Every time I find myself thinking that today’s teens are lazy and selfish, I meet someone like Liza Sobel. Most high school seniors I know spend the bulk of their time worrying about prom dresses and graduation parties. Liza spent her senior year at Creskill (New Jersey) High School collecting musical instruments for a charter school in New Orleans that didn’t have a music program. Remarkably, she didn’t do it under the direction of a school club or a teacher; she did it entirely on her own. So far, New Orleans students have more than 150 instruments they wouldn’t have without her, and the Algiers Technology Academy alone has enough instruments and supplies to run a music education program.

Liza is a talented music student who sings, composes and plays piano. She once organized a benefit to collect instruments for needy students at her own school, and then heard about the need for instruments in New Orleans, where schools struggling to rebuild had few funds for “extras” like music programs. She was horrified to find out that in the city that spawned Louis Armstrong, there were students who had never so much as heard a live piano.

“When I was growing up if I needed a book or an instrument, or wanted to study with a music teacher, it was easily done,” she explains. “To hear that there was a school that had no music program at all was really shocking.”

So unlike most of us, who do little more than shake our heads in disbelief when we hear such things, Liza actually did something. When she couldn’t find an organized program to collect instruments, she created one. She found out that a nearby school district was shipping donated goods to New Orleans and asked if they could take instruments with them. She then contacted local schools and businesses and by February was able to send more than 50 instruments to the Algiers Technology Academy, a new charter school which until then had no music program, but had a social studies teacher named Adam Brumer who wanted to start one. She also collected various supplies, including sheet music, music stands, and the like.

After a local newspaper ran a story about her efforts, Liza was able to raise enough money to repair broken instruments she had collected and buy necessary supplies like reeds for clarinets and saxophones.

“I thought it would be too overwhelming to unpack those instruments in New Orleans and then first repair them,” she explains.

Liza is the kind of civic-minded student the creators of the “Teaching The Levees” curriculum dream about. She used her time, talents and the resources of her community to help another community in need. She’s a model for all of us about how much of a difference a single student can make.

Liza is off to Cornell University in the fall, and is trying to find another student to take over her work in northern New Jersey. But her work serves as a model that deserves to be duplicated everywhere. So here’s a plea to everyone reading this post to try and start a donation program in your community. Perhaps you could encourage a group of students could start a club or earn community service credit. It involves a lot of tireless work – posting flyers, contacting local businesses, collecting donations to cover shipping and repair costs – but it’s something we can all do that can make a huge difference in other students’ lives.

Even if you can’t start a local program, if you have an old instrument or know anyone who does, you can ship it directly to the Tipitina’s Foundation, which supports band programs in New Olreans. (Click here for information about donations directly to Tipitina’s.) Instruments can be sent directly to them c/o Mark Fowler, Tipitina’s Music Office Co-Op,  501 Napoleon Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70115. The foundation is preparing a PDF form on their website for donors to download and include with their instrument shipment. If you can’t find the form or have trouble with PDFs, simply enclose a note with the instrument, but be sure to include a stamped, self-addressed envelope so they can send back a receipt for the donation. For questions about shipping, call the foundation at 504-891-0580; for other information about donations contact Mark Fowler at mfowler@tipitinas.com. And, of course, Tipitina’s in an IRS-recognized charity that accepts tax-deductible cash donations to help purchase supplies for school music programs.

Please feel free to contact Liza directly at GiveInstruments@optonline.net, or contact me at ell10@columbia.edu if you want to find out more about starting a donation program.

I first contacted Liza when I saw her flyer on a bulletin board here at Teacher’s College, and ended up donating my son’s first trumpet, which was taking up space in a closet. In many communities there are students who begin playing an instrument and then abandon it as they get older or go to college, or who upgrade to a better instrument as they progress. These abandoned instruments may no longer be worth much to them (although instrument donations are fully tax deductible), but they are gold to students in New Orleans. (I also went ahead and made repairs to the instrument before donating it, saving Liza and the recipients the effort of doing so, and I’d encourage you to do so if you can before you donate.)

Remember that Louis Armstrong’s first instrument was a cornet he learned to play at the Home for Colored Waifs. I hate to think there’s another Louis (Louisa?) out there who never comes across that cornet.

A day barely goes by without some news report that would make for wonderful democratic dialogues in our classrooms, but an article posted Thursday on the San Antonio Express-News website was too good for any teacher interested in issues raised by the “Teaching The Levees” curriculum to pass up.

The gist of the article, by reporter Lynn Brezosky, is that in the event of a hurricane evacuation from Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, the U.S. CPB (Customs and Border Protection) will be checking evacuees for citizenship. No proper documentation, and it’s off to a detention center and eventual deportation.

Brezosky’s story, which was picked up by the Houston Chronicle and other media outlets, has caused quite a stir on the blogosphere — ranging from human rights advocates decrying the decision to many “citizens’ rights” advocates applauding it. And it turns out the story only appeared when a reporter photographing a dry-run of an evacuation noticed “Border Patrol agents rehearsing citizenship document checks of people boarding buses,” the article said.

A call to Dan Doty, spokesman for the CBP’s Rio Grande Valley sector confirmed what the photographer saw.

“It’s business as usual at the checkpoints,” Doty told the Express-News. “We’ll still check everybody.” He did offer the assurance that those without proper documentation would be taken to detention centers where they would be safe from the hurricane.

The article quoted a local priest and activist, Rev. Mike Seifert, who predicted that the policy would simply mean that many local families would ignore the evacuation order and remain in harm’s way, even if only one member did not have proper documentation. (Remember that in several storm evacuations, residents have refused to leave because they have not been allowed to bring their pets on evacuation buses.)

“We can’t wait to see the helicopter photos of us sitting on roofs,” he said.
Others predicted that the policy would lead to further delays and confusion in an evacuation that is already likely to be crowded and chaotic.

That group appears to include Gov. Rick Perry, whose spokesperson told the Express-News that “the governor’s office prefers that the Border Patrol not use checkpoints during times of evacuation for obvious reasons. It will slow down traffic and create problems.”

Surely this would make for a wonderful conversation among our students, no matter what part of the country they reside in. Where do the limits of citizenship lie? Does our government have the obligation to provide basic human services to all people as “citizens of the world,” if you will, regardless of their legal status?

In When The Levees Broke, one commentator asked whether or not Katrina had blown away people’s citizenship. This story asks our students to consider whether or not hurricanes have the potential to blow away all human rights.

For students of world events, the study in contrasts between the reactions of the Chinese and Burmese governments to recent natural disasters has been an education in itself.

Within hours of the devastating earthquake in Sichuan Province, the Chinese Prime Minister appeared on television in the disaster zone flanked by rescue workers. At least from our vantage point in the West, it appears that the government is doing a remarkable job of mobilizing forces to rescue the many thousands of victims still buried alive.

Almost two weeks after Cyclone Nargis hit Burma, on the other hand, the only reports westerners get are of the ruling military junta’s refusal to accept international aid and the tide of rotten, bloated bodies flowing through the Irawaddy Delta.

Both tragedies have played out on an enormous scale: estimates of the dead in Burma reach up to 60,000 or even more; in China, the official death toll is approximately 13,000, but many times that number are still feared missing. Both disasters took place in countries governed by rulers who have more than once been labeled “repressive.” In recent weeks, the Chinese government has been battered by protests of its policies in Tibet, most notably in disruptions of the Olympic torch as it made its way to Beijing for this summer’s Olympic Games. In 2005, the Burmese regime brutally cracked down on pro-democracy protests led by Buddhist monks, though details of the crackdown are still sketchy since most western media are banned from the country.

What is remarkable, though, is that the Chinese government, for all its autocratic and repressive tendencies, appears to be functioning in the 21st century and has become sensitive to international opinion — if not the good of its own people. The cynical may call the Chinese reaction a public relations campaign, but whatever its motivations, the rescue effort appears to have been swift and substantial. Even the Dalai Lama, no fan of Beijing, has praised the relief efforts. Meanwhile, the Burmese government remains trapped in some ageless isolationist land of paranoia. Even the normally conciliatory UN Secretary-General Ban-ki Moon has publicly chastised the Burmese government: “I want to register my deep concern — and immense frustration — at the unacceptably slow response to this grave humanitarian crisis,” he said yesterday.

On this morning’s front page, The New York Times delivered a fascinating analysis of the Chinese response to the earthquake, comparing it to the aftermath of the 1976 Tangshan Earthquake, which killed more than 240,000 people — when the government responded much the way Burma’s government has responded to Nargis. The article cautioned that China probably isn’t likely to become a democratic paradise any time soon, but that the response to the earthquake seems to signal a government that it is at least sensitive to world opinion, if not the opinion of its own people.  (It may simply be that the Chinese government is trying to prove that a highly-centralized autocratic form of government has its benefits.  Comparing the Chinese response to the earthquake to our own government’s response to Katrina could make for some very interesting classroom discussion.)

In When the Levees Broke, Wynton Marsalis called Hurricane Katrina a “signature moment” for the United States, one that would define who we are as a nation. The same could be said for China and Burma as they deal with these natural disasters. Exactly how those vastly different responses help define these nations is a topic well worth exploring with our students.

It is hard to imagine how a natural disaster such as Cyclone Nargis — which has already claimed tens of thousand of lives — could be made even worse, but the repressive government of Burma is managing to turn “a humanitarian nightmare,” as a radio report described it yesterday, into something there are simply no words left to describe.

There are very important lessons here for our students, lessons about government responsibility we can’t afford to let slip by. Not only did the Burmese regime fail to warn its people of the impending storm, the equivalent of a Category 3 Hurricane, but now it appears they are determined to keep international aid workers out of the country. This morning, the United Nations announced that it was suspending aid flights into the country after the military government seized relief supplies from a first flight, only to announce minutes later that it would resume those flights. It is still unclear if the government will allow US aid workers into the country.

Remember that this is the government that came to power in a military coup in 1962 and has been best known for brutal repression of opposition. It is responsible for the deaths of thousands of nonviolent student protesters who took to the streets in 1988; this is the government that simply refused to step down when democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi (a Nobel Peace Prize winner) overwhelmingly won elections in 1992, instead keeping her permanently under house arrest. This is the government that murdered Buddhist monks when they took their protests to the streets last year. And it is the government that in the aftermath of Nargis seems more concerned about moving forward with a referendum that is designed to do nothing but give it the illusion of legitimacy than in feeding and caring for its own people. (By the way, it is this government that renamed the country “Myanmar” in 1989, a name change that has not been recognized by most pro-democracy forces within the country.)

And now it is the government that is taking one of the worst national disasters in history and making it significantly worse for its own people. More than a million people have been left homeless, many of them stranded in remote areas that no relief supplies have yet reached. Despite the offers of aid from around the world — even Bill Gates has offered $3 million — it appears unlikely that much of this aid will reach the victims in time to prevent the outbreak of widespread famine and disease.

Anyone who teaches world history knows that the ancient Chinese believed that natural disasters were signals that the country’s rulers had lost the “mandate of heaven” that entitled them to continue ruling. World history teachers also know that the very first governments in Mesopotamia were created out of the necessity to protect citizens from floods.

One can only hope that the Burmese junta’s utter failure to live up to any reasonable definition of responsible government in the aftermath of Nargis will be the final straw that will lead to its downfall. In the meantime, it is heartbreaking to see how much misery must be endured by the Burmese people when so many around the world stand ready to help them.

On a recent train ride into New York City, I found myself scrunched up against three middle-school boys who were engaged in a rather animated discussion — not, to my surprise, about baseball or the latest casualty on American Idol, but about the presidential election.

At first delighted that these boys actually seemed to care about politics, my enthusiasm quickly waned as I came to understand what they found so interesting about the primary process: for the better part of 45 minutes, these boys quizzed each other on who was leading the delegate race in every state that had already held a Democratic primary.

“Maine?” one boy would query the others.

“Clinton?” another would respond.

“No, Obama,” the first boy replied. “Oklahoma?”

And so the game continued.

I wouldn’t want to read too much into the conversation of three pre-teen boys on the Long Island Railroad, but their little game did seem to crystallize much of what’s wrong with national politics these days. Day after day, night after night, the press covers the race as if it were no more than a sporting event. CNN regularly broadcasts its “Ballot Bowl” program; commentators do little more than offer their daily analysis of who seems to be ahead, what strategies the candidates are employing, and whether or not those strategies will result in a win. I even heard someone on the radio yesterday comment that the Rev. Wright controversy has forced Barack Obama “to play defense instead of playing offense.”

The flip side, of course, is that there is almost no discussion of what these candidates stand for and what they might actually do once in office. None of the boys on the train seemed to have the foggiest idea of a single policy supported by Clinton or Obama — and why should they? On what TV program would they have been exposed to this information? I watch a lot of TV news, and it’s a rare day when the conversation moves beyond the primary play-by-play to issues of any substance. Occasionally there’s a very brief break in the action to announce that John McCain has revealed a health care plan — and then it’s right back to dissecting which bloc of voters is most likely to support McCain’s plan, rather than any meaningful analysis of whether McCain’s plan might actually work. The talking heads seem to think that the Rev. Wright controversy or Bill Richardson’s endorsement of Obama are actually matters of substance. But I’ve yet to see a single conversation about the appointment of Supreme Court justices by the next president, or, in recent weeks, a word about the candidates’ views on the war in Iraq.

The problem with all this, of course, is not simply that it deprives the voters of substantive analysis, but that it engenders a kind of electoral tunnel-vision in which winning becomes the only issue that matters. Voters seem to want to align themselves with a “winner,” the candidate with the “big momentum,” and make decisions based on the poll of the day. They end up supporting the person who may make the best candidate, which may well have little to do with who will make the best president. Remember the 1972 film, The Candidate, in which Robert Redford becomes the unlikely winner of a California Senate race? The film ends with a victorious Redford turning to his campaign manager and asking, “What do we do now?”

It’s fun to follow a team throughout its playing season and analyze why it’s winning or losing because in sports that’s all there is. When a team wins the Super Bowl, it’s done. The players go home, or to Disney World, and that’s that. In politics of course, the ultimate goal is to actually lead the country, but you’d hardly know it to watch the daily press coverage, or listen to these boys on the train. Maybe that’s why we end up with the leaders we do — they know how to win elections, but like Redford’s character in The Candidate, have no clue how to lead.

All of this should be a reminder to educators of the urgency of elevating the discussion in our classrooms. That’s the ultimate goal of “Teaching The Levees,” and the woeful state of our national political discussion in this election year makes it clear how much work we have to do. On my next train ride, I’d love to meet up again with those boys after they have learned more about the candidates and their policies in their social studies classes, and at long last have something to talk about other than who is ahead in the polls.

Back in January, when we surveyed the presidential hopefuls’ stands on Katrina-related issues (see post of 1/11), we reported that John McCain had relatively little to say on the subject. That all changed last week when McCain, now the presumptive Republican nominee, stopped in New Orleans and told the world in no uncertain terms that the government’s response to Katrina had been “terrible and disgraceful.”

“I want to assure the people of the 9th Ward, the people of New Orleans, the people of this country: Never again, never again will a disaster of this nature be handled in the terrible and disgraceful way this was handled,” he said.

McCain made his comments during a 20-minute walking tour of the Lower Ninth Ward with his wife, Cindy, and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, a fellow Republican. He said the nation “didn’t have the right kind of leadership” during and after Katrina, and that “it was not only a perfect storm as far as its physical impact…it was a perfect storm as far as the federal, state, and local governments’ inability.”

McCain didn’t say much that hasn’t already been said by many others — though we certainly don’t hear it all that often these days from leading Repubicans. What was most striking was the uncompromising tone of McCain’s language and the specificity of his attacks. He criticized President Bush for flying over the Gulf Coast rather than immediately visiting after Katrina struck, saying, “I’d have ordered the plane landed at the nearest Air Force base, and I’d have been over here.”

McCain castigated the federal government for leaving “unqualified people in charge,” and complained that “there was a total misreading of the dimensions of the disaster” and a “failure of communications.”

And when a reporter asked if the leadership failure went “straight to the top,” McCain simply replied, “Yes.”

Though his website still doesn’t offer the kind of detailed Gulf Coast rebuilding plan that appear on the sites of both his Democratic rivals, McCain did offer some specific proposals during his visit to New Orleans. Those included restoring wetlands and preserving New Orleans’ barrier islands, providing more affordable housing, immediate action on climate change to help reduce the frequency of hurricanes, and requiring that the city meet a 2011 deadline for completing levees capable of protecting the city from a significant hurricane.

Astute viewers of this website may have noticed that it was recently redesigned. That change coincides with the launch of an extensive set of Professional Development materials designed to help educators interested in implementing “Teaching The Levees” and similar projects in their classrooms.

You can access these materials by clicking on the “Professional Development” link under “Resources” at right (or just click here if that’s easier). This site represents the culmination of many months worth of effort by students and professionals in the EdLab here at Teachers College, including Erin Murphy, Patrina Huff, and Brian Hughes. It features a wealth of multimedia materials on everything from fostering democratic discussions in the classroom to planning a service learning project — to New Orleans, or perhaps somewhere a bit closer to home.

In the Democratic Dialogue section, you’ll find videos in which educators demonstrate some of the techniques used in the “Teaching The Levees” curriculum, including critical thinking and the inquiry process. There are also invaluable print resources you can download free, including guidelines for “Fostering Democratic Discussion in the Classroom” and instructions for “Teaching Democracy: A Media Literacy Approach,” from the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy.

The Civic Engagement portion of the site features video samples of instructional techniques used in schools from New York to California as well as a segment featuring students from New York City’s Beacon School and their teacher Nathan Turner, who undertook a service learning project in New Orleans last year (pictured above). The section also includes a wide range of downloadable material and links to tools, such as Google’s blogging website, that you may wish to use in your classrooms.

So check it out! You’ll no doubt be inspired by some of what you see — particularly the work done by enterprising teachers and their students, including Ned Ide and Kathryn Malone and their students at the Hill School in Pennsylvania, Zach Mulert and his students at La Jolla Country Day School in California, and Dan Nichols and his students at the Heritage School in New York.

And, as always, please feel free to share with us any comments and insights you may have, either here on this blog, or on our “Share Your Lesson Plans” or “Discuss The Levees” forums on this site (see links at right).

The video clip here is from the North American Leaders’ Summit, which is taking place in New Orleans. While most of the talk at the summit is about the future of NAFTA, President Bush is using the meeting with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to promote New Orleans’ recovery. (If for some reason the video does not appear on your browser, click here to watch.)

So far, he has presided with Calderon at the re-opening of the Mexican consulate in the city, across from the Convention Center and dined with his guests at the famed Commander’s Palace Restaurant. He has thanked those who have returned to New Orleans “on behalf of a grateful nation” and praised the efforts of those who “are absolutely determined to make it better than it was before.” He has met with Mayor Ray Nagin and Governor Bobby Jindal, and is scheduled to meet with civic leaders today.

What Bush, Calderon and Harper won’t be doing is tour the areas most heavily affected by Katrina; their two-day summit will take place almost entirely in the downtown “Central Business District.”

Bush also took the time yesterday to do what few politicans who visit New Orleans can resist doing: he joined in the fun with one of the city’s iconic brass bands.

Let’s face it: it’s hard to maintain a neutral tone when writing about Bush and New Orleans these days. All you have to do is read some of the comments posted on the Times-Picayune’s  news stories covering the summit to get a sense of what the average New Orleanean thinks of the president at this point.

Still, it’s not the aim of this blog or of the “Teaching The Levees” curriculum to descend into endless Bush-bashing. After all, Bush could have held this summit anywhere, and decided to do it in New Orleans. That’s more than either of our major political parties could bring themselves to do, both arguing that the city “wasn’t ready” to host a presidential candidates’ debate. Given how so much of the city feels about him, does Bush deserve at least a little credit for taking the time to show his face and talk up the city’s recovery?

Let us know what you think. And if posting comments on a blog isn’t your thing, here’s an alternative idea. Those of you who watch CNN’s broadcast of Anderson Cooper 360 may be familiar with the show’s nightly feature in which viewers are asked to provide a humorous caption for the photo of the day. I thought we’d try this with the video of Bush in New Orleans. So watch the video and post your proposed caption. And remember, class, there are no right or wrong answers.

This is the kind of story I’m a bit reluctant to share — because it’s hard to read it and not give in to complete despair.

But it’s an important story, and one that gives us all a glimpse of what life can be like these days in post-Katrina New Orleans. And in a sense, it gives us a glimpse of what life can be like in any American “inner city,” in which gang violence and drive-by shootings have sadly become part of the fabric of everyday life.

The story begins with the murder of Dinerral Shavers on December 28, 2006 (see post of 10/12/07). Shavers was a music teacher and the talented drummer for the Hot 8 Brass Band, prominently featured in When the Levees Broke. Shavers had been summoned by his stepson, who found himself in the middle of a dispute in the 6th Ward. When Shavers and his wife arrived at the scene, the stepson and his friend jumped into their car. A hail of bullets followed; Shavers was the only victim, killed by a bullet in the back of the head.

Often in New Orleans these days, that would be the end of the story. But police actually succeeding in making an arrest of a teenager named David Bonds, charging him with second-degree murder. The case was dropped at one point when police could not find anyone willing to testify against Bonds. Public outrage led to re-instatement of the charges, and earlier this month Bonds went on trial.

In the end, only one witness, a teenage girl, identified Bonds as the shooter. The young man who had jumped into the car with Shavers’ stepson, Guy McEwen, told the jury he could not identify the shooter. (He is pictured above leaving the courthouse after testifying.) Neither could Shavers’ wife or her son, who were also in the car that night.

Based on the testimony of one girl, the jury voted 11-1 to acquit Bonds.

In a way, the whole sad affair might have been considered a small victory for New Orleans law enforcement. At least there had been an arrest, a trial, eyewitness testimony. That doesn’t happen very often.

Unfortunately, the story did not end there.

Thursday night, Guy McEwen, who had turned 20 the day before, died in a hail of gunfire on the 700 block of Peniston Street in Uptown New Orleans. Police said at least two guns had fired more than a dozen shots and that they believed McEwen was the intended target. The Times-Picayune reported that at least 25 gun casings were found at the crime scene.

It’s entirely unclear whether McEwen’s testimony had anything to do with his death. At least one news report so far indicates that it did not. A story issued last night by WWL-TV suggested that McEwen was killed as a result of a neighborhood dispute he had become involved in last week — possibly the same kind of feud that led to Shavers’ death.

Dinerral Shavers’ death was heartbreaking. What word is then left to describe McEwen’s death?

How many times can New Orleans’ heart be broken?

During my recent visit to New Orleans, I came upon this T-shirt for sale in the French Market.

I thought it would make a most interesting topic of discussion for a high school class.

I’m not sure what the Cadillac refers to, but I’m pretty sure the “plasma TV” is a reference to Sharon Jasper. At the height of the debate over the demolition of public housing in December (see posts of 12/18 and 12/21), the former resident of the St. Bernard housing complex made headlines when she lamented the living conditions she had been provided with by city housing vouchers. Jasper allowed photographers to tour her apartment; a photo of her sitting in her living room appeared in the Times-Picayune the next day. (Click here to read the article and see the picture.)

That set off a flurry of online commentary dubbing Jasper a “welfare queen” and a “hypocritical ungrateful loudmouth.” What seemed to really get at people was the fact that Jasper’s apartment looked kind of nice in the picture, with its renovated kitchen and, yes, a big-screen TV. (For the record, it looks more like a rear-projection TV than a plasma, though I don’t suppose the distinction really makes much difference.)

The comments on the Times-Picayune’s website were not simply negative, they were largely downright hostile. Someone suggested Jasper’s TV must have been one of those looted during Katrina; someone else wrote that Jasper was typical of the welfare recipients who learn how to “work the system.” Another exhorted Jasper to “get off your a** and take control of your life.” Bloggers all over the web had a field day for months.

Much of the anger was directed at Jasper’s complaints about her situation: the caption in the Times-Picayune quoted her as saying, “I might be poor but I don’t like to live poor.  I thank God for a place to live, but it’s pitiful what people give you.”  Elsewhere in the article she was quoted as saying that even though her rent was paid by a housing voucher, she could not afford the deposit or the “steep utility bill.”  One writer called Jasper typical of people who “think the world owes them.”  Another suggested “She should be kicked out onto the street and made to WORK for every thing she gets, like MOST of us do.”

Even if one concludes that Jasper has nothing to legitimately complain about, you have to wonder where all the venom comes from. In the entire post-Katrina mess, why is so much of the acrimony reserved for Sharon Jasper? Are we as a nation more angry that our government hasn’t done a very good job of taking care of people made homeless by Katrina — or at the people themselves? And even if the government does provide them with housing, do they then forfeit the right to express anger about anything?

Of course, it’s unclear whether Jasper owns the TV, whether it came with the apartment, or whether it even works. The overall calculus of the comments was eminently clear: if you have a big screen TV, you are not poor and have nothing to complain about. The further implication was clear, as well: if you are poor, you should be living in substandard conditions.

I’m guessing more than a few students agree with the comments posted online about Jasper. And I think the whole incident — and the T-shirt — could be a very powerful spark for a classroom discussion about our general attitudes toward the poor.