August 9th, 1997

FROM RAGS TO RICHES - BUT NOT FOR YOU AND ME
By Jackie Giuliano

"Too many needy people were getting into the boxes and cleaning us out. They'd slide their 8 or 10 year olds in and take whatever they needed," said Art Mattson, finance director for Goodwill Industries in Orange County California while explaining why attendants are necessary at the Goodwill and Salvation Army donation boxes in parking lots.

The Environmental Protection Agency reports that of the 5.1 million tons [that's 10.2 billion pounds] of clothing and footwear thrown away with household garbage in 1995, only 660,000 tons, or 13%, was recycled.

"The American public is very generous," said Vahan Chamlian in an interview with the Los Angeles Times on July 28, 1997. The 71 year old Armenian immigrant owns a $78.6 million business that buys used clothing from charity collectors such as Goodwill Industries or the Salvation Army and sells it in poor countries. He will buy a piece of clothing for 10 cents and it winds up being sold for as much as $15, the equivalent of 3 weeks' wages, in a poor village in Nigeria.

So, my friends, if you have ever donated used clothing thinking it was going to a poor or needy person, think again. There is a really good chance that you have helped pay for Chamlian's million dollar Fresno, California home, his corporate jet, or his wife's Rolls Royce car.

As I have said many times before, things are not what they appear to be.

In Los Angeles on Monday, July 27, 1997, the Reverend Wiley Drake was found guilty of violating city zoning codes. He allowed homeless people to stay in a makeshift shelter in his church's parking lot. This Reverend Drake, by the way, is the one who introduced a successful amendment at the Southern Baptist Convention earlier this summer denouncing the Disney company for their sympathetic policies to same sex couples.

In the same newspaper is a list of "Medical Disciplinary Actions" against Los Angeles County physicians during the last two months. Out of the 13 doctors listed, only two had their licenses revoked: one for filing a false income tax return and another for impersonating another doctor. All the rest had "probation" for crimes like prescribing narcotics illegally, failure to properly treat patients resulting in their deaths, and gross negligence.

So, how did we get to such a place where penalties do not match the crimes and the poor are used as stepping stones for the rich? One could argue that this has been the case throughout time, and there is some truth to that. But I think that there is a level of disconnection we have reached that is unique to modern times - the last couple of hundred years. I think that the way we educate people has a lot to do with the difficulty we seem to have making reasoned decisions. I want to reflect a little on our educational process and offer some suggestions about how we as individuals can increase our ability to think critically.

Education today is in a crisis. Governments refuse to allocate enough money for textbooks, teachers are inadequately trained and few in number. In a book from 1969, appropriately titled "Teaching as a Subversive Activity" by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, an apt description of our society is offered. They say that we are a society with "influential men at the head of important institutions who cannot afford to be found wrong, who find change inconvenient, perhaps intolerable, and who have financial or political interests they must conserve at any cost."

These men, and some women, but not many, are threatened by the concept of a democratic society and an evolving, self-nurturing society. Those authors go on to say that there are also obscure people who do not head any important institutions who are equally threatened because they have identified themselves with ideas and institutions which they want to keep from changing. They fear criticism and critical analysis. We have all met people like this. Any arguments against their positions anger them. It's as if they believe that their values are so fragile that any information voiced to the contrary will topple them from their comfortable and familiar places.

These people prefer that our schools not encourage our children to question, doubt, or challenge any part of our society. You will hear the argument, say the authors mentioned above, voiced quite often these days as right wing conservatives take over our school boards, that, "they are our schools and they ought to promote our interests. That is what democracy is all about."

But whose schools are they, and what interests should they promote? Should they be teaching a "greater good" or responding to any corporate donor? A disturbing trend today is for corporations to "sponsor" teaching modules and provide curriculum materials to classrooms throughout the nation. American Express has a slick curriculum module it supplies to schools, desperate for any materials, which teaches young children how to be good consumers. I have heard that one of their packets even contains an application for a child's credit card! And this week, the State of California approved the use of the books of scientology leader, L. Ron Hubbard, in schools.

Authors Postman and Weingartner relate a story about an interview in the early 1960s with novelist Ernest Hemingway. The interviewer was trying to get Hemingway to tell what it takes to be a great writer. Hemingway said, "In order to be a great writer a person must have a built-in, shockproof crap detector." Postman and Weingartner suggest that we should design our schools to produce experts at "crap detection." These people would be able to spot the faulty assumptions, misconceptions, greedy agendas, and bold-faced lies that surround us.

And we are surrounded by crap. Yesterday it was present in the Department of Energy's claims that it makes economic sense to restart one of the nuclear reactors at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. And they revealed that they have been spending $31 million a year to maintain one of Hanford's reactors in "hot standby" status. The same government refuses to take care of those who are sick and dying from being downwind from the Hanford facility over the last 50 years. That is crap.

It is present in the opening quote of this article, where the financial officer of Goodwill Industries bemoans the fact that needy people "steal" clothes that have been donated by people who assume their old clothes are going to needy people. This "theft" gets in the way of this "charity" making a profit. That is crap.

It is present in the conviction of the Baptist Minister, sentenced yesterday for sheltering the homeless, going against city zoning ordinances. That is crap.

So, we all need to improve our crap detectors. Now. Someone said that the beginning of wisdom is calling things by their right name.

We can forgive ourselves for this delay in fine-tuning our crap detectors. We have been taught to remember things in school, not to formulate rational thoughts, make observations, ask probing questions, or identify and challenge assumptions. We have been taught to repeat what someone else says is true. The most probing questions that most of my adult students ask these days at the start of a class term are, "How long does the paper have to be," and "Do you deduct points for grammar?" By the end of the term, they are ready to begin challenging assumptions, but at the beginning, they just want to be told what I want them to say. We must take back our intellectual powers.

Here is a chilling summary by Postman and Weingartner of the primary aims of so many teachers, expressed either explicitly or implicitly, in their teachings:

1. Passive acceptance is a more desirable response to ideas than active criticism.
   
   
2. Discovering knowledge is beyond the power of students and is, in any case, none of their business.
   
   
3. Recall is the highest form of intellectual achievement, and the collection of unrelated "facts" is the goal of education.
   
   
4. The voice of authority is to be trusted and valued more than independent judgement.
   
   
5. Feelings are irrelevant in education.
   
   
6. There is always a single, unambiguous Right Answer to a question.
   
   
7. English is not History, and History is not Science, and Science is not Art, and Art is not Music, and Art and Music are minor subjects (subject to cancellation), and English, History and Science major subjects, and a subject is something you "take" and, when you have taken it, you have "had" it, and if you have "had" it, you are immune and need not "take" it again.

Many fine teachers are teaching skills of critical thinking. But not enough.

You can teach yourself how to increase the sensitivity of your crap detector. Here are some ways.

• Become a better listener. Most of us don't listen when someone else is speaking. We are actually just waiting until it is our turn to speak. We really haven't heard what the other person has said. Practice listening, really listening. Don't say a thing until the other is finished. Then, formulate your thoughts, slowly and carefully, taking all the time you need, and respond. This one thing alone will dramatically change the way you communicate and the way you take in information.
  
  
• Challenge assumptions. Every one. If someone says, "Do it," ask "Why?" If the answer does not satisfy you, ask again, and again, and again until you get a proper answer.
  
  
• Challenge your own assumptions about the way the world works. Go out of your way to understand what is behind your actions. Be constantly aware that things are not as they seem. When you flush your toilet, be aware that the contents are not disappearing. They are just going a few miles away to be superficially treated and pumped into the ocean, contributing to the toxic load in our seas, making lifeguards and swimmers sick, and killing sea life. Be mindful of your actions. Be responsible.
  
  
• Hold yourself accountable for what you say and what you write. Don't say something unless you know where you heard it from. Do some research before you add a fact to your collection. Don't just repeat things. Understand them. Words are important. Every time we say something to someone, it makes an impression. That person will pass it on and the person who hears it next will pass it on, like a bad photocopy of a copy of a copy. Don't be part of that chain.
  
  
• Be a party pooper. Challenge your friends' and loved ones' assumptions as well - gently, respectfully, but firmly. Be open to having your own assumptions challenged.
  
  
• Say what you mean and mean what you say.
  
  
• Tell your elected representatives what YOU want them to do. They work for you and only you. I am currently disputing a phone bill with GTE. Because I sent them copies, I have the California and Washington State Public Utilities Commissions, the Federal Communications Commission, my two State Senators, my California State Assemblyperson, and GTE all looking into it. It's what we pay them for.
  
  
• Consider each dollar you spend like it was a 10-page letter to your Congressperson or to the Chairperson of the Board of the parent corporation who makes the product you are buying. Your buying choices are a tremendous form of activism.
  
  
• Call things by their right names. When it is crap, call it crap.

Regarding the issues I opened this column with, DO NOT give your old clothes and household items to "charitable" organizations because you think they are going to the "needy." Evidence is clear that you cannot trust that this will happen. Find a shelter, halfway house, or rehab center in your community (I am sure there are many), call them and find out their needs, and send your stuff directly to them. Let's close down the profiteers making billions off the suffering of others.

We look with uncertainty
Beyond the old choices for
Clear-cut answers
To a softer, more permeable aliveness
Which is every moment
At the brink of death;
For something new is being born in us
If we but let it.
We stand at a new doorway;
Awaiting that which comes . . .
Daring to be human creatures.
Vulnerable to the beauty of existence.
Learning to love.
-- Anne Hillman

RESOURCES AND REFERENCES 1. Read "Teaching as a Subversive Activity by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, published by Dell Books. I don't know if it is still in print, but you can get used copies from Powells Bookstore in Portland, Oregon. Search their shelves at http://www.powells.com

2. The work of Neil Postman has many followers. You can find links to his work at http://www.channel-zero.com/issue1/postlink.html
For an interview with him, visit http://www.channel-zero.com/issue1/postman1.html

3. Whether you are a student or a teacher, there is much to learn from the Center for Critical Thinking at Sonoma State University in Northern California. Teachers can find lesson plans and ideas for teaching students of all ages to think and reason. Visit their web site at http://www.sonoma.edu/cthink/default.html

4. Learn about where it goes when you flush in my Healing Our World article "Do You Know Where It Goes When You Flush?" You can find it at http://www.envirolink.org/environews/ens/newsfeed/may17-1997g.html

5. E-mail Goodwill Industries at goodwill@goodwill.org and find the Salvation Army nearest you at http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/findfol/finder.htm. Tell them both that you disapprove of any program that auctions used clothing to international traders who make billions of dollars of profit by selling clothes to poor nations. Those clothes should go to the hungry and homeless, not to the highest bidder.

6. The Los Angeles Times web site is helpful for initial background information on a subject. Be careful, and remember to challenge assumptions and question and confirm what you read. They can be found at http://www.latimes.com/. There you will find articles about Hanford and also about the selling of used clothes.

{Jackie Giuliano can be found trying to think critically in Venice, California. He is a Professor of Environmental Studies for Antioch University, Los Angeles, the University of Phoenix, and the Union Institute College of Undergraduate Studies. He is also the Educational Outreach Manager for the Ice and Fire Preprojects, a NASA program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to send space probes to Jupiter's moon Europa, the planet Pluto, and the Sun. Please send your comments, ideas, and visions to him at jackieg@jps.net}