It's been a long time. I've been working on new things that I hope will play out well here. This is something that Rethinking Schools
didn't get back to me on, but that could work anywhere that has students facing cuts to the things that make their lives function in any vaguely proper way.
During a brief lunch break, I found
myself eating a peanut butter sandwich with one hand and using the other to
play around with
“Budget Puzzle: You Fix the Budget,” a
New York Times interactive article challenging readers to balance
the Federal budget by selecting from a list of various cuts and taxes.
With surprising ease, I found my budget with
a several billion dollar surplus just as two students wandered into my
room.
I pointed out my success to them,
unsure if they knew exactly what “balanced the Federal budget” meant.
I should’ve known better.
One student excitedly asked how I had done it
and another suggested that I send it in, as if the solution to our nation’s
funding problems was as simple as just moving numbers around until we can
figure out the right answer.
I was
struck by their assumption that budgets are essentially benevolent documents
that just sometimes don’t have room to provide for everyone’s needs. In the Bronx, where I teach, budget cuts in
education and services for working people are common, ranging from reduction in
housing or food aid to the constant threat of teacher layoffs or the
elimination of free Metro cards for students.
Still, students assumed that cuts like the ones they were experiencing
must be happening everywhere, to everyone.
After all, why would services in their neighborhoods be reduced at a disproportionately
high rate?
These types
of assumptions were exactly the sorts of things that I wanted to target by
teaching about the budget process. Even
though austerity measures are being pushed through in Europe and across the
United States, it is simply not the case that cuts to the services that working
people are paying for are unavoidable.
By looking at all of the choices on the table and seeing that domestic
spending and so-called “entitlement” programs (a disparaging term that should
be fought against whenever possible) are not the only places where spending can
be cut, students came to realize that the pain of reductions are not being
evenly spread by any stretch of the imagination. The benefits to teaching about the budget
process didn’t just end with students coming to a realization that deep cuts in
social spending were avoidable though; this unit allowed us to dig into the
very deeply-entrenched ideas about how and why some people have more or less
than others.
Starting with the
Home
The main
problem that I knew I would have while teaching this unit was the dense lexicon
of budget discussions. To ease students
into this, I started out with the simplest ideas of budget cuts, revenue
generation, and income. Although they
were basic, starting with these three terms helped students break away from
simply talking about saving, making, spending, or losing money. Instead, they learned to see things in terms
of costs, sacrifices, and working time.
If they wanted something, they had to generate the revenue to pay for it
somehow. If they didn’t want to be
bothered with generating revenue, they had to cut something out of the
budget. The most concrete way to work
with these ideas was the home. Groups of
students tackled hypothetical situations where families faced budget shortfalls
and had to figure out how to make up the difference. Predictably, this led to budget cutting
measures like walking to work, getting rid of cable, and buying cheaper
groceries. It also less frequently led
to the suggestion that families could generate revenue by selling possessions,
find jobs for school-age children, or second jobs for parents. Clearly, students had learned the lessons of
hardship well. The answer is always
within the family itself, with every member following the Jurgis Rudkus maxim
to simply “work harder.”
Not all
students were so easily pushed into these answers though. Some spoke out vehemently against the idea
that they should have to cancel their cable because the landlord wanted to
raise the rent or that they should have to work extra hours after school to
help pay for a rise in the cost of their asthma medication. They especially disliked the idea of eating
cheaper food because of a parent’s wage reductions. The general consensus among these students
was that some belt-tightening was ok, but at a certain point budget cuts meant
dropping below an acceptable standard of living. Several went so far as to ask if there was a
point to working at all if people had to do it while living without the basic
comforts. At the heart of all of these
problems was one of the most important questions of the unit: Why do working
people have to pay so much to so many different people, just to continually get
littler and littler comfort in return?
What do we get from
the government anyway?
The
question of working people paying out huge sums at every turn was also wrapped
up in the one of the biggest (though most productive) hurdles that came from
relating government budgets to family budgets.
While students knew that they didn’t like the idea of working hard every
day just to scrimp on all the necessities of life, they also knew the anti-tax
rhetoric that is all too prevalent among working people, and it came up
immediately when we talked about financial hardships on families. Why does the government need to take out so
much?
This was a
legitimate question, since looking at family budgets showed that a large
percentage of money came out of checks and went to the nebulous idea of
“taxes,” while other expenses like Metro cards and sales taxes also ate into
monthly resources. However, this
provided the opportunity to look at all the benefits that come from tax
revenue. Of course students realized
that taxes fed institutions like schools and the military, but they were
surprised by other government-backed programs.
Like many Americans, students hadn’t given much thought to the fact that
the initial development of the Internet came from tax revenue, as did parks,
roadways, fire departments, water purification, bridge construction and upkeep
– the list of things they hadn’t thought about coming from taxes was apparently
almost endless. Soon, students began
asking why people would want to cut out funding for those things. Suddenly, taxes and the budget seemed more
tangible and important, since they were linked to real things.
This is the
point that has to be addressed first if Americans are going to be able to fully
understand the lopsided class conflict that budget balancing has been part
of. Taxes pay for things that are
necessary for society and cuts to those things mean cuts to the structural
foundation of actual communities. Like a household budget without cable,
Internet, decent food, heat, or toiletries, the idea of a community without
parks, clean water, good schools, or drivable roads seemed ridiculous, given
the obvious abundance of resources in America.
So the point of taxes isn’t to pay for things, but to chip in and get
more than you might be able to if you had to pay for everything by
yourself. They are dues that community
members pay to be part of a community.
If the idea of clean water is appealing, taxation is necessary.
As this
argument goes with adults, so it went with students though. “I don’t use any parks or the fire
department, so why should I have to pay for them?” asked one student openly and
without any malicious intent – he simply wondered how that idea worked into the
whole community perspective. Then it
happened. A group of students came up
with the idea that everyone had to pay in a little bit for everything, but it
was only fair if those who benefited most from infrastructure paid more. We have to have roads, so everybody’s got to
pay a little for them, but big stores really
need the roads to get customers and products in, so they should have to pay
more. With a little facilitation, the
logic snowballed. The banks depend on police
to protect their piles of wealth.
Millionaires with multiple homes and a couple of buildings that they do
business out of depend on the insurance of the fire departments in numerous
locations, not just for one apartment like the students did. Landlords could charge more for apartments if
there were nice parks and good access to public transportation in the
area. Businesses were more likely to use
the courts, to benefit from technological development, even to an educated
workforce. It turns out, the rich not
only use these government services more than average, they actually profit from
their existence.
How would working
people balance the budget differently?
Looking at
the budget template from The New York
Times site, I assigned pairs of students to individual budget items,
ranging from the various proposals on changes to capital gains taxes to changes
in Social Security or disability benefits.
Their first major challenge was decoding the language of these
individual proposals, since the level of difficulty in political budget prose
is rather intentionally dense, even in summary form. Even though some proposals were only a
paragraph long, some students took a full class to figure out exactly what
their item was talking about. Causes of
the confusion ranged from tracing through items such as “Allow expiration for
Bush Era tax cuts to individuals with incomes above $250,000” in an effort to
determine exactly what was being done to taxes on which group of people, to
trying to figure out what “Using an alternate measure of inflation” to
calculate cost of living increases in aid money actually meant.
The process was a liberating one in
itself. As students overcame the
alienation caused by the language of the politicians and bureaucrats, they
developed a sense of power. They
could’ve been fooled or confused or simply turned away by the language of
proposals like the Bowles-Simpson plan to “simplify” the tax code by
eliminating some tax loopholes and reducing the overall tax rate for
individuals and businesses. However, as
they read and analyzed what each proposal would actually mean, they were able
to look past words like simplify and reduce tax rates, which are included to
persuade the casual observer that these might be ideas that would benefit just
about anybody. Instead, I asked students
to determine who would benefit from or be hurt by each item, and in what
way.
Some of these were simpler than
others. Students quickly decided that a
carbon tax would either generate revenue by punishing polluters or encourage
industries to find cleaner ways to do business, both very popular outcomes with
middle school students. Sure, the
factory owners would be charged a bit, but it was in the interest of cleaning
up the planet and keeping down the costs of global warming in the future.
Other items sparked conversation
about why anyone would argue against such proposals. For instance, establishing a millionaire tax
benefits the overall system by generating revenue and is a more progressive
approach to taxation, but costs the rich money, so it seems that those items
unfairly burden one group of people.
However, students quickly pointed out that it might actually be more
beneficial for the rich to pay a small surtax if it meant that the government
could maintain infrastructure that would facilitate business. Taxing the rich was largely necessary in
order to maintain the system that made the rich successful.
As students
prepared to present these items to each other, they already had begun prioritizing
certain types of budget proposals. Cuts
to state aid were almost universally never considered. While students cared about items on the
Federal budget, it quickly became apparent that the items that most directly
affected them came from state money, including education, many types of public
assistance, and public transportation.
Cutting the state seemed like too much of a sacrifice, especially in
light of the comparatively paltry 40 billion that this would save over a 20
year period, equaling less than 4% of the overall budget. For students, this cut would cost much more
than it would save, hurting nearly everyone in some facet of life, and
contributing very little to any actual solution. An egalitarian focus was central to this
conversation. If a proposal would hurt
many and benefit only slightly, it simply wasn’t worth the cost. Similarly, although some students supported a
consumption tax in various forms, usually as a 5% Federal sales tax, their
logic was based on the presumed equality in such taxes. Sales tax would depend upon how much someone
bought, and most arguments centered on the assumption that the rich would be
forced to pay their fair share because they buy so much more than other
classes. Other suggestions, like cutting
jobs or freezing pay in the Federal workforce, were non-starters. Students could clearly see that reducing jobs
or pay to working families would only save in the short term and would
ultimately cost more, not only to the people put out of work or the unemployment
agencies that would have to pay out benefits after layoffs, but to the economy
in general when these workers stop spending money, sending a ripple effect
through other sectors.
Overall, the students were able to
balance the budget by keeping these sorts of concerns in mind at all
times. In general, students favored
items that would generate revenue, although they did also suggest cuts that
seemed to earn big reductions in the debt.
These ranged from reductions in the Social Security benefits of higher
wage earners to an elimination of costly nuclear missile spending through
weapon decommissioning projects. Even in
terms of taxes though, they were less hawkish than I was in my budget. More often than not, they favored reducing
tax breaks for the rich, such as higher-income mortgage deductions and
corporate loopholes. They were wary of
capital gains or estate taxes on any but the very highest earners, partially
because of the residual anti-tax conditioning they came to class carrying, but
also because of what can only be described as an amazing sense of
sympathy. Showing a benevolent tendency
that was quite unlike that of the rich interests who normally craft government
budget documents, students were concerned with the possibility that, even if
the wealthy in general could afford higher taxes, what would happen if an
individual had special circumstances that limited his or her ability to
pay? What if that person lost a home or couldn’t
put kids through school?
Of course, these concerns reflected
the realities that many of my students had faced themselves and wanted to spare
other people from facing. This was no
dictatorship of the proletariat, just an attempt to make people pay their fair
share. Most of their budgets actually divided
spending cuts and tax increases fairly evenly, arguing that it would be unfair
to ask for too much from anyone without everyone being willing to give
something up. Unfortunately, when their
budgets were finished, they had produced documents that couldn’t hope to pass
through a House subcommittee, let alone make it to the point of being signed by
the President. They were speechless when
I told them their budgets would be laughed out of Congress. They had avoided job cuts, minimized tax
increases on all but those who could bear them the easiest, gave sustainable
funds to education and the environment, and made some hard decisions about the
military. Many of them had even managed
to run a short term surplus, even though they were only in 8th
grade. Clearly something is wrong.
So why doesn’t the
budget ever look like this?
As students
worked through their budgets and eventually came through in the black, the
first thing that happened is that they dropped their initial scorn for
government officials who were behind on passing a budget. Originally we had made it a bit of a game,
mocking educated leaders who couldn’t do something that a bunch of early-teens
were about to do. After looking at all
the variables and facing many arguments about priorities and values, students
were a bit more sympathetic. This was
hard stuff. They developed a new
irritation though. While looking at
summaries of the Paul Ryan budget and President Obama’s counter-proposal,
students were struck by how many items on their budgets didn’t appear on either
document from Washington. The President
made lackluster pushes for a repeal to the Bush Era cuts to the wealthy, but
shied away from anything resembling the millionaire’s tax or the reduction in
corporate loopholes. Republicans denied
the possibility of adding any taxes, even for oil industries in the wake of
record profits. Instead, the two groups
seemed to only be arguing about how deeply to cut from an already bare-bones
Federal budget.
Furthermore, students started to
realize that it was taking a lot of cuts to working people to equal up to just
a few cuts to the rich. One estimate claims
that the millionaire’s tax would generate almost one hundred billion dollars in
revenue over the next 10 years by imposing a 5.4% tax on a few people who aren’t
exactly struggling. However, this tax
has been looked over in favor of a Federal workforce pay freeze that will
effectively reduce the pay of tens of thousands of workers by approximately
5%. Even though this cut to pay for
workers affects more people who have less to lose, students were quick to point
out that it didn’t generate even one fifth of the revenue. Cuts to state aid and other Federal programs
like the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools would also be necessary to make
up the gap left by neglecting the Millionaire’s tax.
There’s a clear trend here. While students were concerned about asking
too much from the rich, the beneficiaries of such consideration have no problem
asking for everything from working people.
Reductions in salaries, benefits and standards of living for workers are
framed as “tough sacrifices” while taxes on the wealthiest members of society
are declaimed as “class warfare.”
Students were appalled by the fact that they hadn’t been willing to
attack the rich in order to balance the budget but were expected to put up with
seemingly endless cuts themselves. One
student demanded a chance to rewrite his budget, blow for blow. Suddenly it was all-too-clear that budgets
weren’t the benevolent documents that students had assumed them to be.
Students left the unit angry, but
unsure what to do about it. Clearly the
government had betrayed them and sided with the wealthy, even in the more
progressive cases. What it took time for
them to realize was that this unit was an important first step, one that many
people in the adult world still haven’t taken.
Understanding how the budget works, starting with the simple fact of not
being intimidated by the language used to talk about it, is key to changing the
predatory tendencies built into the ways that decisions about our economy are
made. Being able to look at the whole
range of items on a particular budget to identify its priorities gave students
the critical analytical skills necessary to answer any politician who
mock-sympathetically explains that there just isn’t enough money for education
or parks or aid to families. There is
enough money. It just got put somewhere
else, which the people who wrote the budget deemed to be more important. Understanding this seemingly simple point is
key to not only understanding how budgets work in general; it is absolutely
necessary for understanding why, unless people learn to read and analyze these
documents critically, the wealthy will continually benefit from
institutionalized helping hands, while workers continue to be asked to bear an
obscenely heavy load.
This is my first full reflection on
that, although the focus has been pretty real for me since the early
classes this September. For several weeks, students worked with the
reading and annotation method I've been advocating – writing
everything they know and ignoring or moving past what they don't
until later. At the end of the unit, students got a choice of texts
to read on their own, annotate, and explicate. This student chose to
read and annotate a selection from Rousseau's Discourse on the
Origin of Inequality. It's a
fairly challenging text once you go below the surface level of the
dichotomy between natural and social sources of inequality, and he
follows Rousseau's nuance admirably. The really nice thing is that
you can see the student learning to transfer Rousseau's language to
his own over the course of the text; early on, it is largely a series
of loosely-copied phrases and ideas, but by the end he is summarizing
and explicating the text in completely new langauge.
The
annotations start out simply, as he picks out the basic ideas that
Rousseau is setting up, ignoring a lot of the finer details. This is
about two types of inequality and it doesn't make any sense to talk
about the source of natural inequality. You could do worse than to
get this out of the first 2 paragraphs, I think. Going on, the
annotations bear a pretty strong resemblance to Rousseau's own
wording, as he teases out the meaning. However, by his notes on the
bottom of the page, the language has shifted to his own. Similarly,
on the 2nd
page he defaults to small revisions to Rousseau's phrases –
clarifying them – but then summarizes in his own language at the
bottom. He is picking out the connections between the pieces and
finding a way to tell what he understands generally from the pieces
he has translated.
