Unfixable?

Oh my, oh my.
The question that has been on my mind for far too long.

http://www.economist.com/world/americas/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14845329

Unfixable?
Nov 12th 2009 KINGSTON
From The Economist print edition

The burden of debt and crime
JUST over two years ago when Bruce Golding’s Labour Party came to power in Jamaica, ending 18 years in opposition, there were modest hopes that it might make progress in tackling the island’s endemic problems of economic stagnation and gang violence. Quite how hard that is has become clear in the past fortnight with the departure first of the central-bank governor and then the police chief. Mr Golding’s people inherited a huge national debt, much of it borrowed in the markets at interest rates that have sometimes topped 20%. Just servicing this eats up about 60% of government revenues. Then came the world recession, which has hit tourism, bauxite and remittances from Jamaicans abroad, the island’s three big foreign-exchange earners. UC Rusal, the country’s biggest bauxite operator, has shut most of its Jamaican mines because of low world prices. With tax revenue down and privatisation plans stalled, the fiscal deficit has soared.

The Bank of Jamaica’s governor, Derick Latibeaudiere, was leading negotiations for a $1.2 billion loan from the IMF. But midway through the talks, he lost his job. Mr Golding has complained about Mr Latibeaudiere’s generous salary and housing allowance, granted by the previous government. There was talk in Kingston, the capital, of policy disagreement with the finance minister. Either way, the timing of Mr Latibeaudiere’s departure was unfortunate. Standard & Poor’s, a rating agency, immediately downgraded Jamaica’s debt. Talks with the IMF will continue. Mr Golding has promised a fresh effort to cut the fiscal deficit.

The prime minister also edged out the police commissioner, Hardley Lewin, formerly a senior naval officer. Mr Lewin was blunt in his diagnosis of the crime problem. Last month he spoke of the need to “break the linkages between organised criminal networks, our politics, businesses, communities, and I dare say my own service, the police.” The murder rate has stopped rising, but it remains high. Cocaine shipments have fallen, but gangs continue to thrive on extortion, marijuana and fraud. Yet Mr Lewin was seen by many in the police as an outsider, pushing unwanted reforms. On November 3rd Mr Golding said that he had “lost confidence in the ability of the commissioner to deliver the results.” That smacked of shooting the messenger. Mark Shields, a British detective who was Jamaica’s deputy police-commissioner until August, recently said that he no longer believes the force can be reformed. He revealed that half the officers in a key unit failed a polygraph test last year. In his view it would be better to start again with a fully vetted staff and a new ethos. “The patient is terminally ill and should be put down,” he told a forum on crime organised by the opposition People’s National Party. “The cost will be great, but the cost will be even greater from not doing it. If you don’t fix crime, you can’t fix the economy.”

Some Jamaicans are prospering. Gordon “Butch” Stewart, who started his Sandals hotel chain in 1981 amid political warfare and economic chaos, is planning a new hotel in Kingston despite the recession. Patrick Casserly started a tele-services business with 35 staff in 2000; this year, he sold it with 4,200 employees to an American buyer for $85m. Thanks to its grassroots sports clubs, Jamaica also dominates the sprint events in world athletics. But these success stories are all too rare.

Parents

HS parents can be a bit crazy when it comes to academics, but I must say that I find the swim team parents to be somewhat wonderful. :) Over e-mail, at any rate.

Love,
Katherine

Magicians and Systems

The Jamaica Gleaner: Failed Magicians, Rotten Systems

The Jamaica Observer: Was Don Wehby a Success at the Ministry of Finance?

In Martin Henry's article (the Gleaner one), he points out that, in Jamaica, technocrats called in specially to help fix the fields to which they were assigned -- "magicians", he terms them -- have generally failed across the board. He references the Observer article to back up his point. This worries me somewhat, in terms of my bid to secure a Rhodes Scholarship, even as I essentially agree with his thesis and conclusion:

High-performance systems are rules bound and personality-insensitive. Jamaican people and their political leaders alike do not like system, order and discipline. We prefer magicians.

The most successful institutions are those that can replicate that success, almost in perpetuity. This is not to say that leaders -- business leaders, political leaders, etc -- are not important. This is merely to say that Apple would be a crappy company if it couldn't produce a decent computer without Steve Jobs. (And this is a question that people debate.) So, even if these magicians had managed to "succeed" in their jobs, the true test of any one magician's success would have been whether the institution in question managed to thrive under his successor.

As it was, we don't even need to ask that second question.

In addition to Henry's cynical conclusion, this analysis tells me two things. The first is that I will need to come up with some substantive plan for slow, yet steady, systemic change in order to impress the Rhodes Committee. I won't do much for the Education Ministry if I believe that everything rests on me. Secondly, it tells me that Jamaica is pretty much in problems right now if none of these people managed to achieve the systemic change that many of them desired. Actually, this leads me to another point. Perhaps it is not that Jamaican people do not like "system, order, and discipline." Hernando De Soto might back me up on this conjecture. Perhaps it is, rather, that Jamaican people, having given up on the systems and institutions of the country, still expect too much from the magicians. How could there possibly be a two-year solution to the crime problem we're experiencing now? I don't care how much leverage you have or don't have with the force. Even the political ties aside, where is the money coming from to ease all our aching woes? Yes, Giuliani's "broken windows" seemed to generate positive results quickly. But it certainly has its detractors. And Giuliani had money to work with. We do not.

Again, I am forced to reconsider my position on moving back, on dedicating my life to a field that I'm really only in because I have chosen to place my country's needs above, in some sense, my own. The Lord knows that I would probably be happier, in some sense, as a lawyer, in some developed nation. But at the same time, I would be extremely unhappy to be country-less, as I watched my nation-state go up in flames and sink.

Tune in for more revelations as I get them.

Night night,
Katherine

9th graders

As of this year, all 9th graders will spend the first marking period of the year in study hall, in the hope that they may acquire the habit of completing their night's homework (or at least, getting a head-start on it) during their free periods in the day.

Today, I had my first study hall of the year. It was in the science building, which is not a building with which I'm intimately familiar. So, when I came to the room and saw students inside, sitting quietly — some working in their notebooks and some looking in the direction of the blackboard — I naturally assumed that I was in the wrong place. So, I double-checked the number on the door and looked at the students again. They seemed so young, their faces certainly not the faces of high schoolers.

So, I checked with a different teacher this time, who confirmed that no one seemed to be in the room.

Then I went in.

There was no teacher there. Only a student at the front of the class, who had captured his fellow inmates' attention. And these were ninth graders.

Babyish as they look now, by the end of the year, they'll be much older and cruftier. And I will still, as a teacher, look as if I should be taking some math placement test.

There is No Riot

Even that desperate gaiety is gone.
Empty bottles, no longer trophies
are weapons now. Even the cunning
grumble. 'If is talk you want,' she said,
'you wasting time with me. Try the church.'
One time, it was because rain fell
there was no riot. Another time,
it was because the terrorist forgot
to bring the bomb. Now, in these days
though no rain falls, and bombs are well remembered
there is no riot. But everywhere
empty and broken bottles gleam like ruin.

— Martin Carter, Kingston, Jamaica

Hmm

So, yesterday, I was driving along the Henry Hudson and saw on the side of the street a woman, bra in hand, waving her rather pendulous (definitely DD+) breasts at passing cars. I felt as if I had just become a part of a bad exhibitionist/voyeuristic porn flick. Still recovering.

Hoping for some sympathy, or at least something edifying, I told a male friend about this experience:

me: so
I totally saw a naked woman on the side of the henry hudson highway today
waving her substantial tits at passing cars
I didn't know what to think
R: was she fit?
or a big girl?
me: no
I don't remember what she looked like in detail
R: the biological male (read - animal) in me probably would have done some quality oogling
that couldnt be helped
buuuut
the morally-adjusted human being would probably have been horrified/embarrassed (theoretically)
me: lol
well, like I said, I didn't know what to think
I was just shocked
she had her bra in one hand
R: i probably would have only been able to muster an "Awesome"
the rest of me would have been horribly confused
race of this lady?
me: no clue
like really
not white white
not black
R: white? black?
me: maybe latino?
R: Azn?
me: not asian
either part white or native american mix or latino
I think
R: topless or bottomless too?
me: had on panties
and that was it
R: man thats awesome
like, straight out of some guy's fantasy scene in a movie
largely naked chicks on the side of the road waving their ta tas
me: i know
i felt like i was in some sort of crazy porn flick
R: maybe you were witness to one, unbeknownst to you
me: maybe
R: hehe

Oh, boys. /rolls eyes

If I had told this to a (heterosexual) girl, this would have been a very different conversation.

Silly me.

Love,

Katherine

Casten Trip to Guatemala

This is the video of the Casten Trip to Guatemala, over Christmas break 2008. The edges (the left edge in particular) seem to be missing, but hopefully, you'll be able to get an idea.

Jamaican Athletics

Some links about the Jamaican athletics team and their recent performance at the World Championships in Berlin, courtesy of KT:

"With Blazing Speed, It's the Isle of Might"

World records and baton exchanges

Loyalty and honour in the face of bad management

A proposal / a gauntlet thrown.

Congrats to all our runners.

Why is the African continent poor?

"Africa is not poor," he also said.
"Africa is just poorly managed."

Not a new conclusion, but I enjoyed the phrasing and progression of thought.

That Guy: Black supremacy fast becoming a race issue - Best of Sport Analysis - NZ Herald News

[Thanks to ACS for passing this on.] It's clear that this man doesn't really understand (or, that he chooses to misinterpret) the structural arguments behind affirmative-action programs. I'm curious -- what structurally prevents white people from getting "the chance to prove themselves alongside the top competition"? Should we view Derval O'Rourke's achievement in the 100m hurdles as a victory against racism? Or Paula Radcliffe's and Xue Bai's victories in the marathon as proof that white and Asian athletes can fight back against all the ways in which black people have historically kept them down in sport?

My full and heartiest congratulations to those women (and everyone else, regardless of race, who perform at the highest level of athletic competition). Forgive me if I don't hold you up as token representations of your race. I see no barriers to entry at the non-world levels of the sport, so I don't see why this argument even has enough substance to be called a paper tiger.

Thoughts?

BBC - Sonja McLaughlan Blog: Charmed by the planet's fastest man

Nice that she likes Bolt, but embarrassing that she refers to the "President of Jamaica" (we have a Prime Minister), then links to an article about the President of the Jamaican Football Federation, who probably was not the person on the other side of the phone call...

Placing for Failure

The final paper that I wrote for Principles of Teaching and Learning.

It gives a crude overview of the Jamaican high school system, its placement mechanism, and some of the equity / social justice problems associated with it. Full disclosure + apology: We had an eight-page limit (double-spaced) and were only allowed a max. of seven outside sources; the paper ends rather abruptly, at the end of the eighth page. I also wrote most it while suffering from severe caffeine withdrawal. I apologize.

I think I'm going to write further comments on this paper and Holness' plan later today, if I get time. Today is also apartment-cleaning day. We're currently working on the kitchen, so we'll see.

In the meantime, I've posted some comments from Jamaican readers in the comments section.

Happy reading,
Katherine

----


Placing for Failure: GSAT and the Jamaican Secondary Education System
August 12, 2009

Contemporary Context
In Jamaica, for two days every March, elementary education institutions across the island are closed to the general student population, so that they may be transformed into testing centers for the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT). Each year, almost 50,000 sixth-grade students will take 5.75 hours’ worth of standardized tests that will determine, in many cases, the rest of their lives. By law, none of these students may be over 13. The youngest have recently turned eleven. These pre-pubescent youngsters spend two days attempting to demonstrate their knowledge of nationally-standardized content covered during the last one-and-a-half years of their elementary education: multiple choice exams in Language Arts, Mathematics, Social Studies, and Science last an hour or more each; a further hour is spent writing responses to the two Communication Tasks sections (Ministry of Education, 2008).

Many of these students’ parents have spent months—in some cases, years—helping to prepare their children as best as they can for these examinations. They know the stakes: the highest performers in the island will win government- and private sector-sponsored scholarships to the best high schools in the nation. On the other hand, although every student’s family submits a list of five preferred secondary institutions, many performers on both the higher and the lower ends of the spectrum will be placed in schools not of their choice (Bailey, 2005; Francis, 2009). Some test-takers will score so badly that they will be promoted to “secondary institutions” that are, in fact, merely an extension of their former primary schools, with no significant change in curriculum (Bailey; King, 1998). The Ministry considers the following five inputs when awarding places to secondary schools:

1. Students’ composite standard score
2. Students’ choices
3. Available places for each secondary school, broken down by gender
4. Students’ gender
5. Ministry’s Proximity List: This list is compiled by officers in the different regions who have intimate knowledge of the location and proximity of sending schools in relation to receiving schools. (Ministry of Education, 2008, pp. 9-10)

The only input that students’ families may control in any real sense is the second one, the list of five secondary institutions at which the student would prefer to be placed. Yet, even this element of control may be seen as tenuous, at best.

The rate of successful admission to the secondary institutions most commonly named as first choice schools is comparable with the admissions rates of Ivy League and other competitive colleges in the United States. Just under 15% of applicants for the five most popular first choice schools will be admitted, due to space restrictions. If the field is widened to include the ten most popular first choice schools, the admissions rate becomes 17.2%. The most ‘selective’ school, Campion College, has an admission rate of about 11.8% (Ministry of Education, 2006).

After taking the GSAT, students never again see the content of their examinations, and generally receive notification of their placement and grades in early June. As such, students cannot learn from mistakes made on the exam, in hope of improving their knowledge base. Although there are official routes for families to challenge the results that they have been presented if an error is suspected, students only have one opportunity to navigate the examinations successfully; they cannot be retaken in the case of a genuinely unfavorable result.

High School Placement: An Equity Issue
Students’ GSAT scores, viewed in comparison to the other scores of their cohort, are the only measure of student achievement (academic or otherwise) being used to determine high school placement. According to their performance on the GSAT, students are ranked from first to last:
The same principle is used to place each student, starting with the highest rank. The student’s school of first choice is checked for the availability of a space in which to place a student of this gender. If a place is available, the student is placed in that secondary school. If there is no place available, the process is repeated with the student’s next preferred school. If all five preferences are exhausted, without being able to place the student, the process continues in the same manner, with each school on the MoE Proximity List. (Ministry of Education, 2008)

Although the mechanism used to place students in schools is largely automated and is the same for each student, the difference between the GSAT scores that separate the 17% of aspirants who get into the most-requested schools of choice from the remaining 83% can be so miniscule as to suggest that a child’s placement may be determined by sheer chance. As Francis (2009) reports, this can make justifying the difference in outcomes difficult: “the scores that separated the top performers last year were less than half of a percent. "Why should I then place a child that gets 99.1 outside of their choice range and place a child that gets 99.2 in their choice range?" [the Minister of Education] asked.”

The stratification of Jamaican secondary institutions in terms of prestige, curricular goals, and educational outcomes further complicates the issue. If a student does not get into a top traditional high school through GSAT placement, research (Bailey, 2005; Holness, 2009; King, 1998) suggests that differences among institutions and few chances for students to transfer to more rigorous or better-performing institutions create vastly unequal outcomes, even for students attending different institutions that fall within the same category of secondary institutions.

Bailey further argues that current methods of high school placement reinforce areas of socioeconomic segregation within society by rewarding those who already are well-off with high school placements that will allow them to continue being well-off. She finds that the home addresses of the students who attend a traditional, well-performing high school located in a more upscale area of Kingston are overwhelmingly located in suburbia and in middle/high income areas of the metropolis. In contrast, a comparable (though significantly lower performing) high school located in downtown Kingston primarily draws from families living in downtown and transition areas of the city.

Bailey counters the argument that less-affluent residents of Kingston may aspire to different outcomes than more affluent residents of Kingston by discussing the outcome of focus group discussions conducted with eight- to ten-year-olds in both lower- and higher-income socioeconomic groups. She finds that both groups have “what are considered to be middle class aspirations” (p. 68) and desired upward mobility through education, but that, due to unequal elementary education, the lower-income cohort was already behind their richer peers in academic achievement.

Even if one is to disregard the literature that reinforces the idea that “any decision about a student’s continued education… should not be based on the results of a single test” (Oakes & Lipton, 2007, p. 230), the systematic tendency of GSAT to propagate systemic inequalities in elementary education and create inequities of post-secondary outcome between higher- and lower-income students should be enough to view the exam and the system of education to which it is tied as inherently unjust. Fixing GSAT alone is not enough; without enough “quality” institutions to receive students who leave elementary education, regardless of what method of placement is used, educational outcomes of different groups will be wildly inequitable.

The Social and Educational History of Inequitable Outcomes
Oakes and Lipton highlight the falsity of meritocratic mechanisms as engineers of social mobility and change: “The problem with the myth of merit is that it presumes a basic equality of opportunity and resources for success, and that the only variable is that of individual merit. However, … all other things are not equal” (p. 52). The social and educational history of Jamaica shows a tendency towards a belief in meritocracy as an engineer of social justice, the efficacy of which is counteracted by social stratification that largely occurs along the lines of skin colour and ethnicity, as well as by the continual efforts of more powerful social groups to keep less powerful groups in their place through the creation and maintenance of inequitable categories of secondary institutions.

Miller (1990) discusses the social history of Jamaican settlement and social mobility as a means for understanding the current social context in which Jamaican secondary schools operate. He notes the traditional dominance of white Englishmen and their lighter-skinned, mixed offspring. In contending that lighter-skinned immigrant groups (e.g. Syrians, Chinese, etc.) were able to raise their social cachet faster than darker-skinned immigrant groups, Miller suggests the prominence of racial theories as a justification for relative social place; he goes on to argue that class-based theories of inferiority merely served as a replacement for racial theories after Independence, when white populations essentially disappeared from the island. These class-based theories of intellectual capabilities still form part of the reason so many Jamaicans today find acceptable the inequities promoted by GSAT and the secondary education system. They imagine the system truly meritocratic and that, if the lower classes were indeed intelligent, they would be able to take better advantage of the opportunities presented them.

In truth, opportunities have been systematically denied the black lower class throughout Jamaica’s history. The 1930’s, a decade of social upheaval in Jamaica, saw constitutional changes being made that allowed blacks political power for the first time. The new suffrage that blacks enjoyed allowed them to agitate for greater educational opportunity. In 1943, the Kandel committee came out with a report on the state of the educational system that supported greater educational opportunities for blacks in light of the new political developments. Kandel made a number of recommendations, but the most influential (for this paper’s purposes) concerned the elimination of class-based education; he advocated for greater opportunities for the elementary school-educated to continue on to secondary studies. In light of this report’s recommendations, the post-primary school was born.

The post-primary school represented an important step forward for lower class mobilization, but were never intended to raise the lower class to the upper class’s level. In fact, the introduction of post-primary schools, which taught mostly vocational and technical subjects, began the system of secondary education stratification that remains in place today. Although further reforms in 1957 implemented the Common Entrance Exam (GSAT’s predecessor) as a mechanism of secondary school placement and opened up more free places in traditional high schools to lower income students through government-awarded scholarships (a tradition that remains in place today), the stratification of education posed significant challenges to income mobility. Post-Independence reforms that focused on educational access (such as those implemented by Michael Manley during the 1970’s) helped to expand the reach of secondary institutions, but also helped to solidify inequities of outcome due to the stratified system.

Present-Day Interventions
Although questions about the equity of educational outcomes are hotly debated in the Jamaican public sphere, with opinions being presented by representatives of all groups, the Jamaican government remains the main initiator of interventions meant to combat the pervasive inequities evident in the Jamaican system of secondary education and the mechanism through which students are placed into public secondary institutions. Successive governments have engaged in various interventions, most of which have been aimed at increasing opportunities for access to public education by historically underprivileged groups, in particular, the members of the lowest socioeconomic classes. I will discuss below both a recently implemented intervention and the disclosed strategies of the newly elected government for fighting inequities in the secondary educational context.

The Reform of Secondary Education Project (ROSE) proceeded from the view held by the then government that individuals had a right to an education that also functioned as a mechanism of social change (King, 1998). According to King, ROSE was designed “to improve both the quality and productivity of education and to achieve greater access and equity in the secondary school systems” (p. 45). It proposed to do so through changing the tradition of separate and unequal curriculum expectations in the various categories of secondary institutions that serve the Jamaican populace. Through loans granted by the World Bank, ROSE intended to create a national curriculum for grades 7-9, so that students who had been assigned to lower-prestige secondary institutions would not be systemically blocked out of opportunities to pursue more advanced studies. The Project ultimately hoped to postpone the age at which students would be assigned to divergent educational tracks from 11+ to 15+ (King). Both the idea of a curriculum common to all secondary institutions and the proposed shift upward in the age of selection represented a large shift away from historical patterns of academic specialization and segregation at the secondary level. ROSE also represented a change in thinking about the manner in which subjects should be taught. Curricula developed recommended a far more student-focused and –friendly approach than had previously been used and paid attention to the attitudes and values espoused by the students along with the traditional foci of the subject matter. To this end, the World Bank loans also included money for limited retraining of teachers to work with the new methodology. Money was also earmarked for the establishment, expansion and maintenance of necessary infrastructure.

Subsequent evaluations of ROSE have found that it has enjoyed some success at meeting its goals, but has fallen short in other areas. Holness (2009) notes that traditional high schools (the most prestigious category of secondary schools) continue to be exempt from the ROSE program, despite the initial goal of linking all secondary institutions under a common curriculum. Other evaluations have pointed out teacher resistance to following, and a potential inability to follow, the student-centric model upon which ROSE is based [see the essays surrounding that of King (1998) for further discussions of ROSE].

More recently, the current Minister of Education, Andrew Holness, has strongly denounced GSAT’s tendency to perpetuate enclaves of social privilege without providing comparable opportunity for social mobility. Proposed alternatives include Bailey’s suggestion of a geographically-based mechanism of placement (with zones intentionally drawn to include both areas of socioeconomic privilege and economically disadvantaged nearby communities). However, similar proposals have formerly been put forward to no avail; many vocal individuals and groups oppose the idea, for a variety of reasons.
In Minister Holness’ July 2009 sectoral debate presentation on the current state of education in Jamaica, he proposed that gains in both access and educational quality are possible through a focus on literacy achievement. Such a statement runs contrary to traditional beliefs, which dictate that gains in one, particularly in a situation where resources are severely limited (as they are in Jamaica), often come at the cost of gains in the other. This mentality has often been cited as the reason for the decline in educational quality following the post-Independence pushes for the expansion of educational access.

Resource List:
Bailey, C. (2005). Creaming and social segregation in the Jamaican school system. IDEAZ, 4(1-2), 61-71.

Francis, P. (2009, June 12). Fix GSAT soon! – Education minister says GSAT causes two-Jamaica syndrome. Jamaica Gleaner. Retrieved from http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20090612/lead/lead1.html

Holness, A. M. (2009, July). Promoting access and quality in education simultaneously: Sectoral debate presentation. Speech presented at Gordon House, Kingston, Jamaica.

King, R. (1998). Educational inequality in Jamaica: The need for reform. In R. King (Ed.), Institute of education annual: 35th anniversary issue: education and society; teaching and learning in schools; issues and problems in teacher education (pp. 43-58). Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies

Miller, E. (1990). Jamaican society and high schooling. Kingston, Jamaica: Institute of Social and Economic Research.

Ministry of Education. (2006). GSAT brochure. Retrieved on August 9, 2009 from http://www.moec.gov.jm/GSAT%20Brochure.pdf

Ministry of Education. (2008). Ministry paper on the Grade Six Achievement Test. Retrieved on August 9, 2009 from http://www.moe.gov.jm/Final_Ministry_Paper_GSAT_Placement_HME_August_11%5B1%5D%5B1%5D.pdf

Oakes, J. & Lipton, M. (2007). Teaching to change the world (3rd ed.). Boston: McGraw Hill.

Observer photographer arrested - JamaicaObserver.com

A photographer for the Observer was apparently arrested two nights ago because he was trying to take pictures of an incident involving the police. (He is being charged with operating a sound system without a permit, which he technically may also have been doing; the courts will decide on that.)

I have grad school homework up the wazoo — this week coming is the last week of school, but I felt compelled to post. This article brings up three interesting points of discussion:

1. The article repeatedly uses the word "draped" without the preposition, "up", which usually accompanies it in Jamaican speech. The usage of the term may indicate one of two things:

• that the editor believes that using draped in this manner conforms with the word's meanings in traditional, standard British English. (It does not — none of drape's senses correspond with "to be hauled up" or "to be manhandled". All of drape's senses speak to the looseness of hung curtains, not to the violence of the action that the article wishes to depict.)
• that the Observer's (or at least this editor's) current policy is to use Jamaican terms throughout articles, expanding on the newspaper's current policy of depicting Jamaican speech as faithfully as possible. But considering this, the omission of the preposition up is suspect. (Yet, note also that the quoted speech also left out the preposition — this could just be a case of a change in Jamaican usage; I will have to check that out.)

2. In terms of content, the actions taking place proceed from the police's desire to protect the public under the terms of the Noise Abatement Act. In the past year, the number of parties broken up by the police under these terms [see below] has increased dramatically. Considering the Jamaican tradition of open-air parties, this has had a severe effect on the entertainment industry, an important source of revenue for many Jamaicans. Parties that used to go on until daybreak have now had to shut down at 2 AM.

I have heard a number of theories concerning the sudden police desire to carry out their duties in relation to the Act, which first came into force in 1997, twelve years ago. For years, police officers have been bribed into turning a blind eye to the parties of promoters who paid them off, yet recently more and more of those bribes have been ineffective in preventing a party being shut off earlier than expected. So, one reason may be the force's resolve to combat corruption. Another possibility might be the desire to create an effective curfew; if there's nowhere to go after 2AM, you have fewer people about during the night. There may also be (other) political pressure at play, or the behaviour may stem from a desire to raise the bribes necessary for effective blindness and deafness to any noise complaints. This all makes me curious about the true motivations. Thoughts?

According to the Act, "no person shall, on any private premises or in any public place at any time of day or night—(a) sing, or sound or play upon any musical or noisy instrument; or (b) operate, or permit or cause to be operated, any loudspeaker, microphone or any other device for the amplification of sound, in such a manner that the sound is audible beyond a distance of one hundred metres from the source of such sound..." (section 3, subsection 1). The time frames during which this clause is most pertinent for parties are after 11 pm (no loudspeakers at public meetings, section 3, subsection 2) and between 2 AM & 6 AM on Saturdays and Sundays and between midnight & 6 AM on a Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday (section 3, subsection 4). [Disclaimer: I have no idea how these clauses interact, or as to what really should happen on a Sunday, seeing as it falls under all three clauses.]

3. As the Observer noted, this case of a photographer being arrested for snapping pictures during a confrontation between the public and the police, is not unique. In Spain and some other countries, it is actually illegal to take pictures of the police (in Spain's case, the directive comes from the targeting of members of the police force by terrorist groups). In the United States and Jamaica, it is certainly not illegal, yet policemen in both countries have taken to threatening photographers and videographers, professional and amateur, for fear that visual documentation of their actions will end up in the news media or on Youtube. (Yes, Jimmy Justice is annoying. I make no apologies.) I understand the pressure of maintaining positive public relations while enforcing the law, but if the police handle themselves well and with dignity at crime scenes, there should be no reason to fear the shutterbugs. On the other hand, if what Jamaican police fear is terrorist (gangster) retribution, then they should petition to make photographing them (though not their actions) a crime. The newsmedia will then block out their faces in the photographs and the amateurs will stop bothering them, but we will still have the ability to check up on their actions through the fourth estate.

I do not think that this is what the police fear, though. Furthermore, I believe fervently in societal transparency (with appropriate educative measures attached). So, may the practice of taking pictures live on, so fewer people are manhandled by the police.

Love,

Katherine

Michael Jackson

I had a completely different e-mail all set to go to you all, but -- like much of the news these past weeks -- it has been overtaken by the news of Michael Jackson's death and its reception around the world. I missed the memorial on television, but am currently watching the highlights on CNN. Even so, the response was unavoidable: I walk west on 125th Street -- through Harlem -- to get to my classes at Teachers College (Columbia University) and everything was Michael. The stereo systems on the street that yesterday played disparate songs were united today in celebration of Michael Jackson's legacy, his oeuvre. Every t-shirt had Michael's face. Even the congo drums seemed to beat out in celebration of his work and life.

It strikes me when I think that my mother and he were almost the same age; my father (born in 1961, three years after MJ) literally grew up, in some sense, with Michael Jackson and his music. I, too, grew up with Michael Jackson's music, but in quite a different way: for me, MJ was always somewhat pale in complexion, his hair always straightened. I grew up watching the videos for the singles from Bad and Dangerous. Thriller's songs I learned about through the movie Moonwalker, which I watched with almost the same frequency as I did Sesame Street. (Chris, I'm sure you can identify with this last point.) As such, the pictures of Michael Jackson as a young boy that lined the streets of Los Angeles seemed somewhat strange to me; I've know the words to many Jackson 5 songs by heart, but the first time I realized that pictures and videos existed from that era was the day that he died.

I have commented often that these past two years have revealed themselves over and over again to be watershed years: the world is changing rapidly and I feel as if these, right now, are the moments that we will point at in the future when we try to explain to our children what the world was like and how it changed, and changed us. I feel fortunate to be alive and old enough to appreciate the significance of the events of these times -- and to have some connection to them that extends further than watching them on the news.
My heart goes out to the Iranians, the Hondurans, the people caught in the conflict in northwestern China. And my heart goes out to the people who, as Brooke Shields noted, "were lucky enough to know [Michael Jackson] personally" and who are most deeply affected by MJ's abrupt passing. My mind returns to the last funeral-spectacle that remains, to this day, in my memory: that of the former Princess of Wales, Diana.

Elton John then reprised and rewrote the song that had originally been penned in honor of a woman born Norma Jean. How sad that the lyrics of his tribute are just as appropriate for this untimely death as it was for Marilyn's. Just as a generation never knew Marilyn's struggles, or Elvis' or Diana's, but loved and idolized, anyway, so we have loved (and, occasionally, fainted for) Michael Jackson. We have wondered often at his conduct and the circumstances and truths of his life, certainly, but I think it fitting that what has come to light over and over now that he has gone -- too late perhaps -- are how many lives he affected positively. Today, we learned a little about Michael Jackson, the man. How easy it is to forget that the people who entertain us and the people whom we idolize and set apart are indeed people. There will never be another Michael Jackson. May he rest in peace.

Raspberry Walnut Pancakes

While at my alma mater's Commencement this past weekend, I ran into a friend who will graduate with the class of '10. He expressed frustration (he was once with the class of '09) that, having taken a year off from school, he felt, on the occasion of his original class's Commencement, no closer to knowing what his ultimate purpose in life should be. I tried to reassure him that he is not alone, but I don't know if he found the similarity between us at all reassuring; one year post-Bachelor's degree, this past month for me has also been filled with "where am I going?" questions.

As someone who must consult both subway map and iPhone to successfully find any street / building / large, well-known area in New York City, a weekend back in Western Massachusetts was comforting. There, I know the difference between Hadley and South Hadley and can find my way between almost ten towns without either directions or having to retreat to 91. Yet, on Sunday, I was driving up to Northampton from Amherst—and I couldn't get there. A policeman had set up a barricade at the intersection of Rt. 9 and East St (before the intersection of Rt. 9 and Rt. 47) and was directing traffic to turn left or right. Apparently, the best response would have been to have turned left, gone up to 47, then continued up on Bay Rd. I turned right, and a wall of people watching the "Hadley Parade" (which was comprised of old fire trucks?) thwarted my attempt to get across at the intersection of 47 and 9 and onward to lunch with Rachel, my newly-graduated cousin.

Apparently, I don't know where I'm going in Western Mass, either.

I told another friend recently that the two places where I currently feel most at home in New York are the strip of 42nd St between Grand Central and Times Square and the strip of 125th St between Lexington Ave and Frederick Douglass Blvd. She asked me if I was a tourist.

I enjoy those streets for precisely the reasons most New Yorkers hate them – I don't have to pretend as if I know the area; nor do the people who hawk goods on the streets care where I'm from. It's their business to make me feel welcome (or at least, only mildly overwhelmed) as they proffer a program to a Broadway show or point me to their discount clothing store. The amount of performing I have to do on 125 St. to pass off as a "native" is particularly low. The sights and sounds already, in a way, remind me of home: large populations of people my complexion and darker; shop windows haphazardly arrayed with neon-coloured clothing stretched over white plastic mannequins and child-body hangers (manniquers? chang-ers?); sidewalk vendors selling T-shirts! Incense! CDs!, music blaring from dark, nameless vans behind them; and—particularly as the heat begins to soar—diabetes for dessert (in this case, sold in a Dixie cup).

The other day, I bought brightly orange mango-sugar-rush-to-the-head. I walked straight down 125th, licking my artificially early death, and felt as if I knew where I was going (the train station). [The feeling was almost as good as the one I got this weekend from being in the company of so many people I love and who love me. I remain convinced that hugs = happiness.] Even so, as I continue to fail to plan for the summer (though I know, already, that I will be going home to do something, taking (any?) two classes at Columbia University, and will teaching a few books again come the fall), I hope that those architects-who-studied-to-be-geologists-and-then-went-on-to-management-consulting-followed-by-advertising (thanks, Amherst Career Center!) were – will be – ultimately right. That the '10 graduate's, my peers, and my youthful lack of direction will be rewarded; that my uncertainty as to whether I've chosen the right path won't matter in the end.

So, while I will continue to bake pancakes according to recipe (this morning's were delicious), I think I'm going to stop worrying for now about the recipe for my life. We'll see how long this lasts. ;-)

Congrats to the new alums and lots of love,
Katherine

Plots and Plans

Passive aggressive much?

After vacuuming my roommate's dog's poop and piss off from the living room carpet last weekend, I took the (rather overfull) bag out of the vacuum and threw it out. Now, I had meant to buy a bag sometime this week, but you know me [cough] — I take my time to do things where general household cleanliness is concerned, as long as there is no biohazard involved. Anyway, I came home this afternoon (while my roommate was still at school) to find the vacuum in front of my door with a note attached: BAG FULL. (I imagine that she didn't actually bother to look inside the vacuum, or the note might have read: BAG MISSING.) Now, I bought the vacuum, but use the thing with 1/20th of the frequency that J does, since she is borderline obsessive-compulsive about mess and clutter. I imagine that this is why she placed the vacuum outside my door with a note, but why not just ask me to buy a vacuum bag, since she bought the last one?

On the other hand, this clip is wonderful:



Love,
Katherine

On "Wanting" and "Happening": The Easter / Passover Edition

Happy Easter!

I woke up this morning to find that my flatmate's (J's) blind and deaf dog had "escaped" from J's room (where Freckles is kept, through the use of a child safety gate) and had mistaken our living room for the great outdoors, leaving me numerous presents to clean up, as J is away in Boston. I wasn't really upset -- the dog can't actually see where she's using the bathroom and had been doing quite well until today -- but the incident did make me slightly late to drive the bus for "breakfast run" (i.e. private school kids wake up on a Sunday morning to feed and clothe New York City's homeless) and, furthermore, seemed to echo with a theme I've been thinking about lately.

Back in March, when my job was killing me and I came to the realization that all-nighters were not just a high school / college phenomenon, a student sent me an e-mail, with the revision of an assigment that I had mandated to be due on that day. He writes of the rather hurriedly compiled attempt, "I know this is what neither you nor I wanted, but it happened.... Sorry."

The next night (I actually didn't realize how closely these incidents coincided till just this moment), a rather clean breakup happened (to me?) that, nevertheless, left my heart chafed and fraying at the edges for a little while, as these things do. During the initial discussions and throughout the aftermath, both I and the other party reverted to excuses that more or less boiled down to the line my student had given me. "Neither of us want this, but so it must be... for the greater good... for the best... as it happens.... Sorry."

Today, breakfast run finished later than it usually does, so I listened to a Mass on the radio while I searched for a nearby church that I had looked up the night before in case of that very occurrence. I had meant to go to a non-denominational service, but somehow -- after serendipitously finding parking on an Easter Sunday morning -- ended up at a Catholic one. I haven't been to a Catholic service on my own since freshman year at Amherst; it was not, precisely, what I had wanted, but I figured that it would, as it were, "do." But this is what I love (and occasionally don't love) about Catholic churches. Ultimately, they're more or less the same. Although the service I was listening to on the radio took place at a different location than the church I was in, when I entered, exactly the same song was being sung -- it was as if I was able to pick up right where I had left off.

Now, being religious, I am often wont to attribute the coincidences in life that I don't understand to God's work. In this vein, I attributed my happening upon this church that allowed me to have a somewhat steady Easter Sunday church experience, despite my being terribly late, to some greater purpose -- greater good, as it were -- that I cannot fathom and may not always correspond with what I "want." Yet I wonder about the ways in which we as humans (wherever we fall on the religious/non-religious scale) use the excuse "this is not what I wanted, but it happened" to disguise our choices and allow us to do exactly what we want -- the very opposite of what we maintain -- by allowing us not to shoulder the consequences of those choices. We prioritize our lives and often conflate our needs and our wants, choosing steadily along the way and eliminating the time and opportunity for other choices that are not as high on the priority list. Yet, when unfavorable events "happen," we excuse ourselves as if we had not chosen some other greater want (or 'need') that created the adverse effect in the first place.

Now, of course, we cannot see all the ripples, effects and after-effects of our choices and our wants. But often the ones we excuse are the ones we are able to see; the others, unforeseen, catch us so off-guard that we struggle to rationalize them afterward, rather than beforehand. As for Freckles, the blind and deaf dog, I was the person who opened the door of J's room while J was gone, and reinstalled the child safety gate was the only barrier. As such, I am partially responsible for Freckles' error; it is much easier for a dog to push down a child safety gate than it is for a dog to open a door. It is true, neither Freckles, nor Jess, nor I wanted Freckles to interpret the living room as a world green with morning possibility, but it happened, and I stayed late to clean up the mess. I didn't need to consign the event to any greater good, though it fit rather serendipitously into this narrative; I did need -- and manage -- to forgive Freckles, and myself.

May you all have a wonderful week. Any thoughts or comments are, as usual, appreciated.

Much love,
Katherine