Easy Gun Breeds Violence

A psychotic man walks casually into a gun store and buys a slick 9mm Glock automatic pistol. To ensure that his diabolical plot doesn't go awry, he also buys extra magazines loaded with ammunition. That way, he calculates, he can fire at least 20 rounds from a 30-round clip. By then, he will have comfortably mowed down his targets - any living, breathing human will do - and engrave his name next to the infamous assassins of the past.

22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner did just that, killing six people, including a bubbly third-grader, and critically injuring Arizona's Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, his main target. The Congresswoman had called a community meeting in Tucson on January 8 to gauge the mood of her constituents. It was held in the open, a vivid display of democracy in action, until Loughner opened fire and splattered the sidewalks with blood.

Much will be written about what caused Loughner to trip. Menacing to begin with, he unnerved everyone around him in the community college where he was a student. Given his mental state, he must have found the toxic rhetoric of the likes of Glen Beck and Sarah Palin music to his ears.

But ultimately it was one stark fact that made the difference between impotent rage and murderous realization: Buying a gun in Arizona, as in many other states, is as easy as buying milk.

If the NRA and the gun lobby, more correctly, the assassin lobby, is not checked and Congress does not pass laws to keep firearms out of the hands of citizens, particularly the deranged, America will continue to be periodically convulsed by the violence of madmen and psychopaths. There are about 85 guns per 100 Americans. Think of that 85% gun ownership for a moment, and see if you don't get the shivers! On the average, 80 Americans die from guns every day.

Unless we as a nation revisit the first two constitutional amendments and enact tougher gun-control laws, and acknowledge to ourselves that love of gun is an addiction just like the addiction to drugs or alcohol or sex, history will continue to repeat itself and more innocent blood will be splattered on our sidewalks and in our homes.

Muslims Must Protect Their Minorities

What is happening to Muslims? In Egypt's Alexandria, Muslim terrorists killed 21 Coptic Christians on New year's Eve and wounded hundreds. This community has lived in Egypt for almost two thousand years and at 8 million, comprise 10 percent of Egypt's population. In Nigeria, a Muslim terrorist cult attacked several churches last year that left scores dead. In Iraq, a church was taken over by Muslim fanatics on October 31, 2010, that resulted in the killing of about fifty Christians. In Pakistan, Asia Bibi, a Christian and a mother of five, faces a death sentence under the country's notorious blasphemy law. For daring to speak out against this law, Salmaan Taseer, the governor of Punjab, was gunned down by one of his bodyguards.

"My name is Ahmad and I'm a Muslim, but that's not important now," said a young Egyptian high-school student who had gathered spontaneously with a thousand other Egyptians in the Center of Cairo on the first of the year. He was holding the Quran in one hand, a crucifix in the other. "I've come to protest against what happened to our Christian brothers and to show that the religious communities in Egypt won't let themselves be divided."

Such sentiments are indeed being expressed by outraged Muslims at the deaths of minorities who have lived among them for centuries. Unfortunately, they are relatively few in number. Too many Muslims are either afraid or reluctant to speak out against atrocities committed by other Muslims. But let a non-Muslim mock Islam or attack mosques and suddenly these lambs turn into lions as they take to the streets condemning Western aggression and attacking Western interests.

We Muslims cannot continue with this hypocrisy and double-standards for long. We are the ones committing the ultimate blasphemy, through our silence and appeasement of Muslim fanatics. We see Western conspiracy at every corner but are blind to the elephant in the room, the terrorism by Muslims against Muslims and non-Muslims alike. We deny constantly that our cruelest enemies are from within our folds.

We cannot be good Muslims unless we are also good Christians and good Jews. That is what I understand by the reference to "People of the Book" in the Quran. Unless we commit to protecting the minorities living among us, we will be betraying the fundamental tenets of our faith. It is as simple as that. If Muslim minorities living in the West come under attack, can we really blame anyone but ourselves?

Eliminating Desire

“Eliminating Desire” is the perplexing personal interest Mark Zuckerberg lists on his Facebook page. The Facebook founder has become an Internet icon as the number of users of his social network, already more than 550 million, approaches a billion. The company got tons of publicity when Zuckerberg was selected as TIME magazine’s 2010 person of the year. Facebook overtook Google as the most visited site in the U.S. in the past year, a phenomenon unthinkable only a few months ago.

But back to that desire thing.

In an interview, Zuckerberg explained: “I just want to focus on what we’re doing … I think it would be very easy to get distracted and get caught up in short-term things or material things that don’t matter. The phrase is actually ‘Eliminating desire for all that doesn’t really matter.’”

Now, whether history will judge Facebook to have been a transformational or a frivolous innovation is unclear. But that intriguing, enigmatic sentence bears reflection: “Eliminating desire for all that doesn’t really matter.”

The idea of what matters and what doesn’t is, of course, unique to each of us, shaped by faith, culture, passion, inclination. To a technologist like Zuckerberg, connecting people across the globe in a seamless digital network is probably all that matters. Everything else is peripheral. To a scholar, seeking knowledge, and adding to it if possible, is paramount. To a writer, unlocking the mysteries of the human heart is the point. And so it goes.

But then, desires find a way of weaving themselves into our goals and the effect is to scatter focus, as a prism scatters light.

One such desire is more like distraction but it has become so overpowering in our times that it is indistinguishable from what we call addiction, which is desire running rampant. It is our constant need for digital stimuli, one of its chief architects being, ironically, Mark Zuckerberg.

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, iPhone, YouTube, Texting, Email – such are the mind and time-sucking vortex of the Web, and many of us plunge headlong into it from the moment we wake up until a few hours of nightly shut-eye. (What some of us would give to dispense with sleep if that were possible!) Work is now in our pockets, literally, keeping us in a 24x7 state of connection.

But this state of affairs is also what makes Zuckerberg’s statement all the more intriguing. Here is a 26-year-old billionaire who has the means to fulfill any desire that glides into his mind, yet he is singularly focused on his goal. And while his goal may be to create an even more seductive vortex, we must give him credit for resisting desires that afflict most of us – more stuff, more money, more vacation, more everything.

The summit of all desires is, of course, the desire for “things.” Very few of us resist the siren call of materialism. If my neighbor has a 50” TV, why, I must have the biggest HDTV in the market. If he drives a Cadillac, I must drive a Mercedes. If his home has eight rooms, mine must have at least twelve. And if there is no one in sight who can compete with me in possessions or power, does it mean that I can rest? No! Like a shark, I must be constantly moving, even if it means to remain at the same spot.

The unbridled acquisitive instinct that lies dormant when the means aren’t there but blooms instantly when they are, is what causes so much despair and heartbreak. Wise travelers inform us time and again of seeing people in distant lands, whom we regard as dwelling in adversity, who get more out of life’s simple joys – family, friendship (real, not virtual), community, nature – than affluent people living in mansions and surrounded by stuff but surviving on Prozac and therapy. Yet all of us who engage in materialism in one form or another know that the charm of new purchases - a car, a pair of shoes, a watch – wears down in days, until we get the next new “thing” in a deadening cycle of diminishing sensitivity.

So, how to eliminate desire for “all that doesn’t really matter”?

Sometimes it is forced on us, as the Great Recession did, and continues to do. Many Americans have discovered that giving away stuff – clothes, gadgets, cars – and living with less clutter makes life more meaningful. Millionaires have discovered that instead of fretting about the first million begetting the next, they can lead a more satisfying life on, say, $40,000 a year. (Americans living below the poverty line will consider that a sign of affluence). It is no wonder that the top word that we searched for in 2010, according to Merriam-Webster, was “austerity.”

But reflecting on life’s purpose can also have a salutary effect. What exactly do we want out of life? Is it to be the envy of our neighbors, the toast of our societies? Is it to dazzle others with our knowledge, to make lesser mortals tremble with our power? Is it to climb the greasy pole of success on the backs of others? All these desires have shallow roots, however worthy they may appear. Perhaps it will dawn on us, if we can be alone with our thoughts, that happiness often flows from outlasting our impulses.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone, said Thoreau. It is an insight we should put to use as we welcome a new year.

The Muslim scholar Al-Harith bin Asad al-Muhasibi (165 A.H – 243 A.H) left us with this instruction for achieving our dreams: “You will not achieve what you want unless you give up what you desire, and you will never achieve your dreams until you are patient with what you hate.”

Nurturing "A Beautiful Tree"

“The Beautiful Tree” is a book that lays bare the bankruptcy of Western ideas about free primary education in developing countries.

Written by British educator James Tooley and supported by data from the field, it shows how the poor of the world are taking charge of their educational destiny, and how foreign money and governmental collusion threaten to undermine them.

Tooley’s odyssey began in Hyderabad, India, in 2000. A chance stroll through the old city’s teeming slums led him to dozens of makeshift schools where children of rickshaw pullers, street vendors, laborers and society’s assorted underclass were receiving their basic education. The teachers were animated and energetic, the students eager and curious, far more than what he saw in the government and elite schools in the city and its affluent suburbs.

Ignored by western aid agencies and harassed by government officials, a vast network of private schools in these low-income areas have been serving the poor for years. They are locally owned and funded, in contrast to the free public schools that receive copious financial aid from western donors and NGOs. Yet the poor send their children to these private schools, supporting them with fees from their meager income.

They made this conscious decision, Tooley found, because they had compared the public and private schools in their areas and found the education in the latter superior. They could see the transformational power of knowledge in their children as they moved through the grades, even though they had no education themselves.

Tooley’s discovery was as simple as it was profound: The poor chose self-reliance over dependency. They were the best agents of their change, from poverty to prosperity.

Guaranteed salaries in government schools meant that many teachers, beneficiaries of political patronage, rarely showed up for work, and when they did, spent much of their time sleeping or relaxing rather than teaching. “I don’t care whether students learn anything or not. I always collect my pay at the end of the month,” was how one teacher put it.

In contrast, teachers in the fee-charging private schools had to earn their wings every day, or else they were fired. Accountability, combined with a genuine desire to shape young minds, motivated these poorly-paid teachers to excel in their craft, reflected in the higher scores of private school students over their counterparts in government schools.

From numerous interactions with aid executives, public school officials and teachers, Tooley came to understand the philosophy guiding western donors and NGOs: The natives, many of them poor ignoramuses, don’t know what’s best for them. We do. We will fund the construction of schools, bring technology into classrooms, train teachers on western styles of teaching and make education free for all. Good salaries and incentives will ensure a large supply of locals who will buy into our ideas, implement them as directed and stifle any renegade educational movements.

But the private schools of Hyderabad thrived under the most challenging conditions imaginable. Operating as for-profit businesses, the owners provided philanthropy to destitute parents as needed, while holding teachers to the highest standards of behavior, punctuality and subject-mastery and evaluating them on the performance of their students. Tooley felt inspired simply by talking with school owners and teachers like Fazlur Rahman Khurrum, Mohammed Wajid, “Sajid-Sir,” and Maria. The success of their approach was evident in the lively and high-achieving students of their schools.

Was this phenomenon unique to the backstreets and alleys of Hyderabad, Tooley wondered, or was it prevalent elsewhere in the world as well?

For the next several years, Tooley traveled to slums, shantytowns and villages in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Somaliland, Zimbabwe and China. Though separated by language and culture, he found the same drive among the poor to educate their children in indigenous schools operating on shoe-string budgets rather than in free, government schools. The school owners were animated by the same ideas he found in Hyderabad: that a monopoly, as practiced by foreign-funded public schools, bred failure while a competitive educational model based on self-reliance and accountability ensured success.

In his investigation, Tooley uncovered facts that turned conventional wisdom on its head. One such was that the British brought education to the uneducated masses of the subcontinent. Yet data collected in India in early 19^th century showed that there were over 20,000 schools and colleges with over 160,000 students in just 20 districts alone, before the British imported their system. Students included the poorest and the most disadvantaged. Thomas Munro, governor of the Madras Presidency, had to acknowledge that this level of educational enrollment “is higher than it was in most European countries at no very distant period.” Similar high-volume schooling was prevalent in Bengal, Bombay and the Punjab, as evident from one of the reports published in 1841 by the University of Kolkata, titled “State of Education in Bengal 1835-38.”

Citing these figures, Mahatma Gandhi said at Chatham House, London, on October 20, 1931, that “today India is more illiterate than it was fifty or a hundred years ago … because the British administrators, when they came to India, instead of taking hold of things as they were, began to root them out. They scratched the soil and began to look at the root, and left the root like that, and the beautiful tree perished.”<>

What was the beautiful tree Gandhi was referring to? It was the network of private schools, “closely interwoven with the habits of the people and the customs of the country,” throughout India that served students both poor and rich. Philip Hartog, a former vice-chancellor of Dhaka University, was in the audience when Gandhi made his assertion, and was incensed by it. He set out to prove Gandhi, who was imprisoned in 1932 on his return to India, wrong.

It is rich in irony that Tooley, an Englishman (he chose the title “The Beautiful Tree” for his book as homage to Gandhi), dissects Hartog’s arguments point by point almost seven decades later and proves that Gandhi was, in fact, right. Far from bringing education to India, as the British congratulated themselves on doing, they instead crowded out the already-flourishing private education system with their colonial system. Illiteracy increased as a consequence.

Tooley is particularly critical of Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859), the architect of the public schooling system in existence in India today and across the developing world where the British wielded influence. Macaulay was openly dismissive of indigenous scholarship and installed a centralized system of “free” education, with mandatory paraphernalia for every school, buildings and so forth. As Gandhi wrote, “This very poor country of mine is ill able to sustain such an expensive method of education.” Gandhi wished to return to a system of “private schools for the poor, funded mostly by fees and a little philanthropy.”

Whether it is the World Bank or Department for International Development (DfID), UNDP, Oxfam, UNESCO, UNICEF, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation or well-meaning celebrities like Bono, Tooley believes that “development experts today, academics, aid agency officials, and the pop stars and actors and who encourage them, are modern day Macaulays.”

While they believe in the importance of education, they are also convinced that without their intervention, the poor will be doomed. Like Macaulay, they will not even admit to the possibility that the poor can meet their educational aspirations on their own. Macaulay thought there was only one way to educate Indians, and that was to install a uniform and centralized system that suited the British upper classes. The modern Macaulays hold the same view, that only publicly funded systems that serve Britain and America is also the solution, particularly for the poor, in developing countries. “My journey,” Tooley writes, “across Africa and India, and into history, leads me to believe that they are as mistaken today as Macaulay was then.”

Through inquiry and analysis, as opposed to theorizing and acting on received wisdom, Tooley has offered compelling evidence that the world’s poor are not waiting for educational handouts. They are building their own schools and educating themselves, a surer path to universal literacy and prosperity than the sterile ideas and practices of development experts.

Tooley’s observations point the way to a promising future for developing nations. They must find a way to unlock the potential of their poor citizens. It can be done if educational entrepreneurs like Fazlur Rahman Khurrum and Maria build self-sustaining schools in urban slums and villages and transform them into centers of excellence. Private schools for the poor will flourish as much in the cities of Bangladesh, say, as in Hyderabad, Gansu, Lagos and Nairobi if the product is quality education. Teachers don’t have to be certified; they only have to have a hunger for knowledge, a passion for teaching, and a desire to make a difference in the lives of their students.

An aspect of education missing in “The Beautiful Tree” is online learning, particularly mobile learning. If educational entrepreneurs can integrate the Web and mobile learning into their services, they can overcome the limitations of physical classrooms and the vagaries of weather. Given the existence of robust wireless infrastructures in countries like Bangladesh and the near-universal use of cell phones, mobile learning can be the catalyst for world-class education for the poor in developing countries. The world’s knowledge, after all, is now accessible to anyone with a browser and a thirsty mind.

Contrary to what development experts and aid agencies claim, it does not require a miracle to bring schooling to the earth’s poorest children. The poor are already doing it by using their own resources in a holistic network of children, parents, teachers, and entrepreneurs, with knowledge, performance and accountability as keys. Sir Bob Geldof, the activist who has dedicated his life to social justice and peace worldwide, said that development succeeds admirably when people ignore the advice of ‘the experts’ and find their own culturally appropriate model. This is exactly what the world’s poor are doing. They have found their model and it is working admirably for them.

If they really want to do some good in the world, development experts should learn from the private schools in the slums of cities like Hyderabad and Lagos and introduce those educational practices into their own “advanced educational systems.” They can then witness the miracle they have been waiting for.

Sachin Tendulkar, Cricket Genius

What distinguishes remarkable sports figures from very good ones is their professional longevity, their sustained excellence.

Pele played in four world cup soccer tournaments (1958, 1962, 1966, 1970), in which he was the architect of Brazil's victory in the finals in two (1958, 1970). Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played basketball from 1969-1989, won six NBA championships, a record six regular season MVP awards, and scored more points than any other player in league history (38,387).

India's Sachin Tendulkar has scored 50 Test centuries so far, and still has plenty of cricket left in him. His nearest rival is Ricky Ponting of Australia, with 39 centuries.

Starting as a wunderkind when he was only 16, the 37-year-old right-hander has scored most runs in cricket: 14,506 runs at an average of 56.88 in 175 Tests. That's also the most number of Tests anyone has played in the 5-day version of the game.

In One-Day Internationals (ODIs), he has tallied up 17,598 runs in 442 matches, at an average of 45.12. He has also scored 46 centuries and leads all other players with his ODI statistics as well. Is it possible to score a double century in an ODI? Yes, and Sachin did it in February of this year against South Africa. This record will probably remain as untouchable as Brian Lara's (West Indies) record of 400 not out in a 5-day Test against England in 2004.

For 21 years, Tendulkar has been enthralling spectators with his brilliance with the bat. When the flamboyance of youth threatened to desert him in his more mature years, he played with more deliberation and focus. The runs kept coming. In 2010, at the ripe old age of 37, he scored 7 centuries at an astounding average of 85 runs per innings and amassed more than 1,500 runs in 13 Tests.

Tendulkar has scored 11 centuries against Australia, nine against Sri Lanka, seven against England, six against South Africa, five against Bangladesh, four against New Zealand, three each against West Indies and Zimbabwe, and two against Pakistan.

The milestone that his fans worldwide are waiting for is "Century of Centuries." With 50 in Tests and 46 in ODIs, his ton statistics stands at 96. Only 4 more and he will have achieved something that no cricketer is likely to achieve, a total of hundred 100's in both versions of the game.

I have no doubt Tendulkar will score four more centuries, given his current form. As a fan, what I really hope he will be able to accomplish before he surrenders his bat is hit a triple-century (300 or more in an innings). So far, this feat has eluded him, although he has scored six double-centuries.

But is it records that keep the little maestro going? Not really. "I play for the love of the game," he said after his ton number 50. "If I were chasing records, I wouldn't have missed the one-day matches against New Zealand recently. I have to pace myself carefully ... It's about producing quality cricket."

Here's the incomparable Don Bradman on Tendulkar: "I saw him playing on television and was struck by his technique, so I asked my wife to come look at him. Now I never saw myself play, but I feel that this player is playing much the same as I used to play, and she looked at him on television and said yes, there is a similarity between the two ... his compactness, technique, stroke production ... it all seemed to gel."

Sachin Tendulkar is peerless. Jacques Kallis or Ricky Ponting may catch him in the number of Test centuries (long shot, though), but in terms of sheer brilliance sustained over two decades of cricket, Tendulkar has established himself as the Bradman of our times. "Sir Garfield Sobers" has a nice ring to it; so does Sir Sachin Tendulkar.

The Swallows of Summer

A pair of swallows built their nest in the eaves above my garage in spring. I became aware of them in summer when their droppings began to stain the garage door and the driveway. Their comings and goings fascinated me and I felt no animosity toward them while cleaning up their mess.

One day my landscaper told me he could remove the nest with a powerful blast from a hose

"Oh no, I don't want want you to do that," I said, horrified at the prospect.

"You like cleaning poop?"

"well, I love birds, and if I have to clean their poop to enjoy them, I don't mind."

He looked at me strangely. The message was unmistakeable: Something was seriously wrong with me. We both laughed, however, and never talked about this anymore.

The swallows were a delight. Occasionally they would put on a show, particularly in the lingering dusk, wheeling and stitching the air with deft aerobics. Other swallows materialized and the flock would fly with sheer joy, rising, falling and rising again. Sweeping away the pair's detritus was the least I could do by way of thanks.

But now it is winter and my swallows are gone, lured by warmth somewhere in the south. The nest is empty but filled with memories of life lived with joy and freedom. Jibananda Das, a Bengali poet, compared the longing evoked by a bird's nest to the longing evoked by his lover as her sight alights on him. If you have never carefully looked at a nest, this metaphor will seem unconvincing to you. But of you have, love will stir in your heart as you recite the poet's "Banalata Sen."

It's raining today and a strong wind is blowing. The street is strewn with red and yellow leaves. They dance furiously in the wind, tracing blurry circles and ellipses, and then suddenly they race along the street in hundred-meter dashes. Some ravens flit from tree to tree. Suddenly the sun peeks from behind the clouds and just as suddenly, it is swallowed again, but not before I catch sight of a rainbow lighting up the green hills.

Will my swallows return in spring, not any pair but this pair? Probably not. Probably another pair will make the empty nest their own. I am ready to welcome them but the winter feels long and spring seems far away.

Save the Tigers

To focus on the negative side of any issue is the specialty of journalists.

In a “Tiger Summit” at St. Petersburg, Russia, from November 22-24, concerned leaders met to discuss how to prevent the extinction of the big cats known for their fierce beauty and mythical powers.

But if you are to read the reports filed by journalists, the battle is already lost. Tigers are on their way out and we will be left only with stories by Rudyard Kipling and others about how these animals lived, loved and died.

The statistics is certainly grim. Only about 3,200 tigers remain in the wild. Compare that to the more than 100,000 that roamed the jungles a century ago. At this rate, tigers could be extinct by 2022.

The enemies are poachers and humanity’s relentless usurping of tiger habitats. Poachers can command anywhere from $11,000-$21,000 dollars for tiger skins. Bones can be sold for $1,000. These are prized particularly by the Chinese for their supposedly medicinal values and as aphrodisiacs.

The situation in India is particularly grim. The tiger population there has fallen to 1,411, from about 3,700 estimated to be alive in 2002 and the 40,000 estimated to be roaming across India at the time of independence in 1947. Poachers use the porous border with Nepal to continue their trade with rich clients.

The government has cracked down hard on these thugs but industrial expansion and dams near protected reserves are also taking a heavy toll on the cats. A comprehensive plan to protect the habitats has recently gone into effect.

Bangladesh is home to about 400 Royal Bengal tigers in the Sunderban (beautiful forest), a unique mangrove ecosystem in the southern part of the country. The government is determined to protect and increase their numbers, a move supported by Bangladeshis. Other countries with tiger population include Bhutan, Cambodia, China, Malaysia, Myanmar, Russia, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Nepal, and Indonesia.

While there are serious obstacles to protecting tigers from poaching and encroachments, a concerted effort by leaders of the “tiger countries” can overcome them. The “Tiger Summit” is a step in the right direction. The summit has approved a wide-ranging program to double the world's tiger population in the wild by 2022. It has also produced a declaration of commitment from government leaders of the 13 countries where these magnificent creatures dwell.

In 1794, the poet William Blake wrote:

“Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”

It is easy to be discouraged in these cynical times but when it comes to preserving species threatened with extinction, we often heed our better angels. Tigers will continue to burn bright in the forests of the night. We will rise to the challenge of ensuring that these light are never dimmed.

"What You've Never Had, You Never Miss"

An elderly couple from Canada gave away their $11.2 million lottery winnings to relatives and charities. Their justification: "What you've never had, you never miss."

Allen and Violet Large of Truro, Nova Scotia, have been married for 36 years. They are in their seventies and have everything they need in their retirement years. Violet was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year and has been receiving chemotherapy at a hospital in Halifax.

Year ago when I lived in Halifax, I once drove through Truro. I still remember the sleepy town. The one thing that struck me about it was that not much happened there, and that's the way the few people I saw on the streets seemed to like it.

Allen & Violet distributed their money first to family and then to the local fire department, churches, cemeteries, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, hospitals in Truro and Halifax, organizations that fight cancer, Alzheimer's and diabetes.

You read something like this and you sit still to absorb it. Amid all the daily news of bloodbath and greed and ruthlessness, this couple did what perhaps only one in ten million would do. They could have taken exotic trips, bought all the toys they could indulge in, and spend their last years in pampered care and luxury. But no, they just gave it all away.

They unconsciously followed the wisdom in these lines: "I shall pass this way but once; any good, therefore, that I can do, or any kindness that I can show - let me not defer it nor neglect it - for I shall not pass this way again."

Good and kind people live among us, in big cities and small towns. Next time we hear of cruelty and selfishness, let's remember Violet and Allen Large and others like them and be grateful for the human grace that is as much a part of us as its opposite.

Put Keith Olbermann Back Where He Belongs

MSNBC's suspension of the outspoken TV anchor Keith Olbermann is outrageous. The leading liberal voice of his time is the surest antidote to the toxic fumes that emanate nonstop from FOX and other right wing outlets.

What did Olbermann do to deserve this insult? He contributed a grand total of $2,400 to the campaigns of Representatives Rauj M. Grivalva and Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona and Attorney General Jack Conway of Kentucky!

For this sin, a sane voice has been stilled, at least for now.

MSNBC and its parent NBC News are answerable to NBC Universal. That's the problem with these corporations. The pompous idiots at the top think they know what's best for viewers, even though their only concern is money and profit. They will grab any chance to prove their moral superiority only because there is none. By suspending Olbermann they are trying to make the point that, for them, principles trump everything else. And what is the great principle they are trying to protect? That since a TV anchor's vision will be clouded if he we were to make political contributions, they must act as TV's virtuous gatekeepers. What anachronism! By the way, has anyone taught these geniuses the difference between causation and correlation?

All these honchos are now waiting for is a round of applause from coast to coast for their sanctimony.

Well, not only will no applause be forthcoming, these beacons of self-righteousness should brace for boos from every clear-thinking person in the country. The least they can do to salvage some honor from the situation is to immediately reinstate Keith Olbermann.

Obama Will Regain His Audacity

The midterm election was a rude wake-up call for President Obama but it's not the end of the story. We have perhaps read only the first few chapters in a book of many chapters. The death of the Democratic agenda is greatly exaggerated.

Barack Obama has received his dose of humility just in time. Any longer and he would have put himself beyond rescue. All this talk of elitism, detachment, arrogance, 'I am right, you just don't get it' attitude is mostly true.

But what most Americans tend to overlook is Obama's enormous ability to rediscover himself. Anyone who has read his two autobiographical books know it. Why pundits are not using this trait in their judgment is odd. Perhaps it means that they haven't really read the books. Superficial perusal maybe but no serious study for clues to the president's character.

Since his election to the highest office in the land, Obama tried too hard to please his critics while neglecting his support base. He failed in the first and lost big time because of the second. Candidate Obama that young independents flocked to two years ago began to wonder who they really voted for, because the occupant of the White House certainly didn't resemble their hero, their hope.

The enthusiasm gap widened when Obama lost his sense of purpose and began courting the fat cats who gave us the financial crisis that destroyed millions of American families. Although blessed with a gift for words, the president couldn't explain healthcare or the stimulus or the financial reform in a way that common Americans could understand. Obama's packages were too little, although not too late.

The ultimate irony: A man borne on the wings of audacity suffered a failure of imagination.

But here's the thing: Obama can, and will, regain his audacity in support of his principles and in opposition to his implacable foes. It's in his genes.

Americans told him through their votes that they don't like his style and even the substance he has shown so far. They don't like the sense of superiority he exudes. They want a doer in these tough times but find in him an ivory-tower thinker with little or no appreciation of the difficulties they are facing. They want democrats to shed their timidity and boldly take on the Tea Party.

Obama will absorb these lessons in the days ahead and become candidate Obama again. He will recapture the magic by sheer force of will and reconnect with his constituency. He knows that this is the biggest challenge of his career. He will rise to it, not because of the prospect of a second term, but because he knows in his guts it is the right thing to do.

Waiting for Super Teachers

Education is among America’s most urgent concerns now. For decades pressure has been building to reform the nation’s deplorable public schools, from kindergarten through the twelfth grade (K-12). In spite of the billions that have been poured into the system by the government and by wealthy entrepreneurs, there has been no noticeable improvement in the quality of K-12 education in the U.S. for the last four decades.

In 1971, for instance, the average score for 17-year-olds in reading test was 285; in 2008, it was 286. In 1973, 17-year-olds averaged 304 in math tests; in 2008, the average was 306. Forty years ago, the United States had the highest high school completion rate in the world. Today, it ranks 18th out of 24 industrialized nations. Among 30 developed countries, fifteen-year-old U.S. students rank 25th in math and 21st in science In just 10 years, there is expected to be more than 120 million high-paying, high-skill jobs in the U.S., but only 50 million Americans qualified for these positions.

In the global knowledge economy, an educated citizenry is the key to a nation’s success, its true source of power. All signs, however, suggest that America’s current generation will, for the first time in its history, be less educated than the previous generation. Wars and financial meltdowns do not threaten America’s national interest as much as a broken public school system that churns out large numbers of clueless adults unable to cope with the demands of the 21^st century.

The recently-released educational documentary by Oscar-winning (An Inconvenient Truth) filmmaker Davis Guggenheim called “Waiting for Superman” highlights what plagues the system. The Superman in the title refers to a student’s childhood belief that the ghetto in which he lived might one day be rescued by the Man of Steel. The movie follows the wrenching stories of 5 students and their families as they face a terrifying future. Who will rescue them from the “dropout factories” in which so many are trapped? What can be done when one despairing student after another says, “I am going nowhere and I have no interest in living?” How can incompetent teachers be purged who inform students with sadistic glee that “I get paid whether you learn or not?”

On the opening night of this somber film (not your typical Hollywood action flick) in California’s Silicon Valley, I found the theatre packed with moviegoers trying to understand the seriousness of the issue and their responsibility to change the status quo.

In the movie, “Superman” comes in the form of charter schools. These schools use public money but are independent of district bureaucracy. They have the freedom to do whatever is necessary to improve the quality of education, including firing failing teachers, a near-impossibility in regular public schools. There are two intertwined “villains”: Teachers’ unions and tenure. The main function of the first seems to be to protect teachers at any cost, particularly the incompetent ones. The second often translates into lifelong employment for bad teachers with no accountability for non-performance.

The reality is more nuanced. Teachers’ unions have become easy scapegoats although there is no doubt that they are a major contributor to perpetuating an obsolete, tenure-based system. Achievement gains in charter schools are also not uniform. While there are many high-performing charter schools among the nearly 5,000 that have sprung up in all 50 states, there are also as that are no better than problem-ridden inner-city schools. Besides, of the 56 million children in the nation’s 133,000 elementary and secondary schools, charter schools account for only 3% of the K-12 population. It is not at all clear how they can scale their success to include a larger percentage of students. The movie shows in heartbreaking detail how getting admitted to a charter school for those who need it most – the poor and the disenfranchised – depends on, believe it or not, lotteries!

However, charter schools such as the “Knowledge is Power Program” (KIPP) have achieved two feats. First, they have proven that it is possible to teach students from all ethnic and economic backgrounds for high levels of scholarly success. Second, they have introduced innovation into a public school system whose classroom format - one person lecturing captive students - has not changed since Laura Ingalls of “The Little House on the Prairie” sat in one a century ago.

So how does one go about transforming America’s K-12 public education? Given the stakes, there is no shortage of ideas: student-centered system, rigorous accountability, online classes, Web technology, abolishing tenure and teachers’ unions, common core standards, 21^st-century curricula, and so on.

While all these ideas have merit, the one constant in the calculus of school reform is teacher quality. Good teachers make good schools. They are the reason why students flourish. In unveiling his “Race to the Top” school reform agenda, President Barack Obama said as much, that the single most important factor determining whether students succeed in school is not the color of their skin or their ZIP code or even their parents' income; it is the quality of their teacher.

Given this, ‘what makes a great teacher’ has become a dominant theme in the current education debate, particularly in the context of the Internet and the changing nature of how students acquire knowledge in the 21^st century. Here are a few characteristics of life-changing teachers, in no particular order.

Good teachers are passionate about their students and subjects. They demand more and get more. They know how to use textbook facts (most of it available via Internet search anyway) – be it algebra or English or biology – to inspire independent and critical thinking. Every child starts out as an intellectual explorer. It is the rare teacher who can demonstrate that knowing why - an idea - is more important than learning what - a fact.

Good teachers know that learning occurs when they treat students not as empty vessels but as self-creators seeking expert help. Students are diamonds in the rough. As an award-winning teacher has observed, they have a certain need, an insight, a capacity, an unformed thought. If they are lucky enough to meet a teacher who can respond with a skill, a technique, a body of knowledge, a habit of mind, a sense of humor, learning grows by leaps and bounds.

Uncommon teachers keep the goals of teaching in mind. They ask themselves: what effect will we have on our students in ten or twenty years? A science teacher knows that only a small fraction of them may become scientists. An English teacher knows that only a few, if any, will become professors of literature. But they believe that science or art, if properly taught, will remain a source of pleasure in their lives. Uncommon teachers believe in the fundamental importance of what they teach, no matter what the current fads are and how uninterested some students may appear. They strive to earn their wings everyday, year after year.

Good teachers do not “teach to the test.” Testing is one tool among many to assess student progress but teaching only with the purpose of helping students pass tests is a folly, a delusional approach to education that degrades the profession. Good teachers (one reason why they are so rare) know that critical and independent thinking are traits that require infinite patience to nurture. They are able to strike a balance between the conflicting demands of short-term assessment and long-term creativity.

There is, of course, no best way to teach. If we study superstar teachers, we find that each is distinctive in her or his own way. What is common among them, however, is that they have an intuitive understanding of their students that, when combined with their passion for the subject, enable them to sow the seeds of wonder in them, the source of all insights and discoveries. Perhaps the most encouraging fact to emerge from recent studies is that committed teachers can evolve in their profession as they master the subtleties of their art. In other words, most great teachers are made, not born.

We do not need to wait for Superman to lift our public schools from mediocrity to excellence. All we need are super teachers.

The Generous Spirit of a Car Dealer

Normally we treat car dealers with suspicion. Aren't they the people who will resort to lying and exaggerating to extract the last dime from our wallet when we go shopping for a car? Most of us are no match for the fast-talking car salesman, which is why we dread running into one when buying a car becomes an imperative.

But now comes the news of a car dealer from New Jersey named Brad Benson who promised a new automobile to Florida Pastor Terry Jones if he would not burn a copy of the Quran. You may recall that Jones threatened to burn the Muslim holy book on the ninth-anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks in New York if the construction of the proposed Islamic Community Center near the World Trade Center was not scuttled.

Jones did not burn the Quran on 9/11 and we breathed a sigh of relief. It is true that winning a new car was not the reason why the pastor chose the more peaceful path. Facing criticism from President Obama, General David Petraeus, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and hundreds and thousands of ordinary Americans had undoubtedly something to do with it. But now that this story is out, we should salute Brad Benson, probably the only American in this spectacle who put his money ($14, 200 for a 2011 Huyndai Accent) where his mouth was.

Why did Benson make his offer? "I just didn't think that was (burning the Quran) a good thing for our country." There you have it, as simple and straightforward a reason on a volatile issue as you can get. The pastor is holding Benson to his word and has said that he will donate the car to an organization that helps abused Muslim women. Could anyone have predicted this magnificent turn of events?

Besides smashing stereotypes about car dealers, Benson has shown that the strength and generosity of America is to be found among its ordinary citizens, something we tend to forget in our celebrity-soaked culture. The former New York Giants offensive lineman turned car dealer is known for his radio ads that focus more on current events than on cars. This fact alone should tell us that money is not the only goal of every American businessman, that contrary to popular perception, many of them are driven by higher ideals, such as peace between peoples and nations.

If you find yourself in South Brunswick, New Jersey, stop by to say hello to Brad Benson. I know I will. Heck, if I have the money, I will also buy a car from him. A dream of mine when I came to America over three decades ago was to take a cross-country car trip. It's beginning to look like a distinct possibility now.

Jerry Brown Will be Elected Governor of California

Come November, Californians will elect Jerry Brown as the new governor of California. Why? Not because his Republican opponent, the former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, has blown it with her callous treatment of her Latino housekeeper of nine years, although that certainly is a factor, but because Brown is simply the better choice.

On every single issue, Brown has come across as the more pragmatic as well as the visionary candidate, from school reform and treatment of immigrants to putting people back to work and rebuilding the infrastructure of the Golden State undermined by fiscal mismanagement.

Whitman seems determined to buy her way into the governorship, having spent $120 million on her campaign so far. (In contrast, Brown has spent a total of $4 million, or about 3% of Whitman’s total.) This is the most any political candidate has ever spent in the United States, including presidential candidates. By November, she is expected to have spent $150 million dollars on her campaign, a monstrously arrogant proposition in a time of sky-high foreclosures and mass layoffs.

Americans are fed up with candidates who think money can substitute for ideas and action. They are sick and tired of the super-rich who use manipulative media consultants and slick technology to influence the electorate. Meg Whitman fits these labels and more. She is a political novice who hardly distinguished herself as a CEO. She amassed her wealth only because she was lucky to be at the right place at the right time, riding the fortunes of eBay during the dot-com boom to enormous personal gains. When she left eBay, shareholders were already disenchanted with her performance and the future of eBay appeared bleak. Her questionable acquisition of Skype was one of many bad judgments she displayed throughout her tenure at eBay.

Whitman targeted California’s Hispanic population with coy messages of support and sympathy but her hypocrisy was revealed when she claimed that she did not know the immigration status of her longtime housekeeper Nicandra Diaz Santillan before firing her. This turned out be an outright lie. It is now clear that Whitman knew that Santillan was an undocumented worker. (“You have never seen me and I’ve never seen you,” Whitman told Santillan at the time of firing her, after the former CEO decided that she was going to run for governor.)

Two aspects of this issue are deeply disturbing.

First, Whitman refused to appoint an immigration attorney (it would have cost her a few hundred dollars) when Santillan asked her for help. Santillan’s attorney has also accused Whitman of cheating Diaz out of years’ worth of wages. Originally hired at $28 an hour for 15 hours per week to clean her home, Whitman kept adding more duties to her job without compensating her or increasing her hours.

What is it with some billionaires that they count their pennies when it comes to paying their maids and servants, even going to the extent of cheating them?

Second, Whitman claimed that Brown and his “surrogates” were behind breaking the Santillan story, without offering a shred of evidence to support the claim. Jerry Brown denied the allegation, telling Whitman in their second gubernatorial debate: “Don’t run for governor if you can’t stand up on your own two feet and say, ‘Hey, I made a mistake.’”

Why is it that lack of character is often the hallmark of the entitled?

Whitman’s disdain for the democratic process is well-known. She did not register to vote until 2002. Her reason? She was too busy building a career and focusing on her family for 28 years to bother with voting. To which one may ask, “What about the rest of us? Don't we have careers? Don't we have families to focus on?”

Jerry Brown may not be the ideal candidate to lift California out of its present predicament but undoubtedly he is the better candidate of the two. Most Californians see it this way and that’s why Jerry Brown will be elected the Golden State’s governor in November.