurant, Bar Bonbon, grocery shopped, and got back early to rest. The action starts tomorrow. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? All I know is that we will learn a lot & remember much of it forever!
This Week in School, Day 2, 7/25/2016
We woke up to pouring rain, thunder and more news about WikiLeaks implicating Debbie Wassermann Schultz, and that she would have to resign because of them. I must be honest and say, I wish this year study politics was a little less over the top. Basically we learned that all the things Bernie Sanders and his supporters said occurred during the primary season, did.
The rain stopped and there was nothing for it, except to get going. We decided to start by heading over to FDR Park, the site of the Occupy DNC sit-in. There were a few tents, but not many. I am not surprised; it is really hot and humid. A chalk mural was being done filled with slogans, I added my bit.
It was pretty quiet here, so we decided to head to the convention center. While there we ran into some friends. This is one of the cool parts of doing this, because we have done a lot of volunteering, we run into friends everywhere. We went in to hear a talk about the TPP. The room was huge, and the sound was just okay. I don’t know how the delegates take it for hours. The energy and people watching was worth the security check, even though we couldn’t stay long. Bernie Sanders was coming to speak to the delegates, and without delegate credentials, we couldn’t stay.
Time to head over to Progressive Central and check it out. While there, I made a new homeschooling friend. She lives on Kauai. We were biding our time, out of the heat, until the March/Rally. Progressive Central is at a really nice LGBTQ Center. The venue and people there were warm and welcoming.
The Rally began at 3:00 p.m. There were a huge number of people there, Greens and Bernie Democrats mainly, but also some Libertarians. The speaking was good and impassioned. Then I turned my head and Cornell West was right there. He is a wonderful speaker.
Cornell West was leaving to lead the March, when Jill Stein showed up. About half of the people at the rally had already left with Cornell to march. The rest of us stayed and listened to Jill speak. It is amazing when I think of all the people and issues Sean has learned about this year.
The march, according to Sean’s phone, was over 3 miles long! The heat was intense. We were told, with the humidity, it was 108o! About halfway to our destination, there was a sit-in going on. Some streets are named after states. These streets intersect Broad Street, the street the marchers were walking on, and the blocks of Broad Street that intersected Mississippi Street had flags hanging that had the Confederate flag as a part of it. The protesters, who we joined, wanted the flags down. The sit-in had started in the morning. About 10 minutes after we got there, the flags were removed!
We were ready to get back to our VRBO at the end of the march. We were planning on watching the first night of speeches with friends. It was a good night to be surrounded by friends especially for Sean. Of course the entire thing was very disappointing and disillusioning in light of the WikiLeaks. Two years ago when I decided to have Sean study politics this year, I certainly had no idea it would be the craziest year of politics of my lifetime, and it isn’t over yet.
I won’t spend much time discussing our emotions and feelings publicly other than to say this. My mother was an alcoholic. I grew up with all the myriad issues and problems that entails. Listening to the speeches last night and the spin on the news this morning reminds me of growing up in an alcoholic family where there is a huge elephant in the room. The Democrats have an elephant in their room that is a bigger problem for them than Trump and the RNC could ever be. Bad things were done, and all the powers that be are not talking about them, including Sanders. The divisiveness is going to grow not shrink, as some Democrats refuse to acknowledge the elephant’s existence and others refuse to ignore it. Real healing cannot happen without an honest discussion, apology, and forgiveness. It makes me sorry to see us fight about how we are betraying each other instead of acknowledging the corruption and collusion that occurred as evidenced in the WikiLeaks, and then working to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
This photo is from Day 3. I guess I am not the only person thinking these thoughts.
This Week in School, Day 3, 7/26/2016
It was sunny and cooler today but still hot. You might be wondering why the daily weather update. Oh my, we are outdoors at events held on paved areas every day, and it is hot with so much humidity!
The real revolution, and it feels like there is one going on, is happening outside on sidewalks, in parks, and in the streets. I do not care who you support, the quality of the speeches we have heard have been superb. It is one person, speaking without a teleprompter after another. The speakers are articulate and impassioned. Their messages are so well packaged it is hard to believe anyone can speak that eloquently for that long without any notes. I am telling you this as an educator and a public speaker. No endorsements will be made here, but what we are learning every day about politics, activism, and varying ways of looking at situations is something most people are never exposed to. It opens you up to lines of thought, issues, and perspectives that never occurred to you before.
We were with friends who wanted to go to a demonstration, so we went back to where the march started the day before without knowing what was going on. It is hard to know where to go. It has felt like many of the events have not been well coordinated, with many similar events occurring at the same time. Many in the crowd think this is on purpose and meant as a way of dispersing the protesters by spreading them out. We found ourselves at the Bernie or BUST! Rally, which seemed as much of a Green Party rally as anything else. This link has the lineup, https://citizensagainstplutocracy.wordpress.com/2016/07/20/rally-in-philly-to-demand-bernie-or-bust/. Ultimate R.A.G.E. performed his rap song, Bernie or Bust, https://soundcloud.com/theultimaterage/the-ultimate-rage-bernieorbust.
After the rally I went back to watch the roll call with Mike Johnson. Sean was with John and Charlie watching it backstage at FDR Park. They came back to the VRBO dejected, hot, and tired. No miracles, or drama, depending on your perspective, happened.
As John and I were starting to make dinner, Charlie came in from a run and told us there was a Black Lives Matter March going up Broad Street. The VRBO is very close to the march route. I left John to make dinner, grabbed Sean, and we hurried to catch up to the marchers.
The march was huge. The final destination was FDR Park; we got there about 9 p.m. Jill Stein showed up again! We have seen her 3 times in two days. I admit to being worried for her. I got close enough to shake her hand last night. I am not big, only 5’4”. I think she is smaller than me; she seems so vulnerable out here, with no protection, trying to change the world.
The overall effect of what Stein and the Green Party are trying to do is to end the two-party system. They have a specific agenda yes, and they are working to put that forth. In order to do that, because neither the Democratic or Republican Party will adopt their agenda, they need their party to grow as to the number of states where people can vote for them and that takes more supporters in the states where she is not on the ballot. One of the speakers from the daytime rally said a group of activists representing a wide range of progressive causes was going to join the Green Party. The goal was that the Green Party would become the party of the people and would come to represent core progressive values like social justice and climate justice issues and ending childhood hunger and poverty. It is absolutely fascinating to observe and learn from this committed group of Americans about grassroots activism and how movements build. The entire situation with the Green Party is made even more fascinating, because while the Green Party is trying to build their party and bring the coalition built by Bernie Sanders into it, Bernie Sanders is trying to keep the same coalition of voters in the Democratic Party to vote for Clinton so Trump doesn’t get elected. There is a small presence from the Libertarian Party for Gary Johnson, but neither seems to engender the same type of attention from this group as Stein and the Green Party. It occurs to me constantly that this is what it must have been like directly before, during, and after the American Revolution.
It was interesting in the park at night. The crowd is younger, and the energy is different. The police are out in even greater force than they are during the day. The police have been really great by the way; everyone I have talked to has said this. There is a mix of people, of all ages and colors, trying to keep everything peaceful, and a very few people who seem to be trying to agitate. Even the agitating was low-key.
Two fascinating bits from the evening: It seems at these nighttime events, when the group gets large, plainclothes police or FBI go through the group splitting the crowd by directing the group to another location through misinformation, like telling them delegates need to get out when in fact they don’t. This splits the group because only about half of the people leave.
The other thing we witnessed was a television reporter who had told his audience that protesters were rioting and burning flags. We were there, and nothing even remotely like that went on. People were just standing and sitting around chatting. Two women overheard him tell his audience that, and they laid into him on live television, telling him he was the problem and that he was a liar (which he was). The women were about my age. The reporter was in his 20’s. The women, one black and one white, scolded him seriously like he was a kid who got caught doing something bad.
I had a conversation with a woman running for congress in Virginia. She was telling me the plan progressives have for how to get elected. They are running in this election, but most do not expect to be elected this cycle. The goal is to spend the next two years working on name recognition, running again, and then they expect to have a better chance at winning their seats.
Check out our post on What Constitutes Secular Academic Materials here.
