To the Class of 2020

College graduations are always times of mixed emotions.  On one hand, there is the exultation of having completed a life goal.  On the other hand, graduation often means bidding farewell to friends who you may not see again, leaving behind a life filled with great memories, and, ultimately, facing the unknown on one’s own.  

This year marks the 50th anniversary of my own college graduation.  1970 was a year of tumult and early closures, as students protested the country’s war in Vietnam after National Guardsmen killed four and wounded nine protesting students at Kent State University.  At Penn State, the spring term ended early. We were all glad when graduation day came. 

This year, it was a very different kind of disruption. Graduation came in the midst of a global pandemic that has hit the United States harder than most other countries, cancelling face-to-face instruction and closing campuses across the nation.  Most U.S. colleges and universities cancelled the formal 2020 graduation ceremonies in favor of “virtual” commencements over Zoom or another streaming video service.  Penn State was no exception. Town has been unusually empty and quiet as a result.  However, this past week, we’ve noticed small groups of students, decked out in their graduation robes, posing for photos at the Nittany Lion Shrine, Old Main, the Penn State Arboretum, and other landmarks—finding a way to memoralize their college achievement and create new memories to share in the years to come in the midst of social distancing.  

In 2005, I had the honor of giving a graduation speech at Penn State-Shenango, where I began my college career in 1966.  The campus was celebrating its 40th anniversary, and I was delighted to have the opportunity to speak with the graduating students.  I wanted to share my remarks from that day below as a way of wishing our 2020 grads all the best as they begin their careers in these very turbulent times.

Penn State Shenango Commencement Speech, May 2005

Thank you, Dr. Leeds.

First, let me say congratulations to the graduates who are here with us today.  I also want to recognize our graduates’ families, friends, and loved ones.  No one achieves a goal like this entirely on her own--you all deserve a share of the congratulations tonight.   

I also want to thank Dean Disney and Dr. Leeds for inviting me to be here.   I am especially proud to join you tonight for several reasons.  First, as a Penn State administrator.  Second, as a Penn State Shenango Alum.  Third, as a Shenango Valley native.   And fourth, this year Penn State Shenango is celebrating its 40th anniversary of service to the community here in Western Pennsylvania.   I am a member of the second class to go through the campus.  I graduated from Hickory High School in 1966.  I am a classic Penn State first-generation student.  When I was in high school, I had few prospects of ever attending college.  However, some of my teachers told my mother and me about this new campus that would allow me to attend Penn State without having to bear the expense of leaving home and that would allow me to continue to work part-time while I studied.   The campus was not yet at its current physical location—our classes were held at Kennedy Christian High School during my freshman year—but the very fact that Penn State was here in the Valley was a godsend to me back then and it has been the same for many other students as the campus has grown and become a part of downtown Sharon over the past four decades.   So, it is a distinct honor for me to be back with you this evening.

Back in those days, you could only complete the first two years of a baccalaureate degree at the campus.  I finished my undergraduate degree at University Park in 1970.    The following month, this book came out—Future Shock by Alvin Toffler.   It was, as the cover on the paperback edition said, “a runaway best seller.”  But more than that, it was a kind of social exclamation point that announced that something very big was happening in our world—it proclaimed the beginning of the Information Revolution.  It described the many changes that were beginning to take shape in our culture .  Especially explored a variety of changes—changes in science and technology, in organizations, in families, in education, in relationships—and the challenges facing us as individuals and as a society learned how to cope with increasingly rapid and radical change.   Most of us were only vaguely aware of all this in 1970, but it was not long before we all began to feel the impact and began to sense that things would never be quite the same.  

            

Well, we are now more than a full generation into the Information Revolution.  Most of you who are graduating today know no other world than a wired—and increasingly, wireless—world.  Most of the rest of us have trouble remembering what it was like in the “old days.”  (Notice that I did NOT say the “good old days”).   And yet we are still discovering the true dimensions of change that the Information Revolution has created—and is still creating.  We are, in a very real way, in the same situation that Penn State’s graduates of a century or more ago might have been:  they were a generation into the Industrial Revolution and I am sure most of them could not have envisioned what the 20th century would bring.  We look out today on the edge of the 21st century and only one thing is certain:  there is a lot more change to come.   Some of them will be what one author calls “predictable surprises.”  But some will be total surprises.   It’s going to be an exciting ride.  And it’s time for you to take your turn at the wheel.

One that is still unfolding but that has incredible potential for transforming how we will live in the world in the coming decades—is how the Internet and wireless communications are transforming the concept of “community” in our lives.  We all live in several different overlapping communities.  Our family and friends are a community that we take with us throughout our lives.  We also have our local, physical community—like the Shenango Valley itself—where we have many different kinds of associations and, often, where our cultural heritage rests.  And, as we move on in life, we develop communities that share professional interests and communities of interest around other dimensions of our lives.

            

Today, those communities are no longer as tied to local geography as they used to be.  A generation after Future Shock, we know from experience what Alvin Toffler was telling us:  that the Information Revolution was not about technology, but was about US.  I work with Penn State’s online courses.  My professional community is national and international.  Just in the last two weeks, I have interacted with colleagues in the United Kingdom, Brazil, Mexico, and Norway—all without leaving State College (a town that my graduation speaker in 1970 described as “equally inaccessible from anywhere in the world”).  Students in our online courses come from all 50 states and all 7 continents.  Their experience of a learning community is a bit different from mine 40 years ago.   

            

For me, at my age, all this is an adventure.  For you, well, it may be pretty normal.  But this idea of technology is changing how you will define your community in the years ahead is well worth thinking about.  All of you have the ability now to carry your communities with you wherever your life’s work will take you.  For some of you—and I hope this is true of a good many—it will allow you to stay right here in Western Pennsylvania and still be citizens of a rich community of colleagues and friends far from here.  Pennsylvania is facing a powerful challenge.  Many of our communities—and the Shenango Valley is a wonderful example—were shaped by the needs of the Industrial Revolution.  The challenge—and it is an immediate challenge for all of us—is to re-envision our communities for this new economy.  We’ll need your leadership here at home or wherever your careers take you, to make that happen.

            

Tonight, you have received your degrees from Penn State.  But I think it is important to note that you did not “receive” your education.  It hasn’t been handed down to you.  Instead, you MADE your education.  You had lots of help from faculty members and other students, but it is YOURS.   In the process, you’ve created a new capacity within yourself to face the changes ahead.  One thing we DO know about the world that the information revolution has created is that, for us—because the world continues to change rapidly—education doesn’t end tonight.  It is a lifelong process.  I wound up getting two more degrees from Penn State as an adult learner.  I hope that, as you move forward you will continue to turn to Penn State for renewal and to help you to reach new goals as you move ahead in your life.

For tonight, though--from one alum to another—congratulations and the very best wishes for the future.

Thank you.

America's Ragged Individualism

Our radical politics is not new. I’m reading the first volume Henry Adams’ History of the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson. Published in 1889, it begins with a look back at the realities of life and the nuances of American culture in 1800, the year Jefferson was elected as the third President of the United States. It includes an example of conservative versus liberal thinking that, if anything, is even more extreme today.  Adams—the grandson of John Quincy Adams and great-grandson of John Adams—began his history with a wide, yet detailed look at American culture and the difficulties involved in travel at a time when the frontier was never far away. 

“If Americans agreed in any opinion,” he wrote, “they were united in wishing for roads; but even on that point whole communities showed an indifference, or hostility, that annoyed their contemporaries” (Adams, p. 46).

            As an example, Adams quotes Timothy Dwight, President of Yale from 1795 to 1817, on the Rhode Island state legislature’s refusal to fund the completion of an unfinished turnpike designed to cross the state:

“The principal reason for the refusal, as alleged by one of the members, it is said, was the following: that turnpikes and the establishment of religious worship had their origin in Great Britain, the government of which was a monarchy and the inhabitants slaves; that the people of Massachusetts and Connecticut were obliged by law to support ministers and pay the fare of turnpikes, and were therefore slaves also; that if they chose to be slaves they undoubtedly had a right to their choice, but that free-born Rhode Islanders ought never to submit to be priest-ridden, nor to pay for the privilege of travelling on the highway. This demonstrative reasoning prevailed, and the road continued in the state which I have mentioned until the year 1805. It was then completed, and free-born Rhode Islanders bowed their necks to the slavery of travelling on a good road” (ibid.).

This was, apparently, not an exception to the rule. As Adams noted, “So strong was the popular prejudice against paying for the privilege of travelling on a highway that in certain States, like Rhode Island and Georgia, turnpikes were long unknown, while in Virginia and North Carolina the roads were little better than where the prejudice was universal” (p. 47).

Flash forward a couple of centuries to 2020.  On May 3, Heather Cox Richardson wrote this in her Letters from an American blog:

Jeff Kowalsky’s photograph of the “American Patriot Rally” at the Michigan statehouse on April 30 shows a large, bearded man, leaning forward, mouth open, screaming. Positioned between two police officers who are staring blankly ahead above their masks, he is focused on something they are preventing him from reaching: the legislature. His fury is palpable.

The idea that such a man is an “American Patriot” is the perverted outcome of a generations of political rhetoric that has celebrated a cartoon version of “individualism.” That rhetoric has served a purpose: to convince voters that an active government that regulates business, provides a basic social safety net, and promotes infrastructure—things most Americans actually like—is socialism (para. 1-2).

            This kind of extreme individualism, which separates the individual from any responsibility to community, has been a force in American culture since the beginning. That said, this is not the spirit on which the nation—and the national culture—was built. For every radical individualist icon there are countless more Paul Reveres, Nathaniel Hales, Abraham Lincolns, Martin Luther Kings, and many others--whose identity is tied closely to their achievements and sacrifices on behalf of their community.

            In that sense, America is at its best when it functions as a community of individuals helping not only themselves but also their families, their neighbors, their communities. That has become so apparent during the current pandemic, whose real heroes are not politicians or corporate execs but doctors, nurses, technicians, janitors, food processors, truck drivers, mail deliverers, police—people who put their lives at risk to protect and serve their community.

            As for “socialism” versus “conservative” let me say this. In a democracy, government is not a separate monolith, but simply how we organize ourselves to protect and defend each other. We pay taxes to support the services we need, be it road-building or health care or protection against those who would abuse our community or cheat or take unreasonable advantage of us, and we elect fellow citizens to make sure that the work gets done.  The issue, ultimately, is to determine what kind and what amount of services and protection we, the citizens, need.  This is where politics must be focused and engaged.  Labels like socialism and conservatism separate people and make it that much harder to come together and solve problems.

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Adams, Henry. History of the United States 1801-09. New York: Literary Classics of the United States 1986.

Richardson, Heather Cox. Letters from an American. May 3, 2020. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-3-2020?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=cta

Building New Alliances for Media-Supported K-12 Learning

As we enter the last weeks of the 2019-20 school year, it is becoming increasingly clear that many communities across the nation will not be ready to return students to physical attendance at their public schools.  Many schools have experimented with technology during the past six weeks. We have a brief summer to help schools prepare to build on their experiences with remote/distance/online instruction as they begin the 2020-21 school year in the fall.  Here are some suggestions for how higher education institutions involved in online learning can help their K-12 colleagues in this crisis.

1.         Build a national Open Educational Resources library for K-12.  Many institutions have begun to build libraries of open educational resources (OERs) to reduce cost and avoid duplication.  Community colleges have collaborated for several years to create a national collection of online texts, lectures, interviews with experts, laboratory experiments and other demonstrations, and a wide variety of other experiences. Other collaborative efforts are underway among public and land grant universities. Over the summer, institutions should work together to gather and collect OERs keyed to specific areas of the K-12 curriculum, creating a national library of free online materials, organized around K-12 grade levels and subject areas.  The goal would be to have at least one higher education institution in each state that would coordinate with the national network and with local schools to match OERs to the state’s curriculum and make them available to local teachers.

2.         Create a national catalog of online higher education courses that can be taken as dual enrollment courses.  Many lower-division college/university courses can be taken as “dual enrollment” courses that allow students to simultaneously earn credit toward high school graduation and college credit at the offering institution. The resulting credits are transferrable to other institutions.  Higher education institutions should work together to create a catalog of online higher education courses that qualify for dual enrollment.  Within each state, at least one community college and one public university should then promote the availability of these courses to high schools in the institution’s service area and offer to accept credit for those courses if taken successfully by a high school senior.  

3.         Universities that offer online webinars for teachers should collaborate to develop webinars and professional development courses to help prepare K-12 teachers in key disciplines (English, mathematics, the sciences, history, U.S. government, and social sciences) to make effective use of online content and methods.  Given the short time available to prepare for fall, this initiative might begin by universities working together to develop a series of webinars on effective online communication and teaching skills in the different disciplines.  Ideally, these would extend through the first six-weeks of K-12 instruction, so that teachers have a network through which they can learn, but also share successes and problems. In time, though, this could evolve into a collection of courses that teachers could use for advanced certification, as well as ongoing networks of K-12 teachers guided by experienced online university instructors in their disciplines. 

4.         Work with public media outlets to effectively extend K-3 programming to the schools.  Around the country, local Public Broadcasting Service stations were among the first educational media outlets to work with local school districts and state Departments of Education to match their daytime children’s programs with state curriculum standards in order to provide at-home learning opportunities for students in elementary and middle school grades.  Public broadcasters have a decades-long experience in serving local school curricular needs in their daytime broadcast schedules.  The next step in reviving this mission is for stations—through their state and regional networks and in close coordination with state Departments of Education—to identify unmet needs and then seek federal funds to produced new programs and OERs (along with necessary professional development resources) to meet those needs.  This is an opportunity to revive a program development relationship among colleges of education, discipline-based faculty, and public broadcasters to establish a new relationship with K-12 teachers and students. 

Collaboration as a Key

            This is an immediate problem that requires a quick, but comprehensive solution.  The key to success, I believe, is for higher education institutions to collaborate within the various families of institutions (community colleges, public/land grant universities, liberal arts colleges, etc.) to share the load and share the resulting professional development programs.  We have seen this kind of collaboration already in several aspects of the online movement.  The Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCOER) is one example.  CourseShare, a collaboration among the land grant Big Ten Academic Alliance institutions, is another.  The key to quick success is to use these and other similar alliances to get a head start on creating a sustainable new environment that can support the curricula—and expand the capabilities--of local K-12 schools in the future.

            This, I believe, could be the hallmark achievement of the new decade, not only creating new content but encouraging new ways to engage students at all levels in learning across the curriculum in a maturing information society.

Beyond Community: Thinking About Life After the Pandemic

This spring marks the 50th anniversary of my undergraduate graduation from Penn State. It had been an unusual spring on campus in 1970. It was the height of the Vietnam War.  The military draft had been reinstated, and many seniors knew that they were likely to be drafted shortly after graduation. The killing of students at Kent State by the National Guard radicalized students across the country. Opposition to the war led to demonstrations on campus that spring, some of it focused on opposition to military research. The demonstrations led to riots on campus.  The riots led to classes being cancelled and the term brought to a hasty, early end.    

We never really finished that semester, but as things quieted down, the University went ahead with graduation ceremonies anyway and sent us on our way. We all trooped into Beaver Stadium in our caps and gowns, listened to a speech (the memorable remark was that Penn State was “equally inaccessible from any part of the country”) and picked up our diplomas on the way out.

Fifty years later, the campus is again closed at graduation time. This time, the cause is not a foreign war or student protests, but the global corona virus pandemic that found its way to the U.S. in February and closed the University—in fact, all universities, all public schools, and almost all businesses—starting in March and projected to last at least through the end of May.  Campus has been closed now for almost a month. Students were encouraged to go home in order to obey the statewide “social distancing” requirement. As a result, the town feels almost empty and very quiet.  Fraternities are closed or sparsely populated. Apartment houses—the focus of major building spree over the past few years—are largely empty. Grocery stores are full of masked shoppers but most other businesses are closed. Meanwhile, courses—both at the University and in local school districts—continue through online distance education. The University has announced that the 2020 spring graduation will be “virtual”—an online experience that honor social distancing.

            Looking back, I have to say that life went on pretty much as normal after the campus riots of 1970. The biggest changes had little to do with student activism and much more to do with the Information Revolution that began in earnest at the end of the 70s, when satellite changed how we distributed information and paved the way for national cable networks, and the 90s, when the Web was born. We’ve become used to the Technological Revolution and its impact on how we live and work, although there is yet much to be done to give all citizens equal access.

            We don’t know yet what will happen after the pandemic, but Jim Fong from the University Professional and Continuing Education Association, has just come out with a piece, “A Glimpse into the Future Economy after the Pandemic”, that suggests some of the changes that may flow from today’s pandemic.  Here is how he sees the challenge facing us after the 2020 pandemic subsides and we all venture out of our physical isolation:

The massive lifestyle and workplace disruptions experienced over the last month, and likely to last at least another month or more, have accelerated the shift to the new economy, one that is fueled by automation, artificial intelligence, predictive analytics and robotics. Society has suddenly become more accepting of not only online learning, but the delivery of prepared meals, contactless retail, remote meetings, flexible schedules, home-life balance and mental health, data-driven health prevention, remote workforce collaboration, and digital currency. Another unintended consequence is an acceleration of generational conflict, as some generations have adapted better to self-quarantine while others find it challenging.

         Jim sees the potential that the experience of living through the pandemic—and the “social distancing” regulations that have been imposed because of it—will stimulate long-term social change in everything from healthcare systems to international supply chains to acceptance of robotics and automation, transportation of both people and goods, and even nutrition.  He also foresees changes in how we communicate in businesses and within and across cultures.

            The “stay at home” rule that we are now under has given me a chance to read more.  I recently finished John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, which dramatizes how the experience of the Dust Bowl and Great Depression of the 1930s challenged the long-held social values of a family of tenant farmers in Oklahoma—the Joads. Their story gave me a perspective on the pandemic by bringing into sharp focus the price that working people pay when society is disrupted, whether by industrialized agriculture or by a pandemic. We should not—we cannot—embrace the kinds of dramatic change that are being considered as leaders ponder re-inventing the economy and the society it supports without fully understanding the impact on all sectors of our society and ensuring that all are protected.  The story of The Grapes of Wrath is an important lesson.

I’ve also used some “stay at home” time to read Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari.  In it, he argues that, while all animals are able to communicate in one way or the other, what distinguished Homo Sapiens from other early humans was our ability to extend the concept of community beyond the family and beyond the “tribe” by developing a skill with language that allows us to invent new ideas and bring people together around abstractions.  It is an issue that was very much alive in The Grapes of Wrath. My question:  In the post-pandemic world, as we build new supply chains, new transportation and business systems through technology, will we be able also to realize new cultural values that will hold us together in new kinds of communities that extend beyond national and cultural borders and help us solve the unique problems that will surely arise in this new environment? Will technology help us to see ourselves as part of a larger family or will it encourage a re-tribalization?  This is not an issue arising from political bias.  It is a basic question that we need ask—and answer—in times of great change such as we appear to be entering today.

Rural Broadband: A National Mandate

We are learning many lessons from the coronavirus pandemic. One of the most important is not related to the virus but to our ability to function in the new digital environment. As schools close and classes move online not just at universities but at many public schools, we are witnessing the value of broadband access to our communities.

            The Industrial Revolution demanded the creation of a new communications infrastructure—Rural Free Delivery to keep our rural communities (and agricultural economy) vital, the national highway system to help get raw materials to factories and finished goods to market, radio and television to link us together as a community by giving us shared experiences. So, too, does the Information Revolution demand equal access to the Internet as a right of citizenship as work decentralizes and more professionals work from home. Broadband access is essential in this environment. Increasingly, communities that lack access lack the ability to survive in the new economy.

            This has become a stark reality in the coronavirus pandemic. In Pennsylvania, all public schools have been closed for two weeks. Many districts have closed their physical facilities and are using a variety of online resources to continue instruction during this period. However, in some districts, especially in rural areas, students don’t have access to broadband from home. These schools have had to simply close their doors, leaving students to be home-schooled by parents or, in some cases, to simply not have access education during this period.  

            The situation would also affect businesses that need to close to avoid their employees being exposed to the virus. Without bandwidth, employees are unable to work remotely.  They risk losing their jobs. Their employer risk losing business—and, ultimately, the community risks losing an employer and jobs for its citizens.

            In today’s world, broadband is not just a commercial service. It is a necessary part of the communications infrastructure that allows workers to live in a small community and still be gainfully employed. It is what allows small, rural communities to be vital in the global information society.  

            We need, at this point in the evolution of the new economy, the same kind of national vision for broadband that gave us the interstate highway system. I hope that both political parties will give voters their plans to achieve universal broadband as a resource that must be available to all citizens in the information age. 

Making Democracy Work

Last year, I posted a piece about how I defined “democracy” and “democrat” in response to the current oppositional political environment in the U.S. Today, on the eve of Super Tuesday and a month away from our Pennsylvania primary, I am revisiting the topic in an attempt to make better sense of our political culture in 2020.  

Today’s political environment is so oppositional that it is difficult to truly understand what either party stands for. Increasingly, Democrats and Republicans are defined not by their ideals but by who they stand against. In the process, we seem to have forgotten what we stand for. I have been a Democrat all my life, since my grandma took me to see Jack Kennedy give a stump speech in 1960. Let me take a moment to freshly articulate what politics means to me.  

            At the most fundamental level, my personal political philosophy is based in a view of why we have governments at all. I believe that, in a democracy, government is not a separate ruling elite or an impersonal bureaucracy. It is how we, individual citizens of local, state, and national communities, come together to help each other, to protect each other and our communities, and to improve the lives of all citizens. We elect fellow citizens—neighbors from within the community—to act on our behalf to ensure safety, to ensure that our freedoms are protected, and to encourage continuous improvement of the community itself.  

In short, “government” is not imposed upon on us. It is how we establish and sustain the idea of community in a democracy in order to establish and maintain a quality of life for ourselves and our neighbors. Sometimes the impact is a direct result of governmental action; other times, it is more indirect. The interstate highway system is an example of direct governmental action to benefit the community. National safety standards for vehicles that use those highways is an example of a more indirect action.

            I believe that, in the final analysis, the above description is not just for Democrats. It applies to all citizens across the political spectrum. There is a continuum of feeling on that issue among both Republicans and Democrats which, unfortunately, is often expressed only at the extremes. Some conservatives may believe that the ultimate key to success is to limit the impact of government—putting less emphasis on community, leaving individual citizens to make their own decisions and celebrate or suffer the consequences. Some liberals may believe that the key is to ensure that all solutions apply to all citizens. Others may want to focus on ensuring that corporations are able to succeed, on the assumption that their success will transfer to citizens who interact with a corporation as an investor, an employee, or a customer. There will always be different ways to see a problem and to imagine a solution. The question for all citizens is simple:  to what extent—and in what ways—do we want to help our community by helping our neighbors be safe, secure, and happy—or, as the Declaration of Independence put it, to what extent do we want to ensure “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”—the three “inalienable rights” of all citizens? Ultimately, responses to these criteria should be the basis of a party’s platform or governing strategic plan.

            Personally, as a Democrat, I see government as the voice of the citizenry and hope that citizens will use it to ensure equality and to serve as the vehicle by which we help each other. I believe that this is absolutely critical in a time when the context in which we think about “community” is changing due to the rapid evolution of technology and globalization.  Some priorities: 

            First, we should use government to ensure a physical and regulatory infrastructure that is equally available to all citizens, giving them equal access to resources. A good example is our national highway system, but infrastructure also includes proper control of rivers and other waterways, safe drinking water, access to electricity and other forms of energy, and so forth. Ultimately, the goal is an infrastructure that ensures that all citizens have equal access to a healthy environment and the ability to make a living.

Second, our government should also ensure that all citizens have equal access to health, education, and other services that help ensure a standard quality of life for all citizens and that helps ensure the ability of all citizens to realize their potential as members of the community.  

Third, our government should protect citizens from threats.  This can be threats from other nations, natural threats like climate change, or threats to our economy and health from uncontrolled actions by individuals and organizations. The goal of government in this context is to protect our ability as citizens to have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. One factor that must be considered is that America’s place in international conflicts has changed greatly since the end of World War II. We now live in a highly integrated, global, information-based economy in which many industries—and countries—are increasingly reliant on each other for materials in an international supply chain and as a marketplace. This does not mean that we don’t have enemies or that our partner nations don’t have enemies. However, it does mean that, increasingly, we cannot limit the impact of our actions on us alone.  We need to consider global impacts—on our political allies, on our industry partners, and, yes, even on our competitors when we act internationally.  

With these broad purposes in mind, here are a few items that I think should be the basis for a platform and governing strategy in the political debate as we move toward the 2020 President election:

A Marshall Plan for Appalachia and Middle America The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has called for the equivalent of a Marshall Plan to help communities and working people in the Appalachian region and industrial middle America find new economic, community, and personal opportunities.  They call for a sustained effort, funded over multiple years in several dimensions to achieve results.  Just as the Marshall Plan revitalized Europe after World War II, the proposed plan would be a sustained commitment to revitalization of our industrial core communities.

Climate Change This may be the most critical issue facing our society today.  We need governmental action to reduce emissions and minimize the damage that has already been done and to provide citizens with alternative sources of energy (solar and wind, as examples) that will do no further harm to the environment. We can only do this at the national level. In this case, social interest must override commercial/industry interests. We must demand that our representatives take this issue seriously and build an international coalition to minimize climate change and find ways to overcome its inevitable impact.  

An Infrastructure for the Information Age While a national transportation system—first trains, then the Interstate highway system—were hallmarks of the Industrial Revolution, we are now seeing the need for an online information system that makes the Internet truly accessible to all communities. Today, more people are working remotely, linking in from their homes rather than commuting to offices. At the same time, the supply chain in almost every industry has become international, requiring easy communication with distant colleagues. And, traditional retail stores are giving way to e-tailing. Unless communities have easy access to the web, they cannot thrive. It even affects the ability of local schools to access knowledge for their students. Universal access to the Internet is as important today as roads, trains, and Rural Free Delivery were to the last revolution.

Universal K-14 Education As the Information Society matures, the need for new services that enable citizens to be successful is becoming clear.  One of these is universal access to K-14 education—providing public funding for the first two years of a college education. This reflects a simple truth: the Information Society has made work more complex and requires greater entry-level skills. New York has already taken steps to provide free tuition in its public institutions for resident high school graduates—essentially funding a K-14 education for all.  We need to ensure this in every state.

Access to Health Care Of equal importance is the need to ensure that all citizens have effective access to health care, combined with governmental control over the price of medicines. As lifespans increase in the new environment, all citizens deserve equal access to health services. This is a complex issue, but one that must be addressed. My own sense is that a “public option” is the most practical approach, giving people the right to have private or public health insurance, but ensuring that all citizens will have access to health services.  

Immigration The current concern about immigration is not just limited to the border between Mexico and the U.S. It is a global concern, driven by the huge disparities in governance, rights, and economics in a new global society where everyone can easily see the alternatives. It is driving political discourse in developed countries around the world as they try to limit the economic and social impact of refugees. This will only increase as the global economy continues to evolve and, perhaps most important, as global climate change forces dislocation in some of the world’s most vulnerable countries. Clearly, fences and family separations, etc., are not a true solution. While we need to maintain control of international entry points, that is not the sole issue. For a long-term solution, we need to help our neighbors to the south respond to the political and economic problems that are driving their citizens away from their homes. The factors that contribute to the issue also suggest that we need to take a long view and work with other developed countries to address the core problems that are forcing families to leave their homelands in search of a better life.  

Competition It has become clear that, in this new environment, our ability to function as an independent nation is being challenged by long-time opponents like Russia and China that can use technology and the internationalized economy to interfere with our democratic processes.  This is not, in the final analysis, a simple question of cultural or political or even military competition. The real challenge is how we maintain our political independence and values in an increasingly “connected” cultural and political environment. This is how we can be strong as a nation in this new environment: we remain proud of our personal identities as members of a national culture, but we increasingly must also see ourselves as public members of a broader community that knows no national boundaries. We are Americans, but also citizens of the world.

Controlling the Use of Guns The first month of 2019 saw more than 1,000 gun deaths in the United States.  The Hill reported that nearly 40,000 people were killed by guns in the U.S. in 2017.  Mass gun killings seem to be on the rise. Here in State College, 2019 began with four people (including the shooter) being killed in one incident. Pennsylvania legislators have discussed allowing deer hunters to use semi-automatic weapons. Gun control is one of the most divisive issues in the U.S., pitting gun manufacturers and gun advocacy groups against the general citizenry.  It is time to solve this problem. We test drivers before licensing them, and we require that all motor vehicles be inspected and registered.  We need a similar universal system to control access and mis-use of guns.  

These are important issues with immediate implications. They are also examples of why we need citizen-focused government in these changing times to understand how issues affect different citizens and communities differently, so that our elected representatives can make better decisions on our behalf. Finding consensus is not easy in these days, but it is essential to democracy. It is worth our time to talk things through and find the best path forward.

Thoughts?       

John Steinbeck and America

Today is the 108^th birthday of John Steinbeck, one of my favorite authors.  He gave us The Grapes of Wrath, one of the great American novels that became one of the great American films.  He also gave us eighteen other novels, including Of Mice and Men, Tortilla Flat, and Cannery Row.

            Lately, I have been reading his nonfiction, especially America and Americans, his last book, where he delves into the American “character”—what makes us all Americans, regardless of where our families came from—and the foundations of America’s sense of community.  In the chapter “Government of the People,” he writes about the unique qualities of American politics and has this to say about the role of the President:

The power of the President is great if he can use it; but it is a moral power, a power activated by persuasion and discussion, by the manipulation of the alignments of many small but aggressive groups, each one weak in itself but protected in combination against usurpation of its rights by the executive; and even if the national government should swing into line behind Presidential exercise of power, there remain the rights, prejudices, and customs of states, counties, and townships, management of private production, labor unions, churches, professional organizations of doctors, lawyers, the guilds and leagues and organizations.  All these can give a President trouble; and if, reacting even to the suspicion of overuse or misuse of power, they stand together, a President finds himself hamstrung, straitjacketed, and helpless.”

He also has this comment on folksinger Woody Guthrie:

Harsh-voiced and nasal his guitar hanging like a tire iron on a rusty rim, there is nothing sweet about Woody, and there is nothing sweet about the songs he sings.  But there is something more important for those who will listen. There is the will of a people to endure and fight against oppression.  I think we call this the American Spirit.

Steinbeck, John. America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction. Susan Shillinglaw and Jackson J. Benson, eds. Penguin Books, 2003.