Critical Curriculum
by D.E. Bentley –
Increasingly, our sense of place, of places, is being defined not by the positive and enjoyable experiences and memories, but rather by the brief moments of mass shootings that shatter lives and create a wave of grief extending well beyond the initially impacted communities into the hearts and minds of all. July 9-10, 2019, a month before the “Dayton shooting,” I traveled to Dayton, Ohio. I was there to participate in a workshop, part of the annual Deliberative Democracy Exchange (DDEx) sponsored by the Kettering Foundation (founded in 1927) and the National Issues Forums Institute. The workshop, “Making Deliberative Decisions Relevant to Other Organizations,” offered the chance to hear stories of people, everyday people, making a difference by bringing individuals together to talk and plan for improved community connections and, ultimately, improved communities.
During a break in the workshop schedule, I walked to a nearby park. It turned out to be a special place, quite fitting for the topic of the workshop.
Carillon Historical Park contains the largest carillon in Ohio, which is surrounded by grounds landscaped by the Olmsted Brothers (who also designed Central Park in New York City). Built at the request of Colonel and Mrs. Edward Deeds to commemorate the Deeds family, each of the bells in the tower is inscribed with the name of a Deeds family member. There were originally 23 bells; now there are 57, with a total weight of 37,331 pounds. Deeds Carillon was completed in 1942. For war buffs – which I am not, although my attentions have been turning that way as I look at our world of today – the battle for the city of Stalingrad in late 1942 served as a turning point for WWII, as Germany went on the defensive and headed west. This retreat ended three years later with Nazi Germany’s surrender, in May 1945. The impressive structure that houses the bells, designed by Reinhard & Hofmeister, who also designed Rockefeller Center in New York City, is constructed of Indiana limestone with a granite base. It towers 183 feet and seven inches skyward from its foundation. There are decorative metal windows and an open grate door that is made of lines from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, Christmas Bells.
As a side note, before returning to my discussion of the workshop, a carillon is a musical instrument that consists of a set of at least 23 bells that have been precisely tuned to produce the notes of a western scale. There are, I later learned, seven carillons in New York State. The two closest to the Finger Lakes are the Hopeman Memorial Chime at the University of Rochester, given in memory of Arendt W. Hopeman, the general contractor to the River Campus from 1927-30, and the Davis Memorial Carillon at Alfred University. The Davis Memorial Carillon was erected in 1937 as a living memorial to Dr. Boothe Colwell Davis, who was Alfred University president from 1895 to 1933, and his wife, Estelle Hoffman Davis. Dr. Davis died in 1942. That was also the year that the Carillon in Dayton was first played – what a somber and beautiful event that must have been.
As my two days at the Deliberative Democracy Exchange got underway, all around me there was a sense of hope, and a desire to learn from past mistakes and seek solutions. National Issues Forums can be a way for people to deliberate around current issues by exploring together the costs and benefits of several possible options for action on an issue. Any individual or organization can organize forums and provide the space for citizens to deliberate. NIFI provides research, support, and frameworks for deliberation, so that communities can move past controversy and work toward change. Their Issue Guides offer frameworks for discussing national and regional issues. A new online site Common Ground for Action (https://www.nifi.org/en/common-ground-action) provides an online forum. They have also published two Historic Issue Guides, A New Land and 1776, which revisit the decision–making process and possible outcomes of historic decisions.
My introduction to the work of the National Issues Forum Institute was Doug Garnar, who works with the Kettering Foundation and NIFI (National Issues Forums Institute). Working to find solutions to today’s social ills is important to me, as it is to Dr. Garnar, and I was thrilled when he contacted Candice Press in 2018 about a possible collaboration. In addition to his continuing work with NIFI, Garnar, a long time civics professor at SUNY Broome Community College in Binghamton, NY, actively fosters civic engagement at home by encouraging people to be a part of the political process, as voters and elected officials. He is involved in community initiatives to raise awareness around issues such as homelessness and addiction, and conducts deliberative democracy forums to encourage dialog around controversial issues.
After introductions, Bill Muse, NIFI’s President and the workshop facilitator, asked Garnar and the eighteen other participants to share their experiences using one of NIFI’s Deliberative Democracy frameworks, A House Divided: What Would We Have to Give Up to Get the Political System We Want? Garnar has been sharing summaries of some of these frameworks in recent issues of Owl Light News. “A House Divided” was not one I was familiar with. As with all of the NIFI guides, the framework offers several options for consideration.
In the case of “A House Divided,” the options presented were:
• Option 1: Reduce dangerous, toxic talk.
The problem is that the way we talk is poisoning public life. The “outrage industry” rewards people for saying and doing the most extreme things.
• Option 2: Make fairer rules for politics and follow them.
The problem is that wealthy, powerful special interests game the political system,
making it impossible to find compromise.
• Option 3: Take control and make decisions closer to home.
The problem is that our most important decisions are being made too far away from home.
As with all the frameworks, these are options, meant to generate meaningful discussion.
What was amazing about the process of reviewing this framework was the frankness of the participants in sharing their experiences, and the willingness of Bill Muse to use the feedback to explore changes in the framework – much as our court system works, to actively re-evaluate and modify the US Constitution to reflect social changes and better serve our democratic objectives. There was also a collaborative desire to use what was learned in facilitating the framework to highlight and build on the important community-based projects the participants were involved in.
The applications of “A House Divided” by the workshop participants included: Classroom applications for encouraging dialog within diverse racial and ethnic student populations on college campuses; work with individuals in prison systems; work in communities with mixed populations of documented and undocumented residents; exploring land use options; and building trust and safe learning environments within public school settings impacted by traumatic events. Some commonalities around discussion of the use of “A House Divided” included the need to focus in on the personal experiences of all those involved in the deliberation (storytelling); a sense of hopelessness shared by some participants, around the ability of individuals to impact political change; and the benefits of using arts, such a theatre and community murals, as a conduit for positive deliberation and shared action.
Even in critiquing the effectiveness of this particular framework, the focus remained on finding solutions, such as added guidance for facilitators, increasing the number of facilitators and the use of different forum modes (some felt that the online forum worked better than face-to-face for the “House Divided” framework, as it offered more time for reflection and evaluation.). There was added discussion around how to effectively continue the deliberation process beyond the initial deliberative forum, to inspire collaborations toward change.
This focus on finding ways of working with others was evident not only in the workshop, but with all of my Ddex interactions – during plenary sessions and shared community meals.
The weeklong event included representatives from 36 different countries. During an initial plenary session, a group of women from Israel offered an overview of their work toward helping to strengthen community connections between Jews and Arabs, amidst underlying fears that contributed to distrust. In one case, a woman who was convinced to join a convention to learn more confessed to the organizers that she had hid a knife under her skirt – uncertain as to what she might encounter. People, the presenters shared, “are good,” and will work toward “something they believe in” once we “plant the seed.” “Despite these initial challenges, people are already starting to move forward toward initiatives.” The speakers stressed that this is a sporadic process rather than a linear one; lasting change takes time. For these women, and for so many of those I met, storytelling, encouraging people from diverse perspectives to share their experiences while developing a shared vocabulary around issues, helps reshape views and facilitates positive change.
By the end of the workshop, I felt that I had made connections through the many stories I heard. I also found myself balancing between my role as a reporter and my earlier life experiences as an educator – in juvenile prisons and alternative school settings. Education seemed so much a part of all of the shared experiences, and it remains important to me to find ways of integrating these dual roles as I continue to explore increased involvement. In listening to those assembled, I was reminded, again, of the importance of local action and involvement.
Many of those present have found ways of creating and using existing deliberative frameworks to focus in on a specific community’s needs. Reverend Gregg Kaufman Th.M. was part of a faith-based initiative in the “Cathedral District” of Jacksonville, Florida that led to the creation of a more pedestrian-friendly and community-oriented infrastructure around five historic churches – all of which are still active congregations.
Leslie Garvin, who serves as the Executive Director of the North Carolina Campus Compact, which supports thirty-eight college campuses as they work to foster civic and community engagement in higher education, was working on creating an issues guide for facilitating dialog around Confederate statues. I saw immediate relevance to this and the dialog initiated and carried out by concerned residents and the City of Rochester around the racist images on the Dentzel Carousel at Ontario Beach Park.
Bill Muse, in wrapping up the workshop, stressed the importance of finding bipartisan agencies to partner with to build critical thinking, communication, and collaborative skills in the next generation of citizens. Getting to know so many people in such a short amount of time together is impossible. Nonetheless, I was touched in some way by each and every one of the stories shared during our time together. Many of the participants have spent their lives working toward change, as educators, activists, and citizens, work they continue in their roles with the Kettering Foundation and NIFI. All agreed that there are significant challenges involved in increasing civic deliberations and meaningful dialog, including getting all the parties into the same room together and making sure that all stories are shared and listened to. There was also a shared commitment and belief that slow change at the community level is possible.
As so often happens, I encountered a more personal connection in my travels to Dayton, Ohio. An image of the first playing of the Deeds Carillon bells, on April 5, 1942 by Mrs. Edward Deeds, was published in the April 1942 edition of the National Cash Register (NCR) Factory News. The parent company of NCR was founded in Dayton, Ohio. Charles F. Kettering, the inspiration for the Kettering Foundation’s continuing work, including its annual Deliberative Democracy Exchange (DDEx), worked at the National Cash Register Company in Dayton, Ohio, where he helped develop the first cash register with an electric opening drawer. Edward A. Deeds was a former CEO (1931–1957). They later formed Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company (DELCO), and developed a key-operated electric self-starting ignition system, which was introduced on Cadillac vehicles in 1912, and replaced iron hand cranks. My grandmother, Alice, had retired from NCR in Ithaca, NY. Like so many others of the time, I am sure she marveled at the image of Deeds Carillon and the crowd that gathered to hear the bells, as the fight for a more democratic world, the war after the war to end all wars, continued.