I thought that this photo sums up Anani Memorial International School in many respects: they expect a lot from young children, from behavior to knowledge.  The children are taught both English and French by the time they are six or so, and their teachers expect great things of  them.

What the photo doesn't suggest is the tremendous sense of joy and love that the teachers also share with their students.  Music and clapping often breaks out in all of the classes, and the young scholars are made to feel important and precious.

Many of them are missing one or both parents and would be going to no school at all if  it weren't for this amazing school in the heart of the Nima slum.  Here's another photo, with happier faces.

Today was certainly one of the most unforgettable of my life.  The students and staff of Purity School, led by Proprietress Madame Constance Boakye Afriyie and Headmaster Mr. P.M. Offei, welcomed us before we even entered the school, as ceremonial dancers came out to greet us.

We then had a program of speeches and performances.  Many references were made to Elizabeth Fosler-Jones, who has led the efforts to raise money for the school, and to my son, Peter del Mar, visited the school with me in November and is one of about sixteen students working with Elizabeth.

I then interviewed seven of the school's leading students, who described with passion and eloquence how the school has helped them and how we might help them to make it even stronger.

The visit reminded me of why I have been trying to bring schools in Ghana and the U.S. together.  Certainly we have material resources that can help.  The Pals of Purity School already helped Purity School purchase its first computer.  But the Ghanaian students and their teachers also have a great deal to offer us, including a deep commitment to learning and graciousness that both inspires and humbles.

Leaving for Ghana Tomorrow!

My bags aren't quite packed yet, but I'm getting there!  Twenty-four hours from now I'll be heading toward Ghana for a 10-day trip.

I'm there for multiple purposes, mainly delivering a paper on the tension between how Ghanaian textbooks and intellectuals treat its history and going to a variety of schools to maintain or establish links between them and schools in the Pacific Northwest, where I live.  But I also go for more personal reasons.

Ghana, as one person wrote of Africa more generally, makes me believe in God.  Happiness and suffering alike seem much closer to the surface there, and human relationships seem to count for more.

Westerners are treated like celebrities in Ghana, especially if they are white.  When I speak to students there, I try to emphasize how much I respect how hard they work and how considerate they are with each other.  Maybe it's hard to remember that when you are reading letters from students in the U.S. talking about their games and their pets and their vacations.  But Ghanaians have a lot of very impressive virtues that are hard to put a price tag on

Going to Ghana also reminds me of how bizarre my life is--the material goods, the solitude, the comfort.  Only a small sliver of people in the history of the world have lived the way I do, the way that most people in the West now live.  Of course that doesn't make our lives bad or wrong.  But it's exhilerating to realize how little I know about the human experience and prospect--and sobering to realize what incredible resources I have at my disposal and the responsibilities that come with those unmerited privileges.

Hanna Rosin on Gender in the New Economy

Hanna Rosin, whose much-anticipated book on modern gender roles is about to appear, had another fine piece, this in The New York Times Magazine.

Here she looks at the changing roles of women and men in a small, conservative town in Alabama.  As in so many other places in the U.S., good-paying jobs for men have been disappearing, and their wives are earning a greater and greater share of the family income--this in a place where men are generally understood to be the head of the house.

Rosin does a fine job of pointing out that some of the wounds suffered by men are self-inflicted, as they are reluctant to train for and fill jobs that appear feminine.  But it precisely these jobs--some of which pay quite well, such as health administration or nursing--that are proliferating as high-paying manufacturing jobs dry up.

Traditional ideas about men's roles (and, I would argue, male privilege) are keeping men from being able to jump into the new economy.  As women's economic power grows, much of the rationale for male privilege should be crumbling.

U.S.A. !?!? U.S.A.!?!?

Every four summers we are treated to the Olympic spectacle of matchless athletes encased in a curious hodgepodge of patriotism, nationalism, and "human interest."

A columnist for the Oregonian drew a lot of flak for pointing out what the rest of the world has long known: everyone but the U.S. roots against the U.S. at the Olympics.  It hardly seems fair that the richest nation in the world, a country whose military budget is about as much as everyone else's put together, also gets to scoop up an obscene number of Olympic medals, wave the American flag around in front of the rest of the world every few minutes, and chant "U.S.A.!!  U.S.A.!!" nonstop for weeks while most of the world's nations win not a single medal.  All of this while American athletes and their families maneuver to present themselves as virtuous underdogs deserving of big sponsorship deals.

This is not to say that I didn't go crazy when Galen Rupp (who played soccer for a local coach I know well and went to my son's high school) kicked his way to a silver medal in the 5,000 meters.

But the Olympics more often reflect than transcend nationalism, a fact that the endless stories of young, virtuous Americans struggling for excellence helps to obscure.  The Olympics both project and disguise U.S. power.

Hanna Rosin on Young Women and Casual Sex

The most recent issue of The Atlantic has an interesting piece by Hanna Rosin who argues that handwringing over the "hook-up" culture of casual sex at modern colleges does not victimize young women.

Rosin points out that only a minority of college students have a large number of sexual partners and that the great majority hope to marry.

But most of her ink is devoted to puncturing the assumption that casual sex is bad for young women.  Rosin points out that the average woman at college is doing much better than her male counterpart, and that she's more likely than him to get a good job and make good money right after college.  Many such women conclude that it is unwise for them to take on children, husbands, or even serious boyfriends at a critical time in their lives--at or soon after college.  "Hooking up" enables them to enjoy sex without the burden of a relationship that will take up their valuable time--and might saddle them with a man who is apt to make less money and do less housework than they are.

Back in the 1950s, Hugh Hefner urged well-to-do young men to "rent" women rather than "buying" (marrying) them.  The dynamics that Rosin describes are a bit different, but the fact that many ambitious young women are avoiding commitments to young men is one more indication that the average young woman is apt to be more successful than her male counterpart.

"Wonders of the African World"

I recently watched--and read about--Henry Louise Gates's "Wonders of the African World," a six-part documentary created for public television in the late 1990s.  (Gates is arguably the most prominent African-American scholar in the world.)

The documentary elicited a great deal of criticism, especially from Africans, for Gates's flippant on-camera persona and his tendancy to lecture Africans on such topics as slavery and gender inequality.  The companion volume Gates wrote was much more detailed and nuanced, which suggests that Gates may not have had full control over the TV series.  Certainly complexity is often the enemy of popular historical documentaries.

But what comes through strongly in both the documentary and the book is Gates's focus on great African civilizations--and his often ambivalent reaction to their militaristic or hierarchical aspects. 

As one of his interviewees points out, however, what great civilization has not been ultimately concerned with the exercise of power?  If we are looking for impressive ancestors, how do we define "impressive"?  Should we necessarily conflate impressive with powerful?