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Blog Archives - October, 2010
Accounting for What Matters
– October 31, 2010 As I’ve written a few times in Natural Life Magazine, because the GDP is designed to measure economic growth, it makes no distinction between transactions that add to well-being and those that diminish it. As long as money changes hands, the GDP increases. For instance, environmental pollution ends up being a positive because it creates economic activity – and is even counted positively twice: once when it’s created and again when it’s cleaned up, ludicrously making it more valuable than if it had not happened. And the result of that pollution, which is often illness such as cancer, also ends up on the plus side of the ledger because it, too, creates economic activity. On the other hand, unpaid caregiving of one’s own children or elders isn’t counted. Nor is other work done on a volunteer basis in the community. Shouldn’t a true set of indicators include a way to debit the accounts for the cost of degradation of wetlands and the depletion of the ozone layer and oil? Shouldn’t it adjust for factors such as the value of household and volunteer work, which are invisible in the GDP because no money changes hands? Since the GDP is really not a true accounting of what life is like in our families and our communities, a number of alternative economic indicators have been developed by progressives around the world, including the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI). It’s a project of a California think tank called Redefining Progress, which puts it this way: “We believe that progress is not measured by the quantity of goods we consume, how fast our economy is growing or how much financial wealth is being amassed. We believe progress is measured by how well we equitably distribute wealth, income and access to cultural amenities; diversify and stabilize our economic base; protect and restore native ecosystems; and advance social, economic and environmental sustainability.” Management guru and author Peter Drucker famously said, “What’s measured improves.” So it bodes well that the GPI has been used in a number of countries to measure the success of social programs and the well-being of citizens. But we’re still a long way from real change – especially as conservative governments around the world, in the wake of the recession and in the name of recovery, hack away at things like environmental standards and funding for women’s advocacy and social programs. (And here in Canada, the government plans to eliminate census questions on unpaid work, so there will be even fewer tools with which to measure problems and progress.) Meanwhile, I believe that positive change will continue, as the economic meltdown has reminded people in this part of the world of the virtues of frugality, community, and self-reliance, and the threat of climate change has convinced at least some people to reevaluate their carbon-heavy lifestyles. And if all of this results in the rejection of the idea that success is only about money, we can forge new attitudes toward what’s important in life. The life learning movement is ahead of the pack in this realm. In an article on this topic that I wrote last year for Natural Life Magazine, I quoted something I wrote in my book Challenging Assumptions in Education, about how our public school systems perpetuate social hierarchies, disempower and coerce children, and encourage a destructive level of consumerism and consumption. School teaches submission to power, based on size, age, intellect, and sometimes ability to bully, and there are race, gender and class biases there as well. The very structure of schools delivers a hidden socioeconomic curriculum of standardization, competition, and top-down management by experts. Nevertheless, schooling seems to be where I part ways with so many academics and feminists, including Waring and others like Toronto’s Andrea O’Reilly who are concerned about legitimizing the work of mothering. The persistent denial of the realities of school – and rejection of family- and community-based education as an alternative has complex roots, including the vested interests of the educational industry. And it causes problems not only here but in countries to which we export school. (I wrote a review of a new film Schooling the World: The White Man’s Last Burden for Life Learning Magazine’s November/December issue. It addresses the sometimes negative impact of our well-meaning insertion of western-style schooling into relatively intact traditional cultures.) In a keynote speech given recently to The Economics of Mothering conference hosted by Andrea O’Reilly’s Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (formerly the Association for Research on Mothering), Marilyn Waring reminded the largely academic audience that the word “economics’’ comes from the Greek word for “managing a household.” (Here is an article about the conference by Toronto writer Antonia Zerbisias.) That Greek word “oikos” is also the root of the word “ecology.” And that ties my work up into a nice package – one that helps keep me motivated to continue in spite of its lack of financial reward and slow adoption by the mainstream. Aside from allowing academic and personal freedom, life
learning is about living more mindfully – acting altruistically (instead of
earning gold stars or the approval of authority figures), respecting individuals
for who they are rather than how much money they make or how many degrees they
have, overturning discrimination, working cooperatively, and learning about and
improving the world by living in and acting on it. The kids
who are growing up in that way should be able to solve many problems.
Going Rogue About Education – October 24, 2010 In July, Erica Goldson graduated as valedictorian from high school in New York State. She gave a zinger of a speech criticizing the institution of school as she experienced it. She cited John Taylor Gatto and other deschooling writers as she urged that everyone to rethink education and to work together to revolutionize it. And, more recently,
a valedictorian at the University of Winnipeg has made political waves.
Graduating student Erin Larson used her speech at the fall convocation to
protest the awarding of an honorary degree to a federal politician whose right
wing views she said compromised the university's integrity. Public Safety
Minister Vic Toews has been criticized by many people for public statements he
has made about crime, immigration, and same-sex marriage. Both young people have been praised and derided for their
speeches, with some critics saying they abused their platforms and even made
people “uncomfortable.” But I think that is just the sort of time and place to
make political statements and congratulate these brave and principled
valedictorians. I am heartened to see that there remains passion, insight, and
intellect among young people, in spite of the dumbing down of schools at all
levels. Imagine what will happen once we allow young people to direct their own
lives and learning! (And I do believe that time is coming.)
Who Is Directing Our Lives Anyway?
– October 11, 2010 This training to pay attention to what others think – this belief that others know best what is good for us – results in what sociologist David Riesman has called “other-directed” people. Looking to one’s peers for direction is an inauthentic way to live. Yet most of us allow peer pressure to affect everything from our working lives, to how we spend our leisure time, to our consumption habits. Rather than deploring this lack of trust in our own opinions and feelings, we accept peer pressure as an inevitable part of modern living (except when our adolescent offspring follow us into accepting peer pressure and we encourage them to think for themselves!). People who submit to others’ standards to measure their own growth and that of their children have allowed themselves and their children to unthinkingly be placed into assigned slots. In turn, they put others into their assigned slots, so that everything fits nicely together for the “ others” who are directing the show. Because this school-induced transfer of responsibility for what we think is important starts early in life, few people question why the slots exist in the first place or why we let peer pressure rule our thoughts and our lives. We are encouraged to accept the assumption, from the day we start nursery school or kindergarten, that other people know better than we do how we should spend our time. And it is a long climb out of the slot. You can read more about this assumption
of received ideas in my book Challenging Assumptions in Education: From
Institutionalized Education to a Learning Society.
Let’s Stop the Pinkwashing
– October 5, 2010 There is
definitely some awareness that needs raising, but it’s about why the incidence of
breast cancer has risen steadily over the past fifty years. Experts say
the increase is at least partly due to increased mammography screening (which is, itself, controversial, perhaps unreliable
and part of the problem). But there is evidence that the
increase is also due to our society’s environmental and corporate excesses
coming home to haunt us. Laboratory studies suggest that many of the chemicals
that have been pumped into water, air, soil, and our bodies may cause breast
tumors, hasten their growth, or leave mammary glands more vulnerable to
carcinogens. But that’s not information with which most corporations – with
their history of minimizing risks and being secretive about their ingredient
usage – would want to be associated. Pink champagne is much more palatable to
their bottom lines.
Unfortunately, some mainstream cancer charities readily
enable this pinkwashing rather than address the dirty secret of environmental
causes of cancer. The Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, on
its pink website, lists four factors for cancer prevention: exercise,
eat a balanced
diet, limit alcohol and avoid exposure to cigarette smoke.
Nothing else (although to their credit,
they have apparently funded some research into dangers of chemicals in
occupational settings). It’s website lists sixty corporate
partners, which include a paint company, a plastic manufacturer, some purveyors
of prepared foods, and a cosmetic manufacturer.
The
Canadian Cancer Society has a section about dispelling “myths” on its website.
It seems to discredit research suggesting that parabens, preservatives found in
many pharmaceutical, food, and cosmetic products, can mimic the effects of
estrogen, which can promote breast cancer tumor growth. On the other hand,
seemingly not to alarm people, there is silence about what substances can be
carcinogenic. Again, a long list of donors and sponsors. It’s easy for such positions to be seen as credible, at
least at first glance, which is all most people take. After all, the government
has safe levels for chemicals in consumer products, right? Well, there aren’t
exposure guidelines for many of these potential toxins. Those
in the know about such things say that no comprehensive list of
endocrine disrupting chemicals exists, and most of the nearly 100,000 chemicals
in use have not been tested to determine whether they affect hormone systems.
And the regulations don’t take into account the interactions among the many
different chemicals that we are exposed to every day. Or that they can linger in
the environment for years after the safe level guidelines are lowered or the
chemicals are phased out.
In spite of all the pinkness – or perhaps because of it –
few studies have investigated the effects of modern chemicals on women’s breast
health. Fortunately, activists for women’s health and the environment are
beginning to change that. One notable example is the
Breast Cancer Fund, which has just published the
sixth edition of its
State of the Evidence: The Connection Between Breast Cancer and the Environment.
It catalogues the growing evidence linking breast cancer to
synthetic hormones in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and meat; pesticides in food;
solvents in household cleaning products; BPA in food containers; flame
retardants in furniture; and radiation from medical treatments.
This report comes just months after the President’s Cancer
Panel’s report, Reducing Environmental
Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now, whose lead authors, Margaret Kripke, Ph.D.,
and LaSalle Leffall, Jr., M.D., found that the true burden of environmentally
induced cancer has been grossly underestimated. The report includes a hefty
critique of failed regulation, undue industry influence, and inadequate research
and funding. It also found that the government has been locked in a
cancer-fighting paradigm that has failed to look at the complexity of cancer
causation.
In other new research, the community activist
Silent
Spring Institute found that women who report greater use of cleaning products
may be at higher breast cancer risk than those who say they use them sparingly.
Researchers reported in the journal
Environmental Health that they had asked more than 1500 women about their
cleaning product usage and found that those who reported using more air
fresheners and products for mold and mildew control had a higher incidence of
breast cancer.
A much older research study was conducted by the same
organization and published in 2003 in
Environmental Science & Technology. The
The Household Exposure Study took indoor air and dust samples from 120 homes
and measured the concentrations of chemicals identified as endocrine disruptors,
which mimic or interfere with human hormones, sometimes affecting cell growth
and development. The investigators’ selection was based on the chemicals’ wide
use in pesticides, detergents, plastics, furniture, and cosmetics. They detected
a total of 67 endocrine disruptors in the air and dust in
women’s
homes.
“The growing scientific evidence compels us to act to
prevent breast cancer,” says Jeanne Rizzo, R.N., president of the Breast Cancer
Fund. “This Breast Cancer Awareness Month, our message is clear: we must move
beyond awareness to prevention.”
We have begun to do the research that could lead to
prevention. Activist organizations like Breast Cancer Action and
Women’s Healthy Environments Network
are pushing companies – notably in the cosmetics industry – to remove
some of the nastier ingredients from their products. Now, what’s needed is to
remove the hypocrisy and stop the pinkwashing so women have
some tools to make healthier decisions and governments can be forced to regulate
industry. Protecting Our Children From Hurt Teaches Them Fear –
October 1, 2010 My beloved grandfather lived with us in a house across the
street from the school. When I was six, he died. But I didn’t know about it for
awhile. When an ambulance was called to take him away, it was recess time at
school. My mother phoned the school and arranged for me to be called into the
school building on some pretense so that I wouldn’t see the ambulance. They
waited until after dinner that night to tell me he had “gone.” Then they cleaned
out his bedroom, painted the walls, and moved me into it, for which I was
grateful because I’d slept on a cot in the living room until then. But we never
talked about him much after that. When I was fifteen, my father died. He had a heart attack
while lying on our couch. I didn’t know that’s what was happening and was sent
to bed so I wouldn’t see the ambulance arrive. He never came home. I wasn’t
allowed to visit the funeral home or attend the funeral. My mother wouldn’t talk
about him much after that. Aside from my mother’s
difficulty with emotions, keeping me away from those life experiences didn’t protect
me at all; it taught me that there were things I wasn’t capable of
dealing with.
I’ve dealt with – and accomplished – a great deal in my sixty years.
And I’m
proud of that. But sometimes I wonder what life would have been like if I’d found my
spirit and my voice earlier. I wonder how much more I could have done, and how
much stronger I’d be, with more confidence in my abilities, without fearing the
unknown, and if I’d done something else with all those minutes in which I
imagined and worried about what might happen next. Naomi Aldort just sent me her column for the
November/December issue of Life Learning Magazine. She wrote: “Shielding a child
from reality does not help her grow up emotionally stronger. On the contrary, it
teaches her fear of life.” Somehow, I didn’t make that mistake with my own
daughters, who are both strong, fearless women. But I wonder about the kids
today whose parents are trying so hard to keep them safe from all of life’s
emotional bogeymen. Will they grow up wishing their parents had allowed them to more
fully experience life? |