4/25/08: Consider volunteering -- for your own sake

We Americans are wasting our time. While most of us plop down in front of the TV after work, according to an article run recently in this paper, watching television only rates "middling" on the enjoyment scale. Those who eschew television in favor of reading "War and Peace" or other self-improvement schemes probably aren't rating those pursuits much higher. We're using our leisure time badly. We're not having as much fun as we could or should be having.

So let's do something about it.

Try volunteering.

There are a lot of reasons to volunteer for a cause you believe in, but most of them rely on an appeal to the unselfish, altruistic side of us that cares about duty and fellow-feeling and abstract concepts of generosity.

My argument for volunteering is purely selfish: Do it because you'll like it.

Volunteering clears the way for caring about what we really, actually care about. We may be at our jobs for purely practical reasons -- the salary or benefits, for instance -- but volunteering eliminates these obstacles to our enjoyment.

I call getting paid "an obstacle" with good reason: For decades, research into educational psychology has shown that when we're motivated by external rewards for something that should be intrinsically rewarding, we take less pleasure in it. University students asked to solve puzzles or write newspaper headlines, activities they found rewarding for their own sakes, were less likely to continue those activities after the experiment if they had been paid to do them. The reward interfered with their enjoyment of the activities, which became "required" instead of "fun."

This contradicts the impulse to throw money at problems -- problems such as teachers leaving beleaguered school districts. According to Public Agenda, a nonpartisan opinion research group, raising salaries -- a solution frequently offered as a panacea for teacher loss -- would not be most effective for retaining teachers. Instead, teachers who left cited "unreasonable standards and accountability" as their main reason for leaving.

Among the general population, a Families and Work Institute survey showed people rank "salary/wage" as 16th out of 20 reasons listed for taking a job.

We just don't care that much about money. In fact, money sometimes gets in the way of what we do care about.

But if you're looking for more mercenary reasons to sacrifice your leisure time to voluntary service, consider the following.

On a practical level, volunteering is an "in," in terms of networking. Getting to know the staff of any given agency will put your foot in the door, should you ever decide to make nonprofit work into a full-time career. In a time of limited employment options, that's nothing to sneeze at.

And while applying for a job requires a cover letter and resume highlighting accomplishments relevant to the position you hope to fill, volunteering for an organization you might be interested in working for usually takes no more than an inquiring phone call. Often, no previous experience is required. Almost any organization will train "on the job," giving you knowledge, skills and abilities that carry over into your professional or personal life.

Finally, the warm-and-fuzzy feeling of "giving something back" has become a cliche, but it's become one for a reason. I taught as a full-time volunteer for two years at an adult education school in Washington, D.C., though an Americorps-associated voluntary service program, and i can tell you -- there's nothing quite like watching one of your students walk up to the front of a crowded, happy room to accept a hard-won diploma.

It certainly can't be topped by a rerun of "Friends."

4/18/08: Candidates' true faith can't be seen in forum

U.S. Sens. Clinton and Obama appeared at a "Compassion Forum" held at my alma mater, Messiah College, on Sunday. My connection with the school made me read the transcripts with interest -- and trepidation.

Messiah College does a good job, in my experience, helping students explore the complexities of how religious faith interacts with the secular world. Political campaigns, in my experience, do not.

Sunday's transcripts, unfortunately, tended to read more like a political campaign's attempt to deal with religion than like those of a theology class.

There were hot-topic questions: Each senator was asked about life beginning at conception, ad Obama was asked his view on evolution. These issues can serve as deal breakers for evangelicals who might otherwise wish to support a Democrat; along with gay marriage, they make up a three-issue litmus test for evangelical voters.

To end each senator's answer period, one of the hosts asked whether the candidates believed a discussion on personal religious convictions was appropriate for a political campaign.

The senators agreed the discussion was as relevant as a discussion of any other part of their personal lives. They both pointed to God as a source of guidance, as well, bringing up the question of how their beliefs would interact with potential decision-making as president.

I cringed.

The trouble with this, in my mind, is not that religion has no place in politics. I agree with both candidates -- that insofar as candidates' personal lives are relevant to their ability to govern, we should know all we can about them -- and I believe how people conduct their personal lives is a factor in judging character.

My problem with the forum is that it cannot do what it claims to do.

True faith can't be quantified or litmus-tested. It can't be spun. And it can only rarely be articulated.

This doesn't fit well with political campaigns, which tend to rely on simplification, spin and "staying on message" to prove one contender is better than the other. Instead of engaging in real, personal discussion on real, personal issues, candidates stay on guard, worried "the other guy" will go for the jugular at the first sign of vulnerability.

We can't really see who our candidates are, because they can't afford to show us.

In practical matters, this hardly makes a difference.

The public spotlight pointed at candidates during their run, and at the president after inauguration, provides -- or should provide -- a level of accountability in seeing that practical promises made are kept.

Either troops are withdrawn from Iraq or they aren't. The national deficit decreases, or it doesn't. We have universal health care, or lower taxes or stricter environmental regulations, or we don't. These are quantifiable results.

But turn that spotlight on matters of the heart, on the beliefs and motivations of a candidate, and we begin to see less clearly. If even our closest friends and relatives, if even aspects of ourselves, are a mystery to us, how could we expect to really know a presidential candidate?

Our criteria become reductive and simplified, turning what is and should be complex into a discrete, answerable series of questions. The answers to these questions do no more to tell us who a candidate really is or what she or he believes than the answers to what color socks she wears or what his first pet's name was -- and they may tell us less.

4/11/08: Bilingual education leads to higher scores

When I was 10, my best friend was a Vietnamese immigrant named Van. She had been in America less than a year and transferred to my class at Northend Elementary in New Britain from Cromwell in the middle of the year. I was assigned to tutor her, and we became fast friends.

Our friendship grew despite the limitations of Van's English, which was broken and accented, and my Vietnamese, which was nonexistent. As she became more fluent, I became less so, altering my grammar and accent to match hers so she could understand me more easily. I probably looked pretty strange to outsiders, a little white girl running around speaking like a recent Asian immigrant.

But great friendships always look strange to outsiders, and this was a great friendship.

Over the next few years, I watched and listened as Van's English improved, and as she told me about her "special" classes in English as a Second Language, for which she was removed from regular middle school classes once a day. Her teacher, like most ESL teachers in America, had not been specifically trained to teach ESL and made do with innate creativity and what resources he could find. He must have worked with learners from several language groups; now having been an ESL teacher myself, I imagine he was hard-pressed to come up with lessons that dealt with the specific difficulties encountered by Polish speakers learning English while also attending to Lao or Spanish or Arabic speakers' needs.

Van worked hard, but even as a middle-schooler, I felt there must be a better way.

There is.

It's called bilingual education.

If Van and I had been offered bilingual education in, for example, Vietnamese and English, not only would she more quickly have learned English -- and content-based subjects such as science or math -- but I would also have been able to learn her language.

Vietnamese may not have the cultural cache of French of the economic clout of Chinese, and I'm not arguing that central Connecticut needs an English-Vietnamese bilingual magnet school. But learning any language in addition to our mother tongues expands our minds and helps us to think through problems from multiple perspectives.

And learning through bilingual education is the most effective way.

If scientific research will impress, consider that according to a major study released by the U.S. Department of Education in 1991, "the more schools developed children's native-language skills, the higher they scored academically over the long term in English." In Dade County, Fla., research completed in 2000 showed students enrolled in bilingual education scored higher in literacy than those in English immersion programs.

Common sense bears this out. Imagine being taken to a non-English-speaking country and put into a classroom with peers, then being expected to follow instructions, learn new material and make friends. Even with all your adult knowledge at your disposal, this task would be nearly impossible, and you would likely feel alienated and alone.

Now imagine that half your fellow students spoke your language, that the other half were learning it and that many of your classes would be held in your mother tongue. Learning would become cooperative and fun.

Teaching kids in their first language leads them to greater success in the long term; so does having them learn a second language. If bilingual education offers us the opportunity to do both effectively, why wouldn't we take advantage of that?

I was lucky. Even without bilingual education, I learned to love language and respect other cultures through my friend.

For the new generation, let's not rely on luck.

4/4/08: Olympics in China call for new approach

In the summer of 2001, when Beijing was chosen to host this year's Summer Olympics, I was teaching at an English camp in the south of China.

When the announcement came through, my American teammates and I were startled out of our beds by what sounded like several million people cheering. Our students, middle and high school age, could hardly sit still through their English lessons the next day.

China is excited about the Olympics -- not just for the substantial economic opportunity the games represent, and not just as a way to gain "face" internationally, but because the Chinese people are proud of their country and eager to share it with the world.

Americans seem to be viewing the Beijing Olympics differently. Since the announcement, news coverage of the upcoming event has been filled with warnings of disappointment to come -- the world's top long-distance runner may not compete due to Beijing's notorious pollution -- and protests, which have made strange bedfellows of the Falun Gong, Christians, Steven Spielberg, President Bush and several Nobel Peace laureates, all railing against China's various human rights violations.

More recently, protests in Tibet have taken center stage, despite the efforts of the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government to limit the violence done by and to Chinese and Tibetans.

As Americans, we take principled stands against China's attitudes toward an independent Tibet, Taiwan, the Sudanese government, national democracy and its religious or political dissidents. We remember the Tiananmen Square protests. We make plans to further the cause of democracy, viewing the Olympics as a chance to make Red China into a free-speaking, free-market capitalist society.

We will convert them with American dollars, with international ill-will, by putting the thumbscrews to Chinese leaders, we seem to be saying. China's government will buckle under pressure.

The problem with our plans is that they are old ones. We have discussed human rights and trade agreements with Chinese premiers in each decade since President Nixon visited in 1972. The economic diplomacy supposed to bring democracy to China has done what it can: We have traded with China, allowed the country to import its inexpensively made goods, even arranged to shore up the American dollar by selling I-bonds to the Chinese government.

Our economies are inextricably linked; our political systems remain divergent. The combination of protest and money has brought us this far but will take us no further.

The Olympics call for new approach: listening. In August, thousands of foreigners will descend on the capital of the People's Republic at the same moment, for the same peaceful purpose. Thousands of Chinese who have never left their homeland will meet people from around the world, be exposed to new points of view and express their opinions -- on their lives, their work, their government -- to new friends. But this will only happen if we come as friends, willing to learn instead of lecture.

The people of China are eager to meet us, and in a country where so much is based on "guanxi" -- personal relationships -- simply acting decently should be our next step. The Chinese people themselves will create the change in their country. It will be the impression we make that determines whether they would want to be anything like us.

Protesters claim that the stakes are too high to let this opportunity for real change pass us by. As an American who lived among the open and generous people of China, I tend to agree.