August 16, 2010

We aren’t in this mess because of budget deficits. In fact, the only way to jump-start our economy is for the government to create jobs.

It’s nonsense to think of the economy heading downward again into a double-dip recession when most Americans never emerged from the first dip. We’re still in one long Big Dipper.

The following is an excerpt from The Death of “Why?”: The Decline of Questioning and the Future of Democracy by Andrea Batista Schlesinger. Copyright 2009 Andrea Batista Schlesinger. Reprinted with permission by Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Nancy Gannon is not an ideologue, an America hater, or an activist determined to recruit revolutionaries to her cause. She’s just a high school principal.

She’s a principal in one of the toughest places to be a principal: the New York City public school system. Yet, despite the enormous challenges of educating children in a city where only slightly more than half of all ninth graders graduate high school, Nancy’s mission goes beyond securing as many diplomas as possible.

Individuation and financial autonomy have long been the ideals for successful maturity, but current times necessitate changing our ideas about what it means to “grow up.”

In the spring of 1973, a couple of months before I left for college, my parents moved into a one-bedroom apartment. I have no traumatic memories of this event, and I don’t recall worrying that anyone might have thought it odd at the time. Young people my age were expected to leave the parental nest, so downsizing made perfect sense. But now when I speak about it, people are astonished.