IEP and Nanny on her wedding day

I’m here to follow up.

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about Manhattan’s niche industry of super high end nannies and mused about why some people will pay astronomical prices for childcare.  I was responding to an article in The New York Times Magazine that discussed this topic and has since gotten quite a bit of national attention.

Take, for example, this article from Slate’s Double X section in which experienced nanny L. Wood discusses why she would rather work for a rich family (specifically a rich mother) than a working one.*  Wood comments that the obvious issue of compensation certainly factors in.  But, rather, she believes it is the way that wealthy mothers manage their relationships with nannies and babysitters that makes them preferable employers.  Specifically, they don’t have relationships with their nannies – according to Wood, that is.

Perhaps I come to this topic defensively.  Except for the fact that we did go through a well-reputed referral agency (rather than Craigslist or similar) to hire our nanny  I am everything she described in a working mother.  We went through a series of awkward interviews.  We ultimately made a decision based on a gut feel.  When our nanny was new to us and we were new to parenting I’m sure that I micromanaged her more than was warranted.  And – at the heart of Wood’s position – we have a personal relationship with our nanny.  It seems we’re everything she’d hate.

So now that I’ve gotten my disclosures out of the way let me ask this: what’s so wrong with all of that?  When it comes to babysitters I can see her point.  They are there to keep your kids fed, amused, out of trouble, and put to bed for an evening here and there.  They are paid hourly and if they are reasonably experienced there is no need to go through lengthy pre- or post-game rituals with them.  But a nanny is different.  This person is caring for your children on a daily basis for long periods of time.  (I know of a family who had the same nanny for 12 years!)  Nannies are working (and sometimes living) in your house for the majority of your children’s waking hours.  What I don’t understand is why anyone wouldn’t want such an employment arrangement to come with some degree of personal relationship.

Wood argues that, “Wealthy moms know how to manage their help because they have experience hiring, managing, and firing people in their homes.”  She believes that this level of comfort with household employees makes them better employers because it affords them some degree of detachment from their nannies.  While I would agree that someone well-versed in managing a household staff is better equipped to be a good boss, I wholly disagree that the detachment that supposedly results is any kind of asset.

Any study that analyzes people’s job satisfaction tells us that one of the biggest indicators in whether or not people like their jobs is the relationships they have at work.  This usually outranks even the work itself in measures of job satisfaction.  In a professional environment the friendships and camaraderie that are built amongst coworkers are highly valued.  Yet Wood seems to believe that such relationships come as a detriment.

Taking this a step further, a nanny’s job is to help raise your kids for a portion of their lives.  Certainly she should do so in accordance with the parents’ rules, values, and priorities.  But she’s still shepherding them through life on a daily basis.  In the same way that two parents need to communicate about their children extensively, so should a mother** and her nanny.  Raising a child is a huge job and a collaboration.  If a nanny is part of that collaboration in your family then shouldn’t there be more to a mother’s return home at the end of the day than, “You’re dismissed”?

I don’t pretend that our nanny comes to our house every day out of the goodness of her heart.  She comes because it is her job and because we pay her.  Nevertheless every morning when I leave for work thank her.  And every evening when she leaves our house we thank her.  Perhaps this isn’t the way things are for most working adults.  Come to think of it, I don’t think my current boss has ever thanked me for anything.  But maybe that should be the way things are for more of us.  How much happier might we all be if our employers told us on a regular basis how much they appreciate what we do?

In my last post on this topic I mentioned that IEP was Nanny’s ring bearer when she got married last month.  I couldn’t have imagined it any other way.  And I’m pretty sure neither could she.  And I know for certain that we’re both very grateful for that.

*For the purposes of this blog post I will overlook the incredibly erroneous assumption that no working mothers are affluent, and that all stay-at-home mothers are.  Clearly she’s never heard of Sheryl Sandberg.  Nor has she, apparently, ever met a family that made financial sacrifices in order for one parent to stay home.

**I don’t mean to exclude fathers here.  But Wood limits her argument to mothers, so for the sake of practicality so am I.

His heart was in the right place.  Truly it was.  Nevertheless, I gave him the cold, hard diss.

In the summer of 2003 I started a new job more than a year after having been laid of from my previous one.  GAP and I were dating at the time and he wanted to spend the night at my place the night before I started work so that he could make me pancakes in the morning.  I turned him down.  While I certainly appreciated the thought, I was nervous, and all I really wanted was to go through my normal morning routine without any special occasion festivities throwing me off my game.

I thought of this memory yesterday when I was scanning headlines online and came across this article wherein various women commented via Twitter on the essential components of their morning routine.  It seems I’m not the only one who adheres to a morning routine with a certain religiosity.

Having kids is about the fastest way to put any adult routine on the chopping block.  But even as my morning routine has evolved to account for feedings, diaper changes, and temper tantrums I still hold certain aspects of my mornings sacred:  My breakfast.  My two-mile walk with our dogs.  And leaving the house with the bed made.  These things make me feel normal and in control of my day.

Most of the respondents to HuffPo’s survey said that coffee was the thing they couldn’t live without.  Others said exercise, a favorite body lotion, and a hug or kiss from a loved one.  But I think that what we include in our morning routine isn’t so important as the fact that we have one.  Mornings are hard for many of us.  Making each day up from scratch would be a disaster.  Having a routine allows us to operate on autopilot for a bit until we’ve rubbed the sleep out of our eyes and all pistons are firing.  And that routine also gives us a barometer of sorts for how the day is going.  This isn’t to say that a rough morning means that the rest of your day is doomed, or conversely that a good morning can’t be trashed pretty quickly.  But it gives us some context for the day.

There are certainly days when I wish for a different morning routine; one that includes sleeping until 7:30, eating breakfast at a leisurely pace while reading the news, and then going out for a long run while I’m still feeling fresh and energetic.  (When all my children are grown, perhaps I will have that…)  For the moment, though, my mornings are quite different.  Nevertheless, even if they are subject to influences outside of myself I know how important it is to take care of my own needs amidst the chaos.

I need my morning routine.  It keeps me upright and moving at a time when horizontal and sedentary seem much more appealing.  And if I can cross off my morning tasks one by one, then I can face the day knowing that I got it off to a good start.

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Okay, so let’s pretend this is Twitter.  What are the aspects of your morning routine that you could never give up?

I don’t have an answer here.  But if you know me at all you know that that won’t stop me from asking the question.  This time around the question is: How on earth do we train hot-headed young men to be cocky, trained, killing machines, and then expect them to simultaneously demonstrate prudence and cultural sensitivity?

A pair of stories in this vein have caught my attention recently.

The first incident was the more horrific.  Early this month a US soldier opened fire on Afghan civilians, killing 16.  It boggles the mind, really.  How on earth could this happen?  And yet, when you think about it further it seems even more curious that it doesn’t happen more often.  We take young men, at the most aggressive, arrogant moment in their lives.  It’s the moment when they are technically adults, but still mere adolescents in so many ways.  We train them about the enemy.  We ship them off, thousands of miles from home.  We place them in shockingly stressful situations.  We arm them.  And then we expect them to exercise sound judgment and restraint.

The second incident was alarming, but mostly for its stupidity.  A pair of helicopter pilots in a remote region of Afghanistan were showboating and buzzing an outpost building.  On their rapid descent they lost control of the aircraft, crashed to the ground, and then flipped the helicopter a few times before it finally stopped.  It is either by the grace of God or crazy dumb luck that no one on board or on the ground was killed.  Here again is another example of something that initially seems alarming.  But after pondering all of the contributing factors perhaps we should be surprised we don’t read more stories like this.  Why wouldn’t headstrong young men, stranded in remote mountains, and trained to make amazing pieces of machinery do amazing things, want to have a little fun with their skills every now and then?

It all sounds like a recipe for disaster, and yet to a certain extent we can’t afford to have it any other way.

We need these men (and women) to be confident, even cocky.  We need them to be fearless.  We need them to be able to see a situation in the stark contrast of black and white when the moment comes to pull the trigger.  They are doing a job that most people are unwilling to do and that requires traits that aren’t always easy to muster.  In the words of Colonel Nathan R. Jessup, “…deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall! You need me on that wall!” And he’s right.  We do.

But while we need our military personnel to be able to stand on a wall, we also need them to understand cultures highly different from our own.  We need them to exercise deference and nuance in dealing with people whose assumptions about Americans are likely not favorable.  We need them to respect customs they don’t share and gods they don’t worship.  And we need them to do this in their early twenties and with guns in their hands.

It is an incredible testament to our military and the respect for its chain of command that these kinds of disasters don’t happen more often.  Thankfully most decisions are coming from older, more experienced, and more level headed officers.  And thankfully most younger troops seem to hold their authority in sacred esteem.

Perhaps some of these disasters are par for the course.  I don’t know whether to be disgusted that they happen at all, or grateful that they don’t happen more.  As is the case in most situations that are streaked with grey, I think I feel a little of both.

I’ve made mention here before of the fact that GAP and I intend to adopt.  Well, now that we have our two biological children we have set out on the path toward adoption.  It feels a wee bit crazy to be starting this next parenting adventure before the most recent addition is even sleeping through the night.  But when you consider that the process takes about two years it makes a bit more sense.

We submitted our application a few weeks ago and right now the name of the game is: paperwork.  And lots of it.  Forms, forms, and more forms.  Most of them are fairly predictable – employment verifications, tax returns, medical exam results, and so on.  One form, however, is more of a doozy.  We each have to fill out a 16-page personal information form that addresses everything from our parents’ marital status to what we might do if our adopted child wants to seek out his birth parents.

Not surprisingly when it comes to international adoption there is quite a bit of focus on the racial aspect of things.  We intend to adopt from Asia which means that, by definition, our adopted children will not have the same fair skin and blue eyes that our biological sons have.  The adoption agency – quite rightly – wants to know how we will help our adopted kids deal with any discrimination they may face as minorities, and in that vein asks about what discrimination we have faced in our own lives and how we coped.  One such field requested: Talk about a time when someone made an assumption about you based only on how you look.

I was stumped.

I called my sister and she knew exactly why I was at a loss.  I’m a completely normal looking white woman.  I am of average height and build.  I grew up around people who look largely like I do.  I currently live in an area where most people look largely like I do.  I imagine people have made all sorts of assumptions about me based on my appearance, but none to my detriment.  And that is almost certainly what the adoption form’s question is trying to unveil.  And I wonder about the effect this has on how I go about my way in the world.

Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t mean to sit here and say, “It’s too bad I’ve never been misjudged or discriminated against based on appearances.  My life would really be a lot more colorful if I had some experience in this realm.”  I should be – and am – incredibly grateful that I’m struggling with this question.  But if I am to answer it with a true story (which I will, some way, somehow), I’m going to have to dig to come up with it.

As I talked through it with my sister she told me about a friend of hers.  This friend was from an affluent community in the mid-Atlantic region.  She ended up attending Prestigious University A for undergrad, but amongst her other applications was Prestigious University B.  Prestigious University  B’s application asked her to describe a time when she had been discriminated against based on her race.  In her teenage naiveté she wrote, without a trace of irony, “Not applicable.”  The story is funny now because as adults we all understand that this is the kind of question we are supposed to answer with nuanced empathy.  But a part of me applauds her response for its candor and honesty.  For truly, if you’ve never experienced discrimination of any kind, isn’t it insulting to those who have to pretend that you know anything of what they’ve legitimately endured?

I think what the adoption agency wants to learn is how I will empathize with and support my adopted children when they are  on the receiving end of ignorant and hurtful assumptions based on their race (as they almost certainly will be at some point).  And the fact of the matter is that no matter how genius a response I dream up for my personal information form, I can’t honestly say that I’ve ever experienced what my children will.  When it happens I will listen to them.  I will explain that some people are ignorant, and judgmental, and bigoted.  I will ring up GAP’s brother or sister (both of whom are Asian and were adopted in the mid-’80s) and ask for their perspective and guidance.  And I have confidence that GAP and I together will chart those waters successfully, if imperfectly.

I think it’s a shame that I can’t respond to the form’s query honestly.  A lot of people in this world have lived through real, painful, and damaging discrimination.  And it feels a bit disingenuous for me to claim that I, in any way, am one of them.

I was struck late last week by all of the coverage of Mit Romney’s proclamation that he likes grits.  It struck me because it made me sad.  You know there’s a presidential primary afoot when a comment like this makes headline news.

I’m always disappointed when I see a presidential campaign turned into a three-ring circus of gaffes and stunts.  Granted some of this is the fault of the candidates themselves.  (Really, who makes a ten thousand dollar bet during a debate?)  But much of the blame rests on our shoulders.  The antics that candidates go through to curry our favor are largely determined by us.  Much like television networks wouldn’t air reality shows if we didn’t watch them, politicians wouldn’t go to such lengths to prove that they are just like the rest of us if we didn’t make them.

And here’s the irony of the whole thing: Presidential candidates are not just like the rest of us.  Quite frankly, we should be grateful for that.  (The West Wing aptly addressed this issue in its third season.)  The President of the United States is still, arguably, the most powerful person in the world.  This is a person who can veto acts of Congress, and wage war for 60 days without congressional consent, and sign bills into law.  This is a big, damn deal.  I don’t want to hand those reins over to just anyone.  The bar for this job should be set far higher than the litmus test that unfortunately emerged out of the Bush/Gore election in 2000: “Would I want to have a beer with this person?”

Somehow, though, we always manage to distill things down to these asinine measures of relatability.  And this is how we end up with Hilary Clinton taking a shot of Crown Royal in 2008, Michelle Obama and Jill Biden attending a NASCAR race in 2011, and Mit Romney liking grits in 2012.  We force them to work for their street cred, and stunts like these are the price they pay.  But why do we do this?  Why do we ask politicians to posture and pander this way?  We ought to find it patronizing.

The net net of it is that we care that our elected officials understand our lives.  For how can we reliably expect them to represent us as governors if they know nothing of who we are – our passions, tastes, and challenges?  And I think this is a valid stance to take, although I disagree with the way we have chosen to take it.  We have chosen to evaluate a candidate’s ability to understand his constituents in part based on his ability to participate in local traditions, and I’m not sure how accurate a barometer that is for what we’re actually trying to measure.  Just because Mit Romney tries and likes grits doesn’t mean that he has any meaninful understanding of what life is like for middle class Southerners.  Just because Newt Gingrich can crack a joke about gun racks doesn’t mean that truly cares about cultures that value hunting.  These are two men who, respectively, are worth an estimated $250 million, and have had the power in their hands to shut down the federal government.  Any semblance of a life that most Americans would consider “normal” is nothing but a speck in these men’s rearview mirrors.  At some level we know that, which is why we make them attend pancake suppers and drink PBR.

This isn’t to say that I think retail politics are all a bunch of hooey.  Sitting down and having substantive conversations with individuals from various walks of life can be a valuable way to understand the needs of different demographic segments.  There’s nothing wrong with putting a face on a statistic.  It’s just that we take it too far.  The fact remains that to presidential candidates most of us will always be statistics – and that’s okay!  I can’t reasonably expect any U.S. President to know me personally.  But what I can reasonably expect is that he understands how his decisions will likely impact me (and every other demographic segment) and bear that in mind while leading our country.

When you get right down to it, I don’t care whether Mit Romney likes grits.  Or arugala.  Or red wine.  Or macaroni and cheese.  He can eat grits morning, noon, and night and it doesn’t mean that his decisions as President will benefit Southerners.  I care that he cares about the people he may some day represent.  And it’s too bad that we can’t come up with a better way to determine if he – or anybody else, for that matter - does.

If you know me at all in real life, you know I’m a fan of Tivo.  (Or, more accurately in my case, DVR.  But as far as I’m concerned “Tivo” is to digitally recorded video as “Kleenex” is to facial tissue… But I digress.)  GAP was the one pushing it when we climbed aboard the Tivo bandwagon several years ago.  But today I am the bigger evangelist.  I love the thing.

Perhaps this is quite a bit to do with life as a parent of young children.  I’ve heard my parents say many times that they have no idea what pop culture was doing in the ’80s because they were busy raising children.  I suspect that the same lot would have befallen me were it not for the magic of Tivo.  (Because really, who has time to set a VCR to record anything that isn’t earth shatteringly important?)  It is because of the magic “record” button on our remote that I am even slightly up to speed on current television shows.  Nevertheless, I am about to bite the hand that feeds me.

I miss the anticipation of watching shows in real time.

I remember in college how we all looked forward to congregating in dormitory and frat house rooms to watch Friends after dinner.  I remember one sorority sister who amazed her suite-mates because she was able to shower within the time span of a commercial break.  (Remember commercials?)  I recall that in my early twenties I made sure to leave Wednesday nights open so that I could watch The West Wing as it aired, and phone GAP (we did the long distance thing for a couple of years) as soon as it ended to rehash it.  The only show that I’ve watched in real time since we got Tivo was LOST and that was only because the suspense from week to week was completely unbearable (and because it conveniently started well after IEP’s bedtime).

I started thinking about all this because it occurred to me the other day that I don’t even know which days of the week some of my favorite shows air.  I think How I Met Your Mother is still on Mondays.  But The Big Bang Theory may have been moved.  Thursdays, perhaps?  And my favorite show of the moment, New Girl (“… really any type of chut-en-y“)?  I have no idea when it’s on.  That didn’t use to be the case.  Even today, 25-ish years later I can tell you that The Wonder Years aired on Tuesdays and The Cosby Show aired on Thursdays.

I miss getting excited about a new episode of a favorite show.  I miss looking forward to it.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love that I can sit down on nearly any evening and at least one of the shows I like is magically waiting for me to watch in my own time.  Because honestly, were that not the case, I’d miss most of it.  Still, though, there’s something a little isolating about it.

When everyone can watch a show at their own convenience almost no one watches it in real time.  (Sports are the obvious exception here.)  And when no one watches it in real time that collective, water-cooler moment the next day is substantially diluted.

None of this is breaking news.  But sometimes I notice little cultural phenomena and feel compelled to comment.  I have fond memories of looking forward to some of my past favorite shows each week.  A working mother of two young kids doesn’t really have the bandwidth to set her clock by the TV Guide anyway.  But I still miss the subtle excitement of the bygone time when I could.

You can’t blink or you will miss it.  It’s in the first line of this article called ”Farming the Unconscious” posted on We Make Money Not Art.” You don’t even know to be looking for it.

The “it” I refer to is the fact that the project discussed in the article comes from the Royal College of Art.  Not agriculture.  Not livestock.  Art.  This is relevant because it throws into question whether or not the entire project was created as an earnest attempt to solve a problem, or as a commentary on modern animal husbandry practices.

I encourage you to read the article.  The images alone are quite impactful.  The jist of it is this: Most people understand that the factory farming methods applied to chickens are largely believed to be inhumane.  The birds have been bred over time to reach physical maturity in about six weeks.  This rapid growth cycle is often too much for the cardio-pulmonary systems of the birds to withstand and many of them die before they can be slaughtered.  On top of the questionable breeding they are housed in huge, windowless, poorly ventilated barns with little-to-no room for movement, standing on a bed of their own feces, and reduced to cannibalizing each other out of boredom.  Seriously, it’s pretty disturbing.

But more disturbing still is student André Ford’s proposed solution.

He suggests that if the demand for poultry is such that we must be able to produce it on a mass scale, then why continue to raise chickens when we could just grow them?  Yes.  Grow.  Like a crop.  It is (apparently…) the logical extension of Purdue University professor Paul Thompson’s belief that raising more tolerant blind chickens we could circumvent many of the animal welfare problems plaguing the egg and poultry industry today.  If they are blind they won’t object as much to the conditions in which they live.  So why not take it a step further, render them fully unconscious, and house them in the most economic conditions possible?  While the chicken isn’t technically headless, it is effectively brainless.  To quote Ford explanation of the project:

As long as their brain stem is intact, the homeostatic functions of the chicken will continue to operate. By removing the cerebral cortex of the chicken, its sensory perceptions are removed. It can be produced in a denser condition while remaining alive, and oblivious. The feet will also be removed so the body of the chicken can be packed together in a dense volume. Food, water and air are delivered via an arterial network and excreta is removed in the same manner.  Around 1000 chickens will be packed into each ‘leaf’, which forms part of a moving, productive system.

• A collection of posts related to my month-long vegetarian experiment in 2010:
  • Vegetarian Update: Enlightened, Not Enraged,
  • Vegetarian Update: Cultural Connotations
  • Vegetarian Update: The New Normal.
• On Roast Chicken and Moral Failings
• A Carnivore’s Conscience

It  all started here: an article on Huffington Post about a seven-year-old boy who proclaimed to his parents that he is gay.  A friend posted a link on Facebook.  I read the article, loved it, and reposted it on my own Facebook page with a comment that the boy’s parents were to be commended for their supportive response.  However, that is not all there was to the story.

As it was told by his mother, a significant part of the boy’s coming out had to do with his crush on the character Blaine from Glee.*  He apparently also has frequent exposure to gay and lesbian couples through his parents’ friends.  So as far as he is concerned liking boys is no bigger a deal than liking girls.  I was thrilled to learn that this kid is blessed to grow up in a family and community where such a confession at the age of seven was met with complete acceptance, but there is the question of how he came to consider his sexuality at such a young age in the first place.

Is there a chance that this boy decided that he is/wants to be gay based on a very likable character in a television show?

I thought about it and I think the Glee crush probably gave this boy the platform – context and vocabulary – to express himself, but wouldn’t have put the idea in his head. I’m sure there are lots of kids who watch Glee at impressionable ages and don’t walk away believing they’re gay.  But what if they did?  What if kids watched Blaine, with his bowties, crooning voice, and wisdom beyond his years and said, “I’m going to be like him.  I’m going to be gay.”?  What then?  Would it be the worst thing in the world?  And why do we hang the weight of the world on it?  We chalk most of what kids say at this age (“I want to be a ninja turtle.” “I want to marry you, Mommy.” “Girls are yucky.”) up to their being children and not up to permanent beliefs.  So why is this topic so different?

Unfortunately, the answer is easy: fear for our kids.  Not all kids live in environments as tolerant as that of the boy from the article.  To run around the grade school playground pronouncing your homosexuality carries risks, right?  It would have for us, certainly.  But what about for today’s kids?  They are growing up in a world with Glee on the air.  They are growing up in a world where gay marriage is legal in more than half a dozen states.  Is it really the taboo ordeal today that it would have been 25 years ago?  Or are we just projecting our own fears onto our kids?

I don’t know the answer to this question.  I’m sure it varies by region of the country, religious and political persuasions, and various other criteria.  But any way you slice it, I don’t see how this kid coming out as a seven-year-old should be a problem.

If he identifies as gay now, it’s great that he’s being supported, just the same as it’s great to be supportive of a kid when he says he wants to be a secret detective. If he decides later that he’d rather kiss girls that’s fine too. What matters most is not how he came to this identification, but the fact that he’s being given the space and support to decide for himself.

*For the purposes of this post I am entirely setting aside the issue of whether or not a seven-year-old has any business watching Glee in the first place.

For two people with three graduate degrees between us, GAP and I have made a somewhat unlikely habit of questioning the actual value of the educational pedigrees we worked so hard to attain.

The basic premise of our debate is this: Does a college or graduate degree hold value because of the knowledge imparted by the coursework itself, or because of the signal it sends to the marketplace about the kind of person you are and the kind of employee you will be?

In this vein, we once spent the better part of a weekend intermittently debating whether we would fill a hypothetical entry level position with a candidate who had a four-year undergraduate degree, or one who had spent his post-high school years in the Peace Corps.  Assuming all other things were equal – raw intelligence, social skills, work ethic, etc. – which candidate did we think was more likely to do a better job.  Weighing the merits of each, we both ultimately (if reluctantly, for some reason*) admitted that we’d hire the college grad over the Peace Corps alum.  While we both liked the idea of the Peace Corps alum, we felt that the college grad was better positioned to succeed in an office job for a variety of reasons.

As it turns out, we’re not the only ones.  On Monday GAP sent me a link to this article on the Library of Economics and Liberty’s blog which discusses the difference between failing academic classes and merely forgetting the information taught in them.  In it author Bryan Caplan (George Mason Economics Professor) points out that he doesn’t remember any of his high school Spanish, which has no bearing on his current professional life.  However, if he’d failed high school Spanish it would have negatively impacted his college prospects, which in turn likely would have affected his current professional life.

Caplan’s point speaks directly to the conversation that GAP and I have had so many times.  It doesn’t seem to be about the knowledge. Patently, I remember precious little of what I studied in college – even of many courses within my business major.  (Ironically, I probably retained the most of my Spanish degree – my second major – even though I rarely use it.  Unlike other coursework, it seems to reside in the same portion of my brain as bike riding and skiing – rusty, but ready to be used whenever needed.)  Yet the fact that I earned my bachelor’s degree, and then my MBA, indicates that I am worthy of my job.  Perhaps there have been moments when my job required knowledge learned in school.  But by and large my jobs – all of them – have required knowledge I learned by experience much more frequently than that learned in classrooms.

As GAP and I think about our children’s education it is something we value incredibly, but not for the reasons you might expect.  We value it for the process skills that our kids will learn – how to apply yourself; how to seek help from classmates and teachers; how to juggle a demanding course load; and how to achieve those ever-elusive time management skills.  Whether or not they can calculate an integral when they finish high school (I think I still could, if really pressed – thank you Ms. Clements!) is ultimately irrelevant.  Whether or not they can rise to a challenge, however, matters a great deal.

*We really liked the idea of the Peace Corps candidate.  We thought he was probably a more interesting person and likely had more street smarts than his college grad counterpart.  But we felt that the guy with the bachelor’s degree would be better positioned to succeed at a desk job than someone who’d been out traveling the world for four years. … And we both sort of felt like jerks because of it.

About nine months ago my mother and sister started yammering on about some British series that I absolutely had to watch called “Downton Abbey.”  I blew them off.  While I can certainly appreciate a good British production my tastes are typically more mainstream than theirs.  These two can devour episode after episode of the most obscure film or series.  I assumed this was more of the same.  Then the Emmys rolled around and “Downton Abbey” cleaned up.  Over the holidays when we all gathered here for Christmas their well-intentioned suggestions started afresh.  Finally, a couple of weeks ago I gave in.  And…

They were right.  It’s wonderful.  The scenery and costumes are stunning.  The characters are fresh.  The dialog is clever.  The plot is intriguing.  In short, I am hooked.

Imagining a life of evening gowns and ladies’ maids is mind candy enough.  But when I stop daydreaming there are other aspects of this show that pique my interest even further.  The biggest “for instance” in this category is the sense of honor and pride exemplified by many of the characters, most notably the staff.

These are people who are, by all practical means, condemned to a life of service.  There was no way out of the class you were born into in England at that time.  Cooking and cleaning.  Being always present but still invisible.  Tending to the needs – however superficial – of other people all the time.  Zipping dresses they’ll never get to wear and fluffing beds they’ll never get to sleep in.  This is largely thankless work, but these characters take a surprising amount of pride in doing it well and bringing honor to the family they serve in the process.

Watching “Downton Abbey” I can’t help but wonder how many people today put so much of themselves into their work.  I’m not just talking about long hours in corporate cubicles.  Many people put that much of their time into their work.  But how many people derive such a sense of honor from their work?  How many of us avoid foolish behavior because of the shadow it might cast on our employer?  How many of us would tender our resignations because an embarrassing incident from our past came to light and might be seen as shameful to our boss?  I can’t get over the extent to which these characters’ identities are inextricable from their work in the household.

Of course they are fictional characters.  They are largely painted in shades of black and white in the way that many imagined characters are.  So this phenomenon I write of here is likely exaggerated for the screen.  Nevertheless, in shows and films that take place in present day we see characters compartmentalize their personal and professional lives.  (Granted most of us don’t live in our bosses’ homes.  That presents an additional dynamic.)  We see characters try to explain away their mistakes and bad behavior.  We see them fight for their personal gain.  We rarely see such devotion to any person or cause outside the character’s own self.

I suppose what I’m angling at here is that in looking at our culture today I see a lack of service.*  Yes, when earthquakes and tsunamis hit we line up to donate blood and money.  But on a regular basis I don’t typically find that service – to the greater good in any of its forms – is a driving force in the lives of many people around me.  To clarify, I don’t think that being a footman or a ladies’ maid in an aristocratic British house really did that much for the greater good either.  But these characters (most of them, anyway – there are a few weasels in the bunch…) exhibit a true spirit of service, and pride in doing so.  And that is a quality I don’t see much of.  And it’s a quality that I think, if more prevalent, could be an incredible agent for change and improvement in today’s world.

*And I’m not the only one.  Earlier this week I read this article that looks at the career choices of Prince William’s classmates at Eton, sadly noting that most of them have chosen careers that afford them great opportunities to make vast sums of money, but little opportunity to do much real good.